Six tales from Vietnam, gathered by Antony Landes, the French administrator in Cochinchina who mastered the language of the country and set down the tales its story-tellers told, in Contes et légendes annamites (Saigon, 1886).
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A tiger comes by night to fetch a midwife for his labouring mate, and pays her fee like a gentleman. A crocodile invites his friend the monkey to a feast across the river — and says too much in mid-stream. The lord Khong Lo raises mountains to win a lady who will not be won, and the first monkeys sit down, all unknowing, on red-hot bricks. A monk keeps his word to a tiger, and his envious brother keeps it too, with a very different reward. And a poor man walks to the island of the Celestial Emperor with four questions in his bundle — and comes home with the answers to everyone else's.
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
1:46 The Tiger and the Midwife
2:59 The Crocodile and the Old Monkey
4:29 The Creation of the Mountains
6:49 The Origin of Monkeys
8:32 The Bonze Who Became a Lime Pot
11:43 The Celestial Emperor and the Poor Man
Source: Contes et légendes annamites, collected by A. Landes (Imprimerie Coloniale, Saigon, 1886) — public domain; translated fresh into English for KacheliTV. Narrated by Orson.
Music: "Aqua Elegie" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
