Folk Tales of Portugal — Part 1 (The Daughter of the Witch)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A new shelf opens with one tale told whole from "Portuguese Folk-Tales," collected by Consiglieri Pedroso and translated from the original manuscript by Miss Henriqueta Monteiro, published in London for the Folk-Lore Society in 1882. Pedroso gathered five hundred Portuguese tales; thirty of them, turned into English, make this book. The tale is read as printed, with only the printer's accidents mended.
The Daughter of the Witch — Guiomar, a witch's daughter, loves a prince her mother will not let her marry. She hides him in the house as a beggar, answers her mother's impossible tasks for him — a potful of little birds' guano by morning, a basket of grapes from vines planted the same day — and when the two run away together she turns her lad into a road, a hermitage, and a river, and herself into the old man, the hermit, and the eel, to baffle the pursuit. Her mother's parting curse waits at the palace, and Guiomar must win back the prince's memory. Passage note, exactly as told: Guiomar's magic mishaps on the three chamberlains draw blood — hurt fingers at the flint, and the third man spits blood as the enchanted window beats him. Nothing is softened and nothing is added.
Of the book's thirty tales, one is told in this part. Eight were read in full at this shelf's gate: the tale told here, one passed and held for Part 2 ("The Rabbit"), and six excluded by name under the house rule — "The Vain Queen," "The Maid and the Negress," "The Three Citrons of Love," "May You Vanish Like the Wind," "Pedro and the Prince," and "The Spell-Bound Giant," each set aside because its plot turns on depicted killing or cruelty. The remaining twenty-two tales stand unscreened for later parts. No more than that is claimed.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:55 The Daughter of the Witch
Consiglieri Pedroso, Portuguese Folk-Tales (London: Elliot Stock, for the Folk-Lore Society, 1882), translated by Henriqueta Monteiro — public domain.
Narrated by Violetta. Music: opening and closing theme, "Winterstille 2" — heard at the introduction and the close only; the tale itself is read dry.
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Portuguese folk tales · Portugal fairy tales · Consiglieri Pedroso · Folk-Lore Society 1882 · European folk tales · world folk tales · free audiobook
