Episode 39A – A Rose for Beauty – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 39A Show Notes

Source: French Folklore

This week on MYTH, it’s time to ruin another Disney classic with a peek behind the scenes. This is the first episode in our telling of the classic French tale, Beauty and the Beast. You’ll learn that Disney skipped over an absurd amount of backstory, that finders keepers doesn’t apply to real estate, and that you should really have homeowners insurance. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll discover why you shouldn’t trust that oddly friendly horse you met in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 39A, “A Rose for Beauty”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
I’m pretty sure that you’re familiar with this story: a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme, it’s La Belle et La Bete, or in English, Beauty and the Beast. It’s an animated Disney classic, having already been remade as a live action film, and provides a heartwarming message about bullies, judging people before you know them, and treating servants as inanimate objects that come to life when needed, but as you’ve probably guessed since I’ve decided to cover the story, there’s a lot of tale that didn’t make it into the Disney version. The version that most people are familiar with was first published by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756, but this is actually a simplified and abridged version of the original story, published in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.
For once, I can actually see a lot of merit in many of the cuts that were made, because the original story is a little messy, with a lot more characters, a much more complicated backstory, and some weird, unnecessary magic, but since it’s a version that not many people have heard (partly because it’s surprisingly tough to get ahold of), I’m going to stick to the original. It’s kind of a long story, so we’re going to break it up across a few episodes to keep me from rambling on for too long. Okay, enough preface. It’s off to ancient, magical France!
Once upon a time, in the feudal land of France, there was a great city full of rich and prosperous men. Among them lived a merchant, a man who had made a great fortune through a number of intelligent business ventures. The man also had a healthy libido, and so he and his wife had a full dozen children, six boys and six girls. The story doesn’t say so, but the man’s wife never really appears in the story, so it’s safe to assume she died in some tragic accident in years passed. Pick your favorite fate for her. At the time our story begins, none of the merchant’s children had married: the boys were too young to think of girls that way and the daughters were kind of bitchy snobs, so he had a lot of mouths to feed. The daughters, much like trust fund children throughout history, were immensely proud of the great wealth that they had done jack shit to earn and so felt that they deserved to find the absolutely best husbands possible. So far, no one had yet measured up to their impossible standards for wealth, beauty, personality, upbringing, dancing ability, and so on. Most likely, there wasn’t a man alive who could actually meet every criteria on the list.
Just the same, that didn’t mean that the young women didn’t enjoy being courted by all of the handsome, eligible young men of the city. Everyone knew how wealthy the merchant was, and how beautiful the daughters were, so they captured the attentions of most of the eligible bachelors, who competed to outdo each other in vainglorious flattery. The girls would have been content had this gone on forever, but Fortune is a fickle bitch. It started simply enough. Somewhere in the house, a forgotten candle was knocked over, setting the drapes on fire. The flames spread rapidly through the grand old house, and before anyone had realized what was happening, the fire was blazing out of control and beyond any attempts to stop it. The family and servants fled and watched as their home burned down to the foundations. Their expensive furniture, their splendid clothes, the books of all of the merchant’s accounts, the paper bank notes, all of these burned to ash. The flames were so hot that they melted and boiled away the gold and silver in the house and cracked the precious stones that the man had kept most of his fortune in and done most of his trading with, making them worthless. No one could remember ever having seen a fire this vicious and all-consuming, and when it finally died out, the family had been dropped far down the social ladder.
Whether because fate had turned against him or because the man had simply lost his nerve, the merchant, who had seemed to have a golden touch in any business he turned his mind to, suddenly couldn’t catch a break. All of the ships he’d had at sea, which could have salvaged his fortune somewhat and given him a nest egg to build his fortune again were lost at sea, either to storms or to pirates. The man would go to the docks each day, awaiting news that even one ship would survive, but all he ever received was dire news. His creditors put him into bankruptcy, seizing what few assets he had left until finally, he was left with nothing but a small cottage out in the country which had originally been intended as a hunting lodge, or maybe something to rent to the poor villagers nearby.
