Favorite Folktales From Around the World

by Jane Yolen

  Then said he, “I am your betrothed bridegroom, whom you saw as Bearskin, but through God’s grace I have again received my human form and have once more become clean.” He went up to her, embraced her, and gave her a kiss.

  In the meantime the two sisters came back in full dress, and when they saw that the handsome man had fallen to the share of the youngest, and heard that he was Bearskin, they ran out full of anger and rage. One of them drowned herself in the well, the other hanged herself on a tree.

  In the evening, someone knocked at the door, and when the bridegroom opened it, it was the Devil in his green coat, who said, “You see, I have now got two souls in the place of your one!”

  THE LAD AND THE DEVIL

  Norway

  Once upon a time there was a lad who went along a road cracking nuts. He happened to find one which was worm-eaten, and shortly afterwards he met the Devil.

  “Is it true,” said the lad, “what they say, that the Devil can make himself as small as he likes, and go through a pinhole?”

  “Yes, of course,” answered the Devil.

  “Well, let me see you do it. Creep into this nut if you can,” said the lad.

  And the Devil did it. But he had no sooner got through the wormhole than the lad put a small peg in the hole.

  “I have got you safe, now,” he said, and put the nut in his pocket. When he had walked some distance he came to a smithy. He went in there and asked the smith if he would crack that nut for him.

  “Yes, that’s easily done,” said the smith, and took the smallest hammer he had, laid the nut on the anvil, and gave it a blow, but it didn’t break. So he took a somewhat bigger hammer, but that wasn’t heavy enough either; then he took a still bigger one, but no—the nut would not break.

  This made the smith angry, and he seized the big sledgehammer. “I shall soon make bits of you,” he said, and he gave the nut such a blow that it went into a thousand pieces, and sent half the roof of the smithy flying in the air. Such a crash! just as if the hut were tumbling together.

  “I think the Devil was in the nut,” said the smith.

  “So he was,” said the lad.

  WILEY AND THE HAIRY MAN

  United States

  Wiley’s pappy was a bad man and no-count. He stole watermelons in the dark of the moon. He was lazy, too, and slept while the weeds grew higher than the cotton. Worse still, he killed martins and never even chunked at a crow.

  One day he fell off the ferryboat where the river is quicker than anywhere else and no one ever found him. They looked for him a long way down river and in the still pools between the sandbanks, but they never found him. They heard a big man laughing across the river, and everybody said, “That’s the Hairy Man.” So they stopped looking.

  “Wiley,” his mammy told him, “the Hairy Man’s got your pappy and he’s goin’ to get you if you don’t look out.”

  “Yas’m,” he said. “I’ll look out. I’ll take my hound-dogs everywhere I go. The Hairy Man can’t stand no hound-dog.”

  Wiley knew that because his mammy had told him. She knew because she came from the swamps by the Tombisbee River and knew conjure magic.

  One day Wiley took his axe and went down in the swamp to cut some poles for a hen-roost and his hounds went with him. But they took out after a shoat and ran it so far off Wiley couldn’t even hear them yelp.

  “Well,” he said, “I hope the Hairy Man ain’t nowhere round here now.”

  He picked up his axe to start cutting poles, but he looked up and there came the Hairy Man through the trees grinning. He was sure ugly and his grin didn’t help much. He was hairy all over. His eyes burned like fire and spit drooled all over his big teeth.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” said Wiley, but the Hairy Man kept coming and grinning, so Wiley threw down his axe and climbed up a big bay tree. He saw the Hairy Man didn’t have feet like a man but like a cow, and Wiley never had seen a cow up a bay tree.

  “What for you done climb up there?” the Hairy Man asked Wiley when he got to the bottom of the tree.

  Wiley climbed nearly to the top of the tree and looked down. Then he climbed plumb to the top.

  “How come you climbin’ trees?” the Hairy Man said.

  “My mammy done tole me to stay away from you. What you got in that big croaker-sack?”

  “I ain’t got nothin’ yet.”

  “Gwan away from here,” said Wiley, hoping the tree would grow some more.

