The Midnight Washerwoman and Other Tales of Lower Brittany

Twenty-nine Breton tales, as told over a series of long winter nights, featuring an ingenious miller, a Jerusalem-bound ant, a mad dash at midnight, and more

In the late nineteenth century, the folklorist François-Marie Luzel spent countless winter evenings listening to stories told by his neighbors, local Breton farmers and villagers. At these social gatherings, known as veillées, Luzel recorded the tales in unusual detail, capturing a storytelling tradition that is now almost forgotten. The Midnight Washerwoman and Other Tales of Lower Brittany collects twenty-nine stories gathered by Luzel, many translated into English for the first time. The tales are presented in a series of five imaginary veillées, giving readers a unique opportunity to listen in on a long-ago winter's night of storytelling.

Some of the stories mix the apparently supernatural with the everyday-as in the title tale, when a mysteriously nocturnal washerwoman causes three handsome lads to flee so quickly they lose their clogs in the process. Others invite listeners to root for the underdog, as when a simple miller outwits a powerful seigneur. Another tale must have been greeted with raucous laughter as it recounts an ascending ladder of obstacles-from a mouse to a cat to a man to God (or the Devil) himself-confronted by a traveling ant. Michael Wilson, the volume's editor and translator, provides a substantive introduction that discusses Luzel's work and the significance of Breton storytelling. Michael Wilson is professor of drama at Loughborough University, UK, where he is also Director of the Storytelling Academy, a research and teaching collective. He is the author of Storytelling and Theatre. "Michael Wilson provides a helpful introduction to the life and work of François-Marie Luzel, the leading nineteenth-century folklorist of Breton-speaking Brittany. Luzel's Breton storytellers were not the God- and death-haunted figures one encounters in some folklore writing of the period-they were pragmatic, inventive, and witty. All these qualities come through in Wilson's lively translations of tales collected by Luzel."-David Hopkin, Hertford College, University of Oxford "Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Award, Folklore Society" "This book will be fascinating for anyone who has an interest in storytelling and the oral tradition and Professor Wilson has done a fine job of making a potentially obscure heritage of stories available and understandable to a modern audience."---Terry Potter, The Letterpress Project "Entertaining. . . . Academic readers will also find food for thought."---Christine Goldberg, Journal of Folklore Research Reviews "A wonderful set of stories."---Michael Cronin, Irish Times "{This} book is delightful: always lively and interesting, but also dreamlike, intriguing and thrilling by turns. It is a pleasure to read, beautifully illustrated by Caroline Pedler."---Síle de Cléir, The Conversation UK