In short order, the family had fallen from the very heights of the social ladder to the very bottom and were forced to leave the city they could no longer afford and go almost 350 miles out into the middle of nowhere. As destitute as the merchant was at this reversal of fortune, the daughters were, somehow, even worse. They had never known anything but luxury, so this felt like hell itself. At first, they had held out hope that the suitors who had wooed them so hard for so long would be overjoyed that these great beauties were finally willing to listen to their marriage proposals. They had believed the honeyed words flowing from the lips of these rich, vain men, and so they were shocked to find that the crowd of suitors vanished like morning mist with the rising sun as soon as word got around that their father’s fortune was gone. The men had all been after the daughters for their wealth and status and didn’t actually give a shit about them as people. It was a hard thing to hear. Not a single man stuck around to seek the lovely young women.
If they’d had a group of good friends who’d stuck loyally by them to help out when things got tough, perhaps they could have borne this indignity, but it turned out that their friends were every bit as shallow as their suitors had been. As soon as the family became poor, everyone they had once been friends with suddenly pretended not to know them. A few of them, those who had received the most help from the benevolent patriarch, even went so far as to blame them for their own problems, even though the merchant had done everything he could to be a prudent businessman. His misfortune really wasn’t his fault, but these assholes enjoyed piling on to what had once been the most prestigious family in the city. Some people just love to kick you when you’re down.
Disappearing from the city therefore served the dual purpose of being the only place they could afford and getting them the hell away from everyone who just couldn’t stop talking shit about them all. They couldn’t really afford to do anything or go anywhere, so they mostly sat around in their tiny cottage, cooped up and miserable. It really was in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of a deep, thick forest. The children, who had grown up having servants to cater to their every whims, suddenly found themselves having to divide up the servants duties, along with all of the various needs of life in the deep country, and actually get their soft, rich hands dirty for once. None of them really knew much about cooking, cleaning, and the like, but they all got on with it as best they could since there was no other alternative available. Having lost their rich finery to the debtors as part of the bankruptcy, they were forced to wear ill-fitting, itchy woolen dresses, which made their humble dinners of whatever they could scrape together all the more humbling. They might be poor peasants now, but in their hearts, they never lost their belief that they deserved the finer things in life. Even thinking about the lives they had once lived, the laughter and the fun they had enjoyed, caused them almost physical pain now.
All, that is, except for the youngest daughter. She alone amongst her siblings displayed unusual courage, grit, and resolution, and calmly accepted their new situation. She didn’t waste time complaining about how unfair it all was, or how the world owed them more than this. She just rolled up her sleeves and got on with living her life. Like the others, she had of course endured a perfectly understandable period of mourning and adjustment, and had shared in their gloom and depression, but unlike the others, she actually managed to adjust and even find some reasons for joy and cheer in this new life of theirs. She knew that they hadn’t deserved what had happened to them, but lots of deserving people got the shit end of the stick. She knew she could either wallow in self pity, thus wasting her life, or find a way to be happy. She chose the latter. Fuck the city, and fuck the false friends who had abandoned them. Clearly, if they could all turn their backs on her family so easily, they were better off without them anyhow.
The one thing that did bother her was the suffering and depression of her father and her brothers and sisters. She was a sweet, loving girl, and so she did everything she could think of to try and cheer everyone up, but it was no use. And, to be clear, everything she could think of covered quite a lot of ground. Much like in the rest of their lives, her father had spared no expense in his children’s educations, so the girl was able to play several instruments with exceeding skill and beauty and sing along to her playing with a lovely voice, among other things. She had hoped that her sisters, likewise trained, might have joined her and started some kind of Partridge Family situation, but if anything, her attempts to be cheerful only made them all the more dour.
