Folklore and popular conceptions regarding the fauna of a wetland area on the Caribbean coast of Columbia

Once upon a time? Re-designing the traditional tale: exploring the boundaries and opportunities of contemporary folk tale adaptations in film and associated media

The genres of epic, tale, legend, fairy tale and folk tale are like a precious treasure among the narration-based genres and they are a kind of a carrier of Turkish cultural traditions. In the oral tradition, tales have a different significance. Usually created by people, dream-based, living in oral tradition, explaining the extraordinary events which happen to mostly people, witches and animals, demons, giants, and fairies; defined as the story that is developed by extraordinary people and events, the tales have a great impact in the development of the students’ imaginations. In the first part of the study, the nature and the meaning of the tale genre, and its importance in Turkish Literature and Culture is explained; in the second part, the question, purpose, method and limitations of the research have been discussed; the third section focuses on the usability of the tales in order to meet the needs of the source text in Turkish Education and emphasizes its importance by studying the determination of its functions in education. The aim of the study is to determine the usability of the tales which are also the passer of oral cultural tradition as a source text in Turkish teaching. The research is a descriptive study which is a document analysis. A literature review has been conducted and the findings section is made by the obtained information and it is come to a conclusion that the tales should be used in Turkish education. Also at what rate this literary genre is used in the secondary school textbooks by Turkish Ministry of Education has been identified, and it has been concluded that there are some shortcomings in this subject.

288ReviewsLa corónica 30.1, 2001 Fontes, Manuel da Costa. Folklore and Literature. Studies in the Portuguese , Brazilian, Sephardic, and Hispanic Oral Tradition. SUNY Series in LatinAmerican and Iberian Thought and Culture. Albany: SUNYPress, 2000. vin + 327 pp. ISBN 0 7914 4492 9 In a concise but comprehensive Introduction, the reader is led through the history of peninsular lyric, ballads, epics and folk tales. Having acknowledged the complex relationship between literature and folklore, Fontes declares his intention "to bring together several article-length studies in which, over the years, I have shown, especially from a Luso-Brazilian perspective, that a familiarity with modern folk tales, ballads and lyric poetry can often shed light on medieval and Renaissance Iberian literature" (5). This remarkable collection enables us to explore the relationship between folk narrative and literature, past and present, guided by a folklorist and a literary scholar whose erudition is augmented by an intuitive ability to sniff out hidden allusions and ephemeral metaphors. This thematically organized compilation is supported by an outstanding apparatus designed to lead us through centuries of folklore and literature. In Appendix A are transcriptions of field-collected folk tales (231-38). Appendix B lists eleven Sephardic Flérida ballads (239-46). In Appendixes C and D are seven ballad versions followed by footnotes to the chapters (255-74). A Bibliography with a Table ofAbbreviations guides us to any reference we might seek (275-3Ó7). An Index of Ballads, Popular Songs and Folk tales (309-11), an Index of Euphemisms and Metaphors, and an Index ofSubjects and Proper Names (313-27) serve to orient the reader. The first chapter, "Puputiriru: An Eastern Folktale from the Disciplina Clericalis" (9-26), deals with a folk joke told to Fontes by a Portuguese immigrant . The author begins his study with the ingenuous remark that upon hearing ajoke related in 1978 in Taunton, Massachusetts, he had no idea that it "boasted a truly ancient, venerable Oriental ancestry" (10). He then demonstrates the error of his thinking. For the reader who wants to experience two modern versions, he includes two transcriptions (Appendix A 231-38). We follow his path of discovery when he recognizes a connection between his twentieth-century tale and a version found in ajournai article dealing with an ancient antecedent to Pedro Alfonso's "The Three Dreams or Dream Bread" story. The creative leap he makes to link a story of three travelers and their competitive dream accounts to a tale of a priest, a captain and a soldier who compete with riddle answers for the favors of a prostitute is the beginning of a dazzling display of a talented scholar's intuitive process. The common La corónica 30.1 (Fall, 2001): 288-92 Reviews289 features of all these tales are a competition among three competitors representing different social classes, military ranks, national origin, or worthiness. In the next chapter, "On Alfonso X's 'Interrupted' Encounter with a soldadeira" (27-34) Fontes lifts the blinders that previous critics have applied to a frankly sexual cantiga de escarnho by re-interpreting medieval metaphors that have lost their transparency. A poem that had been merely considered mildly blasphemous is revealed to be an account of the soldadeira's orgasmic thoughts. She even likens her climactic moment to death "cuidei morrer", "com medo de morrer e con al non" a metaphor that is familiar in twentiethcentury Englishjargon - "the little death" (28). For those ofus who have been puzzled by passages that seemed senseless or inappropriate, Fontes offers a key, although not without solid support from citations from parallel works. Since the essays have a central theme, he picks up the thread of misunderstood metaphors in "Martínez de Toledo's 'Nightmare' and the Courtly and Oral Traditions" (35-53). He writes: "The realization that a number of apparently innocent words and expressions had hidden sexual connotations has played an important role in the study of early and traditional Hispanic poetry" (35). Critics have studied the archpriest's palinode, even denying his authorship, but Fontes argues convincingly that "the feigned palinode is in fact an epilogue" (48) in which comical language reveals that his dream attackers are sexual aggressors, and that the frightened...

