The Folktale
Stith Thompson
For the long winter. The numskull has been told to keep the sausage “for the long winter”. When the trickster hears this, he claims to be Long Winter and receives the sausage. *Type 1541; *Fb “tosse” III 832a, “pølse” II 907b; BP I 521, 526; Christensen DF L 46; *Parsons MAFLS XV (1) 194 n. 3; Icelandic: Sveinsson FFC LXXXIII No. 1541. |
Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India III – The Simple Tale 1. Jests and Anecdotes E. Thefts and Cheats |
The Master Thief and The Treasure House of Rhampsinitus, two of the longer tales of robbery ( This anecdote is frequently joined to the story of the literal-minded woman who is told to guard the door and who takes it off and carries it with her ( Jestbooks have a long list of tales in which a thief presents a false order to the guardian of money or valuables. Some of these incidents appear in The Master Thief. Another of this class, well known as an independent oral tale, is the story about Long Winter ( Anecdotes of the way in which a thief escapes detection assume a considerable variety of forms. In some of them, usually concerned with animal tales, the blame for the theft is fastened on a dupe. Many such incidents form a part of larger cycles, and many are purely literary and do not really belong to popular tradition at all. But some of these literary tales have their place in folklore. Such is the anecdote of the thief who steals a horse from the wagon while its owner sleeps. The thief hitches himself to the wagon and persuades the owner the next morning that he is really the horse, who has been transformed into a man overnight ( |
[308] For another anecdote often associated with this, see |
Types: 950, 1009, 1525, 1529, 1541, 1653, 1653B, 1654** |
Motifs J2355, K1413, K335.1.1, K335.1.2.1, K335.1.2.2, K362.1, K403 |