OTTER - OTTERS Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Legends, Myths, History, Nursery Rhymes, Fantasy & Facts Story Lovers World The Story Lovers World home page is at: http://www.story-lovers.com To add to the category below, please e-mail jackie@storyloversworld.com

OTTER - OTTERS Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Legends, Myths, History, Nursery Rhymes, Fantasy & Facts Scroll down or click on your choice below: • SOS-Searching Out Stories/Information-Otter-Otters Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians

SOS - SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION - OTTER - OTTERS
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)

Book titles and online links are in dark blue and underlined. Click on them to get more stories/information.
In performance, always credit your sources.
To retell these stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Posts are listed chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.

1) Query: I am on another story hunt - I am looking for otter stories that will go with my new Folkmanis River otter puppet. Have not been having an easy time of finding them on line - the stories are proving to be as slippery as the mammel they represent.

Cathy M. 9/28/06

Responses:

a) There is a wonderful story called "The Otter's Children" in Stories for Telling by William R. White.

Yvonne Y. 9/29/06

b) I found a few references online you might want to check out. On one site of Thailand Law there was this reference: There were two otters who were close friends. They lived in a big river and always shared their food with each other. But once, one otter became greedy and did not want to share a fish, which he had caught, with his friend in a just manner. The argument arose between the friends, how much the one who caught the fish should share with his friend. Before, they had equal shares. But now, the first otter was willing to give only an insignificant part. At the time of the quarrel, a fox was passing by. They appealed to the fox to adjudicate the dispute. The fox first denied help, saying that he was busy and goes to the court of the king to make decisions. But eventually, he consented, providing that the parties to the dispute agree to be bound by the fox's decision. The otters agreed. The fox, then, gave the head of the fish to the one who caught it, and the tail to the other, leaving the rest for himself, and went his way. The otters felt sorry and concluded that it would have been better for them to settle the dispute by themselves.
http://www.thailawforum.com/articles/abuseofjudicial3.html

I suspect this is the same story in this book by Sharon Creeden: "Indian Otters and the Fox" 79 Fair Is Fair 398/Creeden

And chapter eight in the books makes reference to otters. Half Human, Half Animal, Volume 2: More Tales of Werewolves and Related Creatures is a nonfiction book containing folklore from all over the world. It also includes extensive directories to werewolf (and other human-transforming-to-animal) novels, movies and pop culture miscellanea. It is aimed at an adult audience. Chaper 8 Other Mammals- Lore from Ireland, America, Switzerland, Malaysia, China, Japan, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Cameroon, and Kenya. Werebeasts mentioned include badgers, weasels, wolverines, polecats, otters, and monkeys. This section has 7 legends.

c) There are many legends about the sea otter on the Northwest Coast. Here is a short tale, taken from the tag off of a Folkmanis puppet, "How Sea Otter Came to Be."

Bones:

There was once a lovely young woman who had a devoted brother. They lived in a village by the sea near the cliff dwelling of the powerful Bird Spirit of the north. One day, the Spirit came to the maiden and lured her to his nest to be his wife. There she remained, lonely and frightened, until, one night, her brother rescued her and brought her home. Furious at his loss, the Spirit then sent a raging blizzard to destroy the village huts, so that the villagers were forced to cast brother and sister out into the storm. They made their way to the coast to hide, but there a huge wave swept them out to sea. They wold have drowned, if the Sea Goddess had not taken pity on them. As it was, she turned them into graceful sea creatures, and gave them the gift of the thickest coat of all animals so that they would never be cold in the icy ocean. And that is how sea otters were created. The sister went east and began the otter clans that we know; the brother went west to start the otter herds of Siberia. If an otter, raised out of the water, watches you in your kayak, with a playful glint in its shining eyes, greet it kindly, for it is one of your furred brothers or sisters of the sea.

Adapted from a folktale of the Aleutian Islands.

"Beaver Builds a Slide," a Shoshone Tale
By: Batsy Bybell
Back in the beginning, beavers had tails that looked very much like an otter’s tail, long and narrow and covered with hair. In the middle of winter, Slider the otter was swimming in the cold river. She climbed onto a snowy bank, threw herself down in a belly-flop on her stomach and slid down the slide, like a kid playing on a snowy hill. Whuh whuh whoosh Slip slide swoosh...
For the rest of the story, go to:
http://www.storyteller.net/stories/text/13

Batsy B. 10/1/06

d) There's Russell Hoban's version of "The Gift of the Magi," entitled "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas." Your younger audiences won't care, but your puppeteering skills may be compared to Jim Henson's 1977 adaptation of this story, which is still around on DVD and video.

