Yiddish Folktales

by Beatrice Weinreich

  and Sheyndele, when they were done,

  Sucked the marrow from my bones

  And threw them out the window.”

  The hatmaker, hearing the song, pitied him and made him a hat. And Moyshele put it on and ran off to school.

  One log there,

  One log gone.

  As for my tale—

  My tale is done.

  25

  Next Times That’s What I’ll Say

  Once upon a time there was a king who had two sons, one of whom was a fool while the other was clever. One day the king called his sons to him and said, “It’s time that you both learned some profession or skill. You can’t spend your lives doing nothing. So now, each of you tell me what you would like to learn.”

  The clever son promptly said, “I want to learn every skill there is.”

  “And you?” said the king to his foolish son.

  “Well,” said the fool, “I want to wash clothes in the river.”

  “Good,” said the king. “Washing clothes is also a skill.”

  The king gave each of them money and the sons went away, the clever one to study and the foolish one to the river.

  The fool stood beside the river and washed clothes. He washed and washed and washed. All at once one of the socks he was washing floated away and disappeared. So he crossed over to the other bank to look for it. There he ran about and ran about until he met a postman. “Listen,” he said, “have you seen a sock, by chance?”

  The irritated postman, unaware that this was the king’s son, slapped his cheek so hard that it swelled up like a round loaf. The boy ran crying to the king, “Father, I was washing clothes in the river and a sock floated away. So I asked the postman if he had seen it, and he made my cheek swell like this.”

  The king thought, “A fool is a source of grief, and yet he must be taught wisdom.” So he said, “My son, if it happens again that you meet a postman, take your hat off and say to him, ‘Good morning, Mr. Postman, have you perhaps seen my sock?’ ”

  “Good,” said the fool. “Next time that’s what I’ll say.”

  So he walked and he walked and he walked until he passed a house where a wedding was taking place. He went inside. There, he took his hat off and said to the groom, “Good morning, Mr. Postman. Have you perhaps seen my sock?” The groom and the assembled relatives stared at him as if he was mad. “Postman! Who? Sock? What, where?” So they grabbed him and beat him well, after which they threw him out of the house.

  Away he went, crying to the king, “Father, I’ve been to a wedding where I said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Postman, have you perhaps seen my sock?’ And oh, how they beat me up!”

  The king thought, “A fool is a source of grief, and yet he must be taught wisdom.” And so he said, “My son, if you’re ever at a wedding again, drop a coin on a plate and dance with everyone.”

  “Good,” said the fool, “that’s what I’ll do if it happens again.” And he went off once more.

  He went on and on until he saw a house that was burning—a huge conflagration. He ran into the burning house, threw a coin on a plate, and started to dance. When the firemen saw what he was doing, they burst out laughing and doused him from head to foot with the firehose. He ran to the king crying, “Father, I saw a house burning, and I went in and threw a coin on a plate and began to dance. When the firemen saw me, they doused me with their hose.”

  Hearing that, the king grew sad. “Now pay attention. If it happens again, don’t be a fool. If you see a fire, grab a bucket of water and put it out.”

  “Good,” said the fool, “that’s what I’ll do.” And away he went again.

  The morning after his beating, the fool was walking in the street when he saw a woman carrying a basketful of steaming-hot rolls. Thinking that they were on fire, he grabbed up a pail of water and flung it over them. The woman slapped him silly and snatched his hat from his head. Hatless, the fool ran to the king, crying, “Father, I saw a woman carrying rolls that were steaming, so I took a bucket of water and poured it over them. Then she slapped me silly and snatched my hat from my head.”

  Now the king grew angry and shouted, “You fool. If you see a poor woman carrying rolls, you buy a roll for a kopeck.”

  “Good,” said the fool, “that’s what I’ll do next time.” And away he went.

  He went on and on until he saw a soldier scratching about in the dirt. So he said to the soldier, “Sell me a kopeck’s worth.”

  “With the greatest pleasure in the world. Why, for a kopeck, I’ll sell you a whole wagonload.”

