The Cat-Woman: James R. Foster, Lovers, Mates, and Strange Bedfellows: Old World Folktales (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 146–48.
This French story is a werewolf variant. Widely known, it ends with motif D702.1.1, “Cat’s paw cut off, woman’s hand missing.”
The Serpent-Woman: F. H. Lee, Folk Tales of All Nations (New York: Coward McCann, 1930), pp. 895–902.
This Spanish version of the loathly-wife tale is the distaff side of the marriage-to-a-monster story. The burning of the snake’s skin (motif D721.3, “Disenchantment by destroying skin”) is a death sentence, unlike the same action in the swan-maiden tales. In Spain there used to be a superstition that an evil woman becomes a snake every night for a certain number of years and has the power to inflict painful and often fatal bites.
The Snake’s Lover: David Guss, Legends of the South American Indians (New York: Pantheon Books, forthcoming). This Peruvian story is similar to “The Serpent-Woman” in that the shape shifter is an evil snake. However, though snake wife/husband stories can be found from Scandinavia to India (tale types 433A and B), this story seems more appropriately in the tradition of the loathly-bridegroom motif (D733).
NOT QUITE HUMAN
“The kindness of the fairies …”: Katharine Briggs, The Vanishing People (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 161.
The Well-Baked Man: Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 46–47.
This Pima story is one of the pointed jocular tales that are popular among various American Indian tribes. It is also well established on the summer-camp circuit.
The Finn Messenger: Reidar Christiansen, Folktales of Norway (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 40–41.
In Norway, where this story comes from, the Finns (Laplanders) were thought to be great shape changers and masters of magic. Astral messengers are common occult characters. This story includes motif E721.2, “Body in trance while soul is absent.” This particular tale has been collected in some 15 variants in Norway, as well as in Sweden, Lapland, and Denmark.
Vasilisa the Beautiful: Aleksandr Afanas’ev, Russian Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945, 1973), pp. 439–47.
A Russian Cinderella variant, this story includes the famous Russian witch Baba Yaga, whose hut moved about the forest on chicken’s legs. Baba Yaga’s mode of transportation is unique in folklore annals: flying in a mortar steered by a pestle.
Bridget and the Lurikeen: Henry Glassie, Irish Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 164–65.
The lurikeen in this Irish tale is the same as the leprachaun, the fairy cobbler with a secret stash of gold. He is also called a lubarkin, logheryman (Ulster), cluricaun (Cork), luricaun (Kerry), lurigadaun (Tipperary), lubberkin (England), or lojemand (Norse, meaning Loki Playman).
The Two Hunchbacks: Italo Calvin, Italian Folktales (1980; New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), pp. 332–34.
This is the Italian version of a popular story, type 503, that has been found in Ireland, Japan, France, Spain, Brittany, England, and Germany. There is also a folk ballad in the Irish tradition called “Monday, Tuesday,” which tells only the first part of the tale, omitting the second hunchback altogether.
Then the Merman Laughed: Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 92–93.
The motif of the three laughs (N456, “Enigmatic smile/laugh reveals a secret knowledge”) is popular in Scandinavia and the British Isles. This variant is from Iceland, where tales of merfolk are common. In Ireland, 78 versions of the story have been collected. It is also in the Arthurian tradition, having been included in a story about Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini. In Babylon the motif can be found in a fifth-century tale, “King Solomon and Asmodeus.”
Pergrin and the Mermaid: John Rhys, Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901; London: Wildwood House, 1980), pp. 163–64.
This Welsh tale demonstrates the kind of morality or tit-for-tat that the merfolk offer fishermen. It is a popular story that has attached itself to particular spots and become legend. Other localities in Wales have claimed the same tale.
The Ash Lad Who Had an Eating Match with the Troll: Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jorgen Møe, Norwegian Folk Tales (1960; New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), pp. 81–82.