What is the interplay between a people's folk literature and the natural environment in which they live? Can a people's folk literature be utilized to place these people in time and space? This article analyzes the interrelationships between Winnebago folk tales and Winnebago Wisconsin habitat, concluding that the Winnebago were residents of Wisconsin as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, such analysis indicates that the strong correlations between oral history traditions and historical records make the study of folk literature invaluable aid in ethnohistorical reconstructions. For any given culture, folk literature offers many insights into the people's cosmology, religion, customs, and lifestyle. This is especially true of a people whose principal means of transmitting information has been through oral traditions. Their folk literature abounds with cultural details. If one studies this folk literature in depth, one also realizes that many important components of the people's natural environment appear in their folk tales. From ethnohistorical perspective, two questions immediately emerge: How close is the correlation between folk narrative and the actual natural environment in which a people lived? Is the study of a people's folk literature a valid tool for locating these people in time and space vis-a-vis their natural environment? These are intriguing questions especially when faced with problems of archaeological and historical reconstructions of a people in time and space. Such problems exist for the Winnebago, a Native American people who presently reside in Wisconsin and Nebraska. Archaeological work suggests that the Winnebago moved northward into Wisconsin from the Mississippi River valley (sometime after A.D. 1000), emerging as a part of the Upper Mississippian Oneota archaeological tradition in the late protohistoric period (Griffin 1960; Peske 1966). Ethnographical data also point towards this interpretation: Winnebago informants have suggested their people come from the south, probably entering Wisconsin from the southeast (Radin 1970: Chapter 1). A southern origin for the Winnebago is further supported by linguistical studies which classify the Winnebago language as Siouan. It is usually included as part of the Chiwere-Winnebago subgrouping, containing Winnebago and Chiwere (Iowa, Oto, and extinct Missouri) (Wolff 1950) or closely related to Chiwere with the realization that there is an obvious closeness between Winnebago and Iowa-Oto (Rood 1979: 236, 288). This article explores the nature and depth of the interrelationships between the folk literature of the Winnebago and the natural environment for the historic Winnebago in attempt to assess the duration of time spent by the Winnebago in their historic Wisconsin homelands. Such assessment entails documenting the historic Winnebago in time and space; examining Winnebago

