Part Two of the Finnish 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. Part One brought The Forest Bride. The tales are read in the order they stand in Fillmore's book under this shelf's standing rule; the tales that precede today's in the book and were set aside — the five opening tales named in Part One's register, and since then The Terrible Olli, The Devil's Hide, The Mysterious Servant, and the first two of the Familiar Faces — every one stands named, with its reason, in the shelf register.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The Enchanted Grouse — Helli the hunter cannot shoot a grouse that begs for its life, and feeds it instead for three years; it rewards him with a flight over the ocean to its three sisters, and with the youngest sister's little locked box, which, dropped at home, opens into a castle. Susan Walker, What a Talker! — Susanna can never keep a secret, so when her husband finds a buried treasure he first plants a grouse in his fishnet and a pike in his birdsnare — and her own telling of it makes the whole village laugh the treasure away.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:56 The Enchanted Grouse
11:13 Susan Walker, What a Talker!
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, "2-20" — also heard as a short separator between the stories — the tales themselves are read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
