A velvety green coat of moss is the beating heart of this Old English fairytale about resilience and self-worth in the face of an unjust oppressive world. When an impoverished young girl comes of age in a society where women are denied legal or financial autonomy and treated like property, her shrewd mother sews her a coat of wild mosses which the daughter then uses to disguise herself to escape an unwanted suitor who attempts to buy her love. She finds some degree of freedom and autonomy working as a scullerymaid in the kitchen of a mansion where she is demeaningly named “Mossy Coat”. However, secretly she quietly wields the magic and power of her mossy coat to determine her own destiny.
I love how this folktale weaves together plants, magic and power, bringing the protective, nurturing qualities of this vibrant green moss to front and center. Moss is a plant often associated with the magical and mystical in folklore, growing in the liminal place between the human and faerie realms and for this reason, it is infused with enchantment. The mossy coat in this folktale retains these magical qualities, as well as the association with wildness, freedom and sovereignty. The vibrancy and living aspect of the mossy coat is symbolically contrasted with the oppressive, restrictive circumstances the daughter finds herself in; a world where women are treated like objects to be won over, controlled and owned. By wearing the mossy coat, the daughter is able live more freely than she would have otherwise lived in a marriage forced upon her. Though she works within the confines of a backbreaking job and hides beneath the mossy coat that is considered dirty and ugly, she wields the coat’s magic, casting spells on the other kitchen staff enabling her to attend the castle ball undisguised without anyone knowing who she really is. Though many young women attending the ball would hastily try to win over the heart of the eligible bachelor and young master of the mansion, Mossy Coat is cautious and discerning, and does not give herself to him until she knows he has recognized her true worth.
Block of carved and inked artist’s linoleum showing the fine etchings made by the gouge tool right before printing.
If you are familiar with the story of the Selkie and her sealskin pelt, the mossy coat, like the sealskin pelt, protects and allows the heroine to retain her vitality, her agency, her connection and belonging to her home and to herself. Both folktales are about living in a world where women are manipulated into marriage rather than living beings to be loved or subjects in their own right, yet both folktales defy conventional fairytale representations of women as maidens who passively wait to be saved by a man, and instead, they are stories of women who choose to step into their own power. The valuable role of the seal skin and mossy coat reveal a belief system where nature can be depended upon as a source of protection, something one can be wrapped in, warmed by, and embraced by, and live inside. . .rather than something to fear, control, or simply consume. In both folktales, the sealskin pelt and the mossy coat empower their wearers, reminding them of their true worth.
Though the story of Mossy Coat still follows a familiar fairytale plotline where marriage to a male prince is presented as the ultimate goal for a woman in life, the ending of Mossy Coat contains a slightly more nuanced depiction of this ideal. Mossy coat leaves behind her shoe and the young master searches the land for the one whose foot can fit into it. In the end, the young master is willing to let the scullerymaid try on the shoe inspite of her dirty coat of moss, suggesting that he realizes that outward appearances may be deceiving, showing his emotional maturation. The storyline seems to suggest that these are more highly valued qualities in a male partner than the original suitor who is represented in stark contrast. The first suitor simply saw the daughter’s beauty without her coat on and was attracted to her outward appearance and offered her money to manipulate her into marriage. The second suitor did not know the identity of Mossy Coat without her mossy coat on, and though he does see what she looks like, in the end he recognizes both women are one and the same.
Forest moss on a walk in the Ammonoosuc River region, in the heart of Coos County, New Hampshire near to the Canadian border aka the Boreal forest, and the ancestral lands of the Abenaki, Pennacook and Wabanaki Peoples, past and present.
Moss shares many characteristics of the two heroines in this folktale. Though seemingly insignificant to the larger whole, moss is extraordinarily resilient showing characteristics of patience, collaboration, persistence and success. In her celebrated book Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, Robin Wall Kimmerer delves deep into the intricate world of mosses, revealing the complexity, beauty and vital role these often-overlooked organisms play in ecosystems. Though diminutive in size, moss is one of the oldest plants on earth (450 million years old!) with up to 25,000 species, having adapted to every continent, from the tropics to Antarctica, and living in nearly every habitat, from desert to rainforest.
