Traditional stories/folktales

[neepsntatties]

I am looking for traditional stories with strong female characters. I am reading The Maid from the North just now, do people know any others I could read?

Mr Fox, recorded by Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie, also recorded by Jacobs. Mr Fox is a Bluebeard style story but unlike that the wife saves herself. Molly Whuppie is in the Hansel and Gretl tradition but with a main female character who outwits her captors and wins a prince by proving how clever and cunning she is. Both traditional english folk tales, but sadly barely known, whereas everyone knows their sexist counterparts.

HAve you read Angela Carter 'The Bloody Chamber'? You should! Folk tales are fascinating and were generally told by women to women, lots of more obscure stories have strong female characters,, but they have mainly been recorded only by men, which perhaps explains the ones we have come to know, and of course more recently Disneyfied.

Also The Seal Woman, and Dear as Salt (the basis for the opening of king Lear). Sorry, memories slowly emerging from my MA!

The Forestwife - a more feminist take on the Robin Hood and Maid Marion tales. The writer said she wrote it because she liked to play Robin Hood as a girl and was always got fed up playing Maid Marion and waiting to be rescued by the boys.