Goethe Yearbook 237 After establishing these and other frameworks for her study, ter Horst discusses Miss Sara Sampson and Minna von Barnhelm, particularly women who exhibit masculine traits. When she continues with WUhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, she is careful to explain her choice of genre, since this is the only novel she considers.There is a wealth of material for the exploration of gender identities in Goethe's inexhaustible book and the other works of Goethe, primarily dramas, which it suggests. Notable among the female figures ter Horst considers is, of course, Mignon. Thérèse and Natalie also figure prominently along with others, and many of their male counterparts as weU. It is a strength of this book that ter Horst continues to compare and contrast the characters from these authors in every part of the book and also provides a strong concluding chapter. Ter Horst's treatment of Kleist, particularly the Amazons in Penthesilea, incorporates relatively recent Uterary criticism and more classical material than is cited for the other authors, although there is adequate annotation and bibliographical information throughout. One of her general conclusions for the Kleist chapter reads: "In the works of Goethe and Lessing, the one-sex, theatrical model vies with the two-sex model. In Kleist's Penthesilea, however, the contradictions inherent in the ideology of the two-sex model are revealed through the use of a classical intertext, Homer's Iliad, in particular the combat between Hector and AchiUes. In Penthesilea, both the eponymous heroine and Achules identify, alternately, with Homer's defeated Hector and [. . . the] victorious AchiUes. Thus, a conventionally masculine subject position is not always associated with a biological male, nor is a conventionally feminine subject position always occupied by a biological female" (177). This is but one of the multiple permutations of gender identification discussed in ter Horst's analyses.To summarize her position,"Gender is not something that an individual possesses, nor is it simply imposed by the immediate culture; gender is established relationally, in an exchange with others as well as in dialogue with historical and literary models" (178). Ustfig contemporary gender theory, close reading and historical insights, ter Horst shows that longfamUiar texts can reveal new perspectives for readers with an interest in comparative gender analysis. Villanova University Erlis Wickersham Ulrich Marzolph, ed., Feen-Mährchen: Zur Unterhaltung für Freunde und Freundinnen der Feenwelt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000. 331 PPUlrich Marzolph edits this reprint of an 1801 edition of fairy tales foUowing in the French tradition of contes de fees, and in doing so, he makes available to us a type of text that once was very popular but is now typically difficult to obtain.The Feen-Mährchen stand between the more Uterary and courtly texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth century and the tales taken (as claimed by the Brothers Grimm) "directly" from the oral traditions of the "folk" that follow Ui the nineteenth century. As such, it is an intriguing document of tales published in German before the famous 1812 Grimms' Hausmärchen, and a useful guide for anyone interested in the traditions and developments of folk and fairy tales. (I use the Jack Zipes definition of "fairy tales" as those stories in written form that are "inspired by" folk tales, an open-ended understanding 238 Book Reviews that allows for inclusion of the transcription of seemingly "pure" oral traditions as well as the Uterary renditions of well-known tales.) These particular Feen-Mährchen reflect a wide variety of influences including some direct translations from the French, but above aU, they are characterized by a heavy-handed moral tone stressing virtue and patience, and describing Ui graphic detail the torture of those who must be put to the test but also of those who must be punished for their bad behavior. Certainly that also characterizes many of the famous versions of fairy tales from Charles Perrault and the Grimms, but these Feen tales tend to be longer, even more attentive to detaUed descriptions of the young girls' adventures and their horrors , and even plumper with "happy-ever-after" endings resulting from longwinded stories fuU of "einnehmendes Betragen" and "Sittsamkeit." The first tale, "Die...

Folk tales can be used as a media to teach moral values ​​to children. Folk tale is told from generation to generation through oral tradition. Since it is conveyed orally, several versions of the folk tale are sometimes found in society. This study aims to find out the differences in plot and characterization in the two versions of the folk tale“Bawang Merah dan Bawang Putih”. The descriptive qualitative method was applied in this study. The researchers analyzed the characters and plots in two folk tale books entitled “Bawang Merah dan Bawang Putih” and “Bawang dan Kesuna”. The data of characterization was classified and analyzed using the theory proposed by Mays (2018). Based on the analysis, the results showed that there were three differences in the characterization, namely differences in family relations, differences in parental behavior, and differences in personality. Furthermore, there were also differences found in the plot, namely unfortunate events, unexpected gifts, evil ideas, and sad endings.