They were so unwilling to accept their misfortune, in fact, that they began to turn their bitterness on their sister, who was only trying to help. They accused her of being a little bitch, tormenting them for her own amusement by enjoying their suffering or else claimed she must be either mad or an idiot to not realize how miserable she should be. The eldest daughter in particular resented her baby sister. “How the fuck can this bitch be happy right now? Hmph! She was clearly always meant to be a little peasant slut. Imagine how she would have ruined our reputation if we were still in the city?” This was, of course, utter bullshit. The youngest girl was clearly better suited for standing out in whatever circumstance she found herself in than any of them.
As beautiful as her soul was, her appearance was equally so. She had lovely pale skin, long dark hair, and smooth slender limbs. She had the tender heart of a Disney princess (which is why she eventually became one), and her love and generosity could be seen in almost everything she did. In short, she was the kind of sweet person who seems like they should be cloying and annoying on paper, but are far too kind for anyone to actually dislike (bitchy, jealous sisters aside). She didn’t feel the loss of her lifestyle any less keenly than her sisters, but she had a strength of will that her contemporaries (including the author of the story) found highly unusual in women because fucking patriarchal bullshit.
Her sisters may have treated her like shit, but everyone else could see what a wonderful person she actually was, and so, given that everyone else was being all mopey and emo all the time, everyone quickly decided that the youngest daughter was the clear favorite of the family. In her former life, she had been known throughout the city as Belle, or Beauty, as much for her good heart and kind soul as for her incredible physical charms and grace. It had reached the point where pretty much everyone just called her Belle instead of her real name (which isn’t given in the story). That preference of pretty much everyone they ever met might have contributed just a tiny bit to the petty jealousies of her sisters. It didn’t help that several of the young men had let her know that, even with her father’s reduced circumstances, they were still interested. It was something none of her sisters could have hoped for, and that hurt their pride.
Belle managed to find peace in her new humble, rural life. She would braid up her hair with wildflowers, or wander out in the forest to admire the beauty of nature. She found that she barely even missed the city after a time. By this point, two years had passed, and the family had settled down into their new life, accustomed if not resigned to it. A message had found their humble cottage from the city with news that just might bring a chance to change their fate for the better. One of the merchant’s ships had been spotted, a ship thought lost at sea. The message from his old agent in the city warned him to hurry though. “I fear that your former partners will try to take advantage of your absence to sell your cargo out from under you and make a killing off your misfortune. Hurry, old friend.”
He began to prepare for the long, long trip to the city immediately, relaying the news to his children as he packed. “But Papa!” exclaimed the oldest daughter. “That means that we’re not dead ass broke! You can sell the goods on your ship, make a new fortune, and rescue us all from this horrid life!” All of his children assumed he would have no problem making back his old fortune in no time, but the daughters except for Belle (of course) were far more insistent and more blindly sure than the sons; they wanted to set out immediately with their father and abandon all of this rustic shit to rot. They could buy new clothes once they were back in the city and their father was rich again. At the very least, he would be able to find them a home in a more modest town than the great city they had called home, which would still be a huge step up.
The five daughters seemed almost to have completely forgotten the difficulties of the last two years and practically considered themselves well-to-do again. The only alteration to their thought processes was a determination to take the first decent marriage offer that came their way this time. No more being excessively picky (just, you know, the right amount of picky; he still had to be wealthy and fairly good looking). Overjoyed at this sudden windfall, the five young women made extravagant demands of their father, asking for him to bring them the most ridiculous and expensive gifts with the money he was about to make: jewels, beautiful dresses, luxurious hats. Each of them tried to outdo the others with the over the top gifts they demanded, not even considering that if their father sold everything in this one ship for a great price, he still wouldn’t be able to afford everything they were asking for.
Belle, on the other hand, did the math in her head and quickly realized that her father could never afford to get even one luxurious gift for each daughter, and she didn’t care as much about material things anyway, so she stayed silent as her sisters called out, having decided not to ask for anything. The merchant, who tried very hard to be a good father, noticed that there was one of his girls he hadn’t heard from yet. “And you, my dear sweet Belle? Is there nothing that you want?” He could see her hesitation. “Come now, my dear. Tell me what you want. What can I bring home for you?” She gave her father a hug. “Papa, I do have one thing I want, and I think it far more precious than the gifts the others have asked for combined. All I want, Papa, is to see you come back home to us in perfect health.”
