Tops or Bottoms
When a bullying giant wants to take over his land, a clever farmer knows what to do
My first telling of this tale at the annual Amnesty International benefit performance - which was, appropriately, on a farm in Darmstadt.
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The story belongs to AT tale type 1030, Crop Division between Man and Ogre.
D.L. Ashliman's online collection of folk tales lists 13 variants of the tale from various cultures, including one from Aesop's Fables.
Ashliman's 13 tales are exclusively European/USA. However, and not surprisingly, the FaceBook discussion following my posting the recording shows that it is told in India.
Subsequently a good storytelling friend Deeptha Vivekanand pointed me to a version from Gujarat, 'Lord Siva and the Satwaras', in Folktales of India edited by Brenda E. F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta Goswami, University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Later a Storytell friend Mary Garrett sent her skeleton together with a moral:
Bear and rabbit share a farm
When bear takes tops for his share, rabbit plants potatoes, carrots
When bear chooses bottoms, rabbit plants corn and such
Moral: Know your crops
Disclaimer
The video clips here are all amateur quality, shot in various theatres.
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