H is for Hag

H is for Hag

In Fairy Tales featuring a Hag, she is the crone and a symbol of transformation.
In the Middle Ages the Crone Goddess became the Wicked Witch and Hag Archetype of our fairy tales. Her knowledge and wisdom was persecuted by the Church's fear.

Fairy Tales Mentioning the Hag
(Some of these are sort of disturbing if you're thinking of children reading them...try and focus on the allegory)

Fairy Tale with Unknown Name
As you can probably guess, I do not know the name of this fairy tale.
I do remember that in it a fairy disguised as a hag seduces a prince by telling him that he must make love to her in order to be blessed with riches and what not. He is appalled by the sight of her and can't get it up but she finally persuades him and he bears through it. After the deed is done the hag transforms into a rare beauty, becomes his wife and they live happily ever after.
If you know the name of this story, please tell me, I can't find it online.

Snow White
We all know the story of Snow White, at the very least we've seen the Disney movie. Snow White's wicked stepmother/evil queen sends a huntsman after her to take out her heart. She is saved by 7 dwarves. Is tricked into eating a poisoned apple. A kiss of true love awakens her and she is saved and marries a handsome prince.

Snow White’s original age was 7. Also, she was forced to undergo 3 tricks of the Evil Queen. The first being a corset that is tied over-tight and cuts off her breathing. The second is a poisoned comb that puts her to sleep. The third is the poisoned apple that puts her into a magical coma.
She still wins over the evil queen though, who was then punished in a pretty creative fashion. She was forced to step into red-hot iron shoes and dance until she fell down dead.
In their first edition, the Brothers Grimm published the version they had first collected, in which the villain of the piece is actually Snow White’s jealous birth mother. In other versions, the step mother is a cannibal and wants to eat a part of Snow White’s body, usually her heart.


The Old Woman Who Was Skinned Alive
A king mistakenly believes that two hideous, smelly, deformed old women are actually the most delicate, beautiful and scrumptious of young tender maidens.
He has never actually laid eyes on them, since they’re hidden behind a large wall – but he becomes so passionately aroused after kissing one of the old woman’s fingers through the keyhole in the gate, that he begs to be able to spend the night with her. She agrees to bed him, but only if he will take her in the dark – since, according to herself, she is ‘far too modest to expose her nakedness to him’. The king rushes home to wait in anticipation for night to fall and his love to come to him.

In an attempt to make herself feel more youthful to the king’s touch, the old woman takes all her loose, sagging skin and ties it behind her back with string. She then covers herself with a long shroud, and limps in the dark to the king’s chambers.
After he has finished ‘the deed’ and she’s fallen asleep, the king discovers the secret his ‘tender maiden’ has hidden behind her back, and after lighting a candle he finds that his bed-mate is actually a disgusting old hag. He freaks out and throws her out the window.

Luckily the old woman has so much loose, sagging skin that she gets caught in the branches of a nearby tree and is left hanging there. Some fairies fly by and find the sight of the old woman so funny that they endow her with gifts of wondrous beauty, intelligence, and youth as a reward; she now has the body and face of a 15 year old! The king looks out his bedroom window in the morning, discovers a stunningly beautiful girl sitting in his tree, and immediately takes her for his wife.

The new queen, not wanting to reveal her beauty secret to her sister, tells the old hag that she has had herself skinned alive. The remaining old woman – presumably not wanting to be left out – takes herself quick-smart to the nearest barber shop, and requests that she also be skinned alive. When the barber has removed her skin down to her navel, the old woman dies of blood loss and pain (letting out a big fart as she does so) and her sister and the king live happily ever after.

The moral of the story? Something to do with the vanity of aging women I guess – but regardless of the moral, that is one damn bizarre fairy tale.
-(Giambattista Basile – Il Pentamerone (Entertainment For The Young) 1634)