Rhys - An Apple Story - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Found on https://pixabay.com/users/noname_13-2364555/

Apples are ripening and almost edible! While we wait, August 24 is Pride Cymru Day. Cymru is pronounced "kum-ree". It is the Welsh name for the country of Wales. Even Joseph Jacobs in 1892 bemoaned a lack of Welsh fairy tales as most are hero tales. Fortunately John Rhys, in 1901, produced Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx. He was a professor of Celtic literature and agreed most Welsh folklore was:

as a rule I could not get a single story of any length from the mouths of any of my fellow countrymen, but a considerable number of bits of stories. In some instances these were so scrappy that it took me years to discover how to fit them into their proper context; but, speaking generally, I may say, that, as the materials, such as they were, accumulated, my initial difficulties disappeared. I was, however, always a little afraid of refreshing my memory with the legends of other lands lest I should read into those of my own, ideas possibly foreign to them.

Today's story has a prefix you are free to read at Project Gutenberg. It adds little to the story except for Rhys's informant to say "The scene of the legend, as related by my late mother, was, of course, a lake, the Welsh name of which I have, unfortunately, forgotten, but it was somewhere, I think, near Ỻanberis, and the hero a stalwart young farmer." I will separate at the end the final conclusion Rhys makes about the story.

The legend itself reads as follows:—

‘One hot day, the farmer, riding by the lake, took his horse into the water to drink, and, whilst looking straight down over his horse’s ears into the smooth surface, he became aware of a most lovely face, just beneath the tide, looking up archly at him. Quite bewildered, he earnestly beckoned, and by degrees the head and shoulders which belonged to the face emerged from the water. Overcome with emotion, and nearly maddened by the blaze of beauty so suddenly put before him, he leaped from his horse and rushed wildly into the lake to try to clasp the lovely vision to his heart. As this was a clear case of “love at first sight,” the poor young man was not, of course, answerable for his actions. But the vision had vanished beneath the waves, to instantly reappear, however, a yard or two off, with the most provoking of smiles, and holding out her beautiful white hands towards her admirer, but slipping off into deep water the moment he approached.

‘For many days the young farmer frequented the lake, but without again seeing the beautiful Naiad, until one day he sat down by the margin hoping that she would appear, and yet dreading her appearance, for this latter to him simply meant loss of all peace. Yet he rushed on his fate, like the love-sick shepherd in the old Italian romance, who watched the sleeping beauty, yet dreaded her awakening:—Io perderò la pace, quando si sveglierà!

‘The young man had brought the remains of his frugal dinner with him, and was quietly munching, by way of dessert, an apple of rare and delicious quality, from a tree which grew upon a neighbouring estate. Suddenly the lady appeared in all her rare beauty almost close to him, and begged him to “throw” her one of his apples. This was altogether too much, and he replied by holding out the tempting morsel, exhibiting its beautiful red and green sides, saying that, if she really wanted it, she must fetch it herself. Upon this she came up quite close, and, as she took the apple from his left hand, he dexterously seized tight hold of her with his right, and held her fast. She, however, nothing daunted, bawled lustily, at the top of her voice, for help, and made such an outrageous noise, that at length a most respectable looking old gentleman appeared suddenly out of the midst of the lake. He had a superb white beard, and was simply and classically attired merely in a single wreath of beautiful water-lilies wound round his loins, which was possibly his summer costume, the weather being hot. He politely requested to know what was the matter, and what the young farmer wanted with his daughter. The case was thereupon explained, but not without the usual amount of nervous trepidation which usually happens to love-sick swains when called into the awful presence of “Papa” to “explain their intentions!”

‘After a long parley the lady, at length, agreed to become the young man’s wife on two conditions, which he was to solemnly promise to keep. These conditions were that he was never to strike her with steel or clay (earth), conditions to which the young man very readily assented. As these were primitive days, when people were happy and honest, there were no lawyers to encumber the Holy Estate with lengthy settlements, and to fill their own pockets with heavy fees; matters were therefore soon settled, and the lady married to the young farmer on the spot by the very respectable old lake deity, her papa.

