Birbals Glück
Wie Birbal ins Himmelreich stieg - und wie er zurück kam
When asked to tell in German, I enjoy, as here, making it a bilingual story.
This recording was made in Oct. 2026 at the wonderful Wortschmied von Lauf, a biennial event hosted at the Industriemuseum in Lauf an der Pegnitz, Bavaria.
Telling in German is always a stimulating challenge for me. For the Wortschmied, even more so as the telling cannot exceed seven minutes.
My thanks to the Industriemuseum for use of the film.
Read a blog about the evening by another contestant, Marion Strencioch: Wortschmied von Lauf: Fortunas großer Abend.
An English recording of the tale is Birbal and Emperor Akbar's Barber.
I found the story (attributed to both Birbal and Nasruddin) in Ioan Tenner's splendid resource This Reminds Me of a Story, 111 Teaching Stories of Nasreddin Hodja, the Wise Fool of the East (search within the document for "Filial Piety"). And here is Tenner's extensive Bibliography of Nasruddin story books and publications.
Here are more tales of Birbal.
Here are more tales of Nasruddin.
Want to download the video?
Videos are provided free to view.
If you want to download one, I can arrange that. Just send me a mail telling me which story you'd like, and your reason for wanting a download.
The video clips here are all amateur quality, shot in various theatres or in my home studio.Their intention is just to show the range of my storytelling and give a flavour of a live performance.
Permission is granted for use in non-commercial educational contexts.
The videos are © Richard Martin.
Professionally recorded CDs and DVDs are available here.
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Permission to tell outlines my views on copyright
For those who are teachers: Telling stories in the classroom: basing language teaching on storytelling