Title: The Folktale
Author: Stith Thompson
Year: 1946
Online at Hathi Trust.
3. Formula Tales
"the effect of a formulistic story is always essentially playful, and the proper narrating of one of these tales takes on all the aspects of a game."
Endless tales: "A situation is afforded in which a particular task must be repeated an indefinite number of times. Thousands of sheep, for example, must be put over a stream one at a time, and the narrator proceeds inexorably with his literal repetitions of the performance until his listeners can stand it now longer (Z11; Type 2300)."
"Another kind of endless tale is the 'round.' Here a story proceeds to a certain point and then, in one way or another, usually by having some character tell a story, the whole tale begins over again and keeps repeating itself (Z17; Taylor, Type 2350). The round is much more common as a folksong than as a folktale."
"For formula tales, see: Motif Index Z0-Z99; Archer Taylor, "A Classification of Formula Tales," Journal of American Folklore XLVI, 71 ff.; Taylor, Handworterbuch des deutschen Marchens, II, 164ff."
CUMULATIVE TALES
"A much more definitive narrative core is found in the cumulative tale. Something of the nature of a game is also present here, since the accumulating repetitions must be recited exactly."
"Such tales as The House that Jack Built or The Old Woman and Her Pig are so well known that no reader of the English language needs to have explained to him the way in which a simple phrase or clause is repeated over and over again, always with new additions."
"The cumulative tale always gradually works up to one long final routine containing the entire sequence. THe person examining cumulative tales, therefore, has only to look at this final formula to learn all that is to be learned about the whole tale."
"One important group of cumulative tales has to do with the death of an animal, usually a cock or a hen. Perhaps best known of these is The Death of the Cock (Z31.2.1.1; Taylor, Type 2021A). [...] The tale is very widely distributed over all of Europe and is known in India. but the problem of its ultimate origin is not easy to solve."
Thompson spends a paragraph on variations of this death-of-animal type
also a paragraph on the eating-of-object like the fleeing pancake.
I need to get this one called The Fat Cat Z31.3.2; Type 2027
"Much like the tale of the The Fleeing Pancake is that of The Goat Who Would Not Go Home (Z31.4.1; Type 2015). One animal after another tries in vain to persuade the stubborn goat to go home. Nothing avails until a wolf (sometimes a bee) bites him and drives him home. This tale of the goat has always been especially dear to children and probably for this reason is extraordinarily popular in Europe. Except in printed children's books, however, it is not known elsewhere."
"In the cumulative tales thus far mentioned the structure has been rather simple. There has been a series of events bound together by one slender thread, and the interest has usually been a conversation containing an increasing number of details. The cumulative tale reaches its most interesting development, however, when there is not merely an addition with each episode, but when every episode is dependent upon the last. Perhaps to the English-speaking world, the best known of such tales is The Old Woman and Her Pig (Z41.1; Type 2030)."
Whereas The Old Woman and Her Pig has had its greatest popularity with oral taletellers, the chain known as Stronger and Strongest (Z41.2; Type 2031) is essentially literary. It is found in Orientale tale collections and appears frequently in medieval literature. Though nowhere really popular, it has traveled to every continent. The chain may go in either one of two directions. It may start with God and show he was the ultimate cause of the frostbitten foot. Or it may likewise take the cause to the little mouse who gnawed a hole in the wall. In the first, and more extensive version, the final formula is: God how strong you are - God who sends Death, Death who kills the blacksmith, blacksmith who makes knife, knife that kills steer, steer that drinks water, water that quenches fire, fire that burns stick, stick that kills cat, cat that eats mouse, mouse that perforates wall, wall that resists win, wind that dissolves cloud, cloud that covers sun, sun that rhaws frost, frost that broke my foot."
"See Murray B. Emeneau, Journal of American Folklore, LVI 272 ff., who discusses twelve Indic versions of the tale."
he then spends a paragraph on The Cock's Whiskers (Z41.3; Type 2032), including Zuni example in Cushing.
"The nut hitting the cock on the head appears also as an introduce to another tale which we have already noticed (Type 20C). When the nut hits him on the head, he thinks the world is coming to an end. He sends the hen to tell the duck, the duck to tell the goose, etc. The final formula is: Fox, who told you? Hare. Hare, who told you? Goose, etc. (Z41.4; Type 2033). The animals in their fear agree that they shall eat each other up, and the fox persuades them that the smallest should be eaten first. In this story, as in several similar ones, the animals sometimes appear with queer names."
he then discusses How the Mouse Retained Its Tail (Z41.5; Taylor, Type 2034) -- Europe, and also Africa. "Sometimes this series of adventures is joined with the anecdote of the man who permits his grain of corn to be eaten by the cock and then demands the cock as damages (Type 1655). It will be remembered that this is essentially a cumulative tale, since the hog eats the cock, the ox eats the hog, etc."
he has a paragraph about Jack's house
"Such are the principal cumulative tales, but this list by no means exhausts the whole store of those current in one or another part of the European and Asiatic areas. There remain, for example, the German tale of Pif Paf Poltrie (Z31.1.1; Type 2019) in which the suitor is sent from one relation to the other for consent to the wedding; and the train of troubles which come from a lost horseshoe nail (Z41.9; Taylor, Type 2039)."
"Not all chain-tales are actually cumulative, but may consist of a simple series, verbal or actual. Such, for example are the chains which are based upon a series of actual numbers, like that of the origin of chess (Z21.1; Taylor, Type 2009). The inventor asks one wheat-grain for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth, etc. The amount is so larger than the king cannot pay. This is essentially a literary story, as are also a group of chains concerning special meanings or objects brought into relation with the numbers one to twelve (Z21.2 and subdivisions)."
he spends a paragraph on the "That is good / That is not good" and "Chain of Horrors" stories.
"Formula tales, especially chains and cumulative stories, though they have about them many qualities which belong to games and are therefore amusing to children and to those who never grow up, have aesthetic value of their own. Their essential formal quality is repetition, usually repetition with continuing additions. This is what students of the popular ballad call "incremental repetition," a stylistic feature which adds much to the appeal of many of our finest old ballads."
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