Episode
The Enchanted Pig and The Norka
- Podcast
- The Three Ravens Podcast
- Published
- Apr 30, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3482
- Processing state
processed- Canonical source
- https://www.threeravenspodcast.com/
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Summary
Our Lang Fairy Tale episode for today is a double bill, The Enchanted Pig and The Norka. The Enchanted Pig is a very well known Romanian folk tale, which appears in many different forms, and it's a whole lot of fun! The story compares to East of the Sun and West of the Moon - and possibly wins out against it? Collected by the father of Romanian folklore Petre Ispirescu, we think it's one of the good ones. We follow that on with The Norka, which the Langs took from one of Alexander Afanasyev's many collections of Ukrainian and Russian tales. If you're wondering what a 'norka' is, you might not leave the story any the wiser, though it's an excellent adventure with palaces hidden in eggs, helpful birds, and quite possibly a polyamorous wedding at the end. As ever, we talk about the stories, their history and their tale types - and try out a few more silly voices for our collection! If you are unfamiliar with the Lang Fairy Tales, these seminal collections were assembled between 1889 and 1913 by a married couple, folklorists and translators Nora and Andrew Lang, with most of the work done to compile them completed by Nora, also known as Leonora Blanche Alleyne. Assembled and published in 12 colour-coded "Fairy Books," the corpus the Langs put together included 798 fairy tales from across cultures, many of which had never before been translated into English. They were amongst the most influential books of their time, changing the course of children's literature - although they're hardly just for children, and often deal with quite challenging concepts. Today, purchasing a complete set of the Lang Fairy Books in good condition costs over £4,000 ($5,000+). Thankfully, the collections are all out of copyright, meaning that we can now tell these stories, in podcast form,…