Kimmerer explains some of the important functions mosses play in an ecosystem which include: breaking down rocks which prepares the substrate for the growth of higher plants; absorbing water, stabilizing soil and preventing erosion; playing a keystone role in ecosystem succession, productivity and decomposition; and sequestering carbon. Each tiny frond offers a miniature world harboring a multitude of microorganisms and tiny creatures within its tendrils. . . .all of which are vital to the larger ecosystem. Most of all, moss mirrors those whose labor goes unseen, a poignant symbol of quiet resilience, and a gentle reminder that even the most unassuming life forms possess a quiet strength and intrinsic value.
Like the poor woman and daughter in the folktale, moss is also an exploited undervalued life form, its true worth hidden under the disguise of smallness. There is a similar parallel narrative of injustice and erasure happening in Kimmerer’s narrative where she talks about the ways in which indigenous knowledge about plants and mosses have been omitted from scientific literature. Though science focuses simply on a plant’s value to the wider ecosystem, she talks about the value of a plant to people, and more specifically in her book, the reciprocal and interdependent ways moss and people have related to each other. She mentions how in the Anishinaabe language of her own heritage the words for moss, aasaakamig and aasaakamek, carry the meaning “those ones who cover the earth.” Kimmerer says indigenous people have had hundreds of names for different kinds of mosses and have been using moss as insulation for boots and mittens, bedding and pillows, as sponges for preparing dired meats, as diapers and menstrual padding for their absorptive capacities just to list a few of the many uses and values indigenous people have given to this vibrant green plant.
She describes the indigenous way of relating to plants as elders, and the wisdom mosses offer us as a life form that has avoided extinction and endured through many climate changes from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. “What if we look at the mosses not only as healers of land, but as teachers of how we might live?” she asks and points specifically to the way in which mosses are collaborative and cooperative members of the ecosystem rather than competitive. Organizing themselves for “shared wealth”, mosses defy and prove incorrect the assumption that survival of the fittest is the only framework to understand life on earth. Kimmerer says,
“Rather than competing for scarce water, a moss is designed for equitable sharing. Water is passed from shoot to shoot across leafy bridges and down canals of capillary space to moisten the entire colony, not just an individual. Ecological rules usually dictate that crowding is deleterious, but mosses break those rules. A community of mosses can gather and retain precious moisture much more effectively than a lone individual”.
Furthermore she describes how mosses provide habitat for countless invertebrates and microbes, they provide soft lining for birds’ nests, and nurseries for trout food, and a seedbed for rooting plants. They purify water, build soil, store carbon, and heal land after disturbance.
I love how the fairytale of Mossy Coat mirrors this world view in the way the mother and daughter work collaboratively together for both their benefit. This contrasts with many more popular European fairytales, and even modern day representations of women, where they are competing with each other for status, access to male power and beauty (for example the stepsisters and stepmother in Cinderella, or the stepmother in Snow White). Mossy Coat reveals some older folk values that existed in Old England that resonate with the North American indigenous worldview Kimmerer describes in her book, suggesting that poor English folk did recognize the value of moss and even gave it magical properties that empowered those who used it in their daily life.
Kimmerer says, “I am trying to understand what it means to own a thing, especially a wild and living being. To have exclusive rights to its fate? To dispose of it at will? To deny others its use? Ownership seems a uniquely human behaviour, a social contract validating the desire for purposeless possession and control.” These questions seem very much like questions the fairytale of Mossy Coat asks of its readers as well. By challenging a forced marriage in a society that regards women as the legal property of men, and finding freedom, autonomy and sovereignty in a society that would normally exploit one’s labor and erase one’s identity, the fairytale of Mossy Coat is a story about resisting the colonization of one group of people against another. . .a story that sounds very similar to the one Kimmerer tells.
Mossy Coat ultimately is an Old English folktale of resilience and sovereignty in a world that values ownership over love. It is a story about using resourcefulness and creativity to work within the limitations of one’s circumstances, and how a wild forager and elder woman weaver sews a coat of wild moss that gives a woman her freedom so she can step into her power. . .An enduring folktale that lives on like wild moss, wielding its quiet power. . .
. . .May we always be in search of our mossy coats or already twirling in them, dusting them off, redesigning them. . . .
Notes*
This project is inspired by the retelling of this Old English folktale by the beloved writer Angela Carter in her Old Wives’ Fairytale Book and also Lia Leendertz’s (author of The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide) retelling of it in the Ffern “As The Season Turns” podcast January Episode, posted December 31, 2023.
References:
Kimmerer, Robin Wall (2023). Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Oregon State University Press.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall (April 20, 2022). “Ancient Green: Moss, Climate and Deep Time”, in Emergence Magazine, https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/ancient-green/