  “Ha,” said the Hairy Man and picked up Wiley’s axe. He swung it about and the chips flew. Wiley grabbed the tree close, rubbed his belly on it and hollered, “Fly, chips, fly, back in your same old place.”

  The chips flew and the Hairy Man cussed and damned. Then he swung the axe and Wiley knew he’d have to holler fast. They went to it tooth and toenail then, Wiley hollering and the Hairy Man chopping. He hollered till he was hoarse and he saw the Hairy Man was gaining on him.

  “I’ll come down part of the way,” he said, “if you’ll make this bay tree twice as big around.”

  “I ain’t studyin’ you,” said the Hairy Man, swinging the axe.

  “I bet you can’t,” said Wiley.

  “I ain’t going to try,” said the Hairy Man.

  Then they went to it again, Wiley hollering and the Hairy Man chopping. Wiley had about yelled himself out when he heard his hound-dogs yelping way off.

  “Hyeaaah, dog,” hollered Wiley, and they both heard the hound-dogs yelping and coming jam-up. The Hairy Man looked worried.

  “Come on down,” he said, “and I’ll teach you conjure.”

  “I can learn all the conjure I want from my mammy.”

  The Hairy Man cussed some more, but he threw the axe down and took off throught the swamp.

  When Wiley got home he told his mammy that the Hairy Man had most got him but his dogs ran him off.

  “Did he have his sack?”

  “Yas’m.”

  “Next time he come after you, don’t climb no bay tree.”

  “I ain’t,” said Wiley. “They ain’t big enough around.”

  “Don’t climb no kind o’ tree. Just stay on the ground and say ‘Hello, Hairy Man.’ You hear me, Wiley?”

  “No’m.”

  “He ain’t goin’ to hurt you, child. You can put the Hairy Man in the dirt when I tell you how to do him.”

  “I puts him in the dirt and he puts me in that croaker-sack. I ain’t puttin’ no Hairy Man in the dirt.”

  “You just do like I say. You say, ‘Hello, Hairy Man.’ He says, ‘Hello, Wiley,’ You say, ‘Hello Hairy Man, I done heard you about the best conjure man round here.’ ‘I reckon I am.’ You say, ‘I bet you cain’t turn yourself into no giraffe.’ You keep tellin’ him he cain’t and he will. Then you say, ‘I bet you cain’t turn yourself into no possum.’ Then he will, and you grab him and throw him in the sack.”

  “It don’t sound just right somehow,” said Wiley, “but I will.” So he tied up his dogs so they wouldn’t scare away the Hairy Man, and went down to the swamp again. He hadn’t been there long when he looked up and there came the Hairy Man grinning through the trees, hairy all over and his big teeth showing more than ever. He knew Wiley came off without his hound-dogs. Wiley nearly climbed a tree when he saw the croaker-sack, but he didn’t.

  “Hello, Hairy Man,” he said.

  “Hello, Wiley.” He took the sack off his shoulder and started opening it up.

  “Hairy Man, I done heard you are about the best conjure man round here.”

  “I reckon I is.”

  “I bet you cain’t turn yourself into no giraffe.”

  “Shucks, that ain’t no trouble,” said the Hairy Man.

  “I bet you cain’t do it.”

  So the Hairy Man twisted round and turned himself into a giraffe.

  “I bet you cain’t turn yourself into no alligator,” said Wiley.

  The giraffe twisted around and turned into an alligator, all the time watching Wiley to see he didn’t tr
y to run.

  “Anybody can turn theyself into something big as a man,” said Wiley, “but I bet you cain’t turn yourself into no possum.”

  The alligator twisted around and turned into a possum, and Wiley grabbed it and threw it in the sack.

  Wiley tied the sack up as tight as he could and then he threw it in the river. He started home through the swamp and he looked up and there came the Hairy Man grinning through the trees. Wiley had to scramble up the nearest tree.

  The Hairy Man gloated: “I turned myself into the wind and blew out. Wiley, I’m going to set right here till you get hungry and fall out of that bay tree. You want me to learn you some more conjure?”