At such a heartfelt and selfless response, the other five girls were filled with shame and confusion, which quickly turned outward to anger at their sister. How dare she think herself better than them! That tricksy little bitch was just trying to make them all look bad! This was obviously bullshit, but these girls weren’t fond of self-reflection, so as to avoid having to confront the ugliness within. It was much, much easier to project that anger onto their kind little sister. One of them, speaking for the rest, sneered at Belle. “This child is putting on airs and wants everyone to look at her as a heroine and a martyr, but we know she’s doing it for selfish reason. We see through you, you little brat!”
Belle’s father, on the other hand, was deeply moved by his daughter’s selfless love. “That is a truly kind wish, my daughter, and I will do my best to give it to you, but surely there is something that you want. Your sisters are confused and jealous because they can’t imagine any girl your age not being caught up in pretty gowns and shining jewels. For their sake, if not for your own, surely there is something you can ask for!” “Well, father, if you insist that I ask for something, I would absolutely love it if you could bring me a rose. I have always loved them, and although the wildflowers that grow in some of the clearings are lovely, I miss the roses that cannot grow in the forest.” The clever girl had found a way to ask for something beautiful and physical to appease her sisters and her father while also avoiding making him spend money since he could simply pluck a flower from some public area to bring back.
Once he had finished packing, and had said his goodbyes to all of his many children, he set out for the city with as much haste as he could safely manage. He would need to be on the road for many days, and given how long it had already been since the message was written, the ship could be pulling into harbor any day now. Finally, filthy and exhausted, he arrived at the great city and headed directly for the harbor. As he approached, he could see that his ship, long thought lost, had indeed survived and was already docked. Excited, he hurried over, only to find that his one ally had been right to worry. His former partners had told the captain that he was dead (and maybe they even believed it, having not heard from him in two years, but I think they were just greedy). They had already sold everything that had been on the ship and taken the money for themselves.
The merchant wasn’t about to take this lying down, and he had a legal right to a large share of that money as he had put in most of the money for buying the cargo, so he began to go through the legal framework to try and get it back. Days turned into weeks turned into months. In what seemed no time at all, six months had passed. Despite his old partners hiring some very shady lawyers, he had managed to recover some of the money he was owed, but they too had fallen on hard times, and much of the funds had been seized by their creditors, and the little he had recovered had mostly been spent on his own lawyers and living expenses. At the end of it all, he had little more money than he had arrived with. Realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to squeeze any more water from this stone, he dejectedly decided to head for home before the cost of staying in the city ate up the little he still had.
Unfortunately, leaving now meant traveling in a nasty winter, and he met all sorts of horrid weather on the road home. More than once, he felt on the point of collapsing from exhaustion and exposure, but the thought of his children waiting for him kept him going. Barely. Finally, he was only a few dozen miles from his home when the worst blizzard yet hit. He found himself lost, nearly frozen to death, and buried in snow even on his horse. Still, it was only a few hours ride through the forest, and moving was better than sitting still, so he resolved to keep going. That was a mistake. He soon realized that if he didn’t get out of the storm, he was going to die. There were no homes in this part of the forest, so a somewhat hollow rotted out tree was the best shelter he could find. His horse, having the better survival instincts, wandered over to a nearby cave and huddled for warmth inside.
I doubt he could have slept through the bone-chilling cold and the howl of the wind anyway, but the gnawing of hunger in his belly didn’t help, nor did the roars and howls of large beasts prowling around outside. He had hoped that things would look better by dawn’s light, but when the storm finally calmed down and the sun rose, things were not, in fact, better. The driving snow had completely obliterated any tracks he might have made and had buried the road in virgin snow. He had gotten turned around in the storm, so he had no idea at all in which direction his home lay. He was lost in the woods with no food and no supplies.
