Native's Return

One of Story Teller Alexander Woollcott's hobbies is collecting folk tales which bob up month after month, year after year, sometimes with different characters and settings but always with the same set of basic facts. One such story concerns the European peasant boy who leaves home, makes his fortune, returns in manhood to surprise his aged, indigent parents with a money gift. The parents, who keep the village inn, fail to recognize him when he asks for lodging. Planning to surprise them in the morning, the son retires for the night. But the greedy innkeepers, who have seen their guest's bulging wallet, butcher him in his sleep. In his wallet they discover identification of their son. Most versions end with the parents in remorseful suicide.

Four years ago Mr. Woollcott discussed that story, "the perfect specimen of folk lore," with English Journalist Valentine Williams, who testified to its recurrence in English, French and German newspapers about every six-months for the past 25 years. Nearly always it is issued from, some remote town in Eastern Europe. Two weeks after the Woollcott-Williams conversation, the same old story landed on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune as an Associated Press dispatch from Warsaw, with the headline: PARENTS KILL RICH SON POSING AS A STRANGER Pole, Home After 18 Years In the U. S., Goes Unrecognized

Last fortnight the Associated Press innocently carried the hoary old legend again, this time dated from Oravisa, Yugoslavia. Excerpts:

"This is the story of the Serb Orthodox Christmas time, the filial love of George Nikolau, and how three persons died at the village inn. Nikolau had been away from home for a long time. In Hungary he had grown wealthy by Serb standards. He decided to return for Christmas. With him he brought 10,000 dinars, about $1,900, as a gift. . . ."*

In the Yugoslavian version the prodigal's mother and sister did the murder, the mother hanged herself, the sister threw herself into a well. The A. P. dispatch, however, added one new bit of journalistic invention: "The 10,000 dinars will pay for a triple funeral."

*At current rate of exchange: 10,000 dinars-$228.75.

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