In many cases, the story printed is but one of several twentieth century oral Yiddish versions of a tale. Selected variants which are available in English translation are given in the comments following. Additional Yiddish variants in the YIVO Archives and in published sources will be listed in YIVO’s Yiddish-language edition of the collection, forthcoming.
Certain Yiddish renditions of stories that are also told in other parts of the world contain numerous features specific to Ashkenazic Jewish culture. These have been designated in the annotations as Yiddish “oicotypes,” a term folklorists use for a regional or ethnic group’s own form of a tale.
With the exception of a few large, well-known cities (e.g., Warsaw, Cracow, Odessa, etc.) the names of East European towns, villages, and settlements are given in this book in their Yiddish forms, in the standard YIVO transcription. The corresponding official names of these places are supplied below, and reflect the official borders of the period between the two world wars.
Abbreviations
n.d. no date recorded
n.p. no place recorded
I.F.A. Israeli Folktale Archive
The following collections are housed in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City:
V.A. Vilna Ethnographic Commission Archive
L.A. Litwin (Hurwitz) Archive
C.A. Y.-L. Cahan Archive
B.W.A. Beatrice Weinreich Archive
1. TELLER: Father of collector, Pumpyan (Pumpenai), Lithuania, n.d. COLLECTOR: Benyomin Yankev Bialostotzky. SOURCE: Bialostotzky (1962), pp. 30–31. COMMENTS: A volume of parables entitled Mishlei Ya’akov, culled from the Preacher of Dubno’s homilies, appeared in Cracow in 1886. Unfortunately, the contexts are lost to us.
2. TELLER: Father of collector, Pumpyan (Pumpenai), Lithuania, n.d. COLLECTOR: B. Y. Bialostotzky. SOURCE: Bialostotzky (1962), pp. 37–38, abridged.
3. TELLER: Rive, the daughter of Leye (no surname recorded), n.p. COLLECTOR: Anon., Tshernyak, ca. 1927. SOURCE: V.A. 167:8.
4. TELLER: Yosl Cutler, 32 years old, artist; heard it in Zhitomir, U.S.S.R., 1925. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1940), no. 20, pp. 75–77. TALE TYPE: cf. 947A. COMMENTS: Poverty was rampant in Eastern Europe when these tales were recounted, and, not surprisingly, appears in every genre of Yiddish folk narrative. Pogroms, World War I, the Russian Revolution and Civil War contributed to the destruction of the economic life of Russian Jewry, particularly in the shtetlekh. In addition, industrialization and the development of a market economy eliminated some of the traditional areas of small-town East European Jewish economic activity. Clearly, wish-fulfillment folktales that banished poverty would become favorites.
5. TELLER/COLLECTOR: A. I. Kon, Gorodey (Horodziej), Poland, 1941. SOURCE: V.A. 167:6. COMMENTS: The “animal fable” genre has very few examples in the YIVO archives and in the printed sources of Yiddish tales collected from oral tradition. It would seem that this is more of a written than an oral genre. Dov Noy (1976), p. 260, corroborates this finding from his experience at the Israeli Folktale Archive. See also Dan Ben Amos (1967), p. 134, where he states that “there is no folklore genre in the Haggadah, the legendary section of the Talmud, which has so few examples and yet describes so many details of the story-telling situation as the fable.”
6. SOURCE: V.A. 167:11. TALE TYPE: 200. COMMENTS: The manuscript reads: “From the Archives of the Historic Ethnographic Expedition (?)” [sic]; n.d. This may be a tale originally collected during the An-ski Expedition, 1912–1914. (See the Introduction, note 3.)
7. TELLER: Rokhl Rabin, 30 years old, heard it in Orinyen (Orinin), U.S.S.R. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan, 1928. SOURCE: Cahan (1930), no. 32, pp. 177–83; Cahan (1940), no. 43, pp. 206–12. TALE TYPE: 945.
8. TELLER/COLLECTOR: M. Tolpin, Ostre (Ostróg), Poland, n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 69:7. TALE TYPE: cf. 1082. COMMENTS: This is an example of a tale that was both read and circulated orally, and which we know functioned in conversation to make a point, i.e., as a parable.