With no other option, the poor merchant waded out into the chest-deep snow and, with much flailing and stumbling, chanced across what felt like the road, or at least some kind of path. Relieved, he began to follow it. Either it was the road, it would lead him to the road, or it would lead him to someone’s home where he could seek shelter. Any of those options was better than staying here and dying.
He lost track of time in the endlessly same snow and forest trees, but eventually, the forest opened up into a huge clearing. At the center sat a massive, beautiful castle, and oddly, no snow could be seen anywhere on the castle grounds. In fact, a wide ring of clear ground could be seen circling the castle. It was weird, but it was also shelter which made it better than death so he headed towards it.
The path leading to the gorgeous castle was lined with four rows of massive orange trees, laden with flowers and fruit despite the impossibility of such a thing in the heart of winter. Along the lane were cunningly carved statues, incredibly lifelike, and scattered about the grounds with no apparent eye towards symmetry or order and made of some odd material the merchant couldn’t identify. All of the ones he could see were approximately life-sized and beautifully painted to mimic life. They stood in all sorts of odd poses and different outfits, although the majority of them seemed to be dressed as soldiers. As he approached the outer court of the castle, he saw more and more of the strange statues, so vast that he quickly lost count.
Honestly, he wasn’t all that interested in the statues anyway. He was freezing and starving, and all that really mattered to him was the prospect of a warm place to sit down, safe from the cold. Besides, a castle probably meant food that he could beg. He pressed on, too tired to bother to stop and examine the statues any closer and continued on to the castle doors. As he passed beyond the outer court and into the castle proper, he saw a grand staircase carved from solid agate with oak balusters chased in gold. He kept moving through the castle, finding many richly furnished rooms, but no people. On the plus side, the rooms were suffused by a gentle warmth that thawed his bones. Free from cold, he began to be all the more desperate for food. The problem was that the whole castle seemed to be inhabited solely by statues. Who could he ask for food from?
The place was silent, save only for the sound of his own footfalls, but weirdly, the castle didn’t have the feel of a deserted place. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why, but he felt sure that the place was inhabited. That didn’t change the fact that, although the doors were all open, and the rooms were all clean and furnished in elegant style, he had found no people here.
Exhausted, he finally came to a halt in a drawing room with a huge fire roaring merrily in the fireplace. It clearly couldn’t have been burning long without someone tending it, so he sat down to wait, assuming that someone would be coming along sooner or later either to tend or to enjoy the fire. Besides, the fire felt good on his still chilled skin. He seated himself on a plush sofa near the fire, fully intending to stay there and wait for someone so he could explain who he was and why he was here, his eyes closed of their own accord almost as soon as he sat and he drifted off into a blissful and much-needed sleep.
The merchant awoke on the sofa an unknown time later, but probably not more than an hour or so. He felt a little better now, but also famished. He had no idea how long it had been since he’d eaten, but it felt like his stomach was trying to gnaw on his backbone. Between running out of food on the road home and forcing his way through deep snow, the merchant was ravenous. He sat up, planning to continue his search, but something made him pause. “What the fuck? Where did this table come from?” Indeed, although he remembered no such table when he had sat down, there was one next to him now. What’s more, it was absolutely covered in intoxicatingly delicious-smelling food. He could see all kinds of sumptuous dishes and it called to him. Someone must have found him while he was sleeping and guessed his story. “Hello? Is anyone there? Thank you for your hospitality! The food smells absolutely delicious. Would you please come out so that I can thank you properly for your goodness?”
He sat there for a time, trying to wait for his host to show himself, but he soon gave in to his hunger and devoured everything that had been left for him. It tasted as good as it smelled and did much to sate his hunger. Rubbing his stomach, he leaned back on the sofa and promptly fell back to sleep without meaning to. He was still exhausted from his exertion and from not sleeping the night before, and the food had a soporific effect on him. He slept deeper and longer this time, at least four or five hours.
