A bear-trainer and his animal were lost in a blowing storm and begged shelter at the only cabin they could find in the mountains.

The householder did not seem at all frightened by the enormous bear but tremblingly warned the trainer that all the trolls of the hill were coming to his house that night– as they did each year– to eat him nearly out of house and home.

“And if I can’t stop them from starving me to bones, how can I offer you safety?”

The trainer assured the old man he’d look after his own safety if only he had a roof over his head, and the householder allowed him in.

As soon as he had laid out on the table all the food he had, the skinny old man climbed into the loft to hide. The trainer had his bear lie down behind the stove, and sat down beside it himself, to thaw the ice from his fingers and toes.

An hour before midnight the front door blew open and in came a swarm of wrinkly-skinned trolls, gray as the mountain and tall as the trainer’s waist.

Without seeming to notice him, they fell on the food at the table, quickly consuming a mound larger than their whole group. A young troll, satisfied sooner than the others, was playing with a long sausage in the fire when he noticed the bear behind the stove.

“Does kitty want a sausage?” he shrieked, poking the bear’s nose with the burning meat.

The bear rushed out with a roar and chased all the screaming trolls from the cabin. When another troll, larger than the rest, peeked in the door, the trainer called, “Sic ’em,” and the bear got rid of that one too.

A year later, the old man was working outdoors when a single troll asked from behind a rock, “Have you still got that big kitty, master?”

“Oh yes,” said the old man, thinking quickly. “And she’s had seven kittens since then.”

“Then you’ll never have us back for guests!” said the troll.

And the old man never did see them again.

This is the one I’m preparing to tell for a workshop that concludes on Friday. It’s from a Belorussian (*too* many ways to spell that) collection I picked up over the weekend.

ETA: The version I ended up telling tightened this up quite a bit. I’ll leave this as-is (I understand that’s basic blogging courtesy), but I was so much more pleased with my worked version I had to say this is different than what I told.

A tsar’s wife (a witch) was nosing about for a boy baby to adopt and pretend to the tsar was her own (she had been unable to conceive and her husband had been thinking of getting rid of her).

Her serving women finally found a baby floating in a tiny boat on a deep pond. When the child’s mother, who was watching from the reeds, learned what they were seeking, she dove in to retrieve the baby, nearly drowning herself.

The true mother was delighted to have someone else raise her illegitimate child, and moved close to the palace so she should watch him growing up.

It was well worth watching. He grew up handsome and considerate. More considerate, in fact, than his royal parents were comfortable with. He spent a good deal of time with the common people of the city– especially one poor woman who was kinder to him than his own (he thought) mother.

When he was old enough to marry, his own parents had a nice princess picked out for him, but the prince insisted he already had chosen a sweetheart. She was the daughter of a merchant, and while the merchant was wealthy, he was undeniably common. His parents argued with him until they were hoarse, but he refused to budge.

As they had no idea who the beloved maiden was, the parents took out their anger on the young man. His tsarista mother changed his head to that of a pig, rendering him too ugly even too look at. And his father banished him to an island.

The prince did not arrive empty-handed, however. he had a mirror of his mother’s and a stick of his father’s. Naturally these were not ordinary objects.

The mirror let him see whatever he was thinking of (it’s first image was of his sweetheart, as she was at that moment, wringing her hands for worry of him). The stick he struck against the ground and a magical serving man appeared.

At the prince’s request the servant provided a house and grounds in the heart of the wooded island. However, despite his apparent power, the servant of the stick said he could not bring the prince’s sweetheart or the kind poor woman as he requested.

Only those who chose of their own free will may come to this island.

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From Gary Schmidt’s book, Mara’s Stories: glimmers in the darkness.

Framed within a story of a rabbi’s daughter telling tales in a death camp during WWII, all the tales are a mix flavored by older ideas and images, and embedded in the un-ignorable “now” of Jewish oppression and the camps.

Chiam (whose name means life) had just lost his father, and now his faith. Immersed in the destruction and death of the camps the boy fought to simply stay empty.

This particular morning Chiam had an assignment, and waited in the mud with a line of other boys and old men for his turn to help carry a huge vat of watery soup back to the barracks.

When he stepped forward he saw it was his own rabbi who would be helping him carry the load back through the cold and slippery yard.

Somehow the rabbi knew at once that Chiam had lost faith, and gently probed the boy’s wounded loss, insisting,

“He is the all and ever-present. He is here… even in this place.”

Chiam resisted the suggestion.

“I have seen the world, Rabbi, and I know that God cannot be here.”

“What would God have to do,” asked the rabbi, “to prove Himself to you, young Chiam who has seen so much of the world?”

“He would have to make a wonder, Rabbi. God would have to make a wonder.”

As they talked and walked, the muddy ground grew more and more treacherous underfoot. As they approached the steps of the barracks the old rabbi’s grip slipped and hot soup sloshed on the shins of the guard at the door.

Chiam braced himself for the blows he knew would come next. He knew the old man would be killed for his clumsiness, and maybe Chiam too. The boy felt ready to welcome death in such an empty and meaningless world.

But two heartbeats, then three, passed without the guard looking at them. The rabbi steadied himself and they entered the barracks together and setting down the vat of soup.

Chiam looked up into his rabbi’s face, eyes shining with a new hope. The old man leaned forward, cupping the back of Chiam’s neck in his hand, and drawing the boy forward until their foreheads touched.

“Even here,” the rabbi whispered. “In this place.”

I have written this off the corner of a memory of a description of a tale.  I welcome anyone pointing me to the original source so I can give due credit.

A young man and woman married despite the desire of her family.

They did not expressly forbid her to marry, for there was nothing wrong with the hard-working young man, other than he was a fisherman.

“You will be poor, and most likely widowed in your youth!” her mother would moan. “Then what will you do?”

