Category: Thursday’s Tales

Today's tale, "The Troll in the Skrúdur, " is from Iceland and was collected in Icelandic Lengends collected by Jón Áronson, translated by George Powell and Eríkur Magnusson, 1864. Iceland is a Nordic island country marking the juncture between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It sounds like a beautiful place. Iceland's best-known classical works of literature are the Icelanders' sagas, prose epics set in Iceland's age of settlement. Icelanders are avid consumers of literature, with the highest number of bookstores per capita in the world. For its size, Iceland imports and translates more international literature than any other nation. Iceland also has the highest per capita publication of books and magazines, and around 10% of the population will publish a book in their lifetime. "The Troll in the Skrúdur" begins with a priest from Hólmar near the Reidarfjördur whose daughter is lost. They've searched near and far for her, but she was not found. Near...

C is for Cinderella, at the suggestion of Naida from ...the bookworm... . "Cinderella" is one of those fairy tales that we all know or at least think we do. It's also a story that's been told in countless countries in countless ways. I've read several versions over the years. The one I'm most familiar with was written by Charles Perrault around 1697. His story includes the evil stepmother, the fairy godmother, the pumpkin and animals being turned into the coach and servants, the glass slippers. The father is alive, just not present in the story. These fairy tale fathers and their lack of any kind of backbone is astonishing. How he could let his only child, the daughter of his dead wife, be abused in his own household, given the most menial chores, be lower than a servant? I've also read Grimm's version, which is entirely different, not the story I knew. Cinderellas' mother dies and on her deathbed she promises, "Dear child, remain pious...

How about another tale from Australia? "The Cookooburrahs and the Goolahgool" was retold by Mrs. K. Langloh Parker in Australian Legendary Tales, 1896. Googarh, the iguana, was married to Moodai, the opossum and Cookooburrah, the laughing kookaburra. Two wives, again, but this time that's not the creature's downfall. Cookooburrah was the mother of three sons, one grown and living on his own, the other two only little boys. They had their camp near a goolahgool, which is apparently a tree that can hold water. It has a split in the fork of it, and a hollow below the fork. After a heavy rain, this hollow trunk would fill with water and it held that water for a long time. One day, Googarh, the iguana, and his two wives went out hunting, leaving the two little kookaburra at the camp. The adults  had taken out water and filled their own water bags, but they had left none for the children, who were too small...

  I've been listening to The Bat by Joe Nesbø. Nesbø's series character, Harry Hole, is in Sydney trying to solve the case of murdered Norwegian woman. Several of the characters tell him Aboriginal tales, which is why today's tale is an Australian story, retold by K. Langloh Parker in Australian Legendary Tales, 1897. "Dinewan the Emu, and Wahn the Crows" is not one that has been mentioned in The Bat, but I found it amusing. Dinewan, the emu, and his two wives, the Wahn (crows), were camping out. Seeing some clouds gathering, they made a small shelter made of bark. The rain started, and they all took shelter under it. Dinewan, when his wives were not looking, gave a kick against a piece of bark at one side of the shelter, knocked it down, then told his wives to go and put it up again. When they were outside putting it up, he gave a kick, and knocked down a piece on...

Today's tale is actually a poem written by William Allingham and included in Sixteen Poems by William Allingham, selected by William Bulter Yeats, published in 1905. The Leprecaun or Fairy Shoemaker Little Cowboy, what have you heard, Up on the lonely rath's green mound? Only the plaintive yellow bird Sighing in sultry fields around, Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee!-- Only the grasshopper and the bee?-- "Tip-tap, rip-rap, Tick-a-tack-too! Scarlet leather, sewn together, This will make a shoe. Left, right, pull it tight; Summer days are warm; Underground in winter, Laughing at the storm! Lay your ear close to the hill. Do you not catch the tiny clamour, Busy click of an elfin hammer, Voice of the Lepracaun singing shrill As he merrily plies his trade? He's a span And a quarter in height. Get him in sight, hold him tight, And you're a made Man! You watch your cattle the summer day, Sup on potatoes, sleep in the hay; How would you like to roll in your carriage. Look for a duchess's daughter in marriage? Seize the Shoemaker--then you may! "Big boots a-hunting, Sandals in the hall, White for a wedding-feast, Pink for a ball. This way,...

Last week we looked at a tale about a moose. This week, we're going to look at a tale told by a moose. The Little Moose Who Couldn't Go to Sleep was told by the great moose storyteller, Maynard Moose, to Willy Claflin who wrote it all down and had it illustrated by James Stimson. Yes, it's not my traditional Thursday post, but it's a fun book and it is posing as a traditional Moose story. The story is about Little Moose who can't get a good night's sleep. Her mind just keeps working all night long, thinking about just random things, like I can picture a kid thinking about. She's a cutie, but the next day at school, she's so tired that can't pay attention and isn't learning well. Her parents try to help, but the moose recipe for sleeping well is to eat a big bowl of legumes and go to bed an hour early, neither of which little...