‘The story goes on to say that the union was followed by two sons and two daughters. The eldest son became a great physician, and all his descendants after him were celebrated for their great proficiency in the noble healing art. The second son was a mighty craftsman in all works appertaining to the manufacture and use of iron and metals. Indeed it has been hinted that, his little corracle of bull’s hide having become old and unsafe, he conceived the brilliant idea of making one of thin iron. This he actually accomplished, and, to the intense amazement of the wondering populace, he constantly used it for fishing, or other purposes, on the lake, where he paddled about in perfect security. This important fact ought to be more generally known, as it gives him a fair claim to the introduction of iron ship-building, pace the shades of Beaufort and Brunel.

‘Of the two daughters, one is said to have invented the small ten-stringed harp, and the other the spinning-wheel. Thus were introduced the arts of medicine, manufactures, music, and woollen work.

‘As the old ballad says, applying the quotation to the father and mother:—

They lived for more than forty year

Right long and happilie!

‘One day it happened that the wife expressed a great wish for some of those same delicious apples of which she was so fond, and of which their neighbour often sent them a supply. Off went the farmer, like a good husband that he was, and brought back, not only some apples, but a beautiful young sapling, seven or eight feet high, bearing the same apple, as a present from their friend. This they at once proceeded to set, he digging and she holding; but the hole not being quite deep enough he again set to work, with increased energy, with his spade, and stooping very low threw out the last shovelful over his shoulder—alas! without looking—full into the breast of his wife. She dropped the sapling and solemnly warned him that one of the two conditions of their marriage contract had been broken. Accident was pleaded, but in vain; there was the unfortunate fact—he had struck her with clay! Looking upon the sapling as the cause of this great trouble he determined to return it forthwith to his kind neighbour. Taking a bridle in his hand he proceeded to the field to catch his horse, his wife kindly helping him. They both ran up, one on each side, and, as the unruly steed showed no signs of stopping, the husband attempted to throw the bridle over his head. Not having visited Mexico in his travels, and thereby learned the use of the lasso, he missed his horse’s head and—misfortune of misfortunes—struck his wife in the face with the iron bit, thus breaking the second condition. He had struck her with steel. She no sooner received the blow than—like Esau—she “cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry,” and bidding her husband a last farewell, fled down the hill with lightning speed, dashed into the lake, and disappeared beneath the smooth and glassy waters! Thus, it may be said that, if an apple—indirectly—occasioned the beginning of her married life, so an apple brought about its sad termination.’

***

Such is Mr. Gattie’s tale, and to him probably is to be traced its literary trimming; but even when it is stripped of that accessory, it leaves us with difficulties of somewhat the same order as those attaching to some of the stories which have passed through the hands of Glasynys. However, the substance of it seems to be genuine, and to prove that there has been a Northwalian tradition which traced the medical art to a lake lady like the Egeria of the Physicians of Myđfai.

***

The water creatures are clearly not what we might think of as mermaids or mermen, but it's interesting how accidentally the happy couple were parted. It also reminds me of the many selkie stories. It's as refreshing as an apple, this tale from a country's too little-known folk traditions. Hopefully that similarity is not a case by Rhys "of refreshing my memory with the legends of other lands lest I should read into those of my own, ideas possibly foreign to them." It certainly is a tasty tale!

***********************

 

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:        

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for December 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. 

Have fun discovering even more stories

 

Bailey - The Three Apples - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Apple Orchards are turning into cider mills complete with all manner of activities, crowds, and yellow jackets!  Just because they are yellow with black stripes doesn't make them bees!  They are members of the WASP family . . . read Bees and the Anishinaabe for a story from 2014 about this irritable and irritating cousin of the useful bee.

But whether you have any of the above, the apple trees should be drawing our attention as autumn starts bringing the apple into the spotlight. Carolyn Sherwin Bailey from her Tell Me Another Story has a story worth remembering and a bit of talking about afterwards.

