Episode Details

Part Four of Folk Tales of France opens the book's second section, the jests and merry tricks, with four Breton farces in our own translation: two brothers, one sharp and one simple; a whole village that sails to Paris and back without leaving home; a fishmonger who carries great news to the king; and a rector who sings his stolen money back into the light. Between them in the book stands tale XXXVI, excluded at this shelf's gate, while tale XXXIV stands held for a ruling and tale XXXVIII waits in the register for a legible copy; no completeness is claimed for the stretch.

Jean the Sharp and Jean the Fool are brothers begging their way from farm to farm, the first cunning and the second a simpleton who takes everything literally. The Fool gives his bread to the frogs, chews straw while his brother dines, and stops his supper when the cat walks across his foot; in the night he follows a thread with a kind gift of porridge for his brother, and delivers it to entirely the wrong sleeper.

The men of Saint-Jacut rig their donkey cart with a ship's mast, a sail and a grapnel, and set out to see Paris. They bathe in the great salt sea, which is a field of blue flax; they count themselves and come up one short; and they drive home again persuaded that Paris is a poor, small place whose women are strangely forward, and strangely like their own wives.

A fishmonger of Saint-Jacut rides to Paris with the news that Dinan is retaken from the English, and shouts his way into the palace. Rewarded with a dinner in the castle kitchen, he eats in peace until the little dauphin, the king's young son, slips under the table to pull the long red hairs on his bare legs once too often.

A poor rector scrapes together three hundred francs and hides them in the head of a wooden Saint John, writing beneath the statue: "Here there are." A ruined nobleman reads it, takes the money, and adds one letter, so that it reads "There are none"; and when the rector, sworn to silence at the point of a sword, keeps his word in his own way, he sings the whole theft into the Preface of the Mass, with the gendarmes listening.

Told in Ercé-près-Liffré, Matignon, Ploubalay and Trébry, and collected by Paul Sébillot (1843–1918).

Chapters:

00:08 Jean the Sharp and Jean the Fool

05:54 The Jaguens' Journey to Paris

09:40 The King of France's Son and the Jaguen

12:42 The Rector Robbed

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 grous of the first tale are a porridge of buckwheat, as the book's own note explains; the Jaguens' broad Breton speech is carried lightly, as the book prints it.

Four Breton farces from the old province — a fool's kindness, a village's voyage, a fishmonger's plain speaking, and a rector's revenge in chant. More of Brittany follows in Part Five.

🔊 Listen to the podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/kachelitv/