Favorite Folktales From Around the World

by Jane Yolen

  Then the king was astonished, but very glad, and asked how he had fared. “Very well indeed,” answered he. “One night is past, the two others will pass likewise.” Then he went to the innkeeper, who opened his eyes very wide, and said, “I never expected to see you alive again! Have you learned how to shudder yet?”

  “No,” said he, “it is all in vain. If someone would but tell me!”

  The second night he again went up into the old castle, sat down by the fire, and once more began his old song: “If I could but shudder!” When midnight came, an uproar and noise of tumbling about was heard; at first it was low, but it grew louder and louder. Then it was quiet for a while, and at length with a loud scream, half a man came down the chimney and fell before him. “Hullo!” cried he, “another half belongs to this. This is not enough!” Then the uproar began again, there was a roaring and howling, and the other half fell down likewise. “Wait,” said he, “I will just stoke up the fire a little for you.” When he had done that and looked round again, the two pieces were joined together, and a hideous man was sitting in his place. “That is no part of our bargain,” said the youth, “the bench is mine.” The man wanted to push him away; the youth, however, would not allow that, but thrust him off with all his strength, and seated himself again in his own place. Then still more men fell down, one after the other; they brought nine dead men’s legs and two skulls, and set them up and played at ninepins with them. The youth also wanted to play and said, “Listen you, can I join you?”

  “Yes, if you have any money.”

  “Money enough,” replied he, “but your balls are not quite round.” Then he took the skulls and put them in the lathe and turned them till they were round. “There, now they will roll better!” said he. “Hurrah! now we’ll have fun!” He played with them and lost some of his money, but when it struck twelve, everything vanished from his sight. He lay down and quietly fell asleep.

  Next morning the king came to inquire after him. “How has it fared with you this time?” asked he.

  “I have been playing at ninepins,” he answered, “and have lost a couple of farthings.”

  “Have you not shuddered then?”

  “What?” said he. “I have had a wonderful time! If I did but know what it was to shudder!”

  The third night he sat down again on his bench and said quite sadly, “If I could but shudder.” When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin. Then said he, “Ha, ha, that is certainly my little cousin, who died only a few days ago,” and he beckoned with his finger, and cried, “Come, little cousin, come.” They placed the coffin on the ground, but he went to it and took the lid off, and a dead man lay therein. He felt his face, but it was cold as ice. “Wait,” said he, “I will warm you a little,” and went to the fire and warmed his hand and laid it on the dead man’s face, but he remained cold. Then he took him out, and sat down by the fire and laid him on his breast and rubbed his arms that the blood might circulate again. As this also did no good, he thought to himself, “When two people lie in bed together, they warm each other,” and carried him to the bed, covered him over, and lay down by him. After a short time the dead man became warm too, and began to move. Then said the youth, “See, little cousin, have I not warmed you?”

  The dead man, however, got up and cried, “Now will I strangle you.”

  “What!” said he, “is that the way you think me? You shall at once go into your coffin again,” and he took him up, threw him into it, and shut the lid. Then came the six men and carried him away again. “I cannot manage to shudder,” said he. “I shall never learn it here as long as I live.”

  Then a man entered who was taller than all others, and looked terrible. He was old, however, and had a long white beard. “You wretch,” cried he, “you shall soon learn what it is to shudder, for you shall die.”

  “Not so fast,” replied the youth. “If I am to die, I shall have to have a say in it.”

  “I will soon seize you,” said the fiend.

  “Softly, softly, do not talk so big. I am as strong as you are, and perhaps even stronger.”

  “We shall see,” said the old man. “If you are stronger, I will let you go—come, we will try.” Then he led him by dark passages to a smith’s forge, took an axe, and with one blow struck an anvil into the ground.

