Part One of a new shelf: Finnish fairy tales and folk tales, from Mighty Mikko: A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922) by Parker Fillmore (1878–1944), the American writer who gathered the folk tales of many peoples. Fillmore made his excursions into Finnish folklore with the help of his Finnish-speaking friend Lydia Tulonen, and offers the stories, as he says himself, not as literal translations but as his own versions, retold for the English reader. Billed by reteller and book, as the tales Fillmore gathered; not a survey of all Finnish tradition, and no completeness is claimed. The tales were screened in the order they stand in Fillmore's book under this shelf's standing rule, and the five tales that precede this one in the book were set aside — every one stands named, with its reason, in the shelf register.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The Forest Bride — Veikko, the youngest of three brothers, follows the direction of his felled tree straight into the forest, and finds his sweetheart there: a dainty little mouse in a velvet gown, who rings her silver bell and sets hundreds of mice fetching grains of wheat for a loaf of white bread, and fibres of flax for a web of linen so fine it folds into a nutshell. When a passer-by pushes her little coach into the river, the enchantment breaks, and the mouse stands revealed as a princess.
Parker Fillmore, Mighty Mikko: A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922) — public domain.
Narrated by Benedetto. Music: opening and closing theme, "Napoli in Fiamme" — the tale itself is read dry.
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