Tales for an Unknown City

Edith Fowke is a professor emeritus at York University and author of the
recently published Canadian Folklore: Perspectives on Canadian Culture.

These are tales told by a group of Toronto storytellers who have been
meeting every Friday night since 1978, including such now well-known
people as Alice Kane, Dan Yashinsky, Rita Cox, Carol McGirr, Joan
Bodger, and Celia Lockridge. Yashinsky has selected nearly 50 tales
transcribed from tapes or reconstituted by the tellers. The stories come
from the Prairies, the Northwest Territories, Ireland, Scotland,
Trinidad, Turkey, Israel, China, the Ukraine, Italy, Poland, Germany,
and Tanzania.

They are a mix of traditional wonder tales, ghost stories, first-person
reminiscences, jokes, and historical chronicles—true stories, new
stories, translations, and adaptations of published stories. They
include the adventures of the “wise and sometimes foolish” Hodja
Nasrudin; a version of the Grimms’ tale best known as
“Cinderella”; an Australian twist on “Rumpelstiltskin”; and the
ancient supernatural tale of “Tam Lin.” The storytellers give brief
histories of each tale, and the mosaic is a colorful picture of
Canada’s cultural heritage.

In “An Interlude with Alice Kane,” Canada’s best storyteller
says: “All my life it seems to me that the greatest truths, the truths
by which I live, the truths that give me hope and courage and joy and a
brightness almost beyond bearing, are enclosed in the fabric of a fairy
tale.” Perhaps this book will convey some of that feeling to its
readers.