  “I can do better than that,” said the youth, and went to the other anvil. The old man placed himself near and wanted to look on, and his white beard hung down. Then the youth seized the axe, split the anvil with one blow, and in it caught the old man’s beard. “Now I have you,” said the youth. “Now it is your turn to die.” Then he seized an iron bar and beat the old man till he moaned and entreated him to stop, when he would give him great riches. The youth drew out the axe and let him go.

  The old man led him back into the castle, and in a cellar showed him three chests full of gold. “Of these,” said he, “one part is for the poor, the other for the king, the third yours.” In the meantime it struck twelve, and the spirit disappeared, so that the youth stood in darkness. “I shall still be able to find my way out,” said he, and felt about, found the way into the room, and slept there by his fire.

  Next morning the king came and said, “Now you must have learned what shuddering is?”

  “No,” he answered. “What can it be? My dead cousin was here, and a bearded man came and showed me a great deal of money down below, but no one told me what it was to shudder.”

  “Then,” said the king, “you have saved the castle, and shall marry my daughter.”

  “That is all very well,” said he, “but still I do not know what it is to shudder!”

  Then the gold was brought up and the wedding celebrated. But howsoever much the young king loved his wife, and however happy he was, he still said always, “If I could but shudder—if I could but shudder.” And this at last angered her.

  Her waiting maid said, “I will find a cure for him; he shall soon learn what it is to shudder.” She went out to the stream which flowed through the garden, and had a whole bucketful of gudgeons brought to her. At night when the young king was sleeping, his wife was to draw the clothes off him and empty the bucketful of cold water with the gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would sprawl about him. Then he woke up and cried, “Oh, what makes me shudder so?—what makes me shudder so, dear wife? Ah! now I know what it is to shudder!”

  Baron Munchausen, that consummate liar and braggart invented in the eighteenth century by Rudolf Erich Raspe in volumes that were both satirical and libelous, always assured his listeners: “Having heard, for the first time, that my adventures have been doubted, and looked upon as jokes, I feel bound to come forward and vindicate my character for veracity, by paying three shillings at the Mansion House of this great city for the affidavits, hereto appended.” However, as one of the affidavits, signed by those truth tellers Gulliver, Sinbad, and Aladdin, says: “As we have been believed, whose adventures are tenfold more wonderful, so do we hope all true believers will give him their full faith and credence.”

  So, too, the wonder tales and braggadocio, romantic embellishments, and outright lies that follow should be believed, as they say in the Appalachians, by “considering the source.” Whether it is a German taradiddle about a goose girl who talks to the head of her late lamented horse which is hanging on the wall (and it talks back!), or the quick magic of the miracle-making priest who teaches a farmer a lesson in “The Magic Pear Tree,” these tales are all filled with one kind of wonder or another.

  TALK

  Africa (Ashanti)

  Once, not far from the city of Accra on the Gulf of Guinea, a country man went out to his garden to dig up some yams to take to market. While he was digging, one of the yams said to him, “Well, at last you’re here. You never weeded me, but now you come around with your digging stick. Go away and leave me alone!”

  The farmer turned around and looked at his cow in amazement. The cow was chewing her cud and looking at him.

&nbs
p; “Did you say something?” he asked.

  The cow kept on chewing and said nothing, but the man’s dog spoke up. “It wasn’t the cow who spoke to you,” the dog said. “It was the yam. The yam says leave him alone.”

  The man became angry, because his dog had never talked before, and he didn’t like his tone besides. So he took his knife and cut a branch from a palm tree to whip his dog. Just then the palm tree said, “Put that branch down!”

  The man was getting very upset about the way things were going, and he started to throw the palm branch away, but the palm branch said, “Man, put me down softly!”

  He put the branch down gently on a stone, and the stone said, “Hey, take that thing off me!”

  This was enough, and the frightened farmer started to run for his village. On the way he met a fisherman going the other way with a fish trap on his head.

  “What’s the hurry?” the fisherman asked.