The article outlines typology of the Greek folk tale, its structure and plot peculiarities. The folk tale is a reproduction of thoughts and beliefs and every reader experiences the folk tale in a different way according to his or her experiences. Therefore, the folk tale is not just a remnant of the past, but a collection of cultural elements which are gradually put together by the narrators and which reach the readers or listeners as a cultural blend that they need to decode. The Greek folk tales have been known since ancient times. Herodotus includes folk tales in his Histories, while Aristophanes mentions a story-teller named Philepsios. Moreover, Aristotle states the fact that children’s education includes listening to fables and folk tales. Later professional storytellers appear in the Greek society. During the Byzantine period there are very few references to folk tales and the only thing we can mention is that there were mime artists who used to entertain the rulers and lords with their narrations. During the period of Ottoman empire in Greece, the folk tale and other forms of folk culture became the main expression of social reality. The storytellers of that time contributed to the preservation and development of folk oral tradition and, as a result, folk tales were told by sailors, shepherds, they were heard during the long trips of caravans, and they were also very common in agricultural life.

Through this research, it is hoped that it will be possible to reveal how sagata has become an integral part of the life of the Saibatin community, as well as how this oral literature reflects the worldview, value system and social norms that have developed in this community. With a deeper understanding of sagata, this research also aims to highlight the importance of efforts to preserve oral traditions amidst increasingly rapid global changes. This research uses a descriptive qualitative research method using library research, which involves collecting coverage and research based on literature, which involves collecting information and research through library references, such as books, scientific journals and other reliable sources related to Sagata as an oral tradition. This oral tradition includes several cultural aspects including folklore, folk tales, traditional songs, and other oral literature. Sagat can also contain stories about the origins of a place, heroic stories, myths or history. Oral tradition is a step that needs to be preserved and passed on the knowledge, cultural norms and identity of the Lampung people.

Uttarakhand, a north Indian state is having a rich folk culture. It includes folk tales, folk music (Jaagars, Maangalgeet) folkdance, etc.Being the oral society Garhwal and Kumaon region of Uttarakhand are known for their oral traditions. In the ancient timethe traditions were passed on to the next generation orally. Now in the age of globalization people are shifting from the oral society to the digital media. In this progressive process of shifting towards the digital media people of Uttarakhand are leaving behind the rich oral traditions. The local folk traditions are required to reach on global level so that people may know the culture of Devbhomi, Uttarakhand and local tradition may be promoted and preserved for the next generations.This paper aims at widening the understanding on traditional culture of Uttarakhand through Garhwali folktales. Garhwali folk tales that are good source of education and entertainment provides the essence of unique culture and traditions of Garhwal. The paper focuses why there is a need to save and record these folk tales digitally and triesto explore the ways to integrate the traditional wisdom with latest technologies. For that a study is conducted to collect the data to know the connection of local people to the Garhwali folktales and responses were taken on various aspects to know their awareness about the status of Garhwali folktales in 21st century. The paper also offers some suggestions for preserving Garhwali folktales of Uttarakhand in the form of text, audio and video using the latest technologies so it can reach from local to global level.

This chapter focuses on the collections Slovak Tales and Simple National Slovak Tales, which were edited and published by the most important Slovak collector of folk tales, Pavol Dobšinský (1828–1885). Although the tales in these collections are not authentic folk tales and do not paint a genuine picture of folk prose, they are considered the foundation of knowledge on the Slovak oral folk tale tradition and exerted significant influence on this tradition. Dobšinský was influenced by Romantic conceptions of national art. The tales in his collections display a distinctive style that resulted from his purposeful adaptations of Slovak folk tale variants employing the compilation-stylization method. This chapter examines the characteristic style of these tales, how Dobšinský achieved it, how and why his preference for certain types of magic tales was reflected in his collections, and how they were interpreted to express Slovak nationalism. The international ATU Tale-Type Index is utilized to catalogue the Slovak folk tales discussed.

