Folk Tales of Sweden — Part 2 (The Girl Who Could Spin Gold from Clay and Long Straw · The Castle That Stood on Gold Pillars)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part two of the shelf. Two more Swedish folk tales collected from oral tradition by Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius and George Stephens and published in Svenska folk-sagor och äfventyr, Första delen (Stockholm, 1844–49), heard here in a fresh in-house English translation made from the Swedish. In The Girl Who Could Spin Gold from Clay and Long Straw, a lazy girl's mother boasts her up from the cottage roof to the king's court, where a bucket of clay and a sheaf of straw must be gold by morning — and the little dwarf Titteli Ture lends her his gloves for a price: his name, guessed before the next night, or herself. In The Castle That Stood on Gold Pillars, a crofter's daughter takes the cat for her share of the inheritance, and the wise cat talks her up through the queen's three bed-tests — a bean, a handful of peas, and a straw hidden under the silk bolsters — until her laughing slip sends the whole court on the road to Kattenborg, her castle that stands on gold pillars; the cat's threats to the herdsmen, haymakers and harvesters are spoken only and never enacted, and the cruel giant who owns the castle meets his end in a single closing clause, falling backward and bursting when the cat tricks him into turning to the rising sun — no hand or weapon is laid on him. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:38 The Girl Who Could Spin Gold from Clay and Long Straw
7:58 The Castle That Stood on Gold Pillars
Two further tales of the book are not read on this shelf, each excluded by name after a full reading: Ungdoms-Landet — The Land of Youth (No. 9), which is held for the owner's by-name ruling and is not stock for this shelf; and De Tre Hundarne — The Three Dogs (No. 13), whose rescue is worked through a bloody battle in the troll castle. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Svenska folk-sagor och äfventyr, Första delen, by Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius & George Stephens (Stockholm, 1844–49), public domain — Project Gutenberg eBook #57357, tales 10 and 12, complete and in book order, in a fresh in-house English translation from the Swedish. Narrated by Scratch. Theme: Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs.
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