Popular Tales from the Norse — Part 12 of 14

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Popular Tales from the Norse — Part 12 of 14 (Bushy Bride · Boots and His Brothers · The Twelve Wild Ducks) Three tales from Dasent's collection. First, "Bushy Bride": a kind lassie sent to the burn to fetch water washes, brushes and kisses the three heads that rise from the pool, and is blessed — gold drops from her hair when she brushes it, and gold falls from her mouth when she speaks — while her cross stepsister takes the same road in a very different spirit, and comes home with a nose four ells long. Then "Boots and His Brothers": Peter, Paul and Jack set out for the king's palace, where a great oak shades the windows and a well must be dug to hold water the whole year round; on the road Jack alone stops to wonder at an axe, a spade and a walnut. Last, "The Twelve Wild Ducks", the closing tale of Dasent's first edition: a queen wishes for a daughter as white as snow and as red as blood, her twelve sons fly away as wild ducks, and Snow-white and Rosy-red must keep silence through three long years to set them free. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Told from Dasent's text, with two standing passage cuts carried over from the shelf's register: in "Bushy Bride" the closing clause that would throw the stepmother and her daughter into the snake pit is not read — the tale ends with the brother taken out of the pit unharmed and the true wedding; and in "The Twelve Wild Ducks" the old Queen's doom dialogue and the closing execution are not read — the tale ends with the babes found alive and the joyful homecoming. At source weight: in "Bushy Bride", the brother lies in a pit of snakes on the King's order and is taken out unharmed, and the true bride's little finger is cut to draw blood, the spell-breaking moment itself; in "Boots and His Brothers", the King's standing punishment of clipped ears and exile is carried out on Peter and on Paul, each in a single summary clause; in "The Twelve Wild Ducks", one clause reports, in retrospect, that the old Queen cut the sleeping Queen's little finger to frame her. Nothing in these tales is shown being killed in scene. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:07 Bushy Bride 15:40 Boots and His Brothers 26:35 The Twelve Wild Ducks From Popular Tales from the Norse (first edition, 1859), translated by George Webbe Dasent from the tales collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe — a fresh in-house modernised rendering. Narrated by Scratch. Music: opening and closing theme, "Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs", with short excerpts between the stories, and "The Friend's Cello 2" as the quiet background bed under the reading. 🎧 Podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/kachelitv/