#tale type

Spent a week with little brushes to get crazy with details 🍂 “Wolfbride” acrylic on wood, 6”x12” and inspired by the animal bridegroom story type in fairytales 🐺

The Fleeing Pancake is a cumulative tale. In a cumulative tale, the story will "repeat the elements each time a new one is added" (Gordh 185). In the particular case of the Fleeing Pancake (and also the well-known variant The Gingerbread Man), the names of the characters are repeated each time a new one is added.

The basic formula of this tale type goes like this:

A delicious pastry pops out of the oven, magically endowed with motor skills, human speech, and free will. The pastry escapes to avoid being eaten and must outrun a series of hungry pursuers. In some tales, the pastry is eventually outsmarted by a fox or a pig who then eats him. In one German telling, the fleeing pancake actually relinquishes his sweet cookie body to three hungry orphans.

Did you know that in Oaxaca, Mexico, radishes are carved just like Jack-o-lanterns? Me neither, until I read The Runaway Radish, a book written Janice Levy about a radish who escapes his fate in a true Fleeing Pancake fashion. Variants of Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 2025 are popping up (and rolling away) all over the globe. It seems as if each country wants their own Gingerbread Man folktale, replacing the Gingerbread Man with latkes, tortillas, rice balls, matzo balls, whatever reflects their own cuisine and tastes. Some books even include a recipe for the featured food! This is a great way to teach your child about other countries and celebrate the culinary arts.

Not all tales listed under Tale Type 2025: The Fleeing Pancake, however, follow the same formula. Here are two different tellings listed under type 2025 where the food itself does not have a mind of its own; rather, the food is bewitched by a supernatural creature, who escapes from its edible prison at the end of the story. Neither of these stories are cumulative tales because they do not repeat the character's names each time a new one is added. In my opinion, these stories deserve to be listed under different Tale Type.

Dathera Dad (England)

There was once a farmer's wife who made a pudding and set it on the fire to be boiled. As soon as the water began to boil the pudding jumped, and at last it jumped out upon the floor and rolled about as if it were bewitched. As the pudding was rolling about on the floor a traveling tinker came to the door, and the woman picked the pudding up and gave it to him. So the tinker put it into his budget and slung it over his back. As he trudged along the road the pudding kept rolling about in the budget till at last it broke in pieces, when out came a little fairy child who cried, "Take me to my dathera dad, take me to my dathera dad."

The Devil in the Dough Pan (Russia)

Once a woman was kneading bread, but had forgotten to say the blessing. So the demon, Potánka, ran up and sat down in it. Then she recollected she had kneaded the dough without saying the blessing, went up to it and crossed herself; and Potánka wanted to escape, but could not anyhow, because of the blessing. So she put the leavened dough through a strainer and threw it out into the street, with Potánka inside. The pigs turned him over and over, and he could not escape for three whole days. At last he tore his way out through a crack in the dough and scampered off without looking behind him.

He ran up to his comrades, who asked him, " Where have you been, Potánka?"

"May that woman be accursed!" he said.

"Who?"

"The one who was kneading her dough and had made it without saying the proper blessing; so I ran up and squatted in it. Then she laid hold of me and crossed herself, and after three livelong days I got out, the pigs poking me about and I unable to escape! Never again will I get into a woman's dough."

Retrieved from http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type2025.html

Upon further inquiry, I found that Dathera Dad was also listed under Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 700: Tom Thumb at Surlalunefairytales.com, which makes sense because of the fairy character's diminutive size. I have no idea what "Dathera" is supposed to mean, and neither does the internet, apparently, because all of my searches turned up empty.

As for The Devil in the Dough Pan, this story belongs in some sort of devil tale type that has yet to be created. The capture of the devil or Death itself is an element that I have encountered in a few other stories, such as Aunt Misery or the Mexican folktale about hungry Juan who catches the Devil by the nose. The message of The Devil in the Dough Pan reinforces the importance of prayer and religious tradition in order to protect oneself from malevolent spirits; it is definitely a religious tale type. However, it is interesting to note that at the end of this tale, the dough is eaten by pigs, just like the fleeing pancakes.

Bibliography:

Gordh, Bill. Stories in Action: Interactive Tales And Learning Activities to Promote Early Literacy. Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

SurLaLune Fairytales. http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/

Ashliman, D.L. The Runaway Pancake: Folktales of Aarne-Thompson Uther type 2025. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type2025.html

If you're hungry for more, here are some more cool "Fleeing Pancake" type stories to check out:

- Ahlberg, Allan. The Runaway Dinner (UK)

- Capiuto, Natha. Roule Galette (France)

- Compestine, Ying Chang. The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale (China)

- Kimmel, Eric. The Runaway Tortilla (Texas)

- Kimmelman, Leslie. The Runaway Latkes (US)

- Levy, Janice. Runaway Radish (Mexico)

- Regan-Blake, Connie. Runaway Rice Balls (Japan)

- Shulman, Lisa. The Matzo Ball Boy (US)

- Stolz, Mary. Pangur Ban (Ireland)

- Takayama, Sandi. The Musubi Man (Hawaii)

And of course I couldn't forget my old childhood favorite: