I'm continuing my "following folktales around the world" blog series with a spinoff: reading folktale collections from Hungarian Roma traditional storytellers.
First up: Jóni Ferenc, with talent for putting unexpected twists on well known tale types, and using elaborate cursing to color his tales for adults. His empathy shines through as well. I found many favorites in this book.
Slowly working my way through Ghosts, Monsters and Demons of India by @blaft It's an amazing read. Today's favorite is the demon that kills people by spinning around and smacking them with one very long boob.
Jesus Christ, while walking the earth, encounters some mean and greedy people. And he punishes them by turning all ears of corn in their fields into horse d***s.
Not a myth, but one of my favorite folktales is the Persian tale of Pumpkin Girl (or Melon Girl). It's about a woman who adopts a crying pumpkin and raises it as her child. At school during lunchtime, a girl sneaks out of the pumpkin to eat in secret. A neighbor's son sees her and falls in love with her. The rest is a Cinderella story, and eventually the pumpkin turns into a girl for good.
The fairy court in Northumberland was once up the Hartburn from Rothley, they say, until the actions of an over-proud miller offended them and saw them take themselves off up to the area around Dancing Green Hill and the Hurl Stane, near Chillingham, where the white, fairy cattle still roam.
But there's a lot of them up the Henhole too, and an outpost near Elsdon and Otterburn, all of them seeming more related to each other and to the other wild, little people of the moors than they are to the more lordly fairy folk of Eildon and the Borders.
What folktales or fairy tales would you nominate for a Folktale of the Year bracket?
What's your favorite tale?
Which one do you think would make a good Folktale of the Year for 2024?
Which one would be fun to campaign for in a vote?
Which one would you enjoy reading other people's opinions about?
Give us a title, a summary, or a type (see toot below for explanation of tale types) 😄
I am still mulling over the idea of doing a folktale bracket for October... Have people nominate their favorite tale types and find some fun stories for each type, maybe. What say you all?
Shiny new things alert! It’s the podcast’s 3rd anniversary episode, so in order to honour the all powerful story rule of 3, I am bringing you not one but three episodes! My first has everything you might want in a story: bees, a blue eyed hare, a wise old woman, a witch & All Hallows Eve plus some interesting things you may not know about bees, honey, death & the Underworld: https://bit.ly/3Zd68rQ
And another #book of Yi #FolkTales, the latest in my #folklore obsession purchases. This one is called 梅葛 (Méigě) You can read about it (if you read Chinese) and is a collection of ...
OK, this is complicated. I'll break it down. 梅葛 is the Chinese transliteration of an Yi word which is usually transliterated into Maegor. And the term "maegor" refers to two things.
The most common meaning of "maegor" is a general term for Yi nationality oral folk traditions: song and dance, mostly. It is a style of such. (There are several styles of Yi folk traditions, see.) But... "Maegor" (big-M) is also the title of a specific work in the maegor (small-m) style which contains the creation of the world, the origin of human beings, the creation of, e.g. marriage or funereal social rites, and the history of the relationship between the Yi and other ethnic groups.
It's a hefty tome of fairly dense poetry in an unfamiliar-to-me style. It will be a lot of work to decode. More fun!