Bedouin Folktales from the North of Israel

Judith Rosenhouse, Yoel Shalom Perez

Description

Galilee has been a crossroads of cultures, religions, and languages for centuries, as illustrated in these fascinating Bedouin folktales, which offer excellent examples of the Arabic narrative tradition of the Middle East.

Bedouin Folktales from the North of Israel collects nearly 60 traditional folktales, told mostly by women, that have been carefully translated in the same colloquial style in which they were told. These stories are grouped into themes of love and devotion, ghouls and demons, and animal stories. The work also includes phonetic transcription and linguistic annotation. Accompanying each folktale is a comprehensive ethnographic, folkloristic, and linguistic commentary, placing the tales in context with details on Galilee Bedouin dialects and the tribes themselves.

A rich, multifaceted collection, Bedouin Folktales from the North of Israel is an invaluable resource for linguists, folklorists, anthropologists, and any reader interested in a tradition of storytelling handed down through the centuries.

Foreword
Transcription and Abbreviations

Part I—Stories of love, loyalty, and devotion
1. Between the Sun and the Moon
2. The Princess on the Island
3. The Girl who Fell into a Well
4. The ā's Daughter and the Orator
5. A Woman's Loyalty
6. The King's Wife and the Poor Man
7. uā and the Queen
8. The Doe
9. The Woman from the Sea
10. The Raindrop Bubbles Will Testify
a. The Man and his Neighbor
b. āeq Anāf (Tasting Justice)
11. The Coffee Server
12. The Old Man and the Girl, the Old Woman and the Young Man
13. The Girl and her Brother who Became a Deer
14. Do Good and Throw it to the Sea
15. The Transposed Heads
16. The Son Who Obeyed his Mother
17. The Silent Princess and Smart Muammad
18. The Two Notes (Smart Hassan)
19. The Kidnapped Bride
20. The Prince and his Two Wives
21. In the Family
a. Between a Brother and his Sister
b. Between a Bride and her Mother-in-law
22. The Replaced Bride
23. The Dangerous Night-Watch
a. Šāer asan and his Nine Brothers
b. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
24. My Mother Slew Me; My Father Ate Me
a. The Green Bird
b. The Yellow Cow
25. The Boy, the Uncle and the Lover
26. The Inheritance Case

Part II—Stories about Ġouls and Demons
27. The Giant
28. Frē Rummān (Snow White)
29. The Man Who Delivered a Daughter
30. The Girl and her Seven Brothers
31. The Sickle Hand
32. Bells Sound
a. bēna and the Jujube Tree
b. The inn and the Girl in Dog Clothes
33. The Golden Palm Tree
34. The Children and the Ogre
a. The Girls and the Ġūla
b. Grē'a, mēda and daydūn
c. Nu-Nē
35. The Emīr's Daughter who Flew to Switzerland
36. The Golden Children
a. The Three Siblings and the Talking Birds
b. The Wicked Old Woman
c. The Emīr and the Slave
37. The Ġūla, the Mallow Gatherer and his daughter
38. The Two Brothers and the Ġūla
39. Personal Narratives about Meetings with Ġūls
a. The Young Man and the Ġūla
b. The Ġūla Who Posed as a Tribe Member
c. The Groom and the Ġūla
d. The Ġūla in the Waterhole
e. Abu Xier and the Ġūla
40. The Old Woman and the ūt

Part III—Animal stories
41. The Man and the Wounded Snake
a. The Snake Story
b. The Shepherd and the Snake
42. The Goat, the Kid and the Ġūla
43. The Lion Who Wanted to Know Man's Nature
44. The Two Hunters

Epilogue
Bedouin Dialects in the North of Israel / Judith Rosenhouse
Bedouin Tribes in the Galilee—Historical and Settlement Background / Arnon Medzini

Maps
Index of Tale Types
Index of Motifs
Narrators List
Subject Index
Bibliography

