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The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened
In an age where there is so much easily accessible information, it is easy to get caught up in all the details that we can no longer see the forest in the trees. Today’s Estonian story comes from Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book, first published in 1901. As stated in previous episodes, Nora and Andrew Lang have collected many well-known fairy tales in their books, but their sourcing is not always adequate. While this will not stop us from enjoying this tale, this knowledge is good to keep in mind when analyzing it. After all, knowledge is power. The…
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The Poor Prince: An Afghan Tale
Greetings, Travellers! Today, I want to share a story from Afghanistan with you! The story of the “Poor Prince” itself was retold by Adel Mahria with a translation from Dari by Sabzikar which can be found in Kabul’s former Ministry of Information and Culture bimonthly publication on folktales Volume 2, no. 2-3, published in 1974. It has been further retold by Afghan-Canadian Alaheh Amini. I discovered this tale while researching variants of the Polish Glass Mountain story we did a few episodes back. There are several clear links between this story and the Princess on the Glass Hill folklore type,…
Tales from the Enchanted Forest 