The First Oral Folk Tale Ever?

Abstract

Abstract Ms. Uppsala E.8 contains an incomplete version of the wonder tale ATU 510B, Donkey-Skin, taken down from oral performance in 1612. Though briefly mentioned in reference works it is largely ignored and has not been translated before. Other than being the first known version of the tale and of the motif Three Magical Dresses known from the Cinderella cycle it is probably the first record anywhere of a folktale taken down from an oral source, as demonstrated by its form. It also appears to be the only folktale manifestation of the motif Three Animal Opponents, known prominently from Dante’s Commedia. Complete versions of the tale come from Scandinavian nineteenth-century folk tradition in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Some of these have the incest motif (The Unnatural Father) common to ATU 510 B, while others, including the 1612 fragment, do not: these tell of a farmer or similar who wants to give his daughter to a man she does not want, not of a widowed king pretending a marriage with his own child. In both cases the heroine escapes from home, assisted by a magical Animal Helper. An early fourteenth-century version as a non-magical novella is found in the Florentine collection Il Pecorone; there is also a loose connection to Straparola’s novella Tebaldo – the latter with, the former without the incest motif. Furthermore, the existence of the tale is one of several obstacles to Ruth B. Bottigheimer’s controversial theory that wonder tales were a sixteenth-century urban creation in print rather than a European oral tradition.