Part One of a new shelf: folk tales from Bosnia, from Croatian Folk Songs and Tales from Bosnia (Vukovar: Ern. Jančik, 1883) by Nikola Tordinac (1858–1888), a young priest and schoolmaster of Đakovo who gathered these stories in the Bosnian towns of Žepče and Kreševo — from a schoolboy who had them from his mother, a girl of Žepče who had learned hers from the town's women, parish priests, an old woman from Livno, and his friends' manuscript collections — and died at twenty-nine, five years after his book appeared. Billed by collector and book, as the tales Tordinac gathered; not a survey of all Bosnian tradition, and no completeness is claimed. The tales were screened in the order they stand in his book under this shelf's standing rule, and a great many were set aside — every one stands named, with its reason, in the shelf register. Heard here in fresh translations made for this reading.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Nasreddin's Gusle — the watchmen catch the Hodja filing a shop padlock by night, and his answer is ready. Nasreddin's Bag of Tricks — the sultan, wearied by complaints that the Hodja cheats the whole world, orders him to cheat him too, and lends him a cart and twelve oxen to fetch his tools. Three Brothers, All Three Clever — a stolen mare is hunted by pure reasoning (tall, so fair, so great-moustached), and before the qadi of Travnik the same chain of logic names first a lemon in a sack, then the meat on their plates. The Three Brothers — for three years something eats the brothers' haystack by night; the clever brothers run from the forest noise, but the fool catches the three flying horses, and leaps the emperor's ditch for three princesses and nine loads of treasure.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:54 Nasreddin's Gusle
2:49 Nasreddin's Bag of Tricks
4:43 Three Brothers, All Three Clever
8:09 The Three Brothers
Nikola Tordinac, Croatian Folk Songs and Tales from Bosnia (Ern. Jančik, 1883) — public domain.
Narrated by Lulu. Music: opening and closing theme, "The Cello's Unfinished Promise," also heard as a short separator between the stories — the tales themselves are read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
Bosnian folk tales · Bosnia fairy tales · Nikola Tordinac · Croatian Folk Songs and Tales from Bosnia · Nasreddin Hodja · Bosnian Nasreddin tales · Three Brothers · world folk tales · free audiobook
