Episode Details

Two more tales from Paul Sébillot's Contes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1880), the great collection of the folk tales of Upper Brittany, in a fresh English translation made for this series from the original French.

The Dog Captain. A ship out of Marseille sails herself across the sea, takes her orders from a dog with an eye as intelligent as a person's, weathers a cloud shot through with arrows, and anchors beneath a beautiful castle that hangs between the sky and the sea. Jean the Simple. Jean le Diot does everything exactly as he is told: he butters the cabbages in the garden, sits on the eggs in the brooding goose's place, sells his mother's cow to a wooden saint who never answers, and takes the saint's place in the chapel niche — and Brittany has laughed at him ever since.

Told in Saint-Cast and at Matignon, and collected by Paul Sébillot (1843–1918).

Chapters:

00:10 The Dog Captain

05:39 Jean the Simple

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.

Folk Tales of France — KacheliTV brings the world's folk tales to life in English, in fresh translations from the original languages.

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