Princess of Only One Word
Which one word would mischievous fairies limit a princess to say?
Video not yet publicly available
This tale has been recorded and will be uploaded to the video gallery on 4th Nov. where it will be available to watch for free – together with many, many other tales.
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I much enjoyed this story told by Marion Strencioch as Der verhexte Ring. Like many comic fairy tales, it has great potential to mock social pretension of our own age.
Marion kindly gave me what source information she had: Italienische Volksmärchen (Felix Karlinger – Eugen Diederichs Verlag).
Karlinger cites FIABE E NOVELLE: POPOLARI VENEZIANE RACCOLTE by Giuseppe Bernoni, (Venice 1873) p.45.
Fortunately this book is available online as a pdf.
Unfortunately, the story on p.45, “Ari, Ari, Caga Danari” is not this tale, but a variant of the tale I know as the Shitting Donkey.
Following a lead posted on Storytell, I discovered the story as the identical text in the Swiss magazine, Märchenforum (Mutabor Verlag, Herbst 2017). But the citations were no more than those given by Karlinger. And in spite of a sympathetic phone call with the Märchenforum editor, I have not yet found more about this.
Nonetheless, it is a tale I have greatly enjoyed developing into my own version. (And if anyone has further background information, please mail me.)
More comic tales
The video gallery has become very extensive. So if you would enjoy more tales like this, here are a few suggestions.
The video clips here are all amateur quality, shot in various theatres or, as here, 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.
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For those who are teachers: Telling stories in the classroom: basing language teaching on storytelling