This is a Traditional Bulgarian Folk Tale. Our language teacher’s husband, Petko, told it to us. Petko told us that Bulgarians are very clever, they have morals and hidden morals.
Once upon a time there was a very large man-eating brown bear. It had been eating people from a village nearby its lair so the villagers sent their bravest men to track down the bear and kill it. The men followed the bear’s footprints to its lair, high up in the mountains. It was a small tunnel descending into the bear’s den in the mountain. A man named Gyuro decided to crawl into the tunnel (it was to small to walk into). He tied a rope around his waist and crawled in headfirst. After a while, when Gyuro didn’t come back, they tugged on the rope nervously. When he still didn’t come out, they pulled and pulled until they dragged him out, a man without a head. “Didn’t Gyuro have a head?” One of the men asked. “Of course! Or did he?” said another man. All of the men argued for a bit, and then one said “Let’s go to Gyuro’s wife, she’ll know!” So they went back to the village. They found Gyuro‘s wife out beating rugs in front of her house. They told her the story, and then asked her “Did Gyuro have a head?” She thought a bit, and said “Good question.” She thought a bit more then exclaimed “Ah, I know, Gyuro bought a hat last year, so he must have had a head!”
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| From Bulgaria |
The End
The Moral of this story is never go into something Headfirst (especially man-eating bear caves) without checking it out first.
Or
The hiddden moral: If you do something stupid, people will question your intelligence.
1 response so far ↓
Hi Cyrus, Did you hear other folk tales in Bulgaria? Fun to make up folk tales with a moral at the end. I bet you could do that.
Your picture looks like Gyuro was resisting and was being pulled into the cave by the bear! Now that might be another folk tale with another moral!
Love you, Grandma Cole