Reading Notes: Marriage Tales, Part B

American Crow by Linda Tanner. Web source: Wikimedia Commons. 

The Dog-Husband


There is a girl who has a dog...companion? She spent her days with him as a dog, then at night, he would turn into a man and lie next to her. So the girl becomes pregnant and her parents are very very mad. They call up the townspeople to tear apart the house and leave the girl to die. A Crow took pity on the girl and gave her some coals to try to keep warm.


The girl gave birth to five dogs and her Dog-Husband had been killed by her father, she had no help in raising them. So as the pup children are growing up, the girl realizes that they can in human for as well. She is angry that they haven't had that form all along because she had received so much backlash about having dog children.

The Crow that saved the girl so many years ago made its way back to the house to find the children all grow up. She confronts the boys about how they have been hunting whales and they finally listen to her. The boys become chiefs of the village eventually and make sure that the people all have whale.

My thoughts:

This was an interesting story to read. It is kind of a gender-bent idea of the story that I wrote about yesterday. It might be fun to rewrite this story with a sort of Halloween theme instead of having the dog characters.

Bibliography: 

The Dog-Husband from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929). Web source: The UN-Textbook.