Fairy Tale Friday--Master and Pupil (or The Devil Outwitted)

From Georgian Folk Tales translated by Marjory Wardrop enjoy Master and Pupil.  Who doesn't love a deceiving-the-devil story?

Fairy Tale Friday--The Maiden the Sun Made love to, and Her Boys

From Zuñi Folk Tales, edited by Frank Hamilton Cushing, enjoy The Maiden the Sun Made Love to, and Her Boys.  The Zuñi are a Native American tribe living in New Mexico.

Dancers at Zuni Pueblo courtesy Wikimedia

This long, complicated tale includes:

• Solar impregnation
• Twins
• Dismemberment
• Resurrection
• An explanation for the origin of anger 

(Dear fairy tale fans, I originally planned to find motif numbers for every tale, but it's getting to be too much work.)

Fairy Tale Friday--God's Godson

From Gypsy Folk-Tales by Francis Hindes Groome, enjoy God's Godson. It's a short hero tale.

This book has a very long introduction, in case you decide to browse.

Amazon

Fairy Tale Friday--The Three Oranges

Enjoy this Magyar version of the Love for Three Oranges.  It's on page 133 of The Folk-Tales of the Magyars, volume 13, by W. Henry Jones, János Kriza, János Erdélyi, Gyula Pap.

Here are other versions of this tale I have found.

The Love of Three Oranges, The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales, Paul Delarue, editor, pp. 126-134.

The Three Citrons of Love, Portuguese Folk-Tales. collected by Consiglieri Pedroso, translated by Miss Henriqueta Monteiro, London: Elliot Stock, 1882, pp. 9-13.

The Princess of the Third Pumpkin,Yiddish Folktales, edited by Beatrice Silverman Weinreich, translated by Leonard Wolf, NY: Pantheon Bks, 1988 pp.122-125 (http://rachelhopecrossman.blogspot.com/2011/04/cinderella-99-princess-of-third-pumpkin.html)

The Love of the Three Pomegranates, Italian Folktales, Italo Calvino,compiler, NY: Pantheon, 1980. pp. 389-393

The Reed Maiden, Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars by Jeremiah Curtin, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington,1891, p 457-  (There is also a 1971 edition.)

The Three Love-Oranges, Roman Legends: A Collection of the Fables and Folk-Lore of Rome by R.H. Busk, Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1877. pp. 15-21.

The Love of the Three Oranges, Italian Popular Tales, by Thomas Frederick Crane, Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1885, pp. 338-343.

The Three Orange-Peris, Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, edited by Ignácz Kúnos, London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896, pp. 12-29

The Young Lord and the Cucumber Girl, Tales Alive in Turkey by Warren S. Walker & Ahmet E. Uysal, Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1966, pp. 64-71. (http://enargea.org/tales/Turkish/Cucumber_Girl.html)

How the Pigeon became a Tame Bird, Fairy Tales From Brazil by Elsie Spicer Eells, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1917, pp.165-174.

The basic pattern of these stories goes like this:

• Young man gets three fruits or plants containing young women.
• Young man releases women by cutting fruit, but fails to provide water for first two.
• Young man leaves young woman in tree while he prepares for wedding.
• False bride turns true bride into animal or plant.
• Young man returns and marries false bride.
• True bride tries to get attention of young man in whatever nonhuman form she's in.
• True bride (in many versions) moves in with a woman.
• True bride manages to get attention of young man
• False bride is removed; true bride moves in.

There is considerable variation among versions.  For instance, the young lord in The Young Lord and the Cucumber Girl has to go on a long quest, get milk for a lion, meat for a tiger, chewing gum for a witch, drink from a blood-and-pus fountain, and slip past giants to get 3 cucumbers from a giantess.  In contrast, the prince in The Princess of the Third Pumpkin had only to get up at dawn, put on his coat, and take a bottle of water to his parents' garden, where three pumpkins are growing on one vine.

Fairy Tale Friday--The Enchanted Flower

This week's collection is Fairy Tales from the Harz Mountains.  The Harz Mountains are in Germany and are full of medieval  castles. (Note: I fixed the links. Sorry about that!)

 The Enchanted Flower, page 81, is like the continuation of the Apollo and Daphne story. It begins with a flower that used to be a woman who didn't want to marry the Count of  Lauenburg.  She avoids him by turning into a white flower.  The tale deals with how the flower becomes a woman again: the right person has to pluck her.  In this case, the right person is a young woman about to be married.