  Wiley studied awhile. He studied about the Hairy Man and he studied about his hound-dogs tied up most a mile away.

  “Well,” he said, “you done some pretty smart tricks. But I bet you cain’t make things disappear and go where nobody knows.”

  “Huh, that’s what I’m good at. Look at that old bird-nest on the limb. Now look. It’s done gone.”

  “How I know it was there in the first place? I bet you cain’t make something I know is there disappear.”

  “Ha ha!” said the Hairy Man. “Look at your shirt.”

  Wiley looked down and his shirt was gone, but he didn’t care, because that was just what he wanted the Hairy Man to do.

  “That was just a plain old shirt,” he said. “But this rope I got tied round my breeches has been conjured. I bet you cain’t make it disappear.”

  “Huh, I can make all the rope in this county disappear.”

  “Ha ha ha,” said Wiley.

  The Hairy Man looked mad and threw his chest way out. He opened his mouth wide and hollered loud.

  “From now on all the rope in this county has done disappeared.”

  Wiley reared back, holding his breeches with one hand and a tree-limb with the other.

  “Hyeaaah, dog,” he hollered loud enough to be heard more than a mile off.

  When Wiley and his dogs got back home his mammy asked him did he put the Hairy Man in the sack.

  “Yes’m, but he done turned himself into the wind and blew right through that old croaker-sack.”

  “That is bad,” said his mammy. “But you done fool him twice. If you fool him again he’ll leave you alone. He’ll be mighty hard to fool the third time.”

  “We got to study up a way to fool him, Mammy.”

  “I’ll study up a way tereckly,” she said, and sat down by the fire and held her chin between her hands and studied real hard. But Wiley wasn’t studying anything except how to keep the Hairy Man away. He took his hound-dogs out and tied one at the back door and one at the front door. Then he crossed a broom and an axe-handle over the window and built a fire in the fireplace. Feeling a lot safer, he sat down and helped his mammy study. After a little while his mammy said, “Wiley, you go down to the pen and get that little suckin’ pig away from that old sow.”

  Wiley went down and snatched the sucking pig through the rails and left the sow grunting and heaving in the pen. He took the pig back to his mammy and she put it in his bed.

  “Now, Wiley,” she said, “you go on up to the loft and hide.”

  So he did. Before long he heard the wind howling and the trees shaking, and then dogs started growling. He looked out through a knothole in the planks and saw the dog at the front door looking down toward the swamps, with his hair standing up and his lips drawn back in a snarl. Then an animal as big as a mule with horns on its head ran out of the swamp past the house. The dog jerked and jumped, but he couldn’t get loose. Then an animal bigger than a great big dog with a long nose and big teeth ran out of the swamp and growled at the cabin. This time the dog broke loose and took after the big animal, who ran back down into the swamp. Wiley looked out another chink at the back end of the loft just in time to see his other dog jerk loose and take out after an animal which might have been a possum, but wasn’t.

  “Law-dee,” said Wiley. “The Hairy Man is coming here, sure.”

  He didn’t have long to wait, because soon enough he heard something with feet like a cow scrambling around on the roof. He knew it was the Hairy Man, because he heard him swear when he touched the hot chimney. The Hairy Man jumped off the roof when he found out there was a fire in the fireplace and came up and knocked on the front door as big as you please.

  “Mammy,” he hollered, “I done come after your baby.”

  “You ain’t going to get him,” Mammy hollered back.

  “Give him here or I’ll set your house on fire with lightning.”

  “I got plenty of sweet milk to put it out with.”

  “Give him here or I’ll dry up your spring, make your cow go dry, and send a million boll weevils out of the ground to eat up your cotton.”

  “Hairy Man, you wouldn’t do all that. That’s mighty mean.”

  “I’m a mighty mean man. I ain’t never seen a man as mean as I am.”

  “If I give you my baby will you go on way from here and leave everything else alone?”

  “I swear that’s just what I’ll do,” said the Hairy Man, so Mammy opened the door and let him in.

  “He’s over there in that bed,” she said.

  The Hairy Man came in grinning like he was meaner than he said. He walked over to the bed and snatched the covers back.

