Folk Tales of Greece — Part 3 (The Laurel-Child · The Brother-in-Law of the Lion, the Tiger and the Eagle · The Man Who Had Brains but No Money)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part three. Three Greek folk tales collected by Johann Georg von Hahn in Epirus and Greece and published in his Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Leipzig, 1864); heard here in a fresh in-house English translation made from Hahn's German. All three tales are drawn from the volume's first part. In The Laurel-Child, a childless couple pray for a child, even if it is only a laurel pip — and from the pip grows a golden laurel tree, out of whose bark steps a maiden who over-salts a prince's dinner, is caught, is left sleeping among lemon and orange branches, and comes to his wedding in a dervish's clothes, shining like the sun. In The Brother-in-Law of the Lion, the Tiger and the Eagle, a dying king gives his three daughters to a lion, a tiger and an eagle, and hides an elf-maiden bride for his youngest son — who follows her with an iron crutch and iron shoes, is turned by his sisters into a broom and a dust-shovel to hide him from their husbands, and asks at every house where the Ilinen Bilinen Alamalakusen lie, with the marble mountains and the crystal fields. In The Man Who Had Brains but No Money, a fool who is no fool ships reed mats to Egypt where mats are cheaper, burns them for the sea-horses' gemstones, hides the gems in clay bricks, and holds merchants and partner alike to their bargains in court. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Pastoral Awe, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:39 The Laurel-Child
6:52 The Brother-in-Law of the Lion, the Tiger and the Eagle
17:20 The Man Who Had Brains but No Money
Many further tales of the book are not read on this shelf. Das goldene Huhn (No. 36) and Das Pfefferkorn (No. 56) stand excluded by name after full readings, and the volume's Drakos and dragon-slayer tales and the strong-man cycle stand excluded as a class. For this shelf, every remaining tale of the volume's first and second parts was read in full: the rest were each excluded by name, a record kept in the shelf's canon; four tales of compelled marriage — Allerleirauh (No. 27), Der Jüngling, der Teufel und seine Tochter (No. 54), Der Bauer und die Elfin (No. 77) and Die Elfin als Hausfrau (No. 83) — stand benched for a ruling, and Dionysos (No. 76), a framed collector's anecdote rather than a folk tale as printed, stands held. The tales that passed and were not used here are kept for Part 4. The same volume's Albanian tales are a different shelf's ground and are not used here. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Griechische und albanesische Märchen by Johann Georg von Hahn (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1864), public domain — Greek tales 21, 25 and 38, complete and in book order, in a fresh in-house English translation from the German. Narrated by Amos. Theme: Pastoral Awe.
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