This is a popular folktale in Nepal.
Once upon a time a baby girl was born to the King and Queen of Nepal. The girl was exceptionally beautiful and to add to that, her hair was golden in colour. The King and queen became obsessed with her golden locks, and every night they would count each and every holden strand fearing a few of them might fall off and get lost. They even forbid her to tie her hair fearing her hair might get pulled off. The girl practically lived under house arrest. One day the girl despite her mother’s objection quietly went to the river to have bath. Unfortunately in the midst of her bath a strand of hair broke lose and floated away down the stream.
The King and queen became very upset and announced that whoever finds the lost strand of hair, would receive the princess in marriage. One day her younger brother who was a dimwit managed to find the lost hair strand and brought it to the King.
The King was in a bind wondering how could he marry off his daughter to his own son? So he consulted his minister. After a long deliberation the minister advised the King to keep his word, because if he goes back on his word, his subjects would lose faith in him. The only way forward was to keep to his word and marry off his daughter to his son.
When the princess came to know that she is going to be married off to her own brother, she ran off from the palace into the jungle and climbed to the top of the tallest tree. The King sent his search party into the jungle to find her. They searched high and low and finally found her perched on the highest branch of the tallest tree in the land. They pleaded with her to come down. But the she refused to come down . She told them this marriage will bring disaster to the family. And she wove a tree house out of the branches continued to live on top of the tree.
As time passed her aged parents died. Finally the dimwit brother came to the tree where his beautiful sister was living. Instead of asking her to come down he asked her if he could come up to meet her. She agreed and let down her long golden locks from the top of the tree, so that her brother could grab on to the hair and climb up. As he kept climbing up towards the tree-house, he started feeling hungry. He asked his sister to give him some food to eat. The girl immediately prepared rice and beans, but warned him not to drop any grain on the ground. But her brother being clumsy, dropped a few grains on to the ground. Miraculously trees and herds of cattle sprang up from the fallen grain.
After a few days the girl and her dimwit brother decided to climb down from the tree and build a home in the jungle, and they lived as brother and sister clearly demarcating their activities. The sister cooked and cleaned and did house chores, while the brother took the cattle to graze and cut firewood for cooking. The girl never stepped out of house and hid her beautiful face by smearing black soot all over her body. But the dimwit brother kept boasting about her beauty to all those he met while he was out grazing the cattle. The news of the beautiful girl with golden hair living in the jungle spread far and wide. A neighbouring King heard the news and came in search of her. Eventually he found her in the jungle when she was bathing in the river, and saw the black soot wash away revealing her real beauty and the dazzling golden hair. He immediately asked her to marry him and she accepted his proposal. The golden haired girl left the jungle and went to live with the King in his palace. She then took her dimwit brother along to live in their new home.
A similar story about the girl with golden hair is found in Goa, India.
This story is sung by women while they mill grain on grinding stones in their kitchen. The story is always told in first person, narrating the pain and suffering of the golden haired girl.
The narrative begins with the golden haired girl telling her sister how her beautiful locks of golden hair has become a curse. She invokes the listener of the story ” Listen to my story, Oh! sister, this is the story of my curse. I was that unfortunate woman, whose beauty turned into a curse. My mother worried about my beauty, especially my golden hair and hid me in a room. She would blacken my face with soot and colour my hair brown.”
One day my mother told me to wash my beautiful golden locks. As I dipped my hair in the river water, the long silky golden strands revealed their glorious beauty. But a single strand of hair got lose and floated away in the river current. My fate was sealed, as river gods turned their heads and let the golden strand float away. The man who found the golden strand , fell in love with the golden hair. “Who could be this girl with golden hair? If her single hair is so beautiful, her locks of hair must be so enchanting. I will find this girl and marry her” he vouched. He showed the hair to his mother and told her, said “ Mother look at this hair . I want to marry the girl who has golden hair”.
Mother told the boy ” The girl with golden hair is non other than your sister. How can you marry your sister?” But the boy was adamant. He told her, “Mother you are lying to me . My sister is so ugly and dark like charcoal. And I have made up my mind , I will marry this girl.”
The mother sighed in agony and tried to dissuade the boy. But the stubborn boy insisted “ If you do not approve of this marriage I will run away with the girl and live in another village as husband and wife” .
Saying thus he grabbed the hand of the girl and ran away far from their village, and began living as man and woman in another village. “ This is how how I became sister-in-law to myself, daughter-in-law of my mother, and my mother is now my mother in law and my brother is my husband. We live in another village where nobody knows who we are. This is the story of the girl with golden hair. This is the story of my curse.”
Story collected by : Vidya Kamat
Text source: Golden Hair: A Tribal Myth of kinship detailing a Hindu Narrative in Nepal Himalayas.
By Marie Lecomte- Tilomine
Irish Journal of Anthropology Vol 19 (2) 2016: 84-97
Grinding Stories: Songs from Goa by Heta Pandit
Location: Nepal and Goa
Image copyright: Vidya Kamat
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