Problem: Science is ultimately valued while popular practice or beliefs are viewed as unfounded experience. Thus, a clash can be observed between health professionals’ scientific knowledge and cared people’s popular knowledge or beliefs. Objective: To investigate state-of-the-art nursing production on popular knowledge and beliefs typical from the postpartum period. Methodology: Integrated review of scientific nursing productions in LILACS, SciELO, BDENF databases, and CAPES theses database between 2000 and 2009. Sixteen productions were selected and analyzed. Results: Three central themes emerged: Beliefs and popular practice on puerperal care; Beliefs and popular practice on newborn care; Nursing facing beliefs and popular knowledge during postpartum period. Conclusion: It was evidenced that nursing develops qualitative research studies in order to describe beliefs and popular knowledge, pointing out the possibility to use the ethnographic method and anthropology to make such investigations feasible. It was perceived the need to understand that such knowledge is not superior or inferior to scientific knowledge and by approaching it, nurses may find the symbolic caring dimension and, thus deliver culturally congruent care.

Reading an Oral Tradition Jack Zipes (bio) Inside the Wolf's Belly: Aspects of the Fairy Tale, by Joyce Thomas. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. Though in many ways an informative and perceptive study of different thematic aspects of the fairy tale, Joyce Thomas's Inside the Wolf's Belly is also disturbing and misleading. It tends to rehash phenomenological, Jungian, and Freudian notions about the whole-some and holistic nature of fairy tales without questioning whether these notions are valid. Moreover, Thomas disregards most of the recent historical, sociological, and feminist critiques of fairy tales as though they had no bearing on our understanding and reception of fairy tales today. Her book is divided into six chapters which focus on the aspects of the fairy tale that she believes are crucial for understanding the "essence" of the fairy tale: the human at the center, since, as she says, "the hero is the tale" (17); fantastic effigies; animal helpers and monsters; landscapes and things; and language, form, and structure. Simply stated, her main thesis purports that all fairy tales are concerned with the "humanization" of a protagonist, who must learn to acquire characteristics that she or he lacks to become whole. Along the way, other figures, animals, and landscapes are designed to assist the protagonist in his or her quest. Moreover, the language and style of the tales serve to reinforce the notion of "humanization." In this regard, Thomas follows in the tradition of Max Lüthi, whose works have treated the phenomenological features of folk and fairy tales. However, unlike Lüthi, who covers a wide tradition of folktales, she refers primarily to tales in Margaret Hunt's translation of The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales and Joseph Jacobs's English Fairy Tales, with some casual comments on tales by Basile and Perrault. As she states in her preface, My foremost concern is with the tales themselves, as narrative, as story. These are the Volksmärchen as fairy tales, products of anonymous tellers that were orally transmitted from one generation [End Page 198] to another until fixed in print. Taking my cue from other scholars, I employ both "fairy tale" and "Volksmärchen" to designate those oral creations best distinguished from other folk tales by the presence of the "faerie"—wonder, magic, marvels experienced as reality. [9-10] Thomas is at her best when she interprets individual fairy tales in detail, for she is a sensitive critic who has a fine appreciation of the symbolic language and subtle meanings of the fairy tales. Thus, her discussions of "Snow White" (69-75), the animal-helper tales (12336), "The Frog Prince" (157-60), and "Rumpelstiltskin" (227-232) are all stimulating, but not because they support her overall theory. Rather, they reveal just how insightful Thomas is as a reader. Her interpretations are valid readings of the texts, but her theoretical premises are, bluntly put, vacuous and erroneous. To begin with, Thomas claims to study folk fairy tales—that is, the oral tradition—and yet almost all her examples are from the literary tradition. There have been some excellent studies by Heinz Rölleke, Maria Tatar, and Ruth Bottigheimer that have demonstrated how the Grimms composed their own tales from different variants and how they relied on literature, not on the oral tradition, for their collection. Yet Thomas does not even allude to these studies or to the problematic nature of the so-called folk-fairy tales she claims were preserved and transmitted by anonymous tellers. Her references are almost always to a literary tradition: Basile, Perrault, the Grimms, and even Jacobs. And in the case of the Grimms, she has chosen the most archaic and faulty collection on the market; for Hunt's work is filled with incorrect titles and inaccurate translations. It seems to me an amazing tour de force (French for chutzpah) to try to develop a phenomenological and descriptive theory of the contents of the oral fairy tale when the critic relies mainly on literary sources and when she also makes generalizations about all folktales but focuses primarily on a tiny group of tales extensively revised by the brothers Grimm. Moreover, though Thomas talks about the reality of...

