Episode Details

The Three Gifts. A little shepherd boy, kept in rags by a stepmother who starves him on a scrap of bread, shares that scrap three days running with a poor old woman — a fairy in disguise — and receives three gifts in return: a crossbow that never misses, a pipe that makes everyone dance who hears it, and a revenge on his stepmother that turns every sneeze of his into her disgrace, at the fireside, at Mass, and at last in the courtroom where the priest who danced in the brambles tries to have the little sorcerer punished.

The Miller's Four Sons. An old miller with nothing left in the mill but a crust of bread sends his four sons out to the four corners of the world, and each learns a trade — tailor, huntsman, thief, astrologer — and comes home with a wonder-gift: a needle that sews iron as easily as cloth, a carbine that hits whatever it aims at, a sabre with a ladder hidden in its hilt, and a spyglass that sees whatever one wishes. Together the brothers prove their skill on the eggs in a warbler's nest, rescue the king's daughter from a dragon on a rock in the middle of the sea, and settle their father's mill between them in a contest of laziness.

Chapters: 00:04 — The Three Gifts 06:08 — The Miller's Four Sons

From Paul Sébillot, Contes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne, Tome I (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1880), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering from the French. The volume's remaining tales follow as their texts are verified from the original edition; the tales held at this shelf's gate stand recorded in the shelf's register.

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