Folk Tales of Malta — Part 2 (Little Wrinkle-Rag · The Priest Don Isidoro · The Niece · The Jackal and the Hedgehog · Dschahan and the Chickpeas)
Part two of the Maltese shelf. Five more folk tales of Malta, taken down by dictation on Malta and Gozo in the spring of 1903 and printed in Hans Stumme's Maltesische Märchen (Leipzig, 1904), heard in a fresh English translation made for KacheliTV from Stumme's German. In Little Wrinkle-Rag, a rag doll hung in a wheat field to frighten the birds sings that she will marry the king's son — and, through three balls, a diamond ring and four rusks, she does. In The Priest Don Isidoro, a schoolmaster priest who can hardly breathe on his walks is told he is carrying too heavy a load, takes it into his head that he is with child, and finds out on a garden tree what he was really carrying. In The Niece, a poor woman reads a poster seeking the dead lady's Maltese relatives, presents herself as the niece, and talks her way in one night into the keys of a fortune — where the tale, exactly as printed, leaves her. In The Jackal and the Hedgehog, the hedgehog beats the jackal twice at dividing a harvest — tops against bottoms, and bottoms against tops — and once more, with his three brothers' help, at a race. And in Dschahan and the Chickpeas, one centime's worth of chickpeas becomes, step by step — cock, sow, cow — eight pounds sterling. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Urgent Rhythms, heard also briefly between the stories.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters
2:04 Little Wrinkle-Rag
13:17 The Priest Don Isidoro
16:45 The Niece
21:15 The Jackal and the Hedgehog
26:01 Dschahan and the Chickpeas
The five tales read here stand as the screened bench of Stumme's book, held from Part 1; with them, every tale that passed the shelf's full screen has now been read. Twenty more of the book's tales are not read on this shelf, each excluded by name after a full reading: Little Ball · The Princess Who Slept a Hundred Years · The Golden Eagle · The Letter · The Fisherman's Son · Dschahan (the first) · Dschahan (the second) · The Ape That Carried Off a Girl · Angiolina · Sun and Moon · The Seven-Headed Serpent · The Seven Crooked Lemons · The Golden Lion · The Capuchins · The Gentleman in the Box · Caterina · The Schoolmistress · The Three Accusations · The Seven-Headed Dragon · The Man and His Sister. A twenty-first tale, The Seven Sleepers, is a saint legend and stands parked with the sacred texts. Seven further tales stand benched for a later ruling and are not read here: The Cat · The Three Wishes · Diamantina · The Priest Don Paulo · Margherita · Dschahan and the Chickpea (the fuller telling) · Of a Boy Who Fled from His Parents' House. The book's poems and riddles are not tales and are not read on this shelf. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Maltesische Märchen, Gedichte und Rätsel by Hans Stumme (Leipzig, 1904), public domain — in book order, in a fresh English translation from Stumme's German made for KacheliTV. Narrated by Orson. Theme: Urgent Rhythms.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud. Season 148, Episode 2.
