The animal groom or animal husband, is a particular character that appears in folktales around the world. Some of the most popular European ones are: Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince, and the Bear Husband in the folktale East of the Sun West of the Moon. In Korea there is a Tiger Husband folktale, and in Japan a Snail Husband, and in Vietnam the myth of origin includes a Dragon Husband. The Xalish people of the Pacific-Northwest have a Fish Husband folktale, and the Passamaquoddy of Maine have a legend about a Great Horned Owl who marries a woman. How can we make sense of the presence of the animal groom in so many folktales around the world? What meaning and significance does the animal groom have in our collective imaginations? In this blog post, I look more closely at this Passamaquoddy Owl Husband folktale, reflect on its wisdom and share a few thoughts on what it teaches me.
The Passamaquoddy are a First Nations people who traditionally lived in a landscape called Peskotomuhkatik, which straddles what is now known as the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine. This northeastern part of the United States is home to the Great Horned Owl, known for its distinctive horn-like tufts that appear to be “ears”, as well as its bright yellow eyes, and deep hooting voice. Here is the tale:
Photo Credit: DnDavis. Image used under license from Shutterstock.com.
Once there was a young woman whom many young men wished to marry. Her father, however, was quite protective of her and didn’t think any man could be good enough for her. He told all her suitors that the person who could make the embers on his fire blaze up by spitting on it could take her hand in marriage. Now this was a hard feat, because usually when you spit on embers they go out. So for many weeks nobody was able to do it. However, in the deep forest near the village there lived a Great Horned Owl who was in love with the young woman and wanted to marry her. He sought the advice of his aunt, an owl sorceress, who gave him a magic potion to drink, and sure enough he changed into a handsome young human hunter. In this disguise, he approached the woman’s father and spat upon the embers of the fire. Instantly it blazed into a mighty flame and reluctantly, the father agreed to allow his daughter to marry the hunter. That evening the young groom spread out bear robes for his bride and did all a young man should do for a beloved wife. But it so happened that the young woman woke up in the middle of the night and noticed her husband had ears that stuck up from his thick black hair and yellowish eyes he kept half open even while asleep. She was petrified with fear at the knowledge that she had married the Great Horned Owl himself. She screamed and fled back to her father’s house and the next day the whole village knew she had been tricked.
The Great Horned Owl, however, was not yet willing to give up his pursuit of this woman and retreated back into the forest with a renewed sense of determination. Once again he went to his aunt, the owl sorceress, who gave him a potion that changed him into another young human man with a very different appearance than the first. In his new disguise, he killed a moose and elk and returned to the same village and invited everyone to feast. As the villagers ate, they took turns telling scary stories around the fire as the evening came. Eventually it was time for the beautiful young woman to tell the story of how she married an owl. "This story is really scary," she said, "so I don't want to speak too loudly. I need to whisper. Can everyone pull their hair away from their ears so they can hear me better?" She looked pointedly at the young stranger. Everyone exposed their ears, except for the young stranger, who refused. This stranger, who was the Great Horned Owl in disguise, responded, “My hearing is keen, I can understand a whisper at a great distance. I don’t need to uncover my ears”. But everyone laughed and taunted him repeatedly, “Uncover them! Uncover them!” Angrily the man pulled back his hair to reveal ears that stood up like horns. With cries of terror the villagers fled and once more they knew they had been tricked by the Great Horned Owl himself.
The Great Horned Owl returned to the forest even more determined, and went once more to his aunt the owl sorceress who gave him a magic flute that would lure any woman into the arms of the man who played it. However, though he disguised himself once more as a different man and tried to carry out his aunt’s scheme, the beautiful young woman and her father were so wary they had moved their house to the center of the village and never strayed far and never talked to strangers. The Great Horned Owl in disguise found it impossible to get near enough to the young woman to try out his flute.
The Great Horned Owl Husband, a Passamaquoddy Folktale. Watercolor by Diem Dangers.
Weeks passed, then months, then a whole year passed and the woman became less cautious. She longed for the freedom she had to wonder through the forest like before and now felt her fear had kept her imprisoned in the village. So she slowly began to venture towards the outskirts, until finally one day she went out into the forest itself.
It just so happened that evening the Great Horned Owl was high up in the branches of a pine tree. For a long time he had given up disguising himself as a human being, and even any hope of reconciling with his human wife. This every evening he had even gone as far as to say to himself, “I’m wasting my time on this woman!”. But just then his wife happened to take a rest right at the foot of his tree. Slowly he took out the flute and began to play and she was enchanted. "I would willingly go with whoever is playing that flute," she said. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard." As soon as those words passed over her lips she heard the sound of huge wings above her. It was the Great Horned Owl who swooped down and without protest, she left him gently carry her off in his great talons to the village of owls. There they lived as a married couple happily ever after.
Great Horned Owl. Watercolor by Diem Dangers
Of course, there are many ways to interpret this folktale. One insightful way to give meaning to the animal groom in fairytale is to interpret it from a Jungian perspective. Carl Jung, renowned depth psychologist, refers to all characters in a dream, folktale or myth as aspects of the Self. Jung suggests that the animal groom as a kind of internal predator, the shadow aspect of the psyche that is often rejected and repressed because the character is associated with emotions and aspects of the personality that are considered socially unacceptable. For example, perhaps in order to fulfill our social obligations and to maintain our public persona we have to hide or repress aspects of ourselves that would conflict with this public image. In folktales, it is often represented as a malevolent thing disguised as a benevolent thing, such as an animal groom.
