The Spidogue

There's this story I'm researching at the moment called "The Magic Thread" in the Book of Virtues by William Bennett from 1993, and the trail has gone cold.

The book of virtues calls this a 'french tale', and cites an English collection simply called "Fairy Tales", which I don't have access to from 1987, that book seems to be related to the series of books published in German in the 80s which was translated to french here

I've gotten the German book Der Zauberfaden which was seemingly published as part of this series in the 80s (85?) but it has essentially no publication information on it (no copyright page etc.)

And this version mentions the "French" part on the cover, but gives no further information about where the author found the story. Which means it's very hard for me to find anything earlier than this.

So basically, I am quite skeptical about whether this story really is French, but I'm unsure. If Wanner wanted to write his own original fairy tale, why call it French? Other tales listed in the series seem to be real and well attested, if it isn't his own original tale, is there an earlier version than this?

If anyone can find a version of this Magic Thread story (boy finds a thread and can pull on it to speed up his life) that predates the 1980s I would be thrilled to hear about it, regardless of whether it's in French, German, or any other language.

I might talk more about the process at some point but long story short there is a moral tale in a children's book by Jean-Marie Guyau called La Bobine Merveilleuse from the late 1800s which seems to be the origin.

Eilean Calbha, Iona - Frances Macdonald , 2025.

Scottish , b. 1945 -

Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Galaxy Books, 1965. p. 708 footnote

Hemingway has said of Joyce, 'Once in one of those casual conversations you have when you're drinking, Joyce said to me he was afraid his writing was too suburban and maybe he should get around a bit and see the world. He was afraid of some things--lightning and things, but he was a wonderful man. He was under great discipline--his wife, his writing, his bad eyes. His wife was there and she said, yes, his work was too suburban--"Jim could do with a spot of that lion-hunting." We would go out to drink and Joyce would fall into a fight. He couldn't even see the man so he'd say: "Deal with him, Hemingway! Deal with him!"'

Now they're interesting, but the REAL star of the show is one of his villains, John Doe the Generic Man, who's this guy in a stark white suit with flat pink unshaded, untextured skin with no features or anything who talks like chatGPT and has black text over his face that explains what he's feeling at the moment. That guy is fucking fascinating.