Sujets

• Arabic
• Social Science
• Middle Eastern
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Folclore
• Linguistics
• Tales
• Stories
• General officer
• Phonetics
• Mythology
• Middle East
• Galilee
• Arabic language
• Animals
• General
• Nomad
• Myth
• Love
• Translation
• Tradition
• Spirit
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253063854
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Yoel Shalom Perez and Judith Rosenhouse
Frontispiece by Vika Gorstain.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rosenhouse, J., editor. | Perets, Yo el Shalom, editor.
Title: Bedouin folktales from the north of Israel / edited by Judith Rosenhouse and Yoel Shalom Perez.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022027112 (print) | LCCN 2022027113 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253063823 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253063830 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253063847 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Bedouins-Israel-Galilee-Folklore. | Women, Bedouin-Israel-Galilee-Folklore. | Tales-Israel-Galilee.
Classification: LCC GR286.2.B44 B44 2022 (print) | LCC GR286.2.B44 (ebook) | DDC 398.20933/45-dc23/eng/20220709
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022027112
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022027113
CONTENTS
Foreword
Transcription and Abbreviations
PART I Stories of Love, Loyalty, and Devotion
1. Between the Sun and the Moon
2. The Princess on the Island
3. The Girl Who Fell into a Well
4. The s Daughter and the Orator
5. A Woman s Loyalty
6. The King s Wife and the Poor Man
7. u and the Queen
8. The Doe
9. The Woman from the Sea
10. The Raindrop Bubbles Will Testify
A. The Man and His Neighbor
B. eq An f (Tasting Justice)
11. The Coffee Server
12. The Old Man and the Girl, the Old Woman and the Young Man
13. The Girl and Her Brother Who Became a Deer
14. Do Good and Throw It into the Sea
15. The Transposed Heads
16. The Son Who Obeyed His Mother
17. The Silent Princess and Smart M ammad
18. The Two Notes (Smart asan)
19. The Kidnapped Bride
20. The Prince and His Two Wives
21. In the Family
A. Between a Brother and His Sister
B. Between a Bride and Her Mother-in-Law
22. The Replaced Bride
23. The Dangerous Night-Watch
A. er asan and His Nine Brothers
B. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
24. My Mother Slew Me; My Father Ate Me
A. The Green Bird
B. The Yellow Cow
25. The Boy, the Uncle, and the Lover
26. The Inheritance Case
PART II Stories about ls and Demons
27. The Giant
28. Fr Rumm n (Snow White)
29. The Man Who Delivered a Daughter
30. The Girl and Her Seven Brothers
31. The Sickle Hand
32. Bells Sound
A. b na and the Jujube Tree
B. The inn and the Girl in Dog Clothes
33. The Golden Palm Tree
34. The Children and the Ogre
A. The Girls and the la
B. Gr a, m da, and dayd n
C. Nu - e N
35. The Em r s Daughter Who Flew to Switzerland
36. The Golden Children
A. The Three Siblings and the Talking Birds
B. The Wicked Old Woman
C. The Em r and the Slave
37. The la, the Mallow Gatherer, and His Daughter
38. The Two Brothers and the la
39. Personal Narratives about Meetings with ls
A. The Young Man and the la
B. The la Who Posed as a Tribe Member
C. The Groom and the la
D. The la in the Waterhole
E. Abu Xi e r and the la
40. The Old Woman and the t
PART III Animal Stories
41. The Man and the Wounded Snake
A. The Snake Story
B. The Shepherd and the Snake
42. The Goat, the Kid, and the la
43. The Lion Who Wanted to Know Man s Nature
44. The Two Hunters
Epilogue
Bedouin Dialects in the North of Israel / Judith Rosenhouse
Bedouin Tribes in the Galilee: Historical and Settlement Background / Arnon Medzini
Maps
Bibliography
Index of Tale Types
Index of Motifs
Narrators List
Subject and Name Index
FOREWORD
IN 1970, THE FAMOUS French ethnographer Genevi ve Calame-Griaule wrote in her article For Ethnolinguistic Study of African Literatures on the Study of African Oral Literature the following: 1