9. TELLER/COLLECTOR: A. I. Kon, Gorodey (Horodziej), Poland, 1941 SOURCE: V.A. 167:5. TALE TYPE: cf. 947A*.
10. SOURCE: V.A. 29:2. COMMENTS: Note that Yoshe-Ber justifies his view by referring back to a scriptural passage.
11. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Anon., from Warsaw, Poland, n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 32:9b. COMMENTS: In another variant of this popular legend (Cahan, 1938, p. 148) the hero is Reb Ayzik Yekeles of Sherbershin, who dreams of a treasure under a bridge in Leipzig and then uses the treasure he finds under his stove to build a beautiful synagogue in Shebershin. According to local legend this 950-year-old structure was designed by the architects who created the famous old Cracow synagogue.
12. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski, Grodne (Grodno), Poland, 1929. SOURCE: V.A. 33:1. COMMENTS: This tale has a history in Yiddish that goes back at least to the seventeenth or eighteenth century, when Glikl of Hamlen (1646–1724) included it in memoirs written for her children’s edification. In connection with the preparation of this book, I asked readers of the YIVO newsletter Yedies fun YIVO to put onto tape any Yiddish folktales they remembered hearing or telling. A variant of this very fable was mailed to me in 1984 in response to this request. Mr. Irving Genn taped the version he remembered hearing his mother, Elke Genn (born in Smargon [Smorgonie], Poland, 1880) tell in the 1930s in New York (B.W.A., 101). His comment: “A bitter tale. You can just imagine the sorts of tales that parents in those days—the thirties—told their children.”
13. TELLER/COLLECTOR: L. Las, Shebershin (Szczebrzeszyn), Poland, n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 32:86b.
14. TELLER: Anon., from Podbrodz (Podbrodzie), Poland, n.d. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 5, pp. 111–12. TALE TYPE: 735* and 947*. COMMENTS: A variant of this tale appears in the Yiddish translation of Jephta Yozpa ben Naftoli’s Maaseh Nissim, published in Amsterdam in 1696, an English translation of which appears in Zinberg (1975), p. 200.
15. COLLECTORS: The Horodenka Folklore Collectors’ Club, Poland, n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 30:12.
16. COLLECTOR: Nakhmen Libeskind, Lodz, Poland, 1926. SOURCE: V.A. 69:11.
17. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1940), no. 17, pp. 60–67. TALE TYPE: 431 and 480. COMMENTS: The motif of the anti-hero becoming the hero is a common one in Yiddish folktales; the seeming fool at the beginning of the tale is the successful one in the end. Cf. tale no. 22, “Clever Khashinke and Foolish Bashinke”; also V.A. 30:13.
18. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Leyb Ludnik, 31-year-old tailor, Rovne (Rowne), Poland, n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 57:1. TALE TYPE: 123.
19. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Anon., from Korets (Korzec), Poland, n.d. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 12, pp. 121–22. COMMENTS: This tale has affinities with Yiddish folk-songs in which a young girl bemoans her unmarried state. See, e.g., “Yome, Yome, shpil mir a lidele,” in Cahan (1957), pp. 252–53.
20. TELLER: A young boy who attended kheyder with Y.-L. Cahan in Vilna, Poland, COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan, 1900. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 4, pp. 16–20; Cahan (1940), no. 4, pp. 22–25. TALE TYPE: 700. COMMENTS: The teller has employed some typical Yiddish folktale markers: e.g., the childless couple praying at the cemetery, the reference to the ritually important thirteenth year, and the rhymed ending.
21. TELLER: Yankl Stepanski (b. 1903), Arishtsh, U.S.S.R.; tailor and plumber, since 1922 in the U.S. COLLECTOR: Rakhmiel Peltz, Philadelphia, 1985. SOURCE: B.W.A. no. 103.
22. TELLER: Peshe-Rive Sher (b. 1864), Kozlovitsh (Kozlovich/Kozlovshch), U.S.S.R. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1929), no. 12, pp. 36–37; Cahan (1940), no. 18, pp. 68–70. TALE TYPE: 480. COMMENTS: See note to no. 17, “A Tale of Two Brothers.”
23. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Anon., from Warsaw, Poland, n.d. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 17, p. 125. TALE TYPE: cf. 210.
24. TELLER: Rokhl Cahan, aunt of collector, Vilna, before 1928. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1928), no. 3, pp. 223–24; Cahan (1940), no. 15, pp. 54–56. TALE TYPE: 720. COMMENTS: Most often names are not mentioned in folktales. When they are, they are common to other tales as well. Sheyndele (the generic “litt
le girl”) and Moyshele (the generic “little boy”) appear to be favorites in such Yiddish tales. Cf. Cahan (1938), no. 23, p. 133.
25. TELLER: A young boy who attended kheyder with collector in Vilna, Poland. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan, 1900. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 3, pp. 12–15; Cahan (1940), no. 3, pp. 18–21. TALE TYPE: 1696. COMMENTS: Compare this tale with the Khelm tales and the stories about Khushim the fool.
26. TELLER: Moyshe Zimnik, 36-year-old carpet salesman, whose grandmother told him this tale in Belz (Balti/Beltsy), Rumania, c. 1898. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan, 1928. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 11, pp. 48–50; Cahan (1940), no. 22, pp. 84–85. TALE TYPE: 210.
27. TELLER/COLLECTOR: S. Verite, U.S.S.R., 1940. SOURCE: V.A. 154:15. TALE TYPE: 567 (with motifs from 461 II/III; 921; and 922). COMMENTS: One of the favorite ways for ending a Yiddish wonder tale is the recognition of the hero upon returning home not by his physical appearance but through his telling the story of his life. Cf. also no. 30, “Of Nettles and Roses,” and V.A. 154:27. “Why the Head Turns Gray Before the Beard,” “The Clever Girl” and “The Bishop and Moshke” (nos. 101, 71, and 75) are additional examples of Yiddish riddle tales.
28. TELLER: Anon., from Bender (Tighina/Bendery), Rumania, n.d. COLLECTOR: Leo Wiener. SOURCE: Mitteilungen zur judischen Volkskunde 9, 1902, no. 2, pp. 104–7. TALE TYPE: 325. COMMENTS: A common method of introducing a hero who is in some way strange is to begin with an episode such as we have here. A childless couple goes to a wonder rebbe and asks him to pray for the birth of a child. The rebbe tells them they can’t have both riches and a child, and must make a choice. The implication is that they should be satisfied with their fate. Cf. V.A. 69:8, where the hero is a bear, and our no. 36, “The Snake Bridegroom.”
29. TELLER: Yankl Mikantshik, a night watchman, Kiev, U.S.S.R., 1940. SOURCE: V.A. 154:2. TALE TYPE: 757. COMMENTS: See the Talmudic story about Solomon’s banishment and three years of wandering in far-off lands in Gittin 68a–b. Y.-L. Peretz’s Der arendar (The Innkeeper) is a literary rendering of a variant of this tale published in Mitteilungen 9 (1902) p. 108.
30. TELLER: Ite Kuperman, n.p., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 154:27, abridged. TALE TYPE: cf. 403 (I, IIc, III, IVa, c, d); cf. also 510 (IId, IIIb), 709, 712 (Ib) as well as 506 (IVc). COMMENTS: The teller rambled on occasionally, and some rough edges have been smoothed out in this translation.
31. SOURCE: V.A. 57:5. TALE TYPE: 1164. COMMENTS: Cf. Cahan (1938), no. 23, p. 133.
32. TELLER: Khave Rubin, Smargon (Smorgonie), Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: C.A. 35. TALE TYPE: 923. COMMENTS: There are several Yiddish variants—all told by women storytellers—with culturally specific markers that support its designation as a Yiddish oicotype of the tale. See Alan Dundes, Cinderella: A Case Book, New York, 1983.
33. TELLER: Noyekh Kubel (called by the nickname Noyekh Riz, “Noah the Giant”), Warsaw, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Shmuel Lehman, who began recording story-tellers in 1902, was a tireless folklore collector until his death, in 1942, in the Warsaw Ghetto. One of the most faithful of recorders, Lehman was a master at capturing subtle oral styles. SOURCE: Vanvild (1923), no. 5, pp. 72–75, abridged. TALE TYPE: 950 and 1525. COMMENTS: For a structural analysis of several Yiddish variants of this popular tale, see B. Weinreich (1954).
