Wednesday, March 25, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Mari
✦ ─── ⟐ ─── ✦
Texts
Animal Fables from the Beke CollectionThree Mari animal fables from Beke's 1938 bilingual collection: a bear tricked twice by a clever farmer who gives him the worthless halves of two harvests; a bear who asks a man to paint him spotted like a horse and gets burned with a red-hot ploughshare; and a fox who thinks forty thoughts but loses to a crane who thinks only one. First English translations from German.Bear and Spirit Tales from the Beke CollectionThree Mari folk tales from Beke's 1938 bilingual collection: a boy who secretly follows bear hunters and kills a bear alone by firelight, a hunter who breaks the enchantment on a woman trapped in bear form, and a man who outwits the water spirit's grandson through three clever tricks. First English translations from German.Hunter and Witch Tales from the Beke CollectionTwo Mari fairy tales about hunters who marry supernatural women and face deadly consequences — a man whose hex-born wife comes apart at the joints, and a hunter whose treacherous sister conspires with a witch to kill him, saved only by the cuckoo's countdown and his returning dogs. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.Moral Tales from the Beke CollectionTwo Mari moral tales — a modest man and his greedy neighbour tested by a magical granary, and a disobedient servant destroyed by his bird-man master. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.Spirit World Legends from the Beke CollectionThree folk belief legends from Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual Mari collection: forest spirit encounter, sacred midwifery, and two pious men who outwit the devil's child.The Cheremiss and the Kirghiz Maiden — from the Beke CollectionA Mari adventure tale about Iwan, an orphaned Cheremiss boy who falls in love with a Kirghiz girl across the river, marries her, and must rescue her twice from her father's people — killing a treacherous herdsman along the way. A story of border life between Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples in the Volga-Ural region. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.The Devil as Lover — A Märchen from the Beke CollectionA complete Mari fairy tale about a man whose wife secretly consorts with a devil disguised as her dead lover. She feigns illness and sends him on increasingly dangerous quests for wild animal milk, hoping the beasts will kill him. Instead, he befriends a dog, hare, wolf, bear, lion, and tiger — and the faithful animals discover the devil beneath the floorboards. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.The Rejuvenation Smithy — A Märchen from the Beke CollectionA darkly comic Mari fairy tale about a blacksmith who shakes his fist at the devil's picture every morning — until the devil, disguised as a prodigy apprentice, teaches him to rejuvenate old men by burning them to bone and bathing the bones in water. When the smith tries it on an old woman without the devil's help, she simply burns. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.The Wotjaks and the Cheremisses — Origin Legend from the Beke CollectionA Mari ethnic origin legend about the war between the Cheremisses and the Wotjaks for their ancestral lands, the buried Wotjak treasure that sank back into the earth, and the forest spirit who gives a frightened girl fear-banning herbs and silver. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.Water Spirit and Devil Tales from the Beke CollectionTwo short Mari legends about encounters with water spirits and devils — a fisherman who outwits a shape-shifting water demon, and a bark-worker's wife who is destroyed by a devil wearing her husband's face. From Ödön Beke's 1938 bilingual collection. First English translation from German.