Reading Notes: Turkish Fairy Tales Part A

 Here are some notes I took about the readings in Part A of the Turkish Fairy Tale stories. I am excited to see if any of them are similar to fairy tales I have already read or if they are completely different!

Fear: The story is in two parts and outlines a young boy's search for fear as he had learned what fear was from his mother. He experiences many scary things, including a hand coming from the graveyard and asking him for food, but he still is not frightened. When the Shah dies, the young boy is annointed the new Shah because the pigeons chose him. He says he cannot be until he finds fear, so the Sultana promises to show him fear. She put a live sparrow in his soup, so when he opened it the bird flew out and startled him. The story then ends very abruptly, like literally that happens and then he lives happily ever after.... very dissatisfying ending.

The Wizard Dervish: The dervish tells the king that the reason the king is unhappy is because he is without a son. The dervish tells him to split an apple with his wife and they will have a son, but the dervish will take him when he is 20. The dervish does this, and there are 3 doves that turn into maidens also. One of the dovaidens (dove/maiden) instructs him what to do when her father (the dervish) flogs him and asks him a question. He follows her instructions. Him and that dovaiden get married. The dovaiden did not have her mother's (a witch) permission to marry this man. Weird story. A lot of shape shifting into ponds and ovens and such. The dervish transports him back to the castle. He marries the dovaiden there? Yeah, I'm not sure.

The Fish-Peri: A young boy's father dies and his dying wish is that his son never know his occupation was a fishermen. The boy tries many different occupations and is unsuccessful until he finds his father's fishing net. He goes to try it and is semi successful. He sells some fish and eats the rest. He goes back and catches a beautiful fish and decides neither to sell it or eat it, but rather keep it. He keeps coming home to find his house tidied up. He discovers the fish can turn into a maiden. They marry. Some important guy finds her pretty and wants to marry her and says he will unless the boy can build him a palace. The maiden instructs him to go cast some stuff into the water and a palace will be built. The boy completes all the important guy's tasks. They live happily ever after and then there is a weird riddle at the end. 

The Crow-Peri: Similar to last story but with a bird. A king tells the boy to get ivory. The crow tells the boy to get a bunch of wine from the king, make the elephants drunk, and then take their tusks. The king then tells the boy to find the owner of the magic bird. Bird tells boy to get ship and gives boy directions. Crow turned into woman, boy marries crow woman.

To be honest, I really did not enjoy these stories. They were painfully boring and repetitive and I was not a big fan. They just felt unoriginal in my opinion and honestly too confusing and long winded with a lot of random details that felt unnecessary. I am hoping Part B is more to my taste! 

I like this fish. The story about the Fish-Peri said it was a cool fish. This is a cool fish. Photo by zhengtao tang on Unsplash