Episode Details

Part Two takes Folk Tales of Denmark to Jutland, to the tales Evald Tang Kristensen gathered from the mouths of the Jutland folk in the nineteenth century, in fresh translations made here from the Danish. (The Danish tales are read here part by part, tale by tale — this is not the whole of either collector's great gathering, and no completeness is claimed beyond what is read here.)

The Little Wild Duck (in Danish, Den lille Vildand) — a stepmother who wishes her stepdaughter out of life thrusts her down the well, meaning her death; and the girl finds under the well a rusty door to folk who are baking, and who reward her kindness to their sick child with three wishes: light from her loosened hair, gold rings from her lips, and — if ever she comes into distress at sea — that she cannot drown, but must sail upon the water like a little wild duck. The stepmother's envy sends her own daughter down for wishes of her own, and that daughter comes up with darkness at her hair-loosening, grey toads at her spitting, and a fox's tail growing in her forehead — and is Foxtail from that day. Then the girl's brother fetches her in fine clothes to the king's court; and at sea, hard of hearing from her stepmother's beatings, she takes her stepmother's lying words for her brother's commands, gives up her dress and her finery, lays her head in her stepmother's lap, and is shoved out into the sea. The tale's attempts stand here exactly at the telling's own brief weight — single clauses of the tale, with no harm befalling her in any of them — and the third wish carries her safe behind the ship as the little wild duck, to warm herself three evenings at the king's kitchen fire and send her brother, lying guiltless in the serpents' den, a switch to drive the serpents from him. One thing is not read here: the tale's closing retribution, the spiked tub in which the stepmother and Foxtail are punished, is left out whole, as this shelf left the Red Knight's spiked barrel out of Part 1, and the story goes on without it. Nothing else has been softened or added.

Chapters:

00:12 — The Little Wild Duck

Source: Evald Tang Kristensen, Æventyr fra Jylland (Fairy Tales from Jutland, 1881), the tale volume of his Jyske Folkeminder (Jutland Folk Memories), no. 16, "Den lille Vildand". The English here is our own translation from the Danish, made for this shelf. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.

Thank you for listening — Part 3 of the Danish tales follows on this shelf.

🔊 The KacheliTV podcast carries a new world folk tale every day — follow the show so the next story finds you.