Folk Tales of Slovenia — Part 2 (Doctor Benk)
We return to the Gorjanci Mountains of Slovenia for the second part of the shelf, with one long Slovenian folk tale of the Gorjanci, as collected and told by Janez Trdina. In the days when the great forests of the southern Gorjanci were divided up and the axes sang from dawn to dusk, the widow Belinka kept a forest inn — and could not keep her custom, for her tongue was tied and the drinkers called her house At the Dumb Woman's. Then, one winter's day, a tall stranger in a red cloak came in out of the cold: he drank his litres, played cards with three tiny men out of his bag, and danced with her distaff until the distaff was a girl. Doctor Benk cures one sickness only — sick, weak and crippled tongues — and his fee is a strange one, which he will not take until the other world. Belinka accepts the cure. The gold is another matter.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters:
02:26 Doctor Benk
Source: Janez Trdina (1830–1905), Bajke in povesti o Gorjancih ("Tales and Stories of the Gorjanci Mountains"), first published in Ljubljanski zvon, 1882–88; the tale stands in the 1906 volume (Zbrani spisi II, Ljubljana, 1906) — public domain. Fresh in-house translation from the Slovenian, made for this programme. The tale stands whole, as printed: the Devil of the tale is unmasked only at its close, as in the source, and the cross and the holy water that drive him out are the folk furniture of a temptation tale, carried as printed. Just after the opening theme and introduction, before the tale, you will hear this episode's short spoken break, placed there by design.
The register for this part, in book order and by name. Screened in the 1906 volume and excluded whole, and not read: The Mountain Girl, Barabbas, Mr Know-All, Miss Cizara and Hudobica — enacted killing, beatings, a devil-pact and magical harm stand at their centres. The Advocates and Under the Pear Tree stand benched under the shelf's sacred-texts park — sacred figures walk in them as characters — and were not used; the volume's opening saint and hermit legends (Saint Felix, Saint Felix II, the Hermit Felix, and Peter and Paul) stand fenced in the same class, and The Enchanted Walnut stands excluded by name from the Part 1 screen. Doctor Prežir passed its screen with a passage note and stands banked for Part 3. From the 1904 volume, told in Part 1: The Young Lady, The Gold-Feather Bird and The Deaf Forest; its excluded and benched register stands as published there. This programme bills itself as Slovenian folk tales and legends of the Gorjanci Mountains, as collected and told by Janez Trdina — never as a complete Trdina and never as a survey of the whole country.
Narrated by Morgana.
Music: opening and closing theme only — Lightning Crash.
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