Jung argues that if this shadow side remains unrecognized or unconscious to the Self it can continuously project itself out into our lives in unexpected and often destructive ways. We have all heard stories of the tragic consequences of repressing aspects of the authentic Self, whether it is a closeted sexual orientation, a hidden talent we have withdrawn our energy from, a vocation we have sacrificed in order to fulfill a familial or social obligation, or a burning desire to experience something we have put off for one reason or another. The shadow can also be all the human, less-than-perfect aspects of the Self we feel we cannot reveal to the world or even to ourselves. As a consequence, we might unconsciously give our children the sense that they must fulfill our unfulfilled dreams, or we might try to make up for the absence with self-destructive behaviors, or beat ourselves up for failing to live up to a false sense of who we really are. However, when the shadow is recognized, named and confronted, it can lead to an awakened Self that is able to intervene and halt self-destructive tendencies. In other words, developing a relationship with the shadow side, embracing it as part of a Whole Self rather than rejecting it, is an essential part of a person’s individuation, healing and development.
We can see as this Passamaquoddy folktale unfolds, the young woman developing into a more awakened person: she becomes progressively more aware of her shadow side, represented as the Great Horned Owl or animal groom.
In the first part of the story, when the owl disguises himself as the human hunter, the man and his daughter are unaware that the Owl is in disguise, and they are both tricked and taken advantage of. The young woman is mislead into marrying someone who turned out differently than she expects. She is afraid of this character and doesn’t want to be associated with him and runs back to the safety of her father.
In the second part of the story, the owl disguises himself once again, and the villagers have no idea he is the Great Horned Owl in disguise. However, the young woman is wary this time, and although she does not know for sure that the young stranger is the Owl, she is able to ask him questions which reveal his true character. Though she is able to avoid being tricked, she still views the stranger as someone to avoid and chooses to live in the center of the village far away from the edges of the forest where the Great Horned Owl lives.
In the final part of the story, she is totally aware she is entering into the forest where the Great Horned Owl lives. She is aware of the potential to be deceived, and she walks purposefully away from the safety of her home and village. This time the Great Horned Owl is not in disguise but is his real Owl Self. In this form he plays the flute. She is enchanted, and lets herself be taken away. In the end she willingly lives with her shadow side happily ever after.
According to Carl Jung, becoming whole means identifying all aspects of the Self including the darker, stranger sides for this is what it means to be human. In folktales, this darker side can be in the form of a trickster such as a greedy witch, calculating wizard, charming wolf, or animal groom, in other words, characters that enchant, bewitch, and attract us. The role of the trickster is to wake us up so that we may be less easily deceived, so we may be less likely to fall into a clever trap, even ways we might entrap ourselves or fool ourselves, and to retain and claim our sense of agency. Once we become aware of the trickster inside us it has less power over us, we can live in full consciousness that we have a trickster inside us and we can embrace that.
Great Horned Owl linocut work-in-progress.
What Jung hoped we would learn from the animal groom or trickster is to realize that the task in life is not to become perfect, but to become whole. Wholeness entails both good and evil, light and darkness. He reminds us that sometimes the shadow side can be good creative parts of our selves that have been repressed as well. For example, sometimes collectively society shuns good qualities (like anti-authoritarian tendencies, or highly creative people), so these qualities can get repressed in the Self. If we can find a way to negotiate with our shadow, and allow it to “live” in our conscious personality rather than repressing it, we will not only attain a more secure sense of Selfhood, but we will be more capable of ignoring what others think we should be doing, and more able to deviate from the masses, and fulfill our own personal destiny.
Great Horned Owl linocut print.
However, there are so many other profound and insightful ways of understanding and giving meaning to the animal groom in this folktale. Perhaps the Great Horned Owl can be a symbol of the wild, and how in our early stages of psychological development we might reject aspects of the wild inside us until we understand how to live with the wild. In fact, there was a period in Western History when it was thought that the wild needed to be tamed, controlled, removed, used for profit rather than regeneratively. This perspective predominated for a few centuries and in the Northeastern part of the United States where this folktale originates, it justified the removal of millions of trees, the killing off of native wolves, and the installation of dams on rivers just to name a few things. Carl Jung would call this the “Collective Shadow” because it is a shadow that whole societies may hold.
In fact, in my own neighborhood, there is an example of this Collective Shadow taking place today. Just a few months ago in park near to my home, there lived a family of great horned owls including two adults and two owlets who nested in an oak tree. However, very shortly after the two new owlets were born, the the entire family died of rat poison they had unknowingly consumed through poisoned rodents. So you can see even today, due to our ongoing collective fear of the wild, we try to poison, kill and exterminate aspects of the wild we consider “bad”, but we suffer a great consequence when we only want to accept and embrace the “good” part of the whole. In the case of the great horned owl, not only do we kill the owls, but we kill precisely the creatures that would naturally prey on rats in the first place. In the end, we are left with a surplus population of rats and an imbalanced and poisoned ecosystem.
In the case of the Self, when we internalize from a young age that being anything other than “good” has no intrinsic value, we end up spending our time trying to manage ourselves instead of being ourselves. However, we are not just objects to be corrected, and contrary to what most social media encourages, the goal of life is not simply to make sure we never drop below imagined levels of “perfection.” Jung said we ought to live harmoniously with ourselves, not in constant pursuit of rising above it. How important it is, then, to learn about an ancient folktale like this one, as a source of wisdom that still holds personal relevance in our perfection-obsessed times.
References:
“The Owl Husband: A Passamaquoddy Legend” (www.firstpeople.us)
Pinkola-Estes, Clarissa. (1996) “The Animal Groom”. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. New York: Ballantine Books. Pp. 53-55.
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