Reviewed by: The Storyteller's Sourcebook: A Subject, Title and Motif Index to Folklore Collections for Children John Cech MacDonald, Margaret Read . The Storyteller's Sourcebook: A Subject, Title and Motif Index to Folklore Collections for Children. Detroit: Gale Research/Neal-Schuman, 1982. The Storyteller's Sourcebook is a timely reference work. The best known indexes of fairy and folk tales, myth, and legend are either outdated or have not been constructed with an eye to providing a specific focus on material that has either been adopted by or created especially for children. Many editions of primary works in this field are out of print or have been superseded by more recent collections or Single volumes—particularly picture book versions of folk material, an area of publishing for children that has expanded dramatically in recent years. The Sourcebook catches us up. MacDonald's volume also serves the contemporary "storyteller" in other, quite useful, ways. The Sourcebook, she says, is "specifically designed for quick and easy access by the teacher or librarian who wants to locate (1) tales about a given subject, (2) the location of a specific tale title in collections, (3) tales from an ethnic or geographical area, (4) variants of a specific tale." Thus, in addition to her motif index, there are indexes for these purposes—all of which gives this volume a scope that is not found in other indexes. By her own admission, MacDonald is not attempting to trace motifs as thoroughly as Stith Thompson (whose method of classification she has borrowed with some modifications;) to do so would double or triple the length of the motif index section, thus negating the functional immediacy and cost advantage of her one-volume version. The appearance of the Sourcebook testifies to the resurgence of interest in storytelling within the last decade or so, as a part of the larger concern with the whole of the oral tradition and its vital affects on culture. But MacDonald intends her book for a different kind of storyteller than the traditional teller of tales. Hers is a studious teller, one who approaches the finding of a story like term paper research. "When learning a new tale, storytellers like to examine and compare many variants before deciding on the particular form to use," Dr. MacDonald notes in her Preface. Nothing could be further from the way stories are carried through time by the oral tradition. Given that tradition, I wonder about MacDonald excluding "tales that are the invention of an author" when the stories are so universally known as to be a part of our folklore. Take the most famous tales of Hans Christian Andersen, for example. A bolder conception of possibilities might have led MacDonald away from the rigidities of genre and toward a more accurate view of our contemporary folklore and the stories that are a part of it. Despite my reservations about several of Dr. MacDonald's assumptions concerning folklore and the oral tradition, I would certainly recommend this book. Dr. MacDonald's scholarship is very useful, and the Sourcebook is surely a bargain for what it provides. It has a place in any children's library, especially ones where there are active storytelling programs and communinty interest in preserving this most ancient of the human arts. [End Page 27] John Cech University of Florida Copyright © 1983 Children's Literature Association

What we know about women in traditional tribal societies in Northeast India is based on what oral traditions tell us about them. Although they were more resourceful and respected than the women of the plains societies, their disadvantages in a world teeming with tribal feuds were considerable. Ruthless enemies destroyed villages and killed everyone, but sometimes they spared the lives of women. When two hostile villages agreed to a truce, the women enjoyed freedom of movement, but only within the village. Kidnappings were frequent, and it was unsafe for women to leave the village unaccompanied by men. Their vulnerability prompted tribes to adopt measures such as face tattooing and the practice of tribe or village endogamy. Based on the evidence in oral traditions, mostly folk tales, this paper reconstructs the position of women in the tribal societies of Northeast India during the period of inter-tribal wars.

