Folklore Stories A-Z

I am not a superstitious man, far from it, but it appeared to me totally impossible to go into that room and disbelieve in ghosts.

Androclus, a runaway slave, befriends a lion with a thorn in its paw.

The goddess Athena challenges Arachne to a weaving contest to prove who is the superior craftsperson.

There once lived an armadillo who loved music more than anything else in the world. After every rainfall, the armadillo would drag his shell over to the large pond filled with frogs and he would listen to the big green frogs singing back and forth, back and forth to each other in the most amazing voices.

A man and his family were constantly on the move, hunting for beaver. They traveled from lake to lake, stream to stream, never staying any place long enough for it to become a home. The woman sometimes silently wished that they would find a village and settle down somewhere with their little baby, but her husband was restless, and so they kept moving.

A soldier makes a deal with the Devil in exchange for a lifetime of riches. If he can manage the impossible terms...

The mice are looking for a way to guard themselves from the cat.

Black Bartelmy was an evil, surly buccaneer who murdered his wife and children and went to sea with a band of pirates as nasty as he. He roamed the Atlantic coast, murdering and pillaging and laying waste to the countryside as he passed...

Many and many a year ago, two Micmac warriors from rival villages got into a terrible argument. Harsh words were exchanged, and then knives were pulled. The warriors battled back and forth on the banks of a small creek...

“Mary, Mary…” the half-heard whisper woke her in the darkness before dawn. Darkness. How appropriate. These days, it seemed as if her whole life was in darkness.

Soon after her father's remarriage, Oksana found that all the housework fell to her while her step-sister Olena idled her days away....

It was a cold winter and the snow was deep in the woods surrounding the logging camp near the Dungarvon River. But there was plenty of game to be found if you were a good hunter, so the men didn't go hungry. The camp cook was a jolly fellow, and quite rich for a logger. He kept his life savings in a money belt that he wore at all times...

Echo, doomed forever to repeat the words of others, falls in love with the self-centered Narcissus.

I was a railway fireman back in those days, working on the CPR line in Alberta. I did a hard day's work and earned me a fair wage. I was young then, and my pretty little bride was just setting up housekeeping in the little cottage that was all we could afford. Life was good, and I thought everything would continue rolling along that way...

When a thirteenth child is born to a poor family, the father makes Death the little boy's godfather.

Halycone, the Queen of Thessaly, wanders along the bleak sea-beach and watching for the brown sail of her husband the King, who has gone to seek council from the oracle.

Once upon a time there dwelt near a large wood a poor woodcutter, with his wife and two children by his former marriage, a little boy called Hansel, and a girl named Grethel. He had little enough to break or bite; and once, when there was a great famine in the land, he could not procure even his daily bread

A farmer gets stuck in the mud and calls on Hercules to help him out of his predicament.

Father Odin longed to become the wisest being in the world, so he resolved to win a draught from Mimer's well.

A boy sets out on a journey to learn what it means to be frightened (have the shivers.)