Turkish Folk Tales — Part 1: The Ghost of the Spring and the Shrew · The Crow-Peri · The Piece of Liver
Part One opens a new shelf: Turkish folk tales collected by Ignác Kúnos from the mouths of the Turkish peasantry during his travels through Anatolia, in R. Nisbet Bain's English translation — a wood-cutter whose shrewish wife falls into a well and frightens the ghost who lives there, a fowler whose spared crow turns out to be a peri's servant, and a girl, a stork, and a piece of liver.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In this part:
- The Ghost of the Spring and the Shrew — a poor wood-cutter's wife plumps into a deserted well; the ghost who lives in it is so desperate to be rid of her that he gives her husband three wooden tablets, and with them the man cures two possessed princesses — the second time by swearing his wife is at the door.
- The Crow-Peri — a little fowler spares a crow, and she repays him four times over: a marvellous bird for the Padishah, an ivory palace, the bird's peri-queen mistress fetched by a ship-trick, and a healing drug guarded by lions.
- The Piece of Liver — a stork snatches the liver a girl is washing, and she works the whole chain — barley-ear, rain, censer, boot, hide, straw, and a kiss — to win it back for her mammy.
The tales:
00:43 — The Ghost of the Spring and the Shrew
14:29 — The Crow-Peri
25:28 — The Piece of Liver
Source and rights: Ignác Kúnos, Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (London: A. H. Bullen, 1901), translated by R. Nisbet Bain; performed in Bain's printed English. Kúnos died in 1945 and Bain in 1909; the book and both its makers are in the public domain, and the reading copy is Project Gutenberg #64807. Held for a ruling and not read: Stone-Patience and Knife-Patience, and The Golden-Haired Children. Excluded by name and not read: The Magic Turban, the Magic Whip, and the Magic Carpet; The Cinder-Youth; Mad Mehmed; The Rose-Beauty; The Serpent-Peri and the Magic Mirror; and The Padishah of the Forty Peris. The four Roumanian Fairy Tales printed at the back of the volume are Romanian material and are not read here. No completeness for Kúnos's volume is claimed, and every other tale in it stands unscreened and unread.
Narrated by Lulu.
Music: Cello Makam Pulse — opening and closing theme, with a short instrumental separator between stories, and no music under the narration.
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