When he awoke, stretching and yawning, he found that the table full of empty dishes had been replaced with a new one covered in cakes, desserts, preserved fruits, wines, and liquors. He again called out his thanks to his invisible host and set to and tried a little of everything. He had never dined this well before, not even at the height of his wealth in the city. That thought began to worry him. He was an educated man, and he knew the ancient stories of the gods, and a part of him began to fear than he had wandered into the home of Eros or some such. He resolved to go through every room in the castle until he found someone he could thank for the excellent food and for letting him sleep there.
It proved to be a futile gesture. Every room was large, elegant, and empty. He found no servants, no workers, no gods, nothing. Likewise, he could find nothing to tell him definitively that the place was inhabited. The food appearing twice before him seemed to indicate that it was, but he couldn’t shake the fear that he had somehow wandered into a place of forces beyond his understanding. Giving up his futile search, he sat down to think. “You know, maybe this is like the home of Eros. Maybe no one lives here, and I’m being taken care of by invisible, silent servants. Maybe I was brought here by whatever forces control this place to take ownership of this empty place!” He took the thought as a sign that someone did indeed want to make him a gift of this palace, along with everything it contained. Honestly, I’m not sure how he arrived at that conclusion. Maybe he wasn’t entirely immune from the magical thinking of his daughters. They must have gotten it from somewhere, after all.
Either way, he began to tour the house again, not as a guest but as a new owner taking possession of a fine purchase. He began to mentally divide up the assets amongst his children and even assigning them the rooms they would take as their own when they all moved in here with him. Imagining the looks of shock and delight on their faces when he showed them their new homes and new circumstances nearly made him giddy. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself before, but he had felt like a failure for not being able to provide for his children the way he had before, and the easing of that guilt was almost as powerful as a drug.
His wanderings brought him to the garden, near the castle’s heart, where he saw a riot of strange flowers in full bloom despite the winter raging outside the castle grounds. It was warm and fragrant, like a fine spring morning, and the air was perfumed with the delicate smell of the rarest flowers. Birdsong filled the air, light and sweet, blending beautifully with the trill of the small brook running through it. He laughed in delight. “Something tells me that my dear daughters won’t have much trouble adjusting to their new home. Honestly, they might even complain that it isn’t quite fancy enough for their tastes, or too far from the city, but I think they’ll come to love it. This castle is incredible! I should probably set out for home so that I can stop imagining their joy and actually experience it!”
When he had first come into the castle, the merchant had taken care to unsaddle his horse (whom he had collected from the cave) and send him off in the direction of the stables he had seen as he entered. Half dead and frozen through, he hadn’t been able to muster the energy to take the horse their himself, but it was a solid, clever animal and he had no doubt that the horse had found its way and made itself at home. Resolved now to leave, he set out to find the horse and head home. The path there led through a decorative alley lined with massive rose bushes in full bloom, more beautiful than any roses he had ever seen before. The air was heady with the perfume of them, and the smell reminded him of his promises to his daughters.
He hadn’t exactly been able to fulfill their wishes, although anything they could want seemed to be already here in their new castle home, but Belle’s modest request was one he could definitely fulfill. She was his favorite, anyway, and so it pleased him greatly to be able to make her smile. He reached out and plucked one, the loveliest he could find, then looked around for the best, fully intending to pick enough to make bouquets for each of his daughters when he suddenly got the feeling that he wasn’t alone anymore. Before he could turn around to confirm his suspicion, a deafening, bladder-emptying roar sounded from terrifyingly close behind him. He whirled in terror, rose still clutched in his nerveless hands.
It was somehow even worse than his fear-soaked brain had imagined. Standing there, slavering and breathing heavy with barely suppressed rage, was a massive, terrifying beast that looked stitched together out of several animals by someone who had only the vaguest idea how to sew. The merchant stood frozen as the beast lifted its elephant-like trunk and dropped it with bone-jarring force on his shoulder. “Who gave you permission to pick my motherfucking roses? Was it not enough for you that I let you into my home, let you sleep, and fucking fed you?!? You should have been thanking me on your goddamned knees for saving you from freezing to death out there, and instead I find you here in my garden stealing my goddamned roses! This insolence will be punished, you son of a bitch!”
