Reading B: English Fairy Tales

King John and the Abbot

• King John is jealous of the Abbot's wealth and sends for him
• The Abbot points out that all the money he uses has been donated for his use
• Still the King is angry so he says he will kill the Abbot unless he can answer three questions - Where is the center of the world, how long would it take him to ride around it, and what is he thinking
• The Abbot tries to find out the answer to these question but eventually gives up and returns home where he runs into his shepard
• The Shepard offers to go in his place and ends up tricking the king and earning the pardon for his master the Abbot

Rushen Coatie

• This is one of the most "traditional" Cinderella stories we've read
• A mans nice beautiful wife dies leaving him with a daughter. He remarries a women with three daughters who are not very kind to the daughter forcing her to wear rags and eat little food
• On the advice of her mother RC does exactly what a red calf tells her to do (usually reaching into his ear for food) but the evil stepmother discovers this and has the calf killed
• On the night of church (not exactly a ball) RC revives the calf who covers dinner for her and gives her beautiful clothes, including glass slippers, to go to church with
• There she meets - you guessed it - a prince who falls in love with her.
• This continues for three nights where she dresses up to attend church eventually leaving her shoes and causing the prince to search for her which he does and then marries her

The King O' Cats

• A boy returns to his family after witnessing a strange sight: a group of cats carrying a casket imitating a funeral march
• The cats tell him to tell "Tom" that "Tim" is dead. Not knowing what this means he returns to his family and recounts the tale
• As he is doing so the family cat - Tom - gets excited and eventually exclaims "Tim is dead? Then I'm the King of Cats!" and takes off into the night, presumably to take his rightful place as king.