Crocodile wife
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A crocodile wife is a mistress, especially a deceitful one. The expression derives from oriental folklore and came to prominence when Mohamed Al-Fayed referred to Camilla Parker Bowles as the crocodile wife of Prince Charles during the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed.[1]
In a folk tale from Timor, a fisherman is invited by a female crocodile to see her riches at the bottom of the river. She takes him there on her back, and promises to share her riches with him if he will sleep with her. The man sleeps with his "crocodile wife" by day and with his wife by night until she becomes suspicious and follows him. The crocodile wife sees her and kills the fisherman.[2]
A crocodile wife also figures in a story from Indian folklore, "The Monkey and the Crocodile", in which a monkey regularly feeds apples to a crocodile. The crocodile's wife becomes jealous and invites the monkey to their house in order to kill him, but the monkey escapes.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ BBC NEWS | UK | Diana murdered, Al Fayed claims
- ^ "Literary Masks and Metaphysical Truths: Intimations from Timor" by David Hicks in American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 807-817, Publisher: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.
- ^ The Monkey and the Crocodile - Panchatantra