  The delighted fool ran home to the king, crying, “Oh Father, what a terrific bargain I’ve just made.” Then he told his father what the soldier had said. Hearing this, the king was now well and truly angry and drove his son out of the house.

  26

  The Naughty Little Girl

  Once upon a time there was an old crone who lived all alone in a hut in an open field, and she used to take in naughty children who would not obey their parents. One day a mother gave the crone her naughty daughter and said, “Teach her to be obedient.” The crone took the little girl with her, and they went off into the forest to gather kindling.

  Meanwhile a bear came to the old crone’s hut and began to turn around and around. As he was turning around and around, a dog came up and asked him, “Bear, why are you turning like that?”

  “What difference does it make?” said the bear. “Why don’t you turn too?” Then both of them turned around and around, and as they were turning, along came a stag that said, “Hey, bear, hey, dog, why are you turning like that?”

  They said, “What difference does it make? Why don’t you turn too?” Then all three of them turned around and around, and as they were turning, along came a rooster and said, “Hey, bear and dog and stag, why are you turning like that?”

  They said, “What difference does it make? Why don’t you turn too?” Then all five of them turned around and around, and as they were turning, along came a bit of pitch and a pin and said, “Hey, bear and dog and stag and rooster and teapot cover, why are you turning like that?”

  They said, “What difference does it make? Why don’t you turn too?” Then all seven of them turned around and around until night fell and it was time for them to go to sleep.

  Well, where should they sleep? Inside the old crone’s hut. So they went inside and each of them found a place to sleep. The bear lay down in the bed, the dog in the cradle, the stag on the oven, the rooster on a shelf, the teapot cover in the chimney, the bit of pitch inside a box of matches, and the pin, unable to find anyplace else, stuck himself into a towel.

  When the crone and the little girl came back from the forest, they wanted to go to sleep. They went to the bed, and the bear kicked out at them and frightened them so that they sprang away. They tried to lie down in the cradle, and the dog bit them. “Ouch, ouch,” they cried, “what’s going on here?”

  Next they tried to lie down on the oven, but the stag threatened them with his horns and made them tremble and turn cold with fear. The crone went to the oven to warm herself, but the teapot cover fell out of the chimney and struck her hand. Frightened, the crone cried out, “Woe is me. What’s going on here?” Meaning to light the lamp so that she could see what was happening, she opened the matchbox to take out a match, but the bit of pitch stuck so tightly to her fingers she couldn’t shake it off. So she washed her hands to get rid of the pitch. Then she reached for the towel, but the pin pricked her so hard she began to yell. The rooster, hearing her, yelled back, “You don’t scare me.” When the crone heard that, she was so frightened she dropped dead on the spot.

  The little girl, meanwhile, ran from the hut and all the way home to her mother. From then on she was an obedient child and did everything her mother told her to do. And afterward, children everywhere obeyed their mothers.

  We children loved it when mother told us wonder tales. She was always busy helping to earn the family’s living, but on shabes she had time. A
t dusk, before it was permitted to light candles and say the prayers that ended the Sabbath and ushered in the more prosaic week, we used to gather around her and ask her to tell us a wonder tale. Sometimes she told us a tale about a snake. Sometimes it was about a forest child or a princess …

  —Memoir from a Lithuanian shtetl, the turn of

  the century

  In Yiddish the genre of fairy tales, or märchen, is called vunder-mayses, literally “wonder tales.” They are rich with supernatural figures and things: helpers, like Elyohu hanovi, Elijah the Prophet, who stand in for the fairy godmothers of the folktales of other cultures; hinderers like devils, sorcerers, and the witch Bobe Ha, who must be a relative of Baba Yaga; magical objects like enchanted rings, golden feathers, and glass mountains. The time and place are indefinite (“once upon a time,” “in a city”); the heroes and heroines are unnamed (“there was a young girl,” “a rabbi,” “a princess”). These tales generally contain a series of episodes told as a string of events, or, in the more complex tales, as a revolving stage (“now we leave the heroine and return to the hero”). Wonder tales clearly don’t mean to command our belief, though there is a Hasidic view that they may veil mystical secrets of the greatest importance. (According to Reb Nakhman of Bratslav, “The fairy tales of the world may hold many hidden and exalted things, but they have become distorted because they are deficient and people have become confused and no longer tell them properly.”1)

