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Folk Tales of France, Part Nine — the first part from Sébillot's second Breton volume (Tome II, 1881), freshly translated; what the gate and the scan kept back is declared below.

The Seraine of the Fresnaye. A clog-maker's children hear singing on the water and see the Seraine playing on the waves, bright as gold. Lines and cords take nothing; their father finds her asleep on the swell and slips a great basket under her. His wife would eat her; the Seraine answers that whoever eats her flesh will never eat again, and offers any gift. Carried back to the sea, she pays on the spot — at every stroke of her fins the spray is gold — and their fishing never fails after. A year on she fills their purse again and departs for India, never seen in the bay again.

The Seraine of the Fresnaye — Another Telling. Sébillot prints a second Saint-Cast telling, and the shelf carries both, as at Part 2. Here he takes her sleeping in his shrimp-net and asks nothing when he frees her — and she remembers: in the dear year his nets fill till he must leave fish behind, bread and butter appear, and in the great cold a parcel comes from Paris with clothes and dolls for the girls. "I am an enchanted queen," she tells him; "you took me, and you did not kill me."

The Fairy Cave of La Teignouse. In the houle of La Teignouse stand the fairies' chambers, with the stone tables where the good ladies ate. The fairy Truitonne's goddaughter, promised beauty and a rich marriage, loses her suitor, who finds her sleeping with her mouth full of worms — the sign, says his confessor, that she was never baptised. The godmother turns him into a pig, and long he comes grunting at her door. At the fountain another fairy gives the girl a wand and the words — "By the virtue of my little wand, cease to be a pig, and be a man again" — and with it she raises her parents' house into a château. The fountain heals from that day.

Tellers, as printed: the Seraine by Rose Renaud, of Saint-Cast, 60 (1880); the second telling by Adèle Durand, of Saint-Cast, 25, from her grandfather; the Fairy Cave by Scolastique Texier, widow Durand, of Plévenon, 72 (1880).

What stands around these three is accounted for, not hidden. The volume opens with La Houle du Châtelet, which passes on its merits but cannot be built: its opening leaf is missing from the lawful scan, and a tale is not built from a decapitated text. Artifact-blocked; first in line for the next part. Tome II stands read and gated tale by tale: twenty-eight pass whole, twenty-six pass with passage notes — carried whole in later parts, their matter disclosed. Eleven stand stopped, held for the owner's ruling by name: La Mort des fées, La Princesse Félicité, Les Petites Coudées, Le Corps sans âme, Petite Baguette, Le Présent de la fée, La Fille aux bras coupés, La Chèvre blanche, Moitié de Coq, Les Boucs de Saint-Brieuc des Iffs, and La Biquette et ses petits biquets. Two are excluded by name: Les Trois Petites Poules, and the second printed telling of Les Sept Garçons et leur sœur (its axe beheading fails the gate; the principal telling passes with notes). Three wait on the book itself: Les Fées du Guildo and Le Meneur de loups (leaves absent from the scan) and Le Bélier courant (text surviving only in part). No completeness is claimed for Tome II.

Chapters

00:09 The Seraine of the Fresnaye

09:19 The Seraine of the Fresnaye — Another Telling

13:51 The Fairy Cave of La Teignouse

From Paul Sébillot, Contes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne, Tome II (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1881), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering from the French.

Folk Tales of France is one shelf of the KacheliTV world folk tale library — new parts told from the public-domain collections of the world's peop