This is the classic Norwegian tale, type 1060, in which the stupid ogre is outwitted by squeezing a substituted stone (see also “The old man and the wood sprite,” type 1640, and the eating contest itself, type 1088). The stories can all be found in Northern Europe and in the tales of North American Indians as well.
How Mosquitoes Came to Be: Erdoes and Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends, pp. 192–93.
This charming pourquoi tale is from the Tlinglit Indians. This particular version was retold by Erdoes and Ortiz from English-language sources.
The Departure of the Giants: Harold Courlander, The Crest and the Hide and Other African Stories (New York: Coward McCann & Geoghegan, 1982), pp. 97–99.
This African tale from the Mesa, Habab, Beni-Amar, and Cunama people is a legend that grew up to account for large stone cairns in the area. The blessing that is really a curse is a typical jest of a trickster god.
FOOLING THE DEVIL
The Peasant and the Devil: Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1944, 1972), pp. 767–68.
This is the classic Grimm tale, types 1030 and 9B, known as “Crop division.” In this version a peasant and the Devil bargain over the crops, but the actors in the drama vary around the world. In Egypt, a wolf and a mouse quarrel. In the Afro-American tradition, it is a rabbit and a bear; in Norway, a bear and a fox; in China, a landlord and a peasant. The crops vary too: in this Grimm story, they are turnips and grain, but potatoes, wheat, corn, taro, and even popcorn have appeared in variants.
Wicked John and the Devil: Richard Chase, American Folk Tales and Songs (1956; New York: Dover Publications, 1971), pp. 22–30.
This European import to America can be found throughout the South; variants can be found in Germany, France, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Palestine, Lapland, and the Russias. It is tale type 330, “The smith and the Devil” and “The smith and death.” The motif “Devil sticking to a tree or stool or chair” can be traced as far back as ancient Greek and Hebrew sources.
The Bad Wife: Aleksandr Afanas’ev, Russian Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945, 1973), pp. 56–57.
This Russian tale and the story that follows, “Katcha and the Devil,” fall into the “curst wife” tradition. There is a lively ballad tradition as well on the same subject. Child Ballad 278, “The Farmer’s Curst Wife,” has wide distribution in America and England.
Katcha and the Devil: Parker Fillmore, Czechoslovak Fairy Tales (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1919, pp. 101–12.
This is an elaborate Czechoslovakian version of the Russian “Bad Wife,” both of which fall into the “curst wife” tradition. The threat in this story, “You know Katcha? She’s alive and looking for you!” finds its answer in the Vermont ballad “The Farmer’s Curst Wife”:
Oh, one little devil peeks over the wall,
Saying, “Take her back—she’ll kill us all!”
The Lawyer and the Devil: Michael J. Murphy, Now You’re Talking … Folk Tales from the North of Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1975), pp. 116–17.
This little Irish jocular tale is type 1187. Found in Greek myth and across Europe, it has attained its greatest popularity in Ireland.
Coals on the Devil’s Hearth: Henry Glassie, Irish Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 117–18.
Related to tale type 1187 (see “The Lawyer and the Devil”), this Irish story ends up with a bit of wisdom about the cleverness of women.
The Devil’s Hide: F. H. Lee, Folk Tales of All Nations (New York: Coward McCann, 1932), pp. 416–23.
This Finnish story is part of t
he “stupid ogre” cycle, with the Devil taking the ogre’s place. It is also an “impossible tasks” tale. Such stories, widely scattered throughout Europe, are especially popular in Scandinavia.
How El Bizarrón Fooled the Devil: Dorothy Sharp Carter, Greedy Mariani and Other Folktales of the Antilles (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1974), pp. 24–29.
This is a Cuban variant of a popular South American story that is related to “The Devil’s Hide” and is a version of tale type 1640, “The brave tailor.”
Bearskin: The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, pp. 467–72.
This strange German fairy tale combines a more classic magic tale with a “fool-the-Devil” story. The ending, with its ironic twist, “You see, I have now got two souls in the place of your one!” shows a different morality than the usual Devil tale.