  The standard introduction amol iz geven, “once upon a time …,” reminds listeners that the story is a fictitious one. A rhymed ending, recited with tongue in cheek, was also a common device to signal that this was a flight of fancy, a bobe-mayse:

  I too was there

  And had a good little glass of brandy.

  From my beard it dripped

  But none I sipped.

  The vast majority of the wonder tales tell about a young woman or man who leaves home and has many adventures. Such tales frequently end with a lavish celebration of marriage. Just as the kinder-mayselekh of the previous section represent the fears and challenges of early childhood, the wonder tales dramatize the problems and perils of young adulthood. In a sense they chart the course to maturity. Typically, fairy tale heroes and heroines must confront a number of adversaries: mean parents, stepparents, or siblings; witches, demons, or sorcerers. More specifically, they must overcome a lack—of money or a profession, of a parent or mate. In “Forty Hares and a Princess” and “The Orphan Boys,” the heroes lack status in the community, while in “The Orphan Boy Who Won the Bride,” the hero lacks traditional Jewish learning. By the end of the tale the challenges are met, the needs are satisfied, and the heroines and heroes live happily ever after.

  A smaller group of wonder tales uses the magical settings of the fairy tale world for more spiritually edifying purposes. These pious, didactic wonder tales combine marvelous transformations with religious motifs drawn from the Cabalistic and Midrashic literature.

  Certainly a tale like “The Orphan Boy Who Won the Bride,” though on the surface a male Cinderella tale, owes much of its power to the imagery of prophecy and redemption with which it is studded. The story of a Jewish boy raised by a gentile nobleman recalls the early life of Moses. The Jews wandering in the desert after the flight from Egypt, and Moses receiving the Ten Commandments are figured in the episodes of the Congealed Sea and the island where the boy finds stones on which beautiful writing has been inscribed. Finally there is the climactic wedding scene in which a favorite theme of the Cabalists is replayed: the mystical marriage between the masculine and feminine emanations of God, the eyn sof and shkhine. In the mystical tradition, it is that union that will precede the coming of the Messiah.

  But for the most part, the stories in this section have no specific cultural markers except for linguistic and stylistic ones. They were told in Yiddish by East European Jews and share features, such as formulaic beginnings and endings, with other Yiddish tales that are more culturally colored. Some may represent recent adaptations of stories learned from Polish or Russian ethnic neighbors with whom there was a tradition of story swapping. As one Yiddish scholar points out: “There were at least two large areas in which the interaction of the Yiddish and the Slavic speech communities assumed what may be called mass proportions: the Jewish nurseries in the towns, and the huts of the peasants where Jewish artisans would spend the whole week among their customers, to return to their home town on the eve of the Sabbath.”2

  The inclusion of a Yiddish proverb or a citation from the Bible, Talmud, or Book of Prayers was one way of turning a universal story into a Jewish tale. For example, the theme “the king’s haughtiness punished” is widely known throughout folktale literature. In the Yiddish variant, “The Beggar King and the Melamed,” the teller includes a passage from the morning prayer Ezras Avoseynu (God topples the haughty), converting the story into a pious wonder-tale that illustrates the passage. One can postulate that only stories that felt culturally “right” in form and content were translated into Yiddish by Jewish storytellers. But in time, and after successive retellings, they began to sound and feel like traditional Yiddish folktales.