You probably already found these online:
"Who Killed the Otter's Babies?" a Malaysian tale, although considering what happens in it, it's probably not one for an Otter puppet to tell; you can find it online in Sara Cone Bryant's Best Stories to Tell to Children.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16693/16693-h/16693-h.htm#Page_133

Also probably not appropriate (simply because Otter is killed, which would make it hard for him to tell the story) is the tale from Norse mythology in the Volsung saga of Loki paying the ransom for killing Otter. Here is the The Red Fairy Book version (which leaves out Loki, and Odin, by name):
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/youth/fantasy/TheRedFairyBook/chap37.html

Here's the William Morris translation in the public domain of the VOLSUNGA SAGA - The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs:
http://omacl.org/Volsunga/chapter14.html

"How Rabbit Stole Otter's Coat," a Cherokee tale. Gayle Ross tells this one, and there are various versions available in print. Here's an online version:
http://www.sacred-texts.co m/nam/cher/motc/motc017.htm

Sacred-texts.com also gave me:

"A strange otter" (Welsh):
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/wfb/wfb28.htm

"The Friendship of an Otter" (Seneca)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/iro/sim/sim76.htm

Another Cherokee tale is "How Rabbit goes Duck Hunting," where he boasts that he can do whatever Otter can do. I believe it is in James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. There's a version online at:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1378200

Deborah Duvall has a more elaborate version in her book, "Rabbit Goes Duck Hunting: A Traditional Cherokee Legend," the bones of which you can see at:
http://www.unmpress.com/Book.php?id=10468876669813

There's an otter in Laura Simms' "Moon and Otter and Frog." This story is based on a Modoc tale, "Gaukos and Kulta," which Thomas Doty had on his web site long ago.
http://www.dotycoyote.com/

There's an odd otter tale (otter is a villain) in "The Sad Tale of Woodpecker and Bluejay," which may be an indigenous tale, but I suspect it is a re-write of a native tale. It's in Cyrus McMillan's Canadian Wonder Tales (1918):
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=macmillan&book=wonder&story=woodpecker

A hero transforms himself into an otter in another rewritten native tale, "The Fall of the Spider Man" in MacMillan's Canadian Wonder Tales (1918), but that's not in the public domain, but perhaps you can peek at it in Google Books' version: http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0766158845

You can search for more Native American otter tales here:
http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/tales/index.html

An otter appears as an animal helper in "The Sea-Maiden," a Celtic fairy tale in Joseph Jacob's collection.
http://www.authorama.com/celtic-fairy-tales-19.html

And also in "The Young King Of Easaidh Ruadh," in Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Vol. 1 of 4: (Forgotten Books).
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/pt1/pt105.htm

Okay, this is taking way more time then I thought, but I can't stop. Google books has digitized Nether Lochaber: The Natural History, Legends And Folk-Lore Of The West Highlands by Alexander Stewart. You can find a legend of a tame otter in there, as well as a Gaelic fable about fox and otter.

Otter appears in the folklore of the Ainu of Japan.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/aft.htm

There are several creation stories of the Ainu, in one of them, human beings are mortal because they are made of wood, and this is because the god of heaven sent otter to deliver a message to the god of creation that human beings should be made from stone, but otter got distracted chasing fish and never delivered the message. (Carl Etter, Ainu Folklore):
http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN141797697

Also Rev. John Batchelor, The Ainu and Their Folk-Lore.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hokkaido/legott.html

I came across the Gaelic name, Dobharchu, which is the name given to a malevolent water spirit. It's name means "water-dog" and several sources suggest it refers to a giant otter or even the King of the Otters. There are a few bloody bones for stories to be found if you Google the term "Dobharchu."
http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/siren/552/eur_king_otter.html

Now there's a challenge: having an adorable, cute Folkmanis puppet tell a story to convince the audience that it is in reality a terrifying bloodthirsty monster.

Tim E. 10/3/06

Created 2006; last update 1/11/10