Noodleheads:
The Wisdom of Fools
Some of these fools are wise. These noodleheads might be named Jack in England - (though at some point Jack must have immigrated to Appalachian America), Ivan in Russia, or Boots in Norway, or Guifà in Sicily, but just as often they have no names at all. They may be the wise men of Chelm in Poland, or the merry men of Gotham in England. They may be pranksters and jesters like Tyl or Nesreddin who seem very much the fool, but whose pranks often just expose the foolishness of those who think themselves wiser. They may even be cartoon characters who take everything literally and yet never fall because they just don't know gravity exists. But these same characters are often caricatures which have lent themselves to much further development by writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem in their Yiddish stories. The stories are very old - Tyl stories go back to before 1515, Gotham to before 1540, Hodja to before the 1300's. But these Medieval "urban legends" are as frequently told today and as fresh and revealing as they were before.
The Noodlehead stories are usually simple and brief - some little more than proverbs. They are almost always humorous and entertaining. Though often told for younger children, they still appeal to all ages. Many have been turned into Picture Books. The stories themselves are easily transported from one cultural context to another - tales originating with Tyl Ulinspiegel or the Hodja can often be found in American folklore. Plus there are other fools whose very names make listeners smile in anticipation of their antics: Giufà in Sicily, Guno and Koya in Java. These are good stories for storytellers to start with. Most collections of folktales contain at least one or two noodlehead stories. Besides Gotham and Chelm, there are also other foolish towns: Belmont and Meiringen in Switzerland; Hums in Iran; Lagos in Mexico; Masi in the Solomon Islands; Montieri in Italy; Schilda or Schildburg in Germany; Kampen in the Netherlands; Bemböle (or Hölmölä) in Finland; Tälje in Sweden; and Mols in Denmark.
Neppe Pettersson, who has a special interest in the stories of the noodleheaded people from the Finnish village of Bemböle (Hölmölä in Finnish) suggests a distinction between numskulls. In the index of Aarne & Thompsen, the numskull stories are found from AT 1200 to AT 1349. "These are the stories of a special place, or a village, where everyone is a numskull. The community of numskulls is a happy bunch of people. They are hardworking and kind people. They just don't know any basic natural law. They do not know about light and darkness - that is why a numskull can try to carry light in his hands into a dark room. They can't draw any conclusions or see any consequences - that is why you can put a man in the hole of the mill stone to guard the stone while rolling it down the hill so the stone won't get lost. There aren't any wise among these fools, no wise fool is ever found in these stories nor any tricksters. No person is ever mentioned by his or her name, either. But the stories told about the townspeople of Gotham or Chelm are not put into that category of stories." She says: "They are much too clever in Chelm." In the Aarne-Thompsen index there is a collection of anecdotes and humorous stories found by the numbers AT 1350 to AT 1874 - there we can find the wise fools or tricksters, folk like Tyl and Hodja. "In many of these stories, people are mentioned by their real names. Or stories are about real, existing villages."
This page surveys some of the many origins and resources available for finding tales about noodleheads and their many kin. Books are linked to Amazon.com. Used books can also be searched for at ABEBooks. Links with stories are in red.
Moritz Jagendorf (1888-1981) was the author of Noodlehead Stories from around the World (1950), The Wise men of Gotham (1957), and Tyll Ulenspigel's Merry Pranks (1938). He was born in Austria on August 24, 1888, but at the age of fifteen moved to New York to live with his father. After study at Yale Law School and a D. D. S. at Columbia University (1916), during the 1920s and 1930s, he devoted most of his time to writing plays, puppet shows, and pantomimes for children including titles such as Fairyland and Footlights (1925), Pantomimes for Children's Theatre (1926), Pie and the Tart (1930), and Plays for Club, School, and Camp (1935), but when Jagendorf heard his first American folktale, he lost interest in plays. He began to concentrate on the retelling of popular legends and folk stories for children. He began to concentrate on the retelling of popular legends and folk stories for children. His first collection of folktales was Tyll Ulenspigel's Merry Pranks (1938). This led to many more collections of European and American folklore including compilations of regional legends such as New England Bean-Pot (1948); Upstate Downstate (1949), many collections of tales from the Middle Atlantic states; from New York's Catskills region; the Midwest and the South. M. A. Jagendorf died in 1981. He was the author of over 40 books.
Published Material on Gotham
Online resources: The Merry Men of Gotham
The city of Chelm is in eastern Poland, about 25 km from the Ukrainian border. The "wise men" of Chelm and their foolish acts are featured in many Yiddish folktales, giving the city a reputation similar to the one enjoyed (or suffered) by the towns and regions of Mols in Denmark, Schilda in Germany, Gotham in England, and Biella in Italy, to mention but a few examples. Just imagine town where everyone is a fool. The foolish characters encountered in the stories have have inspired many stories both for children and for older readers. Both Isaac Bashevis Singer and Solomon J. Rabinowitz (aka Sholem Aleichem) have penned stories set in this Eastern European context. Singer's "Shlemiel" has been turned into a musical play, his "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" became the movie with Barbara Streisand: and Rabinowitz wrote the stories of "Tevye the Milkman" and his daughters that became the hit musical and film: The Fiddler on the Roof.
Published Material relating to Chelm
Online Resources on Chelm
[Ger.,=owl-mirror, hence English Owlglass], a north German or Dutch peasant clown of the 14th century who was immortalized in chapbooks describing his practical jokes on clerics and townsfolk -- his name reveals him as "the man who holds up mirrors for owls to look into". The first Till chapbook (c.1510) was probably in Saxon in a book by H. Bote, but the story it told spread all over Europe and North Britain. He allegedly was born in Kneitlingen (Braunschweig/ Lower Saxony) and died in 1350 in Moelln (Schleswig-Holstein). Till is the hero of a tone poem by Richard Strauss and of many novels, poems, and stories. Tyll Ulenspiegel is one of the variant spellings
Published Resources on Tyl Eulenspeigel
Probably the oldest and biggest collection of wise fool stories are those of the Mullah Nesreddin Hodja. Tales of Hodja extend from Albania in the west to Western China in the East, and from Siberia to the Sahara, though Turkey claims to be his homeland. Hodja is often pictured riding backwards on a donkey, so he can see where he has been. Wit, common sense, ingenuousness, ridicule... and the kind of humor that reflects human psychology, exposes the shortcomings of a society, criticizes even are the elements which together create a special kind of logic, the Nasreddin Hodja logic. It is not an exaggeration to consider him one of the main building blocks of folk thought, and his humor, one of the best in the world. According to certain stories, Hodja was a contemporary of Tamerlane, who invaded Anatolia at the beginning of the 15th century, and according to the others, he lived either before or after the age of Tamerlane some suggest he died about 1284 -1285. Many stories and sayings have been attributed to the Hodja.
In Albanian the name would be spelled Naxhrudin Hoxha and pronounced NAZHJ-rue-deen HO-zhah. Hoxha is a common surname in Albania, a province of the Ottoman Empire for about 450 years. In the Arab world, the name is pronounced Naser-a-Din, The "Na" is pronounced with depth, something between "Na" and "Nu". The "Di" is a little bit prolonged and emphasised. The whole name is said in one breath, don't stop untill you get to the "i".Hodja in Arabic is "Haj" when the "H" is a letter that does not exist in English, and it is pronounced from the throut like the dutch pronounce "jj".
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