"Nägendümer" is a German story re-told by Alfred Haas in Rügensche Sagen und Märchen, 1903. It's a type 500 folktale, in which a mysterious and threatening helper is defeated when the hero or heroine discovers his name, like Rumpelstiltskin. One day I might have to do a post about the folktale classification system, since I don't know much about it myself.
The story is pretty short and fairly uncomplicated. There's a girl whose job it is to spin a certain amount of flax every day, but she never manages to complete the whole task. One day a man comes by and promises to spin the flax for her every day if she can guess his name. I don't know why he made the offer, he doesn't seem to gain anything from it except teasing the girl. Of course, she has no idea what his name is. The man goes away and turns himself into a bird. He flies around, singing to her who promised her that...
No, The Paper Bag Princess is not actually a classic fairy tale. It was written in 1980 by Robert Munsch, but it has all the familiar characters - a princess, a prince, and a dragon. And there's a quest and an ending. And I wanted a chance to show off Amber's painting of a paper bag. It's only the second painting she's done - she almost didn't bring it home because it's "only practice."
Princess Elizabeth is a lovely princess who lives in a beautiful castle and plans on marrying Prince Ronald. However, a dragon arrives, destroys her kingdom, kidnaps Ronald, and burns all her clothes so that she has no choice but to wear a paper bag. Elizabeth bravely follows the dragon to rescue Ronald. She comes to the dragon's cave an knocks. Twice he tells he to go away but then she calls out, asking him if he isn't the smartest, fiercest dragon in the whole world. He, of course,...
"How the Goats Came to Hessen" is a German tale told in Sagen Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen und einigen andern, besonders den angrenzenden Gegenden Norddeutschlands by Adalbert Kuhn, 1859. The version I read was a translation by D. L. Ashliman. It's a bit like the "Three Billy Goats Gruff," but this time around cleverness wins rather than pure size and strength.
Hessen is apparently a lovely area, but it was surrounded by giant forests. As any reader of fairy tales knows, scary dangerous things live in the woods, in this case it's wolves. Many goat families who attempted to enter Hessen were devoured by the wolves.
One day a week little kid goat was trying to get to Hessen. Almost immediately after he entered the woods, he was met by a wolf. The kid told the wolf that his mother was coming, and the wolf decided to wait and eat the mother who would be bigger and make a better meal. When...
Today's story comes from Brazil and it's another story about monkeys. "How the Monkey Became a Trickster" was retold by Elsie Spicer Eells in Fairy Tales from Brazil, 1917.
Once there was a beautiful garden where all kind of fruits grew. A wide variety of animals lived in the garden and they were allowed to eat any of the fruit they wanted, as long as they followed a couple of rules. First they always had to be respectful and ask politely, calling the tree by name. For example, when they wanted an orange they had to say, "O, orange tree, O, orange tree, please give me a taste of your fruit." It was also important not to be greedy and to leave plenty of fruit for the other animals and for the tree to keep and furnish seed so other trees could grow.
In the corner of the garden grew the most beautiful tree of all and it had tempting, rosy-cheeked fruit,...
"The Seven Iron Slippers" is a Portugese tale similar to the Twelve Dancing Princesses. It was told by Consiglieri Pedrosoin in Portugese Folk-Tales, 1882.
A king had one daughter. Every evening, the princess wore out seven pairs of iron slippers, and the king couldn't figure out how this happened. He issued a decree issued a decree, that whoever found out how the princess wore out the shoes would be given the princess in marriage if it was a man or a prince if it was a woman. I like the equal opportunity here.
Meanwhile, a soldier was wandering around the countryside and tricked people out of a cap that could turn him invisible and a pair of boots that could take him wherever he told them too. He had the boots take him to the city where he heard about the king's challenge. He figured that he could find out what the princess was up to with the help of his cap and boots. ...
"The Song of the Armadillo" is a tale from Bolivia. I don't think I've featured many South America tales here, but it's one of those bittersweet stories that I tend to like.
Once there was an armadillo who loved music more than anything else in the world. He listened to the frogs and crickets and canaries and wished he could sing like them. Meanwhile, the other animals made fun of him, knowing full well that there was no way an armadillo could learn to sing.
The armadillo finally decided to ask the local wizard to help him. "Great wizard," he said. "It is my deepest desire to learn to sing like the frogs and the crickets and the canaries." At first the wizard was amused, because everyone knows armadillos can't sing, but then he realized how serious the little creature was.
The wizard told the armadillo that he could make him sing, but the price would be too high. It would mean the armadillo's death. The...