Reviewed by: The Secret of Laughter: Magical Tales from Classical Persia Ulrich Marzolph (bio) The Secret of Laughter: Magical Tales from Classical Persia. Compiled by Shusha Guppy . London: I. B. Tauris, 2005. xviii, 209 pp. Ever since the Grub-Street prints of tales from the Arabian Nights at the beginning of the eighteenth century, English-language readers have been fascinated—as have many others—by Oriental tales. While in the eighteenth century the Central European perception of the "Orient" was dominated by the Ottoman Empire and its provinces, the country of Iran (whose denomination as Persia derives from the Greek name of its ancient heartland province of Fârs) entered common [End Page 268] European consciousness somewhat later. Particularly since the beginning of the British Empire's engagement on the Indian subcontinent, Iran's strategic position earned the country attention not only in politics, but also in terms of religion, history, language, and, eventually, culture. English-language collections of "Persian tales" were notably publicized by the indefatigable William Alexander Clouston (1843–96) in books such as The Book of Sindibâd (1884), Flowers from a Persian Garden (1890), and Some Persian Tales, from Various Sources (1892). The first major, and still today the only sizeable, English-language collection of Persian tales from living oral tradition was published by British colonial officer David Lockhart Robinson Lorimer and his wife, Emily Overend, in their Persian Tales, Written Down for the First Time in the Original Kermani and Bakhtiari (1919). Since then, just over half a dozen English-language collections of Persian tales have been published, including L. P. Elwell-Sutton's The Wonderful Sea-Horse (1950), Anne Sinclair Mehdevi's Persian Folk and Fairy Tales (1965), Eleanor Brockett's Persian Fairy Tales (1970), Alan Feinstein's Folk Tales from Persia (1971), and Asha Dhar's Folk Tales of Iran (1978). At the same time, European interest in Persian folk and fairy tales appears to have diminished in reverse proportion to the available knowledge. Particularly since the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 and the ensuing public perception of Iran as a political reality, the country appears to have lost its appeal as a never-never-land of European fantasy. Meanwhile, this loss of interest outside of Iran is paralleled with a tremendous upsurge in indigenous Persian folklore studies and folk narrative research, and in the past decade alone dozens of new collections of tales collected from living oral tradition have been published. It is against this backdrop that Shusha Guppy's new book has to be seen. Guppy, a well-known writer, singer, and songwriter introduces her tales as retellings from the memories of her childhood in Iran, when her nurse used to tell her tales. Her small collection presents altogether eighteen tales labeled as "classical Persian." While one tale, "The Story of Bijan and Manijeh," is acknowledged as a personal retelling from the Persian national epic, Ferdousi's Shâh-nâmeh, the other tales in Guppy's selection correspond more or less to tales that are still today—or at least were until quite recently—current in Persian oral tradition. European readers might particularly cherish her version of the tale known in European tradition as "The Table, the Donkey, and the Stick" (ATU 563), but many of her tales belong to a particularly Eastern and, sometimes, typically Persian stock. The volume's eponymous tale "The Secret of Laughter" is already known from Sufi poet Farîdaddîn 'Attâr's (died 1221) Elâhi-nâmeh (see Hellmut Ritter's epochal work The Ocean of the Soul [1955], recently published in an English rendering, pp. 640–41), the story of "Soltan Mahmoud and the Band of Robbers" from Jalâloddin Rumi's (died 1273) Masnavi-ye ma'navi (see A. J. Arberry, More Tales from the Masnavi, 1966, no. 191). Most of the other tales have been documented from Persian oral tradition in Ulrich Marzolph's Typologie des persischen [End Page 269] Volksmärchens (1984): "The Padishah and His Three Daughters" (type *986*), "The Thief and the Cunning Bride" (879), "The Talking Skull" (*875D1), "The King and the Prophet Khizr" (*1641 E), "The Cruel Mother-in-Law" (*1407 B), "The...