Do you remember the ancient Greek myth
according to which Dionysus was dismembered and pieces of his body boiled in a
cauldron and then pierced with spits and roasted? Those who did such an abominable thing were
the Titans. Luckily, he was later reborn from the one organ they didn’t consume,
his heart.
Well today I bring you a story that was
told over and over again- the legend of
the Eaten Heart. Scholars collected
about 24 distinct versions of this story. For many years, it was thought that
this story came from Europe. Most of the versions came from European literary
traditions in England, Germany, France, and Italy. There was also one Swedish
version.
In the 1880s, a scholar found a version of the story that included all the key elements in the Punjab district of India, and everyone studying this story had to scramble to account for that. Was the Indian version derivative of the European versions, or vice versa? No one place could definitely lay claim to this story—it’s just a classic.
In the 1880s, a scholar found a version of the story that included all the key elements in the Punjab district of India, and everyone studying this story had to scramble to account for that. Was the Indian version derivative of the European versions, or vice versa? No one place could definitely lay claim to this story—it’s just a classic.
Some even go as far as to consider it
as an aside in the story of Tristan and Iseult. It happened during the Middle
Ages, in Europe. In the most basic version of this story, a married woman takes
a lover, and her husband finds out. When the lover dies or is killed, the
husband takes possession of his heart, cooks it, and feeds it to his wife, who
dies shortly after.
 |
Vessel in the form of a heart held by a hand; 16th century Wellcome;Wkimedia |
There are two main variations, dealing
with how the lover dies. In one version, the husband tracks down the lover and
kills him. In the second, the lover dies some other way, usually when he goes
off to the Crusades. He wants his heart removed and sent back to his lady love,
(this was a popular gesture at the time), but while the heart is en route, the
husband intercepts it. No matter what, the wife eats the heart. That’s a key
bit. She almost always dies after that, usually by throwing herself out the
window or refusing to eat, sometimes both. Occasionally she dies of grief. When
she survives, which is rarely, she ends up in a convent. Although she’s always
in love with the dead man, in some versions of the story, her love is innocent
and never consummated. More often, though, she’s an unrepentant adulteress.
Besides being a thrilling tale about a
woman or women being tricked into cannibalism, the legend of the eaten heart is
a story about power. Who wins in the end, the husband or the wife? Different
versions have different answers to that question: sometimes the husband is
explicitly punished for his transgressive act by a vengeful relative of his
wife or by being exiled from his home.