THE THREE APPLES

The old apple tree stood in the orchard with the other trees, and all summer long it had stretched out its branches wide to catch the rain and the sun to make its apples grow round and ripe. Now it was fall, and on the old apple tree were three great apples as yellow as gold and larger than any other apples in the whole orchard. The apple tree stretched and reached as far as it could, until the branch on which the three gold apples grew hung over the orchard wall. There were the three great apples, waiting for some one to pick them, and as the wind blew through the leaves of the apple tree it seemed to sing:

"Here in the orchard are apples three, Who uses one well shall a treasure see."

And one morning Gerald came down the lane that passed by the orchard wall. He looked longingly at the three gold apples, wishing, wishing that he might have one. Just then the wind sang its song again in the leaves of the apple tree and, plump, down to the ground, right at Gerald's feet, fell one of the three gold apples.

He picked it up and turned it round and round in his hands. How sweet it smelled, and how mellow and juicy it was! Gerald could think of nothing so good to do with such a beautiful ripe apple as to eat it. He put it to his mouth and took a great bite of it, then another bite, and another. Soon there was nothing left of the apple but the core, which Gerald threw away. He smacked his lips and went on his way, but the wind in the apple trees sang, sorrowfully, after him:

"Here in the orchard are apples two, But gone is the treasure that fell for you."

And after a while Hilda came down the lane that passed by the orchard wall. She looked up at the two beautiful gold apples that hung on the branch of the old apple tree, and she listened to the wind as it sang in the branches to her:

"Here in the orchard are apples two, A treasure they hold for a child like you."

Then the wind blew harder and, plump, an apple fell in the lane right in front of Hilda.

She picked it up joyfully. She had never seen so large and so golden an apple. She held it carefully in her clasped hands and thought what a pity it would be to eat it, because then it would be gone.

"I will keep this gold apple always," Hilda said, and she wrapped it up in the clean handkerchief that was in her pocket. Then Hilda went home, and there she laid away in a drawer the gold apple that the old apple tree had given her, closing the drawer tightly. The apple lay inside, in the dark, and all wrapped up, for many days, until it spoiled. And when Hilda next went down the lane and past the orchard, the wind in the apple tree sang to her:

"Only one apple where once there were two, Gone is the treasure I gave to you."

Last of all, Rudolph went down the lane one fine fall morning when the sun was shining warm and the wind was out. There, hanging over the orchard wall, he saw just one great gold apple that seemed to him the most beautiful apple that he had ever seen. As he stood looking up at it, the wind in the apple tree sang to him, and it said:

"Round and gold on the apple tree, A wonderful treasure, hanging, see!"

Then the wind blew harder, and down fell the last gold apple of the three into Rudolph's waiting hands.

He held it a long time and looked at it as Gerald and Hilda had, thinking how good it would be to eat, and how pretty it would be to look at if he were to save it. Then he decided not to do either of these things. He took his jack-knife out of his pocket and cut the gold apple in half, straight across, and exactly in the middle between the blossom and the stem.

Oh, the surprise that waited for Rudolph inside the apple! There was a star, and in each point of the star lay a small black seed. Rudolph carefully took out all the seeds and climbed over the orchard wall, holding them in his hand. The earth in the orchard was still soft, for the frost had not yet come. Rudolph made holes in the earth and in each hole he dropped an apple seed. Then he covered up the seeds and climbed back over the wall to eat his apple, and then go on his way.

But as Rudolph walked down the lane, the orchard wind followed him, singing to him from every tree and bush,

"A planted seed is a treasure won.

The work of the apple is now well done."
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or as another site in thinking about philosophy reminds us "There's a Brilliant Star Inside of Every Apple."

 

Have you taken the apple cores and at least tossed them into a field, especially in an area unlikely to be mowed?  I love to do that.  Maybe a deer will find that apple core and plant it somewhere else along with its own fertilizer.  

Similarly I love the story of how the Granny Smith apple came to be.  A site called Culinary Lore says there are various versions of the story, but 

The most common origin story of Granny Smith apples (Some folks just call them granny apples) is that, around 1868 in New South Wales, Mrs. Smith had dumped a crate of old rotten apples French Crab Apples from Tasmania in her garden and then later found an apple sapling growing there. The tree grew to produce green tart apples “that had never grown before.” They subsequently became famous not only in Australia but were shipped all over the world, including the U.S.

