Romani Tales — Part 1: The Snake Who Became the King's Son-in-Law · The Hen That Laid Diamonds · The Five Trades · Winter
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Four Romani folk tales as collected and rendered in English by Francis Hindes Groome in Gypsy Folk-Tales (London, 1899) — the opening episode of a new shelf, drawn from the tales Groome gathered from Romani tellers and the collectors who wrote them down across Europe, and freshly rendered for this series.
A childless old couple raise a little snake on sweet milk, and the snake asks for a king's daughter — then fells a forest in a night, ripens a field of millet by daybreak, and builds a golden bridge with golden fruit trees, before he casts his shape at the wedding house and stands revealed. A poor man's hen lays diamond eggs, and the gifts written on the third egg — an emperorship, a fortune every night, and the seer's sight — go not to the merchant who schemes for them but to the three sons who shared the hen. A sailor invites four working men aboard his ship, and every one of them has a trade to be about. And a poor old woman gives her whole stocking of winter savings to the beggar who says his name is Winter — and gets it back, with interest, out of a tree.
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
2:08 The Snake Who Became the King's Son-in-Law
9:45 The Hen That Laid Diamonds
18:47 The Five Trades
19:55 Winter
Source: Gypsy Folk-Tales (London, 1899) by Francis Hindes Groome — public domain; fresh in-house English rendering. Narrated by Magnolia.
Music: "Winterstille" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
Romani folk tales, Romani Tales, Francis Hindes Groome, Gypsy Folk-Tales, fairy tales, wonder tales, trickster tales, bedtime stories, KacheliTV