  Borrowing—selective borrowing, to be sure—went both ways: from Slavs to their Jewish neighbors and from Jews to their Slavic neighbors. The great Romantic poet of Poland, Adam Mickiewicz (1788–1856), is said to have praised a certain Jewish coachman, with whom he had traveled for two days, as an exquisite storyteller. Coachmen and shoemakers, peddlers and cattle dealers, loggers and beggars, merchants and innkeepers were some of the many Jewish raconteurs who played a significant role in the story-swapping tradition.

  27

  Hang the Mean on My Palace Roof

  Once upon a time there was an old fisherman who lived with his wife in a little hut beside the sea. As he was fishing one day, he caught a duck that swam by and took it home to his wife.

  Some time later the duck laid a brass egg. The man took the egg to the porets, the local squire, who gave him a kopeck for it. The fisherman was very pleased. A while later the duck laid a silver egg. Again the man took the egg to the squire, who this time gave him two kopecks. Later still, the duck laid a golden egg. The man took the egg to the squire, who said, “Fisherman, sell me the duck; I’ll give you a rendl for it.”

  Now, a rendl was a gold coin worth more than the fisherman could make in a lifetime, but he wasn’t sure he necessarily wanted to sell a duck that lays golden eggs. So he said, “Let me talk it over with my wife.”

  His wife said, “You’d better sell him the duck for a rendl. Otherwise, since he’s the squire, he’s likely to take it from us.” So the man took the duck to the squire, who gave him a rendl for it.

  The squire looked the duck over and noticed that there were some blue markings under its right wing. But he couldn’t read them, so he sent for the priest, who looked at the blue markings and read aloud: “ ‘He who eats the liver of this duck will become king. And he who eats the right wing will become the viceroy.’ ”

  So the squire had the duck killed and its liver and right wing put into a pot to cook. And he sat stroking his belly while he waited for the precious meal.

  But the squire’s two sons, both of them terribly hungry, ran into the kitchen and saw the pot cooking. They lifted the cover, and the older son snatched up the liver and ate it while the younger son ate the wing. Just then the cook came in to dish up the meal. Finding that it had been eaten, he roared, “Who did this?” The children replied, “We did.”

  The cook hurried to the squire and fell on his knees. “Your two sons ate the dish I was making for you.” The squire was furious and sent for the priest to ask his advice.

  The priest said, “Order your sons to be killed and eat their livers. That way you’ll get to be king.” So the squire sent for the cook and said, “I want you to kill my sons and roast their livers.” The cook fell on his knees and begged, “Oh Lord, have pity on your own children.” But the squire ordered the cook whipped, and fin
ally the cook agreed to do it.

  At night when the children were sleeping, the cook went into their room with a huge knife and a sharpening stone. He stood there sharpening the knife, sharpening and sharpening as the tears rolled down his cheeks. The sound of the knife on the stone woke them, and they saw him sharpening and weeping.

  “Why are you crying?” they asked.

  “Because the squire has commanded me to kill you and cook your livers for him to eat.”

  The older boy said, “Have pity on us! Why don’t you let us go and kill our dogs? Let Father eat their livers.”

  So the cook killed and buried the dogs and carried their livers to the squire. As for the boys, they jumped out of the window and ran away.

  They traveled on and on and on until they came to a large city. There they went from street to street looking for some way to earn their living. As they passed an open window, they saw a tailor. “Little tailor, little tailor,” they said, “can you help us earn our clothes and food?”

  The tailor replied, “Take needles and thread, scissors and pressing irons. Help me to cut and sew, to baste and press clothes, and then I’ll feed and clothe you.” So the boys took up needles and thread, scissors and pressing irons, and helped the tailor to cut and sew, to baste hems and press clothes. They became good apprentice tailors.

  One day the king died. And the king’s daughter announced: “I will marry the strongest and cleverest man in the country.” So all the strongest men in the country were sent for, and a great wrestling contest was held. A very strong man from the other side of the hore khoyshekh, the Mountains of Darkness, defeated everyone until the two tailor’s apprentices came along. Everyone laughed at them, but the older apprentice wrestled with the champion and beat him. Then the younger apprentice wrestled with all the other strong men and defeated them.