34. TELLER/COLLECTOR: A. Y. Kon, n.p., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 154:8. TALE TYPE: 610. COMMENTS: In variants of this tale other tellers (see V.A. 154:16) have included the motif of the Jewish community being threatened if the princess is not cured, a common motif in Yiddish tales (for which, see V.A. 154:32, 33a, 26:14).
35. SOURCE: V.A. 57:3. TALE TYPE: cf. 461, episode, IIIFF. COMMENTS: The final episode, in which the envious brother tries in vain to imitate his poor brother, has parallels among our tale no. 41, “The Hunchbacks and the Dancing Demons,” and V.A. 154:17.
36. TELLER: Rivke Dizhur, n.p., n.d. COLLECTOR: Sorke Kuperman. SOURCE: V.A. 154:14. TALE TYPE: cf.311 (Ia, II, IIIa, IV, V). COMMENTS: See comments to no. 28, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” regarding unusual heroes. For an English translation of a Yiddish variant in which the hero is a bear, see “The Bear Bridegroom,” in B. Weinreich (1957) pp. 288–94.
37. SOURCE: V.A. 154:9. COMMENTS: This story sounds like a “modern” rather than a traditional fairy tale. The Slavic name of the hero and the lack of any culturally specific markers (except perhaps the focus on learning and the hero’s opening a textile shop) points to a teller’s adapting a tale heard from a Slavic neighbor.
38. TELLER: Nyome Pikover, Grodne (Grodno), Poland, 1927. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski, Grodne. SOURCE: CA. 27:12, abridged. TALE TYPE: 675 (I, IIa, IIIa, b, IV, V); cf. 571 (III). COMMENTS: In the unabridged original the hero is brought to task at the end for having married out of the fold.
39. TELLER: Moyshe Zlotkevitsh, Bialestok (Bialystok), Poland, 13 years old, son of a beggar woman. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski, 1929. SOURCE: Yidisher folklor (1954), vol. I, pp. 13–14. TALE TYPE: a combination of 530, 850 (II), and 506. COMMENTS: Culturally specific motifs in this tale include the description of the “helpers” (a rabbi and the mysterious man—a mystic? a lamedvovnik?), and the specification that the kings were Polish and German, and not just “any” kings.
40. TELLER: Ruvn Kravitski, 45 years old, father of collector, Yedvabne (Jedwabne), Poland, 1928. COLLECTOR: A. Kravitski, Yedvabne, who reported that he heard this tale from others as well, “mostly soldiers.” SOURCE: V.A. 32:17. TALE TYPE: 400. COMMENTS: This culturally specific variant of an international tale type contains some magical elements from the Cabalistic sphere. It also incorporates Jewish motifs from the traditional Purim story—specifically where the hero gets drunk and boasts of his wife’s beauty. The reference to the hero’s thirteenth birthday (his barmitsve) is another such motif.
41. TELLER/COLLECTOR: A. Y. Kohn, 1940, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 154:7. TALE TYPE: 503. COMMENTS: The failure of imitations is a favorite folktale theme. Cf. no. 5–9, “A Passover Tale.”
42. TELLER: Khinye Lifshits, years old, Krementshug (Kremenchug), U.S.S.R., 1940. COLLECTOR: S. Verite. SOURCE: V.A. 154:19. TALE TYPE: cf. 501, 510, and 506 (IVb).
43. TELLER: Yitskhok Vayner (b. 1846), Podbrodz (Podbrodzie), Poland, 1926. COLLECTOR: Arn and Khaye Eyngeldin. SOURCE: V.A. 30:34. COMMENTS: On the simplest level this seems to be the perfect male counterpart to the Yiddish Cinderella tale. Whereas the loveliness of a Cinderella dazzles (as in no. 32, “How Much Do You Love Me?”), in this story it is the learning of the young man that dazzles, and he ends up marrying the daughter of a prestigious rabbi. The number of cultural markers is striking; and unlike most Cinderella tales, this one ends with the hero being reunited with his dead parents. But this is no ordinary “fairy tale.” This story is reminiscent of tales spun by Reb Nakhmen of Bratslav, the Hasidic master storyteller. It is full of biblical and Cabalistic-mystical symbolism, and Messianic allusions. With a knowledge of the culture’s mystical “subtexts,” it can be read as an allegory. (See the introduction to this section.)
