English

The Two frogs and the well by Aesop Hello, This is Richard, and I’m here with a fable by Aesop which is ever so short. As it’s such a teeny weeny squib of a tale, there’s time to tell it to you in three forms: a story, a poem, and a song. First the story It was hot. It was so terribly hot that the trees were sweating. The ponds were empty. The wells were dry. The ducks were thirsty.

This story is called Rumpelstiltskin by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. This is a LibraryCall recording. By the side of a wood, in a country a long way off, ran a fine stream of water; and upon the stream there stood a mill. The miller’s house was close by, and the miller, you must know, had a very beautiful daughter. She was also very shrewd and clever; and the miller was so proud of her, that he one day told the king of the land, who used to come and hunt in the wood, that his daughter could spin gold out of straw.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK There was once upon a time a poor widow who had an only son named Jack, and a cow named Milky-white. And all they had to live on was the milk the cow gave every morning which they carried to the market and sold.

The Little Red Hen A Little Red Hen lived in a barnyard. She spent almost all of her time walking about the barnyard in her picketty-pecketty fashion, scratching everywhere for worms. She dearly loved fat, delicious worms and felt they were absolutely necessary to the health of her children. As often as she found a worm she would call “Chuck-chuck-chuck!” to her chickies. When they were gathered about her, she would distribute choice morsels of her tid-bit.

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, published in 1906. Once upon a time there was a frog called Mr. Jeremy Fisher; he lived in a little damp house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond. The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and in the back passage. But Mr. Jeremy liked getting his feet wet; nobody ever scolded him, and he never caught a cold! He was quite pleased when he looked out and saw large drops of rain, splashing in the pond— "I will get some worms and go fishing and catch a dish of minnows for my dinner," said Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck What a funny sight it is to see a brood of ducklings with a hen! —Listen to the story of Jemima Puddle-duck, who was annoyed because the farmer's wife would not let her hatch her own eggs. Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Rebeccah Puddle-duck, was perfectly willing to leave the hatching to some one else—"I have not the patience to sit on a nest for twenty-eight days; and no more have you, Jemima.