CLEVER WIFE / CLEVER HUSBAND STORY |
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CLEVER WIFE / CLEVER HUSBAND STORY FOLKTALES and FOLKLORE Scroll down or click on your choice below • SOS: Searching Out Stories/Info - Clever Wife/ Clever Husband Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians |
SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES/INFO - CLEVER WIFE / CLEVER HUSBAND
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles, movie titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them to get more information.
Story and song titles are in italics.
To retell any stories, obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) Joe Hayes' story, The Day It Snowed Tortillas / El Dia Que Nevaron Tortillas, Folktales told in Spanish and English
Story:
Foolish, talkative woodcutter husband finds three bags of gold in the forest, brings it home to his wife. Wife knows man won't be able to keep secret. Sends husband to town for hundred pound sack of flour. Husband goes, grumbling all the while. When he returns, she cooks favorite dinner and sends him to bed.
While he's sleeping she makes batch after batch of tortillas, then spreads them on the ground outside the house. When woodcutter awakes and looks out the window, he sees tortillas and exclaims. Wife replies, "It must have snowed tortillas." Husband says he never heard of that. Wife says it's because he hasn't had much education. Makes him dress up in Sunday clothes, packs him a lunch and sends him off to school.
When he gets to school, teacher finds out he can't read, puts him with first graders. He has to cram his large man's body into a little first grade school desk. When the teacher calls him to the board with the others, he can't do the math problems, copies name of the child next to hin. Children laugh at him and he stomps out of schoolhouse and goes home. Wife tells him it's okay, he should just go up to the mountains and chop wood.
Some weeks later, while husband is out chopping wood, wife sees three robbers approach the house. They kick the door open, tell her they want the gold her big mouthed husband has been talking about in town. Say it belongs to them. Wife claims not to know anything about the gold, says her husband is always saying foolish things. Robbers wait for husband to return. When he returns, and robbers surround him, he calls out to her, "What happened to that gold I found in the mountains a couple of weeks ago.?" Wife replies, "What gold? I don't knowanaything about any gold." Husband says, "Don't you remember? It was just before the day it snowed tortillas and you sent me to school?" Robbers conclude the man really is crazy and depart.
This one is a cleverwife/foolish husband and a fun story to tell! Jane Yolen also has a variant from Hungary in her book Favorite Folktales from Around the World (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)
Judy
2) There's the Yiddish Jewish story of the man who hung bagels on trees for the same reason.
Dvora
3) The Clever Farmer by Richard Martin
Skeleton
•farmer - wife
•found gold - "wife talks - king!"
•idea: bought bread, fish, rabbit
•"wife - mushrooms" "Husband - April" "Lucky day!"
•bread tree
•fish in grass
•rabbit in river
•gold
•king: "Gold?"
•wife: "Yes - lucky day, mushrooms"
•king: "In April?"
•wife. "Lucky day. Bread tree - fish in grass - rabbit in river. Then found gold"
•farmer tapped head
•king: "Understand - Queen is just the same!"
•••••
© Richard Martin, 2004
(Contact Richard for full text of story, a lesson outline, and for permission to tell.)
http://www.tellatale.eu
4) It is also a Juha story about Juha and his mother called : "The day it rained raisins and almonds."
ofra
5) There's a lovely Ladino (Jewish Spanish) song about a woman who's romancing the neighbor across the street and convinces her husband his comings and going are a cat. In the end, the husband says he's never seen a bald cat with a mustache before.
Dvora
6) The Wife's Letter from Richard Martin.
Here is a story from Surinam, in the invaluable Angela Carter collection, Virago Book of Fairy Tales
Bones:
A woman was clever - she could read.
Her husband wasn't - he couldn't.
But her lover was much more interesting anyway.
And she did so want to be able to spend the whole night with him!
So she dressed him up as a woman - long grass skirt, brought him to the house and told her husband that this was one of her sisters from the country who had come to spend the night with them.
So the husband had to sleep alone. And the other two - ooh-ooh!
The next morning the wife went to market, lover left in bedroom - get some sleep at last! Lay on top of bed with legs wide apart.
Husband saw this "sister". Ran to market to beat wife. She saw him coming.
Pulled a "letter" from her basket. "Husband, can you believe this letter?
Says all my sisters in the country have been turned into men."
"Well, yes, I can believe that because that sister who came last night, she's been turned into a man, too!"
Richard Martin Germany
For permission to tell, visit the Tales and Music web site at
http://www.tellatale.eu
7) The Fool and the Birch-Tree from Russia, sent by Philip Anderson
[Why does it have to be a battle of the sexes?]
Story:
There were three brothers, two clever (and not very honest), and one fool (who was too honest). After their father died, they divided up his property and it "just so happened" that the fool ended up with nothing more than a bony ox. On his way to market he heard the creaking of a birch-tree and thought it was making an offer for his ox, and wanting it on credit. So he tied the ox up and went home, while the poor ox was eaten by wolves in the night. Eventually the fool grew tired of waiting for his money and chopped the tree into pieces to persuade it to pay up, which is when he discovered a pot of gold.
He wasn't such a fool as not to recognise gold, and took what he could home telling his brothers he'd made the tree pay up. Then he and his brothers dug it all up, but despite his brothers injunctions not to tell anyone, he showed it to the first greedy deacon they met, and when the fellow tried to help himself, struck him dead with his axe. The brothers hid the body in the cellar, but then had second thoughts and moved the body, replacing it with that of a goat without letting their brother know.
Once the village started searching for the missing deacon, the fool promptly told them what had happened and where he was. They made him take them to the body, and the fool fumbled around in the cellar until he found a head.
"Did the deacon have a lot of hair?" "Yes"
"Did the deacon have a beard?" "Yes"
"Did the deacon have horns on his head?" "What? You're mad," and off they went.
•••••
For permission to tell,
philip.anderson@tiscali.co.uk
8) The Clever Wife - an old English tale
http://www.ongoing-tales.com/SERIALS/oldtime/FAIRYTALES/cleverwife.html
9) The Clever Wife - a folktale from India
[She said, "It is my husband's daily practice to bring a guest, pretending to feed him. Then he ties him to a post and thrashes him With a grain pounder."... by Unknown]
http://www.4to40.com/folktales/index.asp?article=folktales_thecleverwife
10) The Clever Wife in Sweet and Sour: Tales from China
Fu-Hsing boasts of his wife’s cleverness, the Magistrate sets her tasks, and she solves them by turning them back on him.
http://www.sisterschoice.com/heroines.html
Created 2005; last update 7/8/09
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