YUGUR FOLKTALES

 

Yugur literature is transmitted orally. Usually, traditional narrative literature is divided into folktales, which are fictitious; legends, which deal with historical events or supernatural experiences and are told as being true; and myths, which concern the sacred and deal with the creation of the world and the establishment of civilisation. The historical tales and religious texts are dealt with separately in the sections on the history and religion of the Yugur. Tales from daily life are presented in the section on the Yugur people. Other genres of literature can be found in separate sections: songs, proverbs, and riddles.
      The tales below have been collected by Yugurologists; they represent the first, and so far the only, written testimonies of the Yugur languages. The style of these tales, which were written down from the mouth of the storytellers, is vivid and direct. The translations here keep as close to the original Yugur texts as possible, with a minimum of editing. From the 1980s onwards, Chinese translations of Yugur tales have been published, but some of these have been heavily edited, adding elaborate descriptive passages and moralisations.
      In order to facilitate research as to their structure and distribution, folktales are classified into types and indexed following the classical work The Types of the Folk-tale by Aarne and Thompson, the so called AT-index or AaTh-index. This work deals mainly with European folktales. Indices of non-European tales often present different or additional types and subtypes which have been assigned a preliminary type number only. Therefore, these indices may differ among each other in their attribution of a type number. Some researchers of folktales consider the traditional AT-index not suitable for classifying non-European tales at all and offer independent indices. Thus Ting's classification of Chinese folktales essentially follows the traditional AT-index; Lörincz' classification of Mongolian folktales presents both an independent index as well as an AT-index, and the classification of Chinese tales by Eberhard, and of Turkish folktales by Eberhard and Boratav follow yet other independent systems. In 2004, the AT-index was revised and updated by Uther, so tales are now given an ATU-number.
      According to their protagonists, themes, and structure, folktales can be subdivided in animal tales, ogre tales, tales of magic, tales of wit and wisdom (elsewhere called novellas or social tales), and comical, and religious tales.
      Animal tales are folktales in which personified animals are the protagonists. The theme of most animal tales is the struggle for existence, often boiling down to the quest for food, of eating or being eaten. Usually a small and weak, but smart, animal overcomes a big and strong, but stupid, predator by tricks and pranks. In Yugur animal tales, the trickster is often a hare, and the predator a wolf, sometimes with the fox as his stooge. The Western Yugur folktale of The Friendship of the Wolf, the Fox, and the Raven is less concerned with trickster pranks; the theme of friendship between animals may be of Buddhist origin. The Western Yugur literature attested so far features no etiological animal tales (tales explaining the origin of animals or animal behaviour), while Eastern Yugur literature features a number of etiological animal tales that also occur in several other Mongolic languages.
      Tales of ogres and ogresses are folktales in which a man-eating monster threatens to eat people, especially little children.
      Tales of magic are folktales in which the protagonist must set out on a quest; after initial failure s/he succeeds in overcoming the encountered villain or other difficulties, usually with the help of a magical agent. Often the tale concludes with the marriage of the protagonist. An elaborate analysis of the structure of tales of magic was presented by Propp. The theme of many tales of magic is the process of maturation of the protagonist, the path s/he has to walk to find his or her happiness. In Yugur folktales, the hero or heroin is usually a poor person. As magical helper, the white-haired old man can make his appearance.
      In tales of wit and wisdom, the protagonist falls back on his or her own resourcefulness, rather than on a magical agent. Some Yugur tales in this category are reminiscent of Chinese literary works.
      In comical tales, cheats, liars, and fools comment on social conventions and the clerus by their naive or obscene pranks.
      Religious tales deal with supernatural events or teach religious morals and values. Some tales derive from the Kanjur, the canonical work of Lamaist Buddhism. Although the Yugur people were mostly illiterate, monks learned the Tibetan scriptures.
      The Yugur people share many folktales with the Mongol peoples, Tibetans, and Chinese. Other tales are current not only in oral tradition, but are also present in literary works such as the collection of tales of the Bewitched Corpse.
      A further method of researching folktales is not by comparing tales in their entirety, but by comparing smaller elements (episodes or specific objects) called motifs. These motifs are indexed following the six-volume classical work Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends by Thompson, or Motif Index. Specific motifs may occur embedded in different folktale types.

Meet the storytellers of the Western Yugur folktales.

Have a look at the explanation of Yugur and other foreign words occurring in the folktales.

 

Index of Folktales

Animal tales

Tales of ogres and ogresses

Tales of magic

Tales of wit and wisdom

Comical tales: trickster tales, bawdy tales and numskull tales

Religious tales

Back to the Western Yugur Steppe