Love At First Sight/Oral Tradition

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Examples of Love At First Sight in Oral Tradition include:

Fairy Tales

  • In "Faithful John", Faithful John is unable to keep the new king from looking in the forbidden room, and so the king instantly falls in love with a portrait of a princess.
  • In "The Maiden Without Hands", the king falls in love with the maiden as soon as he meets her stealing pears from his orchard.
  • In "The Six Swans", the king finds the heroine alone in the woods, not speaking to anyone, and falls in love with her beauty.
  • In "Brother and Sister", the king also finds Sister in the woods and wishes to marry her at once.
  • In "The White Bride and the Black One", the king falls in love with a portrait of the heroine.
  • In "Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf", Helena the Beautiful falls in love with Prince Ivan almost as soon as he kidnaps her.
  • In "The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener", after the young gardener attempted to kidnap her, and her father demanded that he get rid of a hill to prove that he was capable of keeping her from danger, the Greek princess hopes that he will succeed in getting rid of the hill.
  • In "Rapunzel", "The Fair Angiola", "Petrosinella", and "Snow-White-Fire-Red", the heroine falls in love with the prince as soon as he gets into the tower. (Note in that all but "Rapunzel", the heroine is instrumental in their escape; she could have escaped on her own.)
  • In "Katie Crackernuts", the prince and Katie fall in love as soon as he recovers his health, and meanwhile, his brother and her sister have fallen in love at sight.
  • In "Vasilissa the Beautiful", the Tsar falls in love with Vasilissa the Beautiful on sight—having first been intrigued by her weaving and sewing abilities.
  • The Arabian Nights tale of "Prince Camaralzaman and Princess Badoura"... hoo boy. The Prince and Princess, living at opposite ends of the world, respectively decline arranged marriage and get locked in towers to think it out. A good fairy and evil djinn come to blows over which of the two is the most beautiful mortal alive. They end up sticking both in the Prince's bed and comparing them, but can't decide, so they decide to let the mortals decide. Binding the Princess in magical slumber, they wake the Prince, who exclaims over her beauty ("Are you the woman my father meant for me? I had no idea!"), fails to wake her, and finally goes back to sleep. They do the same thing for the Princess, who is even more enamored of the Prince, so the immortals judge the Prince the most beautiful mortal, return the sleeping Princess to her bed, and leave the story entirely. The Prince and Princess awake the next morning, realize they're not sleeping next to the beauty from the night before, and go storming around asking "Where's that gorgeous dreamboat I fell in love with last night?!" Not only that, but the Princess makes a threat of killing herself if her father doesn't show her the man she loves. Note: These two have never spoken to each other, never seen each other awake, know absolutely nothing of the other except that they're gorgeous. And the Princess is willing to kill herself rather than not have her Prince.
    • A side note: The Prince and Princess are said to look very much alike, to the point where the Princess can masquerade as the Prince for months (including getting married to another princess! long story). My classmates wondered if it's the girl who looked very butch or the boy who looked very effeminate—as they said, "Would you marry a girl who looked like you?"
    • They look very much alike? This could be perfectly rationalized as both of them being siblings without knowing: not having grown up together they would lack the Westermarck Effect that prevents people from hopelessly falling in love with their close relatives. In fact, in real life it's common for siblings who never saw each other during childhood to fall in love at first sight.
  • In "The Story of the Black Cow", the princess sees a lock of the hero's golden hair and insists she must see its owner to be happy. When he's kidnapped and taken to her, he instantly forgets all else.

Mythology

  • Greek mythology has its share of Love At First Sight, usually caused directly by some god or goddess.
    • Eros, after a quarrel with Apollo, got back at him by shooting him with an arrow that made him fall in love with Daphne at first sight, after he shot Daphne with an arrow that made her (in simplest terms) hate at first sight.
    • Aphrodite, Eros' mother, because she was jealous of the beautiful Psyche, asked Eros to shoot her with an arrow so that she would fall in love with someone repulsive at first sight, but Eros ended up falling in love at first sight with Psyche.
    • Narcissus was so beautiful that every woman who looked upon his face fell instantly in love with him, but he would always spurn such people and break their hearts. He was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection after spurning several nymphs this way.
      • And in other versions, falling in love with his own reflection was punishment for spurning probably much older * male* suitors. Values Dissonance? Perhaps. Creepy? Just a tad.
      • Although in Greek culture of the time young men were supposed to have older male suitors, as well as continue to be attracted to women, so both versions technically work. (Male suitors of the same age? Now that was just weird.)
      • And this doesn't count as Values Dissonance... how?
      • No matter who else got rejected by Narcissus, the last person is always Echo in an exceptionally cruel manner. Since she had the misfortune of getting cursed to repeat only what people said to her, it was a big problem when Narcissus needed directions to the nearest city. He had no way of knowing she was cursed, but it doesn't mean he should have called Echo an idiot and gone out of his way to avoid her. Rather understandable that Aphrodite considered this the last straw—especially since Echo was so in love with him that she couldn't bear to cause him harm, even to seek justice for herself.
    • Hades and Persephone. A bit one-sided, but basically he (also) gets shot with Eros' arrow of love. Instant attraction and abduction ensues.


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