Folk Tales of Costa Rica — Part 1 (Juan, the Boy with the Little Load of Firewood · The Devil's Mother-in-Law · How Uncle Rabbit Played a Dirty Trick on Aunt Whale and Uncle Elephant · How Uncle Rabbit Got Out of a Tight Corner)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Four folk tales of Costa Rica from Carmen Lyra's Cuentos de mi tía Panchita (San José, 1920), the tales her aunt Panchita told her in San José, heard here in a fresh in-house English translation made from the Spanish. The tale-types are old ones from the wider world, carried in tía Panchita's Costa Rican voice — no claim is made that the types began in Costa Rica. In Juan, the Boy with the Little Load of Firewood, the "fool" of three brothers is rewarded for his obedience with a wishing wand, finds the youngest princess's lost ring in the pool, and rides his load of firewood to the palace to claim the king's promise. In The Devil's Mother-in-Law, a rich, gold-toothed bridegroom who walks on ceilings is recognised by his wife's mother for who he is, tricked into an iron jar and buried in the mountain — until a poor woodcutter lets him out, and only one name can frighten him free of the queen he refuses to leave. In How Uncle Rabbit Played a Dirty Trick on Aunt Whale and Uncle Elephant, Uncle Rabbit sets the two strongest creatures on Earth pulling against each other on one rope, to break their plan of governing the world between them. And in How Uncle Rabbit Got Out of a Tight Corner, cornered in a cave in Uncle Tiger's paw, Rabbit deepens his voice and bluffs his way free. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Gangster Piano Symphony, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:38 Juan, the Boy with the Little Load of Firewood
9:24 The Devil's Mother-in-Law
21:17 How Uncle Rabbit Played a Dirty Trick on Aunt Whale and Uncle Elephant
28:33 How Uncle Rabbit Got Out of a Tight Corner
Ten further tales of the book are not read on this shelf, each excluded by name after a full reading: El tonto de las adivinanzas · Uvieta · Escomponte perinola · La Cucarachita Mandinga · La casita de las torrejas · La flor del olivar · El pájaro dulce encanto · Tío Conejo y Tío Coyote · Por qué Tío Conejo tiene las orejas tan largas · Tío Conejo comerciante. Four more tales stand benched for a ruling, and the book's last five Tío Conejo tales were not reachable in full in the copy of record and are held for a full-corpus pass. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Cuentos de mi tía Panchita by Carmen Lyra (San José, 1920), public domain — tales III and VIII and two tales of the Cuentos de tío Conejo, complete and in book order, in a fresh in-house English translation from the Spanish. Narrated by Benedetto. Theme: Gangster Piano Symphony.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
