bear story

[Elizabeth B. Naime]

> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Edward M Dumanis wrote:
>
> No, according to the standard biography of Lambert, the (unpublished and
> unperformed) ballet is about a series of animals who come on stage one by
> one (mouse, frog, cat, etc) and enter a rotten treetrunk. The last animal
> is a bear, who sits on the trunk, demolishing it and all the previous
> dancers, and bringing the whole ballet to a rapid end...

Afanasev has a story like that, I believe.  Short, kind of silly.  In the
folktales he collected... I know them only in English.  And while we're on
the subject of English-language versions of Russian folktales, this story
also appears in Arthur Ransome's _Old Peter's Russian Tales_.  I've been
told that Ransome's stories are based on Afanasev', although he Englishes
them up more than a little and I suspect he has done major surgery to
some!  However it was this old book that got me interested in "Russian"
folk stories, and led me to Afanasev.

Elizabeth Naime
elspeth at ukans.edu