The Lad and the Devil: Claire Booss, Scandinavian Folk and Fairy Tales (New York: Avenel Books/Crown Publishers, 1984), pp. 12–13.
This short Norwegian story makes use of the same kind of trick as Puss-in-Boots played on the ogre.
Wiley and the Hairy Man: Virginia Haviland, North American Legends (New York: William Collins Publishers, 1979), pp. 126–33.
This tale from the American South is a Devil story: the Hairy Man “didn’t have feet like a man but like a cow”—the cloven hoofs give him away. Employing the same trick as that in “The Lad and the Devil,” this is a much more elaborated story.
THE GETTING OF WISDOM
Truth and Falsehood: Georgios A. Megas, Folktales of Greece (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 133–34.
A variation of tale type 613, “The two travelers,” in which the nature of truth and falsehood is disputed, this Greek story was found in Argos in the Peloponnesus. Versions of this tale can be found throughout the Middle East as well.
Getting Common Sense: Roger D. Abrahams, Afro-American Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 52.
This is the Jamaican version of an Anansi story that is widely distributed in the West Indies and the Guianas.
Rich Man, Poor Man: Roger D. Abrahams, African Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), pp. 145–47.
This African story is one variant of a popular wisdom tale that has been found as far away as Burma and Israel and throughout Europe. Rabelais published a version called “The Theft of a Smell.” In each version payment is in a slightly different currency: in Burma, for example, the greedy stallkeeper gets paid with the shadow of a coin. There is an interesting Egyptian version in which a whore complains that a man has dreamed of sleeping with her and so owes her money.
The Lost Horse: Moss Roberts, Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), p. 82.
This blessing/curse story from China has a number of close relatives throughout the Middle East.
It Could Always Be Worse: Nathan Ausubel, A Treasury of Jewish Folklore (New York: Crown Publishers, 1948), pp. 69–70.
This popular Jewish story has made its way into the American nursery by means of a number of popular picture books such as Too Much Noise, by Ann McGovern.
His Just Reward: Lone Thygesen-Blecher and George Blecher, Swedish Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, forthcoming).
This is the Swedish variant of a very popular tale, type 155, “The ungrateful serpent returned to captivity.” Its roots are literary, but the story has been found worldwide, from India to China, throughout Africa, in Egypt, and in Mexico. Usually the animal is a serpent or snake, but occasionally it is a crocodile, tiger, or wolf.
Djuha’s Sleeve: Inea Bushnaq, Arab Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 253.
The Syrian fool Djuha, who traveled to Italy, where he became “Giufa,” is as often wise as foolish. The Sicilian version, “Eat Your Fill, My Fine Clothes,” is almost word for word the same. In Nubia the fool is Djawha; in Mala, Djahan; and in Turkey, Hodja.
King Mátyás and His Scholars: Linda Degh, Folktales of Hungary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 172.
King Mátyás stars in a number of Hungarian stories, This particular exempla has been recorded in six variants, the first published in 1890.
The Missing Axe: Roberts, Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies, p. 58.
The Chinese specialize in short, pithy, anecdotal teaching stories. This one is from Lieh Tzu.
What Melody Is the Sweetest? Dov Noy, Folktales of Israel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 172.
This tale was told by an Afghanistani living in Israel, and its roots are quite old. Variants are found all over the Middle East. For example, in Morocco the answer to the question “What is the sweetest?” Is “Nothing is sweeter than a bed full of playing sons and daughters.” The question in this variant, “What melody …?” is motif H635, “Riddle: What is the sweetest sound?” and the riddle itself is sometimes part of “The clever peasant girl” (tale type 875; see “Catherine, Sly Country Lass” and “The Wise Little Girl” in the “Telling Tales” section) as well as of “The Emperor and the Abbot” (type 922). But the core story here is quite different from any of those.
The Peddler of Swaffham: Adapted by Jane Yolen from Katharine Briggs, British Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 244–45.