  “My yam said, ‘Leave me alone!’ Then the dog said, ‘Listen to what the yam says!’ When I went to whip the dog with a palm branch the tree said, ‘Put that branch down!’ Then the palm branch said, ‘Do it softly!’ Then the stone said, ‘Take that thing off me!’ ”

  “Is that all?” the man with the fish trap asked. “Is that so frightening?”

  “Well,” the man’s fish trap said, “did he take it off the stone?”

  “Wah!” the fisherman shouted. He threw the fish trap on the ground and began to run with the farmer, and on the trail they met a weaver with a bundle of cloth on his head.

  “Where are you going in such a rush?” he asked them.

  “My yam said, ‘Leave me alone!’ ” the farmer said. “The dog said, ‘Listen to what the yam says!’ The tree said, ‘Put that branch down!’ The branch said, ‘Do it softly!’ And the stone said, ‘Take that thing off me!’ ”

  “And then,” the fisherman continued, “the fish trap said, ‘Did he take it off?’ ”

  “That’s nothing to get excited about,” the weaver said. “No reason at all.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” his bundle of cloth said. “If it happened to you you’d run too!”

  “Wah!” the weaver shouted. He threw his bundle on the trail and started running with the other men.

  They came panting to the ford in the river and found a man bathing. “Are you chasing a gazelle?” he asked them.

  The first man said breathlessly, “My yam talked at me, and it said, ‘Leave me alone!’ And my dog said, ‘Listen to your yam!’ And when I cut myself a branch the tree said, ‘Put that branch down!’ And the branch said, ‘Do it softly!’ And the stone said, ‘Take that thing off me!’ ”

  The fisherman panted. “And my trap said, ‘Did he?’ ”

  The weaver wheezed. “And my bundle of cloth said, ‘You’d run too!’ ”

  “Is that why you’re running?” the man in the river asked.

  “Well, wouldn’t you run if you were in their position?” the river said.

  The man jumped out of the water and began to run with the others. They ran down the main street of the village to the house of the chief. The chief’s servant brought his stool out, and he came and sat on it to listen to their complaints. The men began to recite their troubles.

  “I went out to my garden to dig yams,” the farmer said, waving his arms. “Then everything began to talk! My yam said, ‘Leave me alone!’ My dog said, ‘Pay attention to your yam!’ The tree said, ‘Put that branch down!’ The branch said, ‘Do it softly!’ And the stone said, ‘Take it off me!’ ”

  “And my fish trap said, ‘Well, did he take it off?’ ” the fisherman said.

  “And my cloth said, ‘You’d run too!’ ” the weaver said.

  “And the river said the same,” the bather said hoarsely, his eyes bulging.

  The chief listened to them patiently, but he couldn’t refrain from scowling. “Now this is really a wild story,” he said at last. “You’d better all go back to your work before I punish you for disturbing the peace.”

  So the men went away, and the chief shook his head and mumbled to himself, “Nonsense like that upsets the community.”

  “Fantastic, isn’t it?” his stool said. “Imagine, a talking yam!”

  THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON

  Ireland

  Once upon a time, and a very good time it was too, when the streets were paved with penny loaves and houses were whitewashed with buttermilk and the pigs ran round with knives and forks in their snouts shouting: “Eat me, eat me!” there lived a King of Ireland and he had three sons named Art, Neart and Ceart. Art is a man’s name simply, Neart means strength and Ceart means right or justice. Well, Art was his father’s favorite and the other two boys were very jealous of him. At one particular time, you could hear, all around the country, heavenly music coming from somewhere, and the King wanted to know where it was coming from. So he said to his three sons: “Go out and whichever of you finds out where the heavenly music is coming from, can have half my kingdom.”

  So the three of them set off out until they came to a big hole and from this big hole they could hear the sound of the music coming. Neart and Ceart said to Art: “Will you go down? You’re the lightest and the youngest and we’ll let you down into this hole on a rope. You can see where the music is coming from and then we’ll pull you up again,” hoping never to see him again.

  Art said: “Certainly, I will. I think that’s a good idea.”

