Katrina and Geoff discuss fables! On this edition of our Fifth Friday Fable Fest we parse through a series of fables related to marriage. In the process, we talk about all the hit topics: male pattern baldness, insecurity, polygamy vs. polyamory, and why men look best with a little bit of gray in their hair. And that's only the first fable.

CW: Brief discussion of lynching, castration and racially motivated violence.

The episode you've all been waiting for... BEAUTY AND THE BEAST! Strap in folks. Katrina and Geoff finally retell the tale that they've been building up to since Valentine's Day. First Katrina takes the tale back to the 1st-6th century with The Woman Who Married a Snake, a tale from the Indian Panchatantra, to complete the necessary background information. We discuss how a translation of this tale bumped into the story of Cupid and Psyche in the late 1400's to become the Beauty and the Beast story that we know today. Finally, Geoff retells Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's shortened version of the tale based on the novel by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in an episode that is almost as long as those two women's names put together!

Required listening

• Episode 14: https://thefairytellers.podbean.com/e/episode-14-cupid-and-psycheeast-of-the-sun-west-of-the-moon/

Katrina and Geoff discuss mermaids! Geoff retells a Jamaican Anansi story where the mischievous trickster god ends up at the bottom of the ocean and encounters a mermaid-like being called Sea-Mahmmy. Then Katrina retells an Afro-Brazilian story of a poor farmer who marries a "mother-of-the-water" who brings him great prosperity. Katrina refutes the idea that this must have come from a European influence by tracing it back to a similar tale from the Yoruba people of West Africa.

Katrina and Geoff are surprised to find a folklore connection to current events! What does a petition to rebrand Splash Mountain have to do with folklore? Katrina takes us back through the history of this controversial theme park ride, Disney's Song of the South, Joel Chandler Harris's collection of Uncle Remus stories and the problems that arise when outsiders are the ones that record folklore and cultural traditions.

Katrina and Geoff discuss murderous grooms! In this episode we continue toward our eventual Beauty and the Beast episode with two more tales involving monstrous grooms (animal or otherwise). Geoff retells the story of serial wife killer, Bluebeard, and how Charles Perrault apparently thinks these murdered brides got what they deserved. Afterwards, Katrina tells us two versions of The Fitcher's Bird recorded by The Brothers Grimm. Both versions are very similar except one is completely nonsensical intended for children and the other deserves a content warning all its own.

CW: Graphic descriptions of violence and murder

Katrina and Geoff discuss fables! Again. On our second ever Fifth Friday Fable Fest we retell a number of Aesop's famous fables that feature gods of the Greek pantheon. In the process we discuss how the peacock got all those sick eyes on the end of its feathers, why Greek gods in a collection of stories by a Greek author go by their Roman names, and how Katrina's husband spending two months in the hospital can teach us to better cope with this world altering pandemic. Let the fest begin!

Katrina and Geoff talk textiles! Following up on a listener suggestion, we delve a little deeper into seidr, a magic practice of shaping and influencing fate that is closely related to Norse mythology. First, Geoff retells the story of Nora-Gest whose amazing life and untimely death (in a good way, the dude lived over 300 years) was foretold from the time of his birth by three Norns (mythological beings who record the fates of all). Katrina then retells an action packed story from the Eyrbyggja saga that gives hints to scholars and Modern Pagans about how different aspects of seidr may have been used in Icelandic society to protect, to attack, only to be foiled by having your head stuffed in a sack. Grab your distaff and drop spindle while we retell you a thing. 

Support the Nepal Youth Foundation by visiting www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/donate/

Katrina and Geoff discover the REAL Tiger King! Katrina retells the story of The King Who Rides a Tiger, an epic Nepali fairy tale about a humble farmer who saves a talking cobra from a mongoose, finds himself living in a golden palace, and has to face a series of challenges from the king to keep his wife. If you thought Netflix's Tiger King was wild, you are not gonna believe what happens in this story!

Support the Nepal Youth Foundation by visiting www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/donate/

Katrina and Geoff go to Nepal! In support of the Nepal Youth Foundation we spent some time getting familiar with Nepali fairy tales. Geoff retells the story of Soonimaya, a young girl who endures the unfair treatment of an evil stemother, enlists the help of talking animals, and ends up marrying into the royal family, with lots of fun twists and turns along the way. We discuss ant anatomy and physiology, the difficulty of retrieving tiger's milk in a monsoon, and how storytelling is a uniting pastime across cultures.

Katrina and Geoff discuss shape-shifting animal brides! Katrina starts us off with a retelling of Hasan of Basra from One Thousand and One Nights. In this story a young goldsmith gets tricked by an alchemist, saved by God, and falls in love with the swan-princess daughter of an all powerful jinn. Afterwards, Geoff retells The Frog Princess, a Russian fairy tale, with a cameo from the Baba Yaga herself. In this tale, pessimistic grump, Prince Ivan, is forced to marry a frog, falls in love with her, and faces off against Kushchey the Deathless by getting to the center of the most complex Russian nesting doll of all time.