This legend from Norfolk, England, about the efficacy of dreams concerns a peddler named John Chapman—“chapman” being the old word for a peddler. In the fifteenth-century Black Book (still in the Swaffham Church library) is a list of the benefactors of the church, and it records that Chapman paid for the new north aisle as well as contributing to the spire fund in 1462.
The Beduin’s Gazelle: Bushnaq, Arab Folktales, pp. 55–56.
This story is from Saudi Arabia and is related at the core to the story that follows, “The Happy Man’s Shirt,” which has its origins in Greece.
The Happy Man’s Shirt: Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales (1980; New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), pp. 117–19.
This is the Italian version of tale type 844, “The luck-bringing shirt,” which Hans Christian Andersen gave its finest literary form in “The Shoes of Happiness” (Lykkens Galosher). The ultimate source, though, is a legend about Alexander the Great in the Pseudo-Callisthenes. From the Greek, the story made its way into medieval Latin and spread throughout the Orient and Europe.
GHOSTS AND REVENANTS
Orpheus and Eurydice: Bulfinch’s Mythology (New York: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 192–94.
The classic Greek myth of the husband who seeks his dead wife in the bowels of the earth (motif F81.1) was popular throughout the Middle Ages in ballads and literary romances.
The Spirit-Wife: Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 447–51.
This Zuni tale is but one of the many American Indian Orpheus stories. There are forty versions, and according to Stith Thompson, in only three of them does the wife successfully return. There is a study by A. H. Gayton, “The Orpheus Myth in North America,” in the Journal of American Folklore 48 (1935).
One Night in Paradise: Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales (1980; New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), pp. 119–21.
This Italian story is a ghostly version of the supernatural-passage-of-time-infairyland motif, itself tale type 470, “Friends in life and death.” E. S. Hartland, in The Science of Fairy Tales, has two chapters on this subject. Katharine Briggs, in The Vanishing People, devotes one chapter to it. There is a medieval Christian legend of a monk who listens to a heavenly bird singing, and when he stops listening, three hundred years have passed. Such stories are common throughout Europe, America (see the literary tale “Rip Van Winkle,” by Washington Irving), the Middle East, and the Orient (see “Urashima the Fisherman” in the “True Loves and False” section). The story has been in the European literary tradition since the thirteenth century.
A Pretty Girl in the Road: Vance Randolph, The Devil’s Pretty Daughter and Other Ozark Tales (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), pp. 80–81.
America has foste
red many similar ghost stories, legends attached to particular localities. Known in general as “The Vanishing Hitch-hiker,” this is probably the most popular ghost story still in circulation today.
The Dream House: Katharine Briggs, British Folktales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 265–66.
This one of the many Irish ghost stories is unusual in that the dreamer who is the ghost is very much alive. André Maurois’s short story “The House” is a literary version.
The Peasant and the Fiend: C. Fillingham Coxwell, Siberian and Other Folk-Tales (London: C. W. Daniel, 1925), pp. 664–65.
This Estonian transformation story is a variant of tale type 761, “The cruel rich man as the Devil’s horse,” which is popular in Finland as well.
The Tinker and the Ghost: Ralph Steele Boggs and Mary Gould Davis, Three Golden Oranges and Other Spanish Folk Tales (London: Longman, Green, 1936), pp. 99–108.
This Spanish story incorporates some of the action in “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was” (see the “Heroes” section), tale type 326, with motif E351, “Dead returns to pay money debt.”
Hold Him, Tabb: Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, The Book of Negro Folklore (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958), pp. 167–68.
This jocular ghost story, funny despite its tragic ending, is from the Afro-American tradition.
Drinking Companions: Moss Roberts, Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), pp. 178–82.
This charming ghost story is from China.
The Ostler and the Grave Robbers: Briggs, British Folktales, pp. 208–9.
This jocular anecdote comes from the Burke and Hare period of British history, when grave robbers (or “resurrection men”) were digging up newly buried corpses and selling them to medical schools.
DEATH AND THE WORLD’S END
The Duration of Life: Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1944, 1972), pp. 716–17.