Rarely, the texts are given to us in their authentic form, that is to say in their original language, and accompanied by a faithful translation. If the documents published by the linguists fulfill these conditions, they generally lack the comments allowing locating them in the culture that produced them. Conversely, the texts, collected and extensively commented on by ethnologists, are unfaithful to the form of these texts.
The exceptions to this rule make us aware of what we have lost and of the effort required for completing them. In order to attempt the total analysis of these literatures, it is absolutely necessary to be able to refer to the contextual and cultural context, which has molded a content of a wider, even universal heritage, into a new and unique form.
The linguistic context alone makes it possible to specify the exact value of the terms used and the stylistic intentions of the narrator. The reference to the cultural context, on the other hand, will make us understand the choice of elements, their symbolic importance, the structural rules that determine their combination, the sociological interest of the narrative, etc. (Translated from French by Y. S. Perez)
This book reflects an interdisciplinary collaboration between two researchers-the one is a linguist and the other, a folklorist-aiming to realize to some extent Calame-Griaule s above quoted expectations. The book is intended for folklorists, anthropologists, and linguists as much as the wide public that cherishes learning about other cultures and wishes to be acquainted with the Arabic narrative tradition of the Middle East.
Yoel Shalom Perez is a folklorist who, in the 1980s, conducted extensive fieldwork focusing on the narrative tradition of Bedouin tribes in the north of Israel. He collected and recorded in Arabic, the original language, more than a hundred folktales, narrated mostly by Bedouin women from various tribes in the Galilee area.
Judith Rosenhouse is a linguist who, in those years, conducted the first linguistic research on the spoken language of the Bedouin tribes in the Galilee, as part of her linguistic specialization in colloquial Arabic dialects.
Our collaboration already had begun in the 1980s, when we helped each other in finding a few Bedouin folktales and translating them into Hebrew. After many years of separate research, this connection was resumed when Yoel was working on publishing his Hebrew book on the Bedouin tribes folktales from the north of Israel. 2
The Hebrew edition included almost all the stories that Yoel had collected. The texts were written in colloquial sedentary Arabic as used in Israel (not in the original Bedouin dialects). They were written in Hebrew alphabetic transcription and accompanied with translation into Hebrew. Almost each folktale was followed by Perez s folkloristic commentary, regarding cultural and social aspects. The book also contained an original comprehensive chapter, written by Rosenhouse for that book, about the Bedouin dialects in the north of Israel, and Medzini s original chapter on the historical and demographical background of the Bedouin tribes in the Galilee.
The current book combines work by the two authors, Perez and Rosenhouse. Rosenhouse transcribed and translated the stories into English directly from the Arabic recordings and added the linguistic, cultural, and sociolinguistic notes for each story she translated. She also revised the chapter on Bedouin dialects that appeared in the Hebrew volume by adding phonological, morphological, and syntactic descriptions, tables, and details that were not mentioned in the Hebrew version. Perez collected most of the stories in Arabic, arranged them by groups, following the folkloristic method, and translated several stories that he had recorded in Hebrew into English. He also wrote the commentary for each story or group of stories.
Twenty-seven informants from thirteen tribes were recorded. Twenty of the twenty-seven narrators were women, and seven, men. Most of the narrators were in their fifties when they told us their narratives. The list of the narrators and their tribes appears in an appendix at the end of the book.
In the current book, we present to English readers fifty-seven folktales from the one hundred tales that appear in the Hebrew book. These fifty-seven tales represent forty-two narrative types and reflect a wide range of narrative genres. In some cases, we present a few versions of the same story, demonstrating narrative variance and plot variance in the different versions. In other cases, we only mention such versions while noting their unique aspects, in comparison with the folktale presented in the book.
The first part of the book contains folktales of the novella type-realistic stories in which human characteristics, such as cleverness, erotica, love, loyalty, and cunning, are those that propagate the story plot. The second part of the book is dedicated to imaginary tales in which the protagonists contend with ghouls, demons, and other imaginary figures. Many of such stories were told by mothers to their children and fulfilled pedagogical roles in their upbringing, by emphasizing protagonists character features worthy of imitation. The narrative types to which these folktales belong are frequent in all the Indo-European space, but they are unique in both the way the protagonists are portrayed and the atmosphere, which reflect the traditional Bedouin lifestyle. The belief in the existence of devils and demons of many forms and types was (and is still) common in Bedouin society. 3 The narrators still sometimes express this belief by metatextual utterances wh