It helps to have other apple trees near enough to fertilize your "planted" tree, but even old untended apple trees can produce crops.  Our apple trees furnish treats for neighbors' donkeys and horses and we're happy to have them appreciated.

The apple in this story is probably the popular Golden Delicious.

My favorite apple is the Ida Red, but I enjoy Granny Smith apples, too.  That's the great thing about apples, there's so many varieties.  Enjoy! --  (and maybe toss it in a field after you eat it.)

******************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:        

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. 

Have fun discovering even more stories

Pyle - Apple of Contentment - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

How perfect that "Johnny Appleseed" or John Chapman was born on September the 26th at the busiest time for cider mills and the core time for apple festivals!  You do know, I presume, that he wasn't the same as the folk hero of tall tale fame

nor Disney's American Legends cartoon version.  Fort Wayne, Indiana lays claim to being where he died and celebrates him in many ways, but doesn't mark his grave.  A bit closer to me, Findlay, Ohio notes his work there.  I've never been able to locate any proof of his planting here just a bit north in Michigan.  I guess his influence was sufficient to create the plethora of orchards and cider mills.

As a result I have a real taste for telling apple stories.  For those wanting to separate Johnny Appleseed fact from fiction, there's the inevitable Wikipedia article, but you might also try 9 Facts That Tell the True Story of Johnny Appleseed (my browser said it was still trying to download the page, but it actually was downloaded), the supplemental 10 Things You Didn't Know About Johnny Appleseed, and Smithsonian's The Real Johnny Appleseed Brought Apples and Booze to the American Frontier.  I consider the last article best, if you will only read one.  In several of them you will discover Prohibition actually resulted in almost all of his trees being chopped down!  On a happier note, I was delighted to find the Disney film was accurate in its use of the Swedenborgian hymn you may recall singing: Oh the Lord is good to me and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun, the moon and the apple tree.

Last week I mentioned Howard Pyle in connection with his Book of Pirates, which was actually a collection of his various writings and illustrations about pirates.  None were short enough for here and today's story is long, but it's my favorite apple story.  It comes from Pepper and Salt; or Seasoning for Young Folks, which I recommend along with his The Wonder Clock; or Four and Twenty Marvelous Tales, Being One for Each Hour of the Day and the less easily found in stores and libraries, Twilight Land.  He did other books, but these three are wonderful anthologies of his own tale telling and deserve tasting again and again.  So don't just take a bite out of this story, it's worth gobbling it all up.  When you re-tell it, you barely need to digest it for today's listeners as it tells well even though long.

At times it seems as if the title should be the Apple of Discontentment, since it is reserved for Christine.  Similarly I have a bit of discontentment as my second page is only just legible with the binding tighter than I like.  After that I was able to push it down for better viewing, but even then you will notice a bit of a shadow.

When I talked earlier about the possibility of renaming this the Apple of Discontentment, there are a few other thoughts occurring to me.  As I mentioned earlier this is a long story to tell.  When telling at an apple festival or cider mill where people are wanting to move about, shorter stories are easier.  Go to Jackie Baldwin's old site of ideas from fellow storytellers for Apple stories and folklore resources.

On a personal bit of discontentment, I had a twisted, dead tree tangled in with an apple tree cut down only to discover the apple tree had been using the other tree as a prop!  The apple tree started to tip and, before any additional support could be added, a strong wind storm finished the job.  Neighborhood deer were the only ones eating those apples as it was a roadside volunteer.  Often I've tossed the cores of my favorite apples, Ida Reds and Granny Smiths, out a car window or in my own fields hoping to be another "Johnny Appleseed."  I'm already planning how this tree will be replaced with Granny Smiths currently and then add Ida Reds when I can get them.  (By the way, I have a true story I love to tell about the real Granny Smith of Australia.)

In the meantime, I hope you keep reading from the Public Domain.  Here's my closing for days when I have a story in Keeping the Public in Public Domain. 
***************** 

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  


At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it. 
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend -

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

• The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
             - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
             - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain
             - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
             - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
             - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/
             - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html
  
   
  This reminds me, you're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site is so huge, probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Time Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but you can still see it.  I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/. 

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!