SPEAK BIRD, SPEAK AGAIN The book contains a collection of 45 Palestinian folk tales drawn from a collection of two hundred tales narrated by women from different areas of historic Palestine (the Galilee, the West Bank, and Gaza). The stories collected were chosen on the basis of their popularity, their aesthetic and narrative qualities, and what they tell about popular Palestinian culture dating back many centuries. The authors spent 30 years collecting the material for the book Speak, Bird, Speak Again: A book of Palestinian folk tales is a book first published in English in 1989 by Palestinian authors Ibrahim Muhawi and professor of sociology and anthropology at Bir Zeit University Sharif Kanaana. After the original English book of 1989, a French version, published by UNESCO, followed in 1997, and an Arabic one in Lebanon in 2001. CONTENTS FOREWORD ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION KEY TO REFERENCES INTRODUCTION The Tales The Tellers The Tales and the Culture The Tales and Authority in the Society Food in Society and the Tales Religion and the Supernatural THE TALES Notes on Presentation and Translation GROUP I INDIVIDUALS CHILDREN AND PARENTS 1. Tunjur, Tunjur 2. The Woman Who Married Her Son 3. Precious One and Worn-out One 4. Swes, Swes! 5. The Golden Pail Afterword SIBLINGS 6. Half-a-Halfling 7. The Orphans' Cow 8. Sumac! You Son of a Whore, Sumac! 9. The Green Bird 10. Little Nightingale the Crier Afterword SEXUAL AWAKENING AND COURTSHIP 11. The Little Bird 12. Jummez Bin Yazur, Chief of the Birds 13. Jbene 14. Sackcloth 15. Sahin Afterword THE QUEST FOR THE SPOUSE 16. The Brave Lad 17. Gazelle 18. Lolabe Afterword GROUP II FAMILY BRIDES AND BRIDEGROOMS 19. The Old Woman Ghouleh 20. Lady Tatar 21. Soqak Boqak! 22. Clever Hasan 23. The Cricket Afterword HUSBANDS AND WIVES 24. The Seven Leavenings 25. The Golden Rod in the Valley of Vermilion 26. Minjal 27. Im Ese Afterword FAMILY LIFE 28. Chick Eggs 29. The Ghouleh of Trans-Jordan 30. Bear-Cub of the Kitchen 31 The Woman Whose Hands Were Cut Off 32. N ayyis (Little Sleepy One) Afterword GROUP III SOCIETY 33. Im Awwad and the Ghouleh 34 The Merchant's Daughter 35. Pomegranate Seeds 36. The Woodcutter 37. The Fisherman Afterword GROUP IV ENVIRONMENT 38. The Little She-Goat T 39. The Old Woman and Her Cat 40. Dunglet 41. The Louse Afterword GROUP V UNIVERSE 42. The Woman Who Fell into the Well 43. The Rich Man and the Poor Man 44. Ma ruf the Shoemaker 45. Im Ali and Abu Ali Afterword FOLKLORISTIC ANALYSIS APPENDIX A: TRANSLITERATION APPENDIX B: INDEX OF FOLK MOTIFS APPENDIX C: LIST OF TALES BY TYPE SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOOTNOTE INDEX Speak Bird, Speak Again Palestinian Arab Folktales Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana FOREWORD It was with great pleasure that I watched a joint collaborative effort between a man of letters and a social scientist come to fruition. The marvelous results of this partnership lie in the pages ahead. Not only are there forty-five splendid Palestinian Arab folktales to be savored, but we are also offered a rare combination of ethnographic and literary glosses on details that afford a unique glimpse into the subtle nuances of Palestinian Arab culture. This unusual collection of folktales is destined to be a classic and will surely serve as a model for future researchers in folk narrative. For the benefit of those readers unfamiliar with the history of folktale collection and publication, let me explain why Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales represents a significant departure from nearly all previous anthologies or samplers of folktales. When the Grimm brothers collected fairy tales, or Marchen, from peasant informants in the first decades of the nineteenth century, they did so in part for nationalistic and romantic reasons: they wanted to salvage what they regarded as survivals of an ancient Teutonic heritage, to demonstrate that this culture was the equal of classical (Greek and Roman) as well as prestigious modern (French) cultures. The publication of Kinder-und Hausmarchen in 1812 and 1815 sparked a host of similar collections of fairy tales from other countries by scholars imbued with the same combination of nationalism and romanticism. By the end of the nineteenth century, numerous folklore societies and periodicals had been initiated to further the collection and analysis of all types of traditional peasant art, music, and oral literature. Unfortunately, despite the laudable stated aims of these pioneering collectors to preserve unaltered the precious folkloristic art forms of the local peasantry, all too often they actually rewrote or otherwise manipulated the materials so assiduously gathered. One reason for this intrusiveness was the longstanding elitist notion that literate culture was infinitely superior to illiterate culture. Thus the oral tales were made to conform to the higher canons of taste found in written literature, and oral style was replaced by literary convention. The Grimms, for example, began to combine different versions of the "same" folktale, producing composite texts which they presented as authentic - despite the fact that no raconteur