Writing sexy books set in the late Victorian era makes me curious about what sexy books were available at the time. In a previous post I reviewed a disturbing piece of Victorian noncon BDSM erotica. Today, however, I have two rather different stories to share with you about sexual tricksters in erotic folklore!
The first story is one I discovered while reading The Perfumed Garden of Cheikh Nefzaoui, an Arabic text translated in 1886 by Richard Francis Burton and printed for private circulation. Burton, not at all coincidentally, is also the man who brought the Kama Sutra to the English-speaking world. Not to be confused with Elizabeth Taylor’s husband, Richard Francis Burton had quite a life and maybe I’ll write more about him another day. But back to the 16th century “manual of Arabic Erotology,” which I found to be by turns hot, hilarious on purpose, and also hilarious not on purpose.
Sexual Trickery #1: The Golden Robe
I’m pretty sure that our trickster story, from the second chapter, “Concerning Praiseworthy Men,” is meant to be hilarious. It opens with a lament from the King’s Fool Bahloul about the trouble of having two wives.
By reason of my ignorance, I have married two wives—
And why do you compain, O husband of two wives?
I said to myself, I shall be like a lamb between them;
I shall take my pleasure upon the bosoms of my two sheep,
And I have become like a ram between two female jackals,
Days follow upon days, and nights upon nights,
And their yoke bears me down both during days and nights.
If I am kind to one, the other gets vexed.
The king Mamoum thinks that’s pretty funny, but that’s not the story. For his entertainment value, Mamoun gives Bahloul a golden robe, and that’s where the real trouble begins. As Bahloul leaves, he is seen by Hamdonna, daughter of the king and wife of the Grand Vizier. She is immediately seized with a Great Passion….for the golden robe. Hamdonna invites Bahloul into her home, sings him a song, gives him some food and drink, and asks for the robe.
Bahloul, however, refuses to give it up without a price: “cohabitation,” as the translation puts it. After some fine poetry and a chance to inspect his equipment, Hamdonna agrees and they retire to her chamber. But, Bahloul isn’t going to take the golden robe off until he’s had his payment. And, he says at the last minute, “my loins hurt me and prevent me mounting upon you. You take the man’s position, and then take my robe and let me depart.”
Hamdonna is amenable to the “up-and-down dance,” but when they’re finished the not-so-foolish Bahloul says, “Why, O mistress! You have been riding me, and still want a present?”
What, says Hamdonna, but you said your loins…
Never mind, never mind, Bahloul says, we’ll go again and then you can have the robe.
But after the second round, he gets up to go, still with the robe. Wait, says Hamdonna, what about the robe?
“The first time was for you,” Bahloul says, “the second time for me, now the third time shall be for the robe.”
So they hop on the couch, “until both again did flow over at the same time,” and finally Hamdonna gets the golden robe and Bahloul leaves.
But wait! he knocks on the door of the house again. Hamdonna is a bit nervous about what he wants now, but it’s only a drink of water. Her serving woman gives him a cup, which he promptly drops and breaks just as Hamdonna’s husband, the Vizier, finally comes home!
What are you doing here? asks the Vizier.
Oh, I was just passing by and I was thirsty, Bahloul explains, but I accidentally broke the cup and in retaliation your wife took the golden robe the king gave me.
Is this true, Hamdonna? asks the Vizier of his wife.
“And she, enraptured with the cunning he had displayed, gave him his robe back, and he departed.”
That’s it, that’s the story. The little twist at the end amuses me, and I find it interesting in the ways it plays with the balance of power, and our perception of balance of power. Fools often come out ahead in folktales, and that’s certainly the case here, but there are also some nuggets about class and gender. Hamdonna, as King’s daughter and Grand Vizier’s wife, seems to think she’s entitled to just take the coat. From the poem at the beginning, we see Bahloul reflecting on the ways that a husband has and does not have power over his wives. In their first round of sex, he contrives to have her on top, doing all the work, but then claims that he got no benefit from it. By the end, Hamdonna has given up her virtue, as it were, quite extensively, but because of Bahloul’s cunning, neither of them are suspected of the adultery they’ve just committed, so you can argue that she just had a pretty nice sexy afternoon with no apparent consequence except a broken cup. There’s a lot in this story, no? You can read it for yourself, or other parts of The Perfumed Garden for free from archive.org and see what you think.
Sexual Trickery #2: Manroot
As I was reviewing my notes and starting this post, I suddenly thought of another trickster story. It’s called “Coyote’s Strawberry,” and is a Crow story included in American Indian Myths and Legends, selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz.
In this tale, Coyote is referred to as “Old Man Coyote”, but I think it should be read a “Dirty Old Man Coyote” because when he sees some pretty girls picking strawberries, what does he do? He buries himself in the dirt with the strawberry bushes, letting only the tip of his penis stick out. A girl comes along, but she can’t pick the strawberry, because it apparently has “deep roots”. (And all this time you thought that “manroot” was exclusive to English historicals of a certain era!)
Well, all the girls have to investigate this weird strawberry.
Some pulled at it it, some nibbled at it. “Oh, my,” said one, “this berry weeps.” “No,” said another girl, “it has milk in it.” A third said, “Since we can’t pick it, let’s look for a sharp piece of flint and cut it off.”
By the time they come back with a sharp implement, of course, the strange strawberry is gone. Soon enough, they figure out they’ve been tricked and zero in on the most likely culprit. How do they get back at Dirty Old Man Coyote? They strip naked, smear themselves with blood from some meat, and lay face down on the ground, “as if they had been raped and slain by enemies.” When Dirty Old Man Coyote comes sniffing around to investigate (he wants to see how long they’ve been dead and gauge if enemies who might kill him are still around), they fart in his face.
This story is a lot less consensual than the tale of Hamdonna’s desire for the golden coat, and the matter-of-fact way in which the girls pretend to be “raped and slain” is a disturbing detail I didn’t remember from my past reading. I like that the girls get their revenge, but I don’t find the story amusing so much as slightly bizarre.
When I dug out the book to verify my memory of this story, I found that it is part of a whole section of “Tales of Love and Lust.” Skimming through them again, I’d say “Coyote’s Strawberry” is pretty average on the strangeness scale. American Indian Myths and Legends is one of many hefty tomes of folklore which I collected and read voraciously as a child, and I assume my parents didn’t realize this sort of story was included. You can preview portions of the book online through Google Play, check your library, or get used copy pretty cheap online. I’ll also note that at last October’s Emerald City Writers’ Conference, I attended a session on world building by Beverly Jenkins and she specifically mentioned this text, along with We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, by Dorothy Sterling and Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson as essential for understanding American history.
