Folk Tale - The Most Beautiful Princess

   This is a Folk tale from Brazil. Brazil is the largest country in South America. Brazil is very well-known for its culture and the game ‘Football’. The world biggest river Amazon and the Amazon Rain-forest is here. This Brazilian folk tale is collected from the folk tale story book named, “Tales of Giants from Brazil”. This book was written by- Elsie Spicer Eells, published- 1918.

The Most Beautiful Princes

The Most Beautiful Princess - Part 1

      - A Folk Tale from Brazil

    
   Long ago there was a king who was very ill. He wanted a hare killed to make him some soup. His only son, the prince, set out to find one a hare. As the prince walked along the path to the forest a pretty little hare ran out of the hedge and crossed his path. He at once started in following. The hare was a very swift runner. The prince followed the hare into the deep forest. Suddenly the hare ran into a hole in the ground. The prince kept in sight of her and soon found to his fear that he was in a big cave. At the very rear of the cave there was the most enormous giant he had ever seen in his life.

   The prince was terribly frightened. “Oh, ho!” said the giant in such a deep savage voice that the cave echoed and re-echoed with his words. “You thought you will catch my little hare, did you? Well, I have caught you instead!”

   The giant seized the prince in one of his huge hands and tossed him lightly into a box at one end of the cave. He put the cover on the box and locked it down with a big key. The prince could get only a tiny bit of air through a little hole in the top, and he thought that he never could live. Hours passed, sometimes the prince slept, but more often he lay there thinking about his sick father and what he could ever do to get out of the box and back once more to his father’s side.

The Arabian Nights - The Story of the Fisherman

   This story “The story of the fisherman” is collected from the Arabic folk tales collection, named "The Arabian Nights / one thousand and one nights". This book holds some of the folktales form the Arabian Nights Entertainments. Selected and edited by Andrew Lang, these folktales are simplified and shortened, making them more suitable for children.

The Story of the Fisherman

   The Story of the Fisherman

- Collected from "The Arabian Nights"

   Once upon a time, there was a fisherman. He was so old and so poor that he could hardly manage to support his wife and three children. He went every day for fishing very early and each day he made a rule not to throw his nets more than four times. The fisherman started out one morning by moonlight and came to the sea-coast. He undressed and threw his nets, and as he was drawing them towards the bank he felt a great weight. He though he had caught a large fish and he felt very satisfied. But a moment afterwards, seeing that instead of a fish he only had the dead-body of an ass in his nets, he was much disappointed.

   Vexed with having such a bad haul, when he had mended his nets, which the dead-body of the ass had broken in several places, he threw the nets for second time. In drawing the nets in he again felt a great weight, so that he thought they were full of fish. But he only found a large basket full of rubbish. He was much upset.
 

   "Oh! Fortune," the fisherman cried, "do not trifle you with me, a poor fisherman, who can hardly support his family!" 

   So saying this, he threw away the rubbish, and after having washed his nets clean of the dirt, he threw them for the third time. But the fisherman only drew in stones, shells, and mud. He was almost in despair.