Christine Goldberg Dilleemma

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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 tothink 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 itsproblems 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, wassurely 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, 1997Copyright © 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' versionwas 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 in1961, 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 integratedinto 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 systemuseful. 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 listhas 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 firstwife 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 powerand 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 toa 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 asinstruction and entertainment, and they help to establish social norms for the audience.

Christine Goldberg Dilleemma

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