Hungarian Roma #FolktaleMoment

A man catches a glimpse of the Fairy Queen and starts saying that even the sole of her foot is prettier than the King's only daughter. He almost gets executed for this, but the Fairy Queen shows up in the last moment to prove that the sole of her foot IS indeed prettier than the princess.

(The King at this point decides to marry the Fairy Queen, and goes through a whole lot of adventures to win her. Also, Fairy Queen has flying elephants.)

Digging into the "Gift of the Little People" folktale type (ATU 503), where someone joins the singing of fairies and gets rewarded for it. The human usually adds a few days to the song of "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday!", delighting the fairies.

Hungarian versions, once again, have to be extra about it.

Instead of singing fairies, we have singing skeletons. And they get angry when someone adds "Monday" to their song.

Highly relatable.

#FolktaleMoment of the day (Hungarian Roma folktale):

A mother sheep craves watermelons. After many adventures to acquire some, she meets Jesus Christ. Jesus responds to her wishes by creating a girl who cries red apples.

Sheep says "I want watermelons, not apples."

Jesus re-creates the girl who now cries whole watermelons.

Sheep is happy. The end.

By the way, this Missouri French folktale is hella fun. A prince decides to be a jester instead, and goes off to see the world. He befriends three giants, and they help him win a princess.

When he visits his giant friends, they feed him by cutting their own food into tiny portions, and ask him to dish about the events at court. Initially he beheads one of them on instinct, but manages to revive the giant and apologize for the knee-jerk questing reaction.

#FolktaleMoment: when Google Translate translates "shepherd" as "pet sitter."

New favorite #FolktaleMoment form Iran:

A princess really wants a pet donkey but her father refuses. Her magical aunt finds a way to convince the father (with some clever spells) to allow the donkey anyway.

When princess kisses the donkey on the nose, it turns into a handsome prince. Turns out he had been cursed.

In return for saving him, the princess asks the prince to buy her a new donkey.

Hungarian #FolktaleMoment

The hero of the folktale finds out that the king he works for used to be the King of the Land of Eternal Youth. He was exiled from his kingdom by spiders because he was cruel to them and wanted to kill them off.

So now the Land of Eternal Youth is ruled by friendly spiders.

I think I found the funniest version of "The tortoise and the hare" tale type just now From Japan.

It is about a centipede and a slug running a race to a shrine. Obviously the centipede gets there first, but when the slug arrives, centipede is still taking his sandals off, so slug enters the shrine first.

#FolktaleMoment of the day:

Reading a legend about how emperor Franz Joseph's wife was a witch who used to turn him into a horse and ride him every night.

As a reminder that traditional storytellers often used everyday spoken language, here is what the wise advisor says when the Emperor confides in him about the matter:

"F*** hell, Joe..."

:D

Hello!
I'm Csenge, professional storyteller and author from Hungary. I post about #folktales, mythology, storytelling, RPGs, and general nerdy stuff.

Things I usually post:

#FolktaleMoment: snippets of tales I am researching

#StorySpotting: blog posts about folktales spotted in popular media

#StorytellingPSA: comments of the life of a professional storyteller

#GirlInTheChair: research help for all your folklore needs :)

#ToddlerDnD: Adventures in nerdy parenting