Perseus and Periezade

Periezade will turn to stone if she looks back - illustration by John D. Batten in Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights

I’ve been on a Perseus research kick lately, and read through Edwin Sidney Hartland’s The Legend of Perseus, an exhaustively researched, occasionally surprisingly sarcastic three-volume series examining the concepts of this story and similar fairy tales across the world.
 
The myth basically goes like this: a king named Acrisius hears a prophecy that his daughter Danae’s child will kill him, so he locks Danae in a bronze chamber. However, the god Zeus visits her in the form of a shower of gold, and fathers her son, Perseus. When Acrisius discovers this, he shuts his daughter and grandson in a chest which he casts into the sea. But they survive; the chest washes ashore and a fisherman rescues them. Years later, the local king sets his sights on Danae, and tries to get rid of Perseus by sending him off to fight the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze turns people to stone. Perseus receives advice and magical weapons from the gods, sneaks up on Medusa by using a shield as a mirror, and slays her. On the way back, he runs across a princess named Andromeda, who’s being served up as human sacrifice to a sea monster named Cetus after her family angered Poseidon. Perseus slays Cetus as well as Andromeda’s wicked suitor Phineus, and takes Andromeda as his bride. Returning home, he uses Medusa’s head to petrify Danae’s unwanted bridegroom. As for Acrisius, his prophecy comes true via a freak frisbee accident.
 
This is one of the few Greek myths that’s actually pretty positive all around, and probably the most fairytale-like one out there. The villains are punished, and the heroes are decent people who get a happy ending. (The one bump is the backstory of Medusa; the earliest variants indicate that she’s simply a horrifying monster, the offspring of even more ancient and horrifying monsters, but the Roman writer Ovid wrote up a version in which she was a beautiful girl changed into a beast for the crime of being raped (!). Even though it's probably not at all what the older storytellers envisioned, this version - which makes Medusa a sympathetic and tragic figure - is currently the most well-known backstory.)
 
The myth has given rise to quite a few big-name adaptations:

• A lost play by Euripides from the 4th century BC, Andromeda, is now lost but was hugely influential and its depiction of Perseus and Andromeda might have been the first on-stage treatment of a couple falling in love.
• The 1981 film Clash of the Titans is a loose adaptation with stop-motion animated monsters including Medusa (Cetus was renamed the Kraken for some reason). This movie exposed a lot of people to the myth.
• There's also a loose, thematic adaptation in Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, which launched a whole wave of myth retellings for young readers; Perseus “Percy” Jackson, named for the mythological figure, is a demigod subject of an ominous prophecy who goes on a quest to save his mother, is lent help and otherworldly weapons by the gods, slays Medusa along the way and later uses her head to petrify his mom’s abusive boyfriend, and falls for a girl named Annabeth.

One of the most interesting facts about the Perseus myth, though, is that it seems to be two separate stories mushed together. There's Perseus's birth, and there's his quest to slay Medusa, which serves as an origin myth for protective amulets known as gorgoneia. But the Andromeda sequence feels random - not connected to the rest of the plot at all. Different versions are super inconsistent on whether Perseus kills the sea monster with a sword or with Medusa's head. Plus, the major players in the Andromeda segment, and only the Andromeda segment, have constellations named for them - Perseus, Andromeda, Cetus the sea monster, and Andromeda's parents. Nobody else gets a constellation, unless you count Pegasus the winged horse. The Andromeda story is a star origin myth! Maybe these were separate stories about Perseus that eventually got combined; we don't know. Tumblr user amorphousbl0b pointed out the star connection and also an interesting key similarity - through both parts, Perseus is a defender of women. In the Medusa story, he protects his mother from an unwanted suitor; similarly in the Andromeda segment, he saves Andromeda from her cowardly and vicious fiancé Phineus (who also happens to be her uncle).