  “Hey,” he hollered. “there ain’t nothing in this bed but a old suckin pig.”

  “I ain’t said what kind of baby I was giving you, and that suckin’ pig sure belong to me before I gave it to you.”

  The Hairy Man raged and yelled. He stomped all over the house gnashing his teeth. Then he grabbed up the pig and tore out through the swamp, knocking down trees right and left. The next morning the swamp had a wide path like a cyclone had cut through it, with trees torn loose at the roots and lying on the ground. When the Hairy Man was gone Wiley came down from the loft.

  “Is he done gone, Mammy?”

  “Yes, child. That old Hairy Man cain’t ever hurt you again. We done fool him three times.”

  Aeschylus tells us that by suffering comes wisdom; the wag, that through wisdom comes suffering; and the Bible, that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Every great figure in world literature has taken it upon himself to comment upon wisdom: Shakespeare, Homer, Montaigne, Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, Cervantes, and the rest. But long before the literati were commenting, the world’s folk were having their own say about wisdom’s many faces in the stories and tales—most often short and pithy—that they passed around.

  Whether those stories are allegories such as the Greek “Truth and Falsehood,” the legends such as the English story “The Peddler of Swaffham,” or full-scale extravaganzas such as the Italian tale “The Happy Man’s Shirt,” they are entertainments culled from the hearts and minds of the folk and are therefore human wisdom in its most encapsulated form.

  TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD

  Greece

  Once, Truth and Falsehood met at a crossroads, and after they had greeted each other, Falsehood asked Truth how the world went with him. “How goes it with me?” said Truth. “Each year worse than the last.” “I can see the plight you are in,” said Falsehood, glancing at Truth’s ragged clothes, “Why, even your breath stinks.” “Not a bite has passed my lips these three days,” said Truth. “Wherever I go, I get troubles, not only for myself, but for the few who love me still. It’s no way to live, this.” “You have only yourself to blame,” said Falsehood to him. “Come with me. You’ll see better days, dress in fine clothes like mine, and eat plenty, only you must not gainsay anything I say.”

  Truth consented, just that once, to go and eat with Falsehood because he was so hungry he could hardly keep upright. They set out together and came to a great city, went into the best hotel, which was full of people, and sat and ate of the best. When many hours had gone by, and most of the people had gone, Falsehood rapped with his fist on the table, and the hotelkeeper himself came up to see to their wants, for Falsehood l
ooked like a great nobleman. He asked what they desired.

  “How much longer am I to wait for the change from the sovereign I gave the boy who sets the table?” said Falsehood. The host called the boy, who said that he had had no sovereign. Then Falsehood grew angry and began to shout, saying he would never have believed that such a hotel would rob the people who went in there to eat, but he would bear it in mind another time, and he threw a sovereign at the hotelkeeper. “There,” he said, “bring me the change.”

  Fearing that his hotel would get a bad name, the hotelkeeper would not take the sovereign, but gave change from the reputed sovereign of the argument, and boxed the ears of the boy who could not remember taking the coin. The boy began to cry, and protest that he had not had the sovereign, but as no one believed him, he sighed deeply and said, “Alas, where are you, unhappy Truth? Are you no more?”

  “No, I’m here,” said Truth, through clenched teeth, “but I had not eaten for three days, and now I may not speak. You must find the right of it by yourself, my tongue is tied.”

  When they got outside, Falsehood burst out laughing and said to Truth, “You see how I contrive things?”

  “Better I should die of hunger,” said Truth, “than do the things you do.” So they parted forever.

  GETTING COMMON SENSE

  Jamaica

  Once upon a time, Anansi thought to himself that if he could collect all the common sense in the world and keep it for himself, then he was bound to get plenty of money and plenty of power, for everybody would have to come to him with their worries, and he would charge them a whole lot when he advised them.

  Anansi started to collect up and collect up all the common sense he could find and put it all into one huge calabash. When he searched and searched and couldn’t find any more common sense, Anansi decided to hide his calabash on the top of a very tall tree so that nobody else could reach it.