But the couple was determined, and as they began their new life together the wife shyly presented her husband with a gift of her own lovely hair, braided into a small ornate rope. He tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket, in order to have it always close to his heart.

As everyone had known would happen one day, the fisherman’s small boat was caught out in a storm, and he knew he was lost.

With all his great muscles straining, he fought the winds and rowed until the waves ripped the oars from their locks.

Looking toward the shore he saw his beautiful wife standing on the rocks looking out over the ocean.

Her long hair whipping in every direction because of the fierce winds, he feared she would be knocked into the sea. At the same time he knew she would risk that for her last chance to see him.

The fisherman pulled out the ornament of hair she had given him. It was frazzled and matted from long months in his pocket, but he didn’t notice. All he saw was his bride standing by the water, and felt sorrow not at dying, but for leaving her alone, and his own grief of parting from her.

Impulsively, he kissed the cord of hair, and saw his wife look up suddenly.

In a gray boat tossed like a toy in a gray sea, she saw him.

She held out her arms to him, and without thinking the fisherman dove into the ocean.

Kicking off his huge boots and pulling with all his power through the icy water, the fisherman felt the braided cord clinging to his fingers as he swam. Waves continued to break over him, but they never pulled him under.

Every time he cleared his eyes again, there was his wife standing in the shallows, her clothes dripping in the downpour. She would be waiting with a rope to throw him– if he made it close enough.

He began to feel a warmth that reminded him of her arms. He swam more slowly, and the sound of the wind seemed to be growing muffled.

At that moment he felt a rope against his hand. Coming instantly alive he wrapped it round his forearm and began to fight the waves with renewed hope.

The cold was burning him now– innumerable lances of pain weighing down his limbs and screaming at him to give up, but in the rope he could feel the touch of his wife’s hands. She, who loved him enough to risk being pulled into the sea. His anchor. His tie to land and life.

The combination of storm-twilight and salt-spray now obscured her from sight, but that she held him– defying the sea– was undeniable.

At last he felt rocks underfoot. He stumbled toward the shore as though running downhill. The rope was still in his hand when he collapsed beside his wife.

“That was a good throw, my love,” he said, as she clutched his head to her pounding heart.

“We must get where it is warm,” she said.

“How far do you think you threw it?” he persisted, leaning heavily on her shoulder as they walked toward shelter.

“It was with you the whole time,” she said

The young woman held up the end of the rope he still clutched. He could see it was firm and untangled, woven in the same pattern as the token she given him so many months before.

But this rope was far longer. Long enough to reach from storm to shore, and strong enough to bring him safely home.

“And all the times you’ve been away,” she said, “I’ve never let go of it.”

A poor farmer was moaning to himself about his ill lot in life when an enormous djinn appeared before him.

Naturally the man was terrified, but he could not be silent when the djinn demanded his reason to be discontent.

“Good master,” said the man, “I have land enough, and this year even seed, but I cannot afford to hire the help I need to prepare and sow all the land.”

“You think you have too much work to do?”

“No one could do so much alone.”

The djinn offered a deal to the man, promising him great wealth if he were able to keep the djinn occupied until noon. Of course the man would lose his life if he failed this condition, but he felt himself in no real danger.

Eagerly the man agreed to the terms, and the djinn returned the next morning at sunrise.

First the farmer set the djinn to clearing and planting his lands. This he finished in less than an hour.

Then the man ordered a well be dug. Half an hour.

Realizing he’d made a bad bargain, the man became afraid, but thought of a third task– to dig a cellar and prepare the foundation for a grand home he would build if he somehow survived.

While the djinn was working at this task, the farmer went to his wife and confessed his folly, begging her forgiveness and attempting to set his affairs in order. She would have none of that.

“You say he must have a new task as soon as his current one is complete?”

“Yes. And he must continue to have a task until noon, or my life is forfeit.”

“Then, husband, there is no worry at all.”

She pulled one curly strand of hair from her head and handed it to him. “Tell him your final task is for him to straighten that hair.”

The man was horrified, but had no time to think of an alternative, for the djinn had completed his extravagant request in less than an hour and was back demanding more work.

Tremblingly extending the hair, the man told him to straighten it. The djinn took the task as seriously as all the other work.

He pulled at it, stretched it, smoothed it across his hairy goat leg. Every time he released the end it sprung away from his enforced straightness. As the sun climbed higher he began to grow angry. He put the hair on an anvil and hammered so hard the hammer broke.

But nothing he could do would straighten the curly hair, so he had to give the farmer what he’d promised.

Found in Folktales from India.

A brother and sister lived in a forest alone, with no parents.

One day, they offered shelter to a stranger lost in the woods. He was struck by the sister’s beauty and made arrangements with the brother to marry her.

Some months after the marriage the sister sent word that she would soon give birth, so her brother set out on the journey that would bring him to her village.

It was a long journey, and to be safe from wild animals through the night the brother asked a tree for permission to sleep in its branches. This the tree agreed to.

That night a great tiger came to the foot of the tree and askedit to accompany him to the next village.

The headman’s wife has just had a son, and I will be killing him on his wedding day.

The tree begged off, saying he had a guest, and the tiger said there would be great punishments if the visitor revealed what he had heard.

Now, the brother was quite distraught, convinced it was his new nephew the tiger had spoken of. When he reached the village he found out it was so, but said nothing of what he had heard, only making his sister promise she would inform him so he would be present when his nephew was to marry.

After many years he received word, and returned to his sister’s village, stationing himself with his bow and ax at his nephew’s side, never leaving him for a moment.

That afternoon the young man declared he would take a walk in the fields, no matter what his uncle might say. So the faithful uncle went along, too, convinced this would be the time the tiger would attack.

He was right.

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