Four tales from the Kolyma country, told at Pokhotsk in 1895 and 1896 and written down by Waldemar Bogoras. An old man feigns his death so that he can eat a fat elk all alone, and his wife teaches him better with the help of a ptarmigan. A bear carries off a girl kept hidden for her beauty, and her brother-in-law, a great shaman, fights for her in bear's shape with a bell on his ear — and the boy she bears is Bear-Ear, the strong hunter. Grass-Blade Girl, born from a blade of grass and rich in pearls and sables, is stolen by the witch Yaghishna, loses everything, and is born again from a new green blade. And Kutika Mutika, whose name no suitor could guess, flies from the monster who guessed it — and meets him again at her own fireside, with three children in the house.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters:
01:33 Yukaghir Tale — The Death That Was Only Feigned
06:21 A Bear Tale
13:55 Grass-Blade Girl
23:04 Yukaghir Tale — Kutika Mutika
Source: Waldemar Bogoras, Tales of Yukaghir, Lamut, and Russianized Natives of Eastern Siberia (1918), recorded for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition — public domain. Narrators as printed: N.109 and N.111 told by Katherine Rumiantzev, a Russianized Yukaghir woman, at Pokhotsk, summer 1896; N.110 told by Nicholas Kusakoff, a Russian creole, at Pokhotsk, summer 1896; N.113 told by Nicholas Kusakoff, a Russian creole, at Pokhotsk, summer 1895. Fresh in-house English rendering, heard exactly as screened: in the first tale, the two scoldings stand where blows stood, the ptarmigan frightens without drawing blood, and the poker is shaken, not swung; in the bear tale, one forced sentence is not heard, and the bear's anger is heard in a single plain clause; in Grass-Blade Girl, the witch's cellar, the pursuit, and the witch's end are condensed to plain clauses, with the girl's rebirth whole; in the last tale, the monster's seizing of the two little ones and his end at the sea are condensed the same way. After the first tale and its music you will hear this episode's short spoken break, placed there by design.
Left out of this part, in book order and by name: N.108 Raven Tale and N.112 The Alder-Block — excluded whole under this shelf's written register, and never narrated. Held by name for the owner's ruling, and untouched: N.116 The She-Monster, N.117 The Monster with Iron Teeth, N.118 The Girl from the Grave-Box, N.119 and N.120 Small-Pox (both versions), N.129 The Woman's Head, and N.142 Story of Hungry Children. This part tells Kolyma tales only, and the shelf claims no completeness that its exclusions contradict.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
