Folk Tales of Corsica — Part 2
Four more Corsican tales from J.-B. Frédéric Ortoli's "Les contes populaires de l'île de Corse" (Paris, 1883), in a fresh in-house English translation made for this series — selected tales from the Tallano district and Porto-Vecchio in southern Corsica, told to the collector by the people named below.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In The Girl Who Loved the Nightingale, Belladonna — who can change herself into whatever she wishes — will marry no one but the nightingale that sings every morning on the pomegranate tree, and neither lock nor chaplain can hold her. In The Two Boxes, a prince forced to marry against his heart teaches his father, with a box of rough gold and a box of wrought silver, which wife is which. In Marie, the King's Daughter, a princess whose modest answer enrages her father flees in a donkey's skin, keeps goats, and loses a shoe so small that no one else in the kingdom can wear it. And in Ditu Migniulellu, a girl no bigger than a little finger, with the sweetest voice in the world, is found singing inside a cooking pot — and a king's son swears an oath he then spends three balls trying to escape.
The tales:
0:52 — The Girl Who Loved the Nightingale (told in 1881 by Alexandre d'Aurelio, of Olmiccia-di-Tallano)
8:42 — The Two Boxes (told in 1881 by Joseph Quilichini, at Poggio-di-Tallano)
14:31 — Marie, the King's Daughter (told in 1881 by Mademoiselle Adélaïde de Alma, of Porto-Vecchio)
25:02 — Ditu Migniulellu (told in 1881 by Marie Orion, of Olmiccia-di-Tallano)
Source: Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Ortoli (1861–1907), "Les contes populaires de l'île de Corse," Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie, 1883 — public domain; lawful copy via the Internet Archive. Fresh in-house English translation from the French; no existing translation used. These are selected tales, not the complete volume. The volume's vendetta and bandit tales and its devil-pact material are excluded as a class under this channel's standing content law. Held for a future ruling: The Three Apples of Mariucella, The Three Brothers and the Virgin, and The Shepherd and the Month of March. Excluded by name: The Three Toads, The Donkey of the Golden Sequins, The Priest and His Mistress, and Malia. Screened for this episode and also excluded: The Enchanted Ring and The Fountain of Rose Water.
Narrated by Madame de Pamplemousse.
Music: the theme (Urgent Rhythms) opens and closes this episode and returns briefly between the stories. No music plays under the narration.
Season 167 — Folk Tales of Corsica, Episode 2.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
