Category: Myth and Lore

Origins and setting “The King of Cats” is a compact, uncanny tale from the British and Irish storytelling tradition—often told at the hearth on winter nights. It belongs to that family of “fireside wonders” in which the everyday world suddenly reveals a secret order: animals hold courts, kings sit in chimney-corners, and a casual message…

Origins and setting “The Princess on the Glass Mountain” (also known as “The Princess on the Glass Hill”) is a celebrated Norwegian wonder tale, recorded in the nineteenth century by the folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. It stands within the international tale type often labelled ATU 530, where a humble youth—typically the scorned…

Origins “The Twelve Months” (often known in Czech as O dvanácti měsíčkách and in Slovak as Dvanásť mesiačikov) is a Central-European folk wonder tale best loved in the Czech and Slovak traditions, with close cousins throughout the Slavic world and the Balkans. Its bones are simple and durable: a kind, put-upon girl, an ungentle stepfamily,…

Origins and setting “The Three Golden Hairs of the Devil” is a German wonder tale preserved by the Brothers Grimm (their tale of the Glückskind, or “Lucky Child”). It belongs to a long-travelled European story family in which a fated child survives a jealous ruler, is sent on a perilous errand to the Otherworld, and…

Origins “Eglė the Queen of Serpents” (Lithuanian: Eglė žalčių karalienė) is Lithuania’s most famous wonder tale, a Baltic myth of marriage across the boundary of worlds. It fuses the “animal-bridegroom” motif with an origin-story for the trees of the land—spruce, oak, ash, birch, and trembling aspen. The tale is austere and ocean-lapped: a snake-king from…

Origins “Fehérlófia” (“Son of the White Mare”) is one of the best-loved Hungarian wonder tales, preserved from the country’s deep oral tradition and shaped by steppe myth and Indo-European hero cycles. Its pattern blends two classic threads: the marvellous birth and superhuman nurturing of a hero, and the descent into the underworld to free abducted…

Origins “The Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples” is a South-Slavic wonder tale most widely known in its Serbian form. It blends two old European story-patterns: the “stolen fruit from the royal garden” and the “bird-maiden bride” (sometimes called the Swan-Maiden motif, though here the maidens wear peahen plumage). In the nineteenth century it was…

“Youth Without Age and Life Without Death” (Romanian: Tinereţe fără bătrâneţe şi viaţă fără de moarte) is among the most treasured Romanian wonder tales. Fixed in literary form in the nineteenth century from an older oral tradition, it is notable for its philosophical bent: the hero’s quest is not for a kingdom or a bride…

“Harap-Alb” (“the White Moor”) is a classic Romanian wonder tale shaped by village storytelling and set down in literary form in the late nineteenth century. It blends familiar European folk-motifs—kindness to humble creatures, the wise crone who aids the hero, a shape-shifting bride, and a band of marvellous companions—with distinctly Romanian flavour: wry humour, rustic…

Origins and setting “The Water of Life” is a classic German wonder tale best known from the nineteenth-century oral traditions gathered in central Europe. Its dramatis personae are spare and emblematic: a dying king, three sons (two proud, one modest), a crabbed dwarf who can open or close the way, an enchanted castle with perilous…

Origins and setting From the high pastures of the Tyrol to the pale pinnacles of the Dolomites, from the green folds of Graubünden to the shadow of Salzburg’s Untersberg, Alpine folk have long told of dwarfs—the Zwerge or Bergmännlein—small, old, and strong as the mountain’s own roots. Sometimes they are master-smiths and miners who strike…

Origins and setting Across the heathlands and sandy ridges of the eastern Low Countries—Gelderland, Overijssel, Drenthe—and over the border into Lower Saxony, folk once spoke in hushed voices of the Witte Wieven. The name is often heard as “White Women,” for they rise like milk-white vapour over moor and mound; yet old tellers insist it…

Origins and setting “The Lady of Stavoren” is a moralising wonder tale from the Frisian coast of the Low Countries, centred on the old seaport of Stavoren on the Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer). Told for centuries by sailors, merchants, and townsfolk, the legend explains the town’s misfortune as the just consequence of pride and waste.…

Introduction: the tale’s origins “The Seven-Headed Serpent” (often told in Iberia and the Basque country, with close cousins across Portugal and Spain) belongs to the great Dragon-Slayer cycle (ATU 300). Its signatures are hard to miss: a kingdom blackmailed by a man-eating monster with seven heads; the princess chosen as the next tribute; a humble…

Introduction: the tale’s origins This wonder-tale is rooted in Portuguese oral tradition, circulating in village storytelling and later entering print in the nineteenth century. It bears the hallmarks of the Iberian fairy-tale imagination: a miraculous birth marked by a visible sign (the living rose), fierce maternal protectiveness that becomes concealment, a chance encounter through a…

Introduction “The Three Oranges” (also told as “The Three Citrons” or “Le tre arance”) is a classic Mediterranean wonder-tale, widespread in Iberia and Italy and classed by folklorists as ATU 408. The story There was once a king’s son who fell into a strange melancholy. Physicians bled him and minstrels played to him, but nothing…

Introduction “The Bird of Truth” (Spanish: El pájaro de la verdad) is a classic Iberian wonder-tale, told across Spain and the wider Mediterranean. It belongs to the family of calumniated-queen stories, where a rightful mother is falsely accused and only a quest—culminating in a truth-telling bird—can set the record straight. Typical Spanish versions keep the…