Tailor and his Wife

Not enough money in your pocket? This favourite bawdy tale from Scotland shows one answer.

This wonderful Scottish comic tale is one of my favourites when telling to adult audiences.
I first met the story in the excellent collection Scottish Traditional Tales, ed. A.J. Bruford and D.A. MacDonald (Edinburgh, 1994). They collected it from Alisdair Stewart.

In 2023 I was delighted to hear a German version told by Annika Füser and Mohammed Kello. With their help, and that of Prof. Kristin Wardetzky, I tracked down a source: “Der Maler und der Domprobst zu Regensburg” by Hans Sachs (1494-1576) in Deutsch Schwänke (Leander Petzold. Schneider Verlag 2002).

Below is a short video with a little more about the context of such tales.

Want to download the video?
Videos are provided free to view.

If you want to download one, I can arrange that. Just send me a mail telling me which story you’d like, and your reason for wanting a download.

Disclaimer

The video clips here are all amateur quality, shot in various theatres or, as here, in my home studio.

Their intention is just to show the range of my storytelling and give a flavour of a live performance.

Permission is granted for use in non-commercial educational contexts.

The videos are © Richard Martin.

Professionally recorded CDs and DVDs are available here.

More comic tales

The video gallery has become very extensive. So if you would enjoy more tales like this, here are a few suggestions.

Go here for tales to watch

Go here for a list of all tales included on this site

Go here to receive an e-mail notification when new tales are added

Permission to tell outlines my views on copyright

For those who are teachers: Telling stories in the classroom: basing language teaching on storytelling