Folk Tales of Czechia — Part 2 (A Clever Lass, The Soldier and the Devil, Old Nick and Kitty, The Knight Bambus, Francis and Martin, Witches at the Cross, The Witch and the Horseshoes, The Haunted Mill)
Part Two of the Czechia shelf brings eight more tales told whole from "Czech Folk Tales," selected and translated by Dr. Josef Baudiš and published in London in 1917. Six of them come from Kubín's tales of the Kladsko country and two from the journal Český Lid, and Baudiš's English is what is read here, faithfully as printed. The book holds twenty-three tales; eleven are now told across Parts One and Two, and no more than that is claimed.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A Clever Lass — a shepherd's daughter whose counsel outwits the king who would marry her, and who takes home from her parting the thing she likes best. The Soldier and the Devil — a discharged soldier with three pennies and three boons plays cards with the devil at a haunted mill, loses his treasures to a card-playing countess, and grows horns from an apple before he wins them back. Old Nick and Kitty — the spinster who would dance with Old Nick himself gets her wish, and neither the devil nor the shepherd who takes her off his hands can be rid of her. The Knight Bambus — a poor gamekeeper finds the robber-knight enchanted as a fox, keeping three heaps of gold in a ruined castle, and is undone by telling his wife. Francis and Martin — two lads spy on a miser's buried baskets and win them by ploughing the threshing-floor with three black goats. And three short pieces to close: Witches at the Cross, The Witch and the Horseshoes, and The Haunted Mill.
Passage notes, carried as printed and declared: in The Soldier and the Devil, the devil's attempt to tear the soldier fails outright, and the hammering he gets in the knapsack is comic torment with no injury narrated; in Old Nick and Kitty, Kitty is thrown into the pond and is expressly not drowned, unharmed; in The Knight Bambus, the shot that hits the enchanted fox is reported in a single clause with no wound described; in The Witch and the Horseshoes, the shoeing is told in a single clause with no pain narrated; in The Haunted Mill, the bear's beating of the Waternick is comic chastisement with no injury narrated.
Screened and excluded by name at this part's screen, as the nine Part One exclusions were before them: Three Doves (the dragon tears the hero in two on the page; a raven's head is pulled off as a test; the close turns on beheadings), The Man Who Met Misery (the ogre's eyes are pierced with a dagger; the hero's finger is broken off), and Nine at a Blow (the giant splits the dragon in twain; the giant is tricked into breaking his neck). With the Part One register — The Twelve Months, Víťazko, Boots, Cloak, and Ring, Silly Jura, The Bear, the Eagle, and the Fish, Shepherd Hynek, The Three Roses, The Enchanted Princesses, and The Twin Brothers — twelve of the book's twenty-three tales stand excluded by name, and no completeness is claimed.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:53 A Clever Lass
7:53 The Soldier and the Devil
14:18 Old Nick and Kitty
18:30 The Knight Bambus
23:55 Francis and Martin
28:39 Witches at the Cross
30:14 The Witch and the Horseshoes
32:03 The Haunted Mill
Josef Baudiš, Czech Folk Tales (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1917) — public domain.
Narrated by Scratch. Music: theme, "Lightning Crash" — heard at the opening, between the tales, and at the close; the tales themselves are read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
Czech folk tales · Bohemian folk tales · Moravian folk tales · Czech fairy tales · Josef Baudiš · Slavic folk tales · world folk tales · free audiobook