See, I told you there was a lot that was cut out of the version of the story that you knew. We’re at the end of the first episode on this tale, and we’re only now getting out of the first 15 minutes of the Disney film. Believe me, though; there’s a whole lot more craziness in store in the next few episodes, but for now, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the Cheval Mallet, which roughly translates from the original french as “evil horse”.
Stories of the cheval mallet litter the French countryside, especially around Vendee, Poitou, and Pays de Retz near Lac de Grand Lieu, all in western central France. There are a lot of stories about the wicked equine, but they all boil down to more or less the same tale.
Picture this. You’re a traveler in France long enough ago that horses were still the only real alternative to walking. You’ve been on your feet all day, the sun has gone down some time ago, and you still have a long ways yet to go. Your back hurts, your feet are aching, and you can hardly stomach the thought of walking another step. Suddenly, out of the darkness, you hear a quiet whinny. You look up, fully expecting to see someone much richer than you about to knock you off the road, but instead you see a beautiful horse, solid white in color, standing next to the road.
This is no ordinary horse. In fact, it might be the finest piece of horseflesh you’ve ever laid eyes on before. Kings would be lucky to own such a horse, so you can’t imagine what it’s doing wandering here in the middle of nowhere all alone in the dead of night. The horse watches you, already saddled and bridled and ready to be ridden. You walk over slowly, afraid that the owner will appear out of the bushes at any moment to demand to know what you’re doing with his horse, but no one appears. It’s just you and the horse.
As you get close, the horse snorts happily and nuzzles your shoulder with its nose. It moves forward a few steps, clearly inviting you to climb on its back and ride. This is one well-trained horse! You’re not sure if you should, but exhaustion soon wins out. You won’t be stealing the horse. Not really. You’ll just borrow it a while, ride it long enough to rest your feet, and then let it go again. No harm no foul, right?
Before you can change your mind, you swing up into the saddle and gently kick the horse’s flanks. The horse whinnies again in what seems to be a distinctly malicious way and then charges into a full gallop into the wilderness. You weren’t ready for this, and since you don’t own a horse, you’re not exactly the best rider. You clutch the saddle horn desperately, holding on for dear life just to stay on the horse’s back. You have no idea where the horse is headed, but you can’t really spare energy to wonder.
Just as you’re starting to maybe get the hang of this, enough at least to look around a little and see where you are, you notice something. Something very, very bad. The horse is galloping directly for a cliff. A big one. If the horse’s wild charge takes it off the side, you’ll both be dead. Terrified, you pry one hand off the saddle to try and grab the reins, hoping to stop the horse, but it just puts on a fresh burst of speed, leaving you unsteady in your seat. You certainly aren’t ready for the sudden twisting motion as the horse turns aside from the cliff at the last moment while also putting on the brakes. Momentum is a real bastard and it lifts you clean out of the saddle and sends you sailing off over the cliff edge. The last thing you see before you plummet down into the darkness to your doom is that damned horse watching you fall. If it wasn’t impossible, you’d swear that horse was grinning evilly at you.
The exact method of death employed by the cheval mallet varies from story to story. Sometimes, it throws you from a cliff, sometimes it rides out into a river and lets you be washed away and drowned, and sometimes it just throws you to the earth and tramples you to a mushy pile of burst organs and splintered bones. Regardless, you were dead the moment you climbed up on the horse’s back. That is, unless you were lucky enough to be carrying a medallion of Saint Benoit, better known as Saint Benedict, the patron saint of protection from witchcraft and the like, or had six coins marked with a cross in your coin purse. Most people unlucky enough to find themselves traveling the rural roads on their own feet in the middle of the night probably didn’t carry such fancy objects and were probably fucked. The moral of the story is pretty simple: don’t ride strange horses. They might be evil magical monsters.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, it’s part two of this folktale. You’ll see that petty theft is worse than breaking and entering, that walking into something doesn’t make it yours, and that it’s selfish to ask for a flower instead of a dress made of jewels and spun gold. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll discover the dreadful beast that immigrated to America and Canada from the French countryside. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.