  Down on the end of a rope he was lowered and he went along a cave like a long tunnel, along and along and along until it got very dark. He walked for hours until it must have been nighttime, for in the tunnel he couldn’t tell night from day. In the end and when his feet were falling off him, he saw a light. Over to the light he went and he met an old man and he said to the old man that was there: “Could you tell me where the heavenly music is coming from?”

  “No, then,” said the old man, “I can’t. But I tell you what you can do. You can stop the night and tomorrow you can walk—it’s a day’s journey—on to my father’s place and he might be able to tell you.”

  So the old man put him up for the night and gave him the best of food. They had rashers and eggs with black pudding and white pudding and a Cork drisheen, three Hafner’s sausages each, the best of homemade wholemeal bread, all washed down with lashings of strong tea, and after that they both went to bed, as well they might after such a feed.

  The next morning Art woke up and started on his journey for another day’s traveling along the tunnel, until he came to another light and he went in and met an old, old man and he said to him: “Are you the father of the other old man that I saw back along there?”

  “That’s not an old man,” said the second old man, “he’s only a hundred.”

  “Well,” said Art, “I’d like to know where the heavenly music is coming from and he said you might be able to help me.”

  “Well,” said the second old man, “that I can’t help you. But my father that lives further up might be able to. Come in anyway and I’ll feed you for the night and you can get up in the morning and go up and ask my father.”

  So Art went in and the old, old man gave him a great meal. They had bowls of stirabout, followed by huge plates of the best Limerick ham with spring cabbage and lovely potatoes, that were like balls of flour melting in your mouth, and with all this they drank three pints each of the freshest buttermilk Art had ever tasted. I can tell you he slept soundly that night.

  And the next morning he got up and after saying goodbye to the old, old man, he walked for another whole day along the tunnel until he came to another light and there was an old, old, old man. So Art said to him: “Are you the father of the old, old man back there along the tunnel?”

  “Well, I am,” said the old, old, old man, “but that fellow’s not as old as he makes out; he’s only a hundred and fifty and he eats all them new-fangled foods, as you probably found out.”

  “Well,” said Art, “he did me very well. But what I wanted to know was if y
ou can tell me where the heavenly music comes from?”

  “Well, now,” said the old, old, old man, “we’ll talk about that in the morning. Come on in now and have a bit to eat and rest yourself. You must be famished after that day’s walking.”

  So in Art went and the old, old, old man got some food ready. They started off with two great bowls of yellow buck porridge each and after that, they had four crubeens apiece with fresh soda bread and homemade butter and they had three pints of the creamiest porter Art had ever drunk to go with it all.

  The next morning, he got up and he said to the old man: “Now can you tell me where the heavenly music is coming from?”

  “Well, no,” said the old, old, old man, “but I know that there’s nobody else living at the end of this tunnel except a terrible fierce man, a giant, and,” he said, “I wouldn’t go near him if I were you. But if you do decide to go up to him, he lives a terrible far distance away at the very end. You’ll find, however,” he said, “a little stallion when you go a couple of miles up the road there and, if you get up on him, he’ll carry you to where the heavenly music comes from. But,” he said, “you’ll want to be very wary of that giant.”

  Art went along and he came up to where, sure enough, there was a stallion and there was light with more light further on. So the stallion said to him: “Do you want a lift?”

  “I do,” said Art, “but I’m going up to where the heavenly music is.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” said the stallion “no offense given and no offense taken. Jump up there on me back and I’ll take you.”

  So up on the stallion’s back he jumped and the stallion galloped away for nearly a whole day, until he came to one of the most beautiful gardens Art had ever seen. “This,” said the stallion, “is the nearest I can take you to where the heavenly music comes from.”

  Art went up through the garden, wondering at every more marvelous thing that he saw. Nearer and nearer came the heavenly music and at last Art came to a house and the music was coming from there. Into the house Art went and there was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. And she was singing and making the heavenly music.