Chris Handley's suggested parlour game

[Ivan A Derzhanski <cbmvax!uunet!COGSCI.ED.AC.UK!iad>]

Re Bob Slaughter's story about _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_ being
told to an African tribe.

I can't help retelling a passage from Ivan Vazov's _Under the Yoke_,
the first Bulgarian novel (and certainly one of the best ones).

Imagine this small town, a few years before the liberation of Bulgaria
(ie a little more than a hundred years ago).  Several people decide to
perform a play in order to raise money for a certain purpose.  Now
"theatre" is a novel concept for most of the population, so of course
everyone is present, either on the stage or in the audience, and in
either case damn excited.  The guest of honour is the Bey, the local
representative of the Ottoman power.  He doesn't know Bulgarian, so a
rather talkative citizen, who knows the story (based on a book of some
popularity at that time), volunteers to explain to him what is going
on.  To wit, a mediaeval German count sets off to war, leaving a
trusted servitor in charge of his wife.  The man tries to win the
Countess' favours, but the virtuous woman responds in the negative.
He longs for revenge and worries for his head should the Countess
complain to her husband, so upon the Count's return he hastens to
report that the lady has violated the duty of faithfulness in his
absence.  The furious Count immediately orders another of his men to
take her to the forest and kill her there.

The translator is carried away by his own eloquence, so apart from the
plot of the play he also tells the Bey a similar story about a French
consul in Istanbul, with the effect that the Bey is left with the
permanent impression that the Count is a French consul.  But he is not
quite satisfied with the logic of the events.

  "That consul fellow is a great simpleton.  How come he ordered that
his wife be killed, without investigating the case properly?  Marry, I
never so much as lock up a street drunkard, without first making him
breathe to Agent Mihal."
  "You see, Bey efendi, that's how it's written, to make it more curious."
  "Well the writer is a fool; and the consul is an even greater fool."

Meanwhile the good man, who is convinced of the Countess' innocence,
leaves her in a cave in the forest, where after many years she is
found by her hunting husband (who by that time has discovered the
truth), and their happiness knows no limit.  The Count intends to
punish severely his wife's accuser, but she pleads that he be forgiven
and urged to repent, and so he is.

This last point is a major disappointment for the Bey, in whose
understanding the story is somehow incomplete.  His intuition is that
the villain must hang by the neck until dead, otherwise justice can't
be said to have triumphed, and surely that is much more important than
a woman's momentary emotions.

  "They ought to have hanged the rascal.  That's what I'd have done...
Do me a favour, if they give the same play again, say that he should hang.
It fits better this way."

Ivan