Ion Creangă (1837–1889)

A hungry fox manages to steal some fish from a passing peasant in this folktale from Romanian author Ion Creangă, pretending to be dead in order to be taken up into the peasant's cart. Celebrating this good fortune, the fox is confronted by a bear, who wants his share of the fish. The cunning fox tricks this ursine intruder into "fishing" in the nearby lake for his own fish, leading to a painful loss of tail, when the lake freezes over...

Published in 1983 in Kishinev, the capital of Moldova (then part of the USSR), The Fox Plays the Bear a Trick is described on its title page as being translated from the Moldavian. As I understand it, in current English usage, Moldova/Moldovan refers to the modern-day nation-state, whereas Moldavia/Moldavian refers to the historic region, which encompassed that state, as well parts of modern-day Romania and Ukraine, and which was for many centuries its own autonomous entity. In any case, my further understanding is that the Moldavian/Moldovan language is essentially the same as the Romanian language, but that Soviet policy was to distinguish between the two. I'm honestly not sure if this is still a controversial issue, although perhaps not, given that 'Romanian' has been listed as the official language of Moldova since 1991. However that may be, I have added the book to both my "Romanian children" shelf, because Creangă is considered a Romanian author, to my "Moldovan children" shelf, as the book was published in the capital of that nation, and to my "Soviet children" shelf, as Moldova was still part of the USSR when the book was published.

Leaving aside the issue of national classification, the story here was quite interesting to me, and although penned by Creangă, must surely come from folklore. The two parts of the story - the fox stealing the fish from the peasant, and the fox tricking the bear - can both be found in multiple other folk traditions from around the world. The first part is a story I have encountered a number of times in various Reynardian collections - in Renard the Fox, Rachel Anderson presents a French version in which her vulpine hero steals some eels from a peasant's cart - as well as in Judit Bodnar's retelling of a Hungarian variant, in A Wagonload of Fish. The second part is even more widespread, at least in the northern hemisphere, and I have read variants from as far afield as Native America. Natalia Belting relates a variant from the Loucheux people of the Mackenzie River in her The Long-Tailed Bear and Other Indian Legends, while an Oneida variant can be found here, on that nation's website. There are variants from Norway (see The Bear's Tale: A Folktale from Norway by Rita Schlachter), from Hungary (see Bodnar's Tale of a Tail for a revisionist take), and from Russia (see Elena Polenova's Why the Bear Has No Tail and Other Russian Fairy-Tales). I'm glad to have discovered this Romanian/Moldovan version!

Engaging enough, as a story, and of interest to me as a student of folklore, The Fox Plays the Bear a Trick also features appealing artwork, done by W. Brinzey. My only real criticism is that the text contains a number of typos, and looks to have been translated into English by someone (D. Melenchuk) who was not a native speaker. Leaving that aside, this is one I would recommend to all young folklore lovers, to fox lovers, and to anyone interested in Romanian/Moldovan/Soviet children's literature. A digital copy can be found here, on the Internet Archive.… (more)