Vietnamese Folk Tales — Part 2: The Man of the Thirty Sous · From Cat Back to Cat · Master Binh
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Eight 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).
Why do some beards grow in three neat tufts, and others land scattered, wherever they fall? How did the dog get his fourth leg, the duck her second, and why do the birds bob three times when they land? A day labourer whose destiny pays him exactly thirty sous — no less, and never more — is offered the whole wealth of the kingdom, and asks for thirty sous. A son walks into the forest to find the mother who left him, and disobeys one warning too many. The simpleton Binh of Sadec strokes sick children back to health, and keeps a secret the prefect is the first to guess. The village notables feast and argue their way from Sky to Cloud to Wind to Wall to Rat, hunting a grander name for a girl called Cat. A lazy wife strikes the grain of rice with her broom, and makes it small for ever. And a frightened messenger, bullied by serpents into turning Heaven's message upside down, gives mankind its mortality — and is kicked down to earth in a very humble shape.
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
2:11 The Origin of the Beard
4:02 The Dog, the Duck and the Birds
6:33 The Man of the Thirty Sous
9:42 The Son in Search of His Mother
11:28 Master Binh
14:05 From Cat Back to Cat
18:50 The Grain of Rice
20:11 The Origin of the Dung Beetle
Source: Contes et légendes annamites, collected by A. Landes (Imprimerie Coloniale, Saigon, 1886) — public domain; translated fresh into English for KacheliTV. Narrated by Silas.
Music: "The Spring Remembers" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