This myth is full of classic fairy tale tropes. The wonder child with the miraculous conception, an unwanted child who survives being thrown out into the water, a prince raised in poverty, the princess and the dragon, otherworldly helpers with advice and magical gifts, and monsters.

There are some fairy tales which hit all the same plot beats as Perseus; Hartland recounts one from Tuscany where there's a witch in place of Medusa, a helpful old man with a flying horse in place of Athena and Hermes, and one-eyed women who are pretty much exactly the Graeae (pp. 11-13). However, remember that there are kind of two halves to the Perseus story - and there's an answer to this too in some popular folktale types.

The Blood Brothers
In ATU tale type 303, "The Blood Brothers," a childless couple is blessed with the birth of twins (or, occasionally, triplets) after the wife ingests magical water, fish, or fruit. Sometimes the blood brothers are identical boys born from different women who both ate the magical food. (For example, in the Brothers Grimms' "The Gold-Children", a fisherman gives his wife and horse pieces of a talking golden fish to eat, after which the wife gives birth to golden twin boys, the horse gives birth to golden twin foals, and two pieces of fish buried in the earth produce two golden lilies.)

As young men, the brothers set out to make their fortunes. One brother discovers a city where a princess is about to be sacrificed to a dragon. He, of course, slays the dragon and marries the princess. At this point, things go wrong; he may run up against a rival for the princess’s hand, or be captured by a witch. (In "The Gold-Children," a witch turns him to stone.) However, his brother had a token to warn him if any danger occurred, and comes to the rescue.

At first Hartland's description of this story seemed like a stretch to me, but there are real parallels. First is the supernatural birth. According to Hartland, because the mother in this story is married, the miraculous birth has to be more remarkable to have the same impact; so where in some stories we might have a virgin birth like Danae’s, in others we have a married woman giving birth to twins or triplets.

Often the boys are the sons of a fisherman, or have some link to water or the ocean; compare Perseus and his mother being rescued from the sea by a fisherman. There’s often a gold or celestial motif, with the boys having golden markings or stars on their foreheads, or being born after the wife eats a golden fish, which matches with Zeus appearing as a golden shower. Or sometimes there is a mysterious supernatural father.

This story follows the Andromeda track, with a wonder child growing up to save a princess from a dragon. If there’s a rival who tries to kill the hero and/or steal the credit for the dragon-slaying, this parallels Phineus, Andromeda’s other suitor.
 
The Three Golden Children
Then, on the Medusa track, there's ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children." Here, a king overhears three sisters gossiping. The youngest boasts that if she married the king, she would bear wonderful children with stars on their foreheads, golden hair or arms, or other markings along those lines. The king takes her up on it and makes her his queen. However, when her prediction comes true, her jealous sisters frame her for infanticide or claim that she has given birth to animals.

From here, there are typically three routes the story can take  (Goldberg, 2016). In one route, the children are actually killed, but come back in a transformation sequence. In another, typical of Slavic variants, the mother and her son(s) are thrown into the sea together in a barrel like Danae and Perseus, and wash up on an island where the son or sons later build a palace to get their father’s attention.

In the third route, the sisters steal the children and cast them into the water in boxes or baskets; then, the queen is imprisoned on the sisters' false accusations. However, the children are rescued and raised by a servant, or merchant, or fisherman, etc. 

The children (in the most famous variants, two brothers and a sister) grow up, but then an old woman (usually sent by their wicked aunts) tells the girl of magical treasures such as a singing tree and a talking bird. The girl begs her brothers to get her these items, and they agree, leaving her with tokens that will tell her if they're in danger. A magical helper typically shows up along the way to offer advice (an equivalent to Athena, Hermes, and the Graeae).

However, the treasure is guarded by magic which turns the two older brothers to stone. Back home, the younger sister sees their tokens change, and charges out, guilt-stricken, to rescue them. In "The Sisters Envious of Their Cadette," from Antoine Galland's edition of The Arabian Nights, phantom voices mock and threaten anyone who climbs a certain mountain. When the brothers turn around to fight or flee, they are turned into black stones. On the way to save them, younger sister Periezade wisely plugs her ears. Compare Perseus looking in a mirror to fight Medusa – it's the same effect of don’t turn around, no matter what. In the end, the sister wins the treasures and restores her brothers along with all the other adventurers who were petrified.