44. TELLER: Sholem Troyanovski, 62 years old, Yevpatorye (Yevpatorya), Crimea, U.S.S.R.—a shoemaker, a former longshoreman, and a member of a collective farm in Peretsfeld, Crimea. The collectors note that “he is not highly literate. He uses a great many Russian words in his daily life.” COLLECTORS: Y. Tshernyak and Shike Troyanovski (son of the teller). SOURCE: V.A. 154:16, abridged. TALE TYPE: 570. COMMENTS: Troyanovski in this tale, as in others of his in the YIVO archives (V.A. 154:18 and 154:20), likes to end with revolution and overthrow of anciens régimes, adding his own twist to an otherwise fairly formulaic telling of a fairy tale.
45. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Noyekh Fishman, Torne (Tarnów), Poland, 1930. SOURCE: V.A. 26:8. TALE TYPE: This tale has certain parallels to types 313 and 400 (IIIa), but appears to be a well-developed tale, with many culturally specific motifs that do not fit the above tale types. See Schwartzbaum (1968), p. 86, note 46, and p. 459, addendum to note 46. COMMENTS: Ashmodai is the chief demon, the King of Demons in Jewish demonology. The marriage of Ashmo
dai’s daughter to a mortal reflects the medieval belief in “the need of … spirits to find completion in the body of man,” and the final rabbinical court scene deals with moral and legal problems raised by this belief (see Trachtenberg [1939], pp. 51–52). In East European Jewish folk tradition, the Land of the Demons is not unlike an ordinary shtetl, hence kheyder-demons, like kheyder-boys, must attend school. This tale is thought to have had a long history in Jewish oral as well as literary traditions. See, e.g., Gaster, “An Ancient Fairy Tale Translated from the Hebrew” in Folklore, London, vol. XLII, pp. 156–78; Gaster (1971), vol. II. pp. 908–42; Pipe (1968), pp. 35–36 and 56–67. An-ski’s satiric Yiddish poem Der ashmeday (Petersburg, 1905) and Moyshe Broderzon’s poem Sikhas kholin (Moscow, 1917, illustrated by El Lissitzky) are two of several modern Yiddish literary treatments of the tale.
46. SOURCE: V.A. 154:20. TALE TYPE: 563 (Ia, b, d, IIc, d).
47. TELLER: Peshe-Rive Sher, 64 years old, Kozlovitsh (Kozlovich/Kozlovshch), U.S.S.R., n.d.; heard from her mother, COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan, 1928. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 10, pp. 42–47; Cahan (1940), no. 21, pp. 78–83. TALE TYPE: cf. 531. COMMENTS: There are no culturally specific markers, except perhaps the name of the witch, Bobe Ha, and this is most likely a recently learned tale from Slavic neighbors, among whom there exist variants with a witch named Baba Yaga.
48. TELLER: Shoshe Halkon, Grodne (Grodno), Poland, 1928; an excellent narrator who used colloquial language, idioms, asides, and rhetorical questions. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski. SOURCE: V.A. 33:8. TALE TYPE: cf. 1313.
49. TELLER: Shoshe Halkon, Grodne (Grodno), Poland, 1929. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski, Grodne. SOURCE: V.A. 28:4.
50. TELLER: Sonye Naymark (b. ca. 1835; nicknamed Sonye di khakhome, “Sonye the Wise”), Mohilev province. COLLECTOR: A. Litwin. SOURCE: Litwin (1917), vol. III, pp. 1–4, abridged. COMMENTS: In the unabridged original, the teller concluded with an explicit summation: “The tale was created, of course, so that people like Berl would learn from Borekh’s anguish that it was unwise to light the samovar or smoke cigars on the Sabbath.” Note that in this modern tale, hell consists in repeating ad infinitum the impious acts that got you there in the first place.
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