Christine Goldberg

DILEMMA TALES IN THE TALE TYPE INDEX: THE THEME OF JOINT

EFFORTS

A tale becomes traditional if it presents situations that are so interesting to

think about that people find the story worth repeating. The situations
described in the tale identify it: texts that present the same situations are, by
definition, variants of the same tale type. The Types of the Folktale was devel-
oped in order to facilitate studies of the various tales, and it has been, on the
whole, extremely useful for this purpose. Unfortunately, though, for some
of the tale types, the Aarne-Thompson descriptions are inadequate and
even misleading.

It has been thirty-six years since the tale type index was last revised, but its
problems go back much further than that. Antti Aarne's original list of tale
types, published in 1910 as Folklore Fellows Communications no. 3, was fewer
than seventy pages long. Intended to be a preliminary catalog of inter-
national folktales, it was modestly based on material from three sources:
the Grimms' tales, Gruntvig's Danish tales, and the Finnish folklore ar-
chives. In an effort to make the brief folktale summaries meaningful to
scholars whom he knew were likely to be familiar with the Grimms' tales,
Aarne used titles that reflected those tales. Aarne, who was to write many
comparative studies of folktales in the years closely following 1910, was
surely aware that analogs to many of these tales existed in southern Europe,
the Middle East, and India, and that some of these analogs would not con-
form to the short description in his catalog. But, in order to do all he did,
Aarne had to work efficiently, and if he had stopped to consider what each
tale type was like throughout its entire area of distribution, he would never
have finished his list.

The original tale types were thus defined according to folktale tradition as
it existed in central and northern Europe. Stith Thompson, in 1928, com-
mented that the absence of references for most of Aarne's types was unfortu-

Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 34, No. 3, 1997

Copyright © 1997 by the Folklore Institute, Indiana University

-179-
nate, and he remedied this situation with citations to studies and to variants,
including references to Bolte and Polívka's notes to the Grimms' tales. But
even in cases where Bolte and Polívka had shown that the Grimms' version
was atypical, Thompson did not alter either the descriptions or the tale type
numbers. Thompson also added references to tales from von Hahn
Griechische und Albanesische Märchen and Gonzenbach Sicilianische Märchen,
but the descriptions of already-established types were not altered to reflect
the content of the variants in these southern collections. Then, and again in
1961, Thompson added new tale types representing tales from southern and
eastern Europe; in 1961, he added many types from India.

In 1946, in The Folktale, Thompson put forth the idea of "Ireland to India"
as the region represented in the tale type index (he did not intend this to
refer only to Indo-European peoples, but rather all peoples regardless of
origin who had come to live in that region). The additional material needed
to represent this great area was added to the index in the form of new types,
subtypes, and references, but this additional material was never integrated
into the descriptions of the original tale types. So, in spite of the many new
(and useful) references, the contents of the tale types defined in 1910 have
never been revised. 1 If Aarne could see the 1961 edition of his catalog, he
would surely be pleased that scholars have continued to find his system
useful. But he would be amazed both at how much (with its many new tales
and references) and how little (in the tales it describes) his preliminary list
has been altered.

The Types of the Folktale is, in spite of its imperfections, indispensable for
folktale research. In suggesting emendations, I intend not to disparage it
but rather to honor it. It is so important to folktale scholarship that it is
worth our trouble to make it as accurate as we can. Defining tale types in
accordance with the evidence is a worthy project that helps us understand
the process of oral tradition.

Dilemma tales -- tales that pose rather than resolve a problem (motif
Z16) -- are not very common in Europe. Aarne's tale type index listed them
in only two places. 2AT 653 The Four Skillful Brothers was based on ...
dilemma tale,
also called JUDGMENT TALE, typically African form of short story whose ending is either
open to conjecture or is morally ambiguous, thus allowing the audience to comment or speculate
upon the correct solution to the problem posed in the tale. Typical issues raised involve conflicts
of loyalty, the necessity to choose a just response to a difficult situation, and the question of
where to lay the blame when several parties seem equally guilty. An example is the story of a
young boy who in a time of crisis must choose between loyalty to his own father, who is a cruel
and unjust man, and loyalty to the kindly foster-father who brought him up.

Another tale deals with a man who died while hunting an ox to feed his three wives. The first
wife learns through a dream what has happened to him, the second leads her fellow wives to the
place where he died, and the third restores him to life. Which of the three most deserves his
praise?

A third tale has a tortoise as central character. Tortoise wishes to be thought of as equal in power
and authority to Hippopotamus and Elephant. When his boastings reach their ears, however, they
snub him by saying he is only a small being of no account. So Tortoise challenges both of them
to a tug of war and through a trick pits them against each other, thus winning from each the
grudging consent that he is their equal. The audience must decide exactly how equal the three of
them are.

A final example is the tale of three brothers, all married to the same girl, who journey together to
a strange land. One night the girl is murdered by a robber, and the eldest brother, with whom she
is sleeping, is condemned to death on suspicion. He begs leave to visit his father before he dies.
When he is late in returning, the second brother offers to die in his place, but, as he is about to be
executed, the third brother steps forward and "confesses" that he is the murderer. At that moment
the eldest brother rides in, just in time to embrace his fate. Which of the brothers, the listeners
are asked, is the most noble? As these four examples show, dilemma tales function both as
instruction and entertainment, and they help to establish social norms for the audience.