The siblings return home with their trophies, which serve the additional purpose of leading them to the king, revealing the truth, and vindicating and saving their mother. In this story, too, there’s a woman at the heart of the quest. For Perseus, there's Danae threatened with forced marriage. For ATU 707, there's the little sister tricked into asking for magical items, and - although the siblings don't know it yet - the falsely-imprisoned mother.

I've always been fond of both Perseus and Periezade as fairytale heroes, and was delighted to realize that their stories have these parallels. One interesting note is that both ATU 303 and ATU 707 have the plot of the "life-token" and the sibling rescue, which Perseus doesn't really have a match for.

And so on
These are widespread stories, with infinite variations. An Irish version seemingly combines Medusa and Perseus's grandfather Acrisius. The mythical Balor was a giant with an eye that destroyed everything he looked at, and there are many folktales of how he was defeated. In one specific folktale collected in the 19th century, Balor locks up his daughter Eithne in a tower to keep her from bearing a son prophesied to kill him. One of his enemies gains access to Eithne anyway; Balor tries to drown the resulting baby triplets, but one survives and grows up to kill him.
 
Or sometimes Medusa is the love interest! This seems to be a minor trend in ATU 707 variants from Eastern and Southeast Europe, where the brother is the main hero, and the final task is to fetch a beautiful woman with magical powers who becomes his bride and helps reveal the truth about their family origins. In a variant from Epirus (a region now part of modern Greece and Albania) "the beauty of the land" (E Bukura e Dheut, a stock character from Albanian lore) lives on the other side of a river; many have pursued her, only to turn to stone. With help from his winged horse, the hero takes her home and marries her. This story gives the vibe that the beauty is somehow trapped in this isolated state, and is grateful to the hero when he frees her (Von Hahn, 287, notes to story no. 69). In a Nogai tale, "Sarygyz, Mistress of the Djinni", the final quest is to fetch the titular character, who lives near a cemetery and turns people to stone. With advice from a talking horse, the boy wins her as his bride. In a note reminiscent of Medusa’s serpent hair, the key is to arrive while Sarygyz is washing her hair; then she revives her victims by shaking her hair.
I've found some references to similar sorceress-brides in a Dargin version, "Арц-Издаг" ("Silver Izdag"), and in a story from Chechnya where "Malkha-Azani" is a sorceress with an enchanted mirror, living beyond nine mountains, who petrifies any men who approach her palace. More research needed - probably with some translation services - but it's very intriguing to see how a Medusa figure can play a different role. The same thing happens in the Greek story of the Tzitzinæna, although she takes a more motherly role to the heroes once she's tamed (Legrand, p. 77ff). In these variants, there is a theme that the hero must call the sorceress and get her to acknowledge him, and this is the most dangerous part of his journey where he might turn to stone. A winged horse is also common in these types - similar to Pegasus.

These stories are incredibly widespread, and with Perseus you can get just a hint of how ancient they are, too.
Editing to add: We know that the classical myth of Perseus has signs of being two separate myths about Perseus combined. Maybe there is a clue how that happened in these fairytale types – one about a miraculously born child who grow up to slay a dragon and save a princess, and the other about a miraculously born child who survives drowning and goes on a quest for a magical item to save his mother.

SOURCES

• Goldberg, Christine. "Review: The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev, Volume II. In: Journal of Folklore Research. Online publication: March 16, 2016.
• Hartland, Edwin Sidney. The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief. 1894. Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.
• Legrand, Emile. Recueil de Contes Populaires Grecs. 1881.
• Von Hahn, Johann Georg. Griechische und albanesische Märchen. 1864.

Further reading

• Periezade