Reading Notes, Marriage Tales: Part B

The second half of these tales was very much like the first.  The first story entitled "The Dog Husband" involved a young girl who had a dog that she was very fond of.  At night, the dog would become a man and sleep with girl.  After some time, she became pregnant.  When her parents found out, they were very ashamed and left her to die.  The crow took pity on her and told her to listen for crackling fire and then go to it.  She gave birth to 5 pups and was barely able to take care of them because her father had killer her dog lover.  However, her pups transformed into humans and became great whale hunters.  Eventually the people moved back to where the girl and her children were because of the bounty in whales and the boys became chiefs of the tribe. 

The last story in this series was called "The True Bride".  This story involved an evil stepmother, her true daughter, and her step daughter.  The stepmother was very mean to her stepdaughter and sent her out in the middle of winter to collect berries even though there were no berries at that time.  The girl went anyway and on her journey came across a house with four men.  The four men had her shovel snow off the roof where she found plentiful berries.  They also gave her fine clothes and the ability to spit gold.  When she returned, the stepmother sent her real daughter on the same quest in hopes that she would return with the same things.  The daughter was haughty to the four men and instead returned with only berries, and the ability to spit foul smelling toe nails. 

The chief's son married the gold-spitting girl because she was very valuable.  After some time, she became pregnant and the husband was called away for a meeting at the time of birth.  The evil step-mother helped deliver the baby, however when the baby came out, it would fall through a hole she cut in the floor and instead handed the wife a cat.  This happened again with a snake.  It was then decided that the wife should be killed because of her weird children and that he should marry the stepmother's real daughter.  She was cast into the lake, but before she drowned, the four brothers rescued her, told her about her real children, and transformed her into a goose.  Eventually with the help of her loyal dog, all was found out and the step-mother and real daughter were hung.  She who spits gold, her husband, and children lived happily. 

The Loyal Dog responsible for She Who Spits Gold's happy ending. 

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