Turkish Folk Tales — Part 2: The Silent Princess · Kara Mustafa the Hero · The Fish-Peri
Part Two of our Turkish shelf turns to Ignác Kúnos's later collection, Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales, gathered from the storytellers of Stamboul: a princess who will not speak and the prince who crosses three mountains with a talking nightingale to win a word from her, a timid husband whose knife makes him a hero to forty Dews, and a fisherman whose mysterious wife sets the Padishah five impossible tasks.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In this part:
- The Silent Princess — a prince breaks an old woman's jugs three times, and her parting words set him lovesick for a princess who has never spoken; her castle is ringed by the fame of suitors who failed before him, but he brings a nightingale, and holds conversation with a lamp-stand, a wall-stand, and a door.
- Kara Mustafa the Hero — the most timid husband in the world draws his rusty knife across spilt honey, kills sixty flies at a stroke and seventy at the second, and has it engraved on the blade; forty Dews believe every word of it, and boiling water, iron balls, and a wrestling bout cannot shake their faith.
- The Fish-Peri — a poor fisherman keeps one fine fish alive in a well, and finds his house swept and tidied by unseen hands; when the Padishah covets the fish-peri maiden, she answers each impossible task — a palace in the sea, a crystal bridge, a feast for a whole land, a mule from an egg, and a day-old infant who can walk and talk.
The tales:
01:27 — The Silent Princess
21:55 — Kara Mustafa the Hero
35:03 — The Fish-Peri
Source and rights: the tales performed here are from Ignác Kúnos, Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales (London: George G. Harrap, 1913), read from the complete public-domain text at the Internet Sacred Text Archive. Kúnos died in 1945; the book and its maker are in the public domain. The shelf's first volume, Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1901), translated by R. Nisbet Bain, stands behind Part 1. Screened for this part and not read: the six remaining tales of the 1901 volume — The Stag-Prince, The Three Orange-Peris, The Horse-Devil and the Witch, The Wind-Demon, The Forty Princes and the Seven-Headed Dragon, and The World's Most Beauteous Damsel — each read in full and set aside under this shelf's content screen, as were the 1913 tellings of The Brother and Sister, Fear, The Three Orange Peris, The Wizard-Dervish, and The Horse-Dew and the Witch; The Creation is a sacred account and stands parked. 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 1901 volume are Romanian material and are not read here. No completeness for either Kúnos volume is claimed, and every other tale in them stands unscreened and unread.
Narrated by Bruno.
Music: Blazing Fire — opening and closing theme, with a short instrumental separator between stories, and no music under the narration.
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