They're at the Post! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Italy

Although stories involving a trickster cat had been around for centuries, the first written version of the story known in English as "Puss in Boots" was in a collection by Giovanni Francesco Straparola, published in the 1550s. It became more widely known after its inclusion in Charles Perrault's "Histoires ou contes du temps passé avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l'Oye" ("Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals: Mother Goose Tales") in 1697.

In this story, titled "Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté" ("The Master Cat or Puss in Boots"), a miller's youngest son inherits a cat, which seems like a pretty disappointing inheritance.

However, the cat (who demands to be given boots to wear), is a cunning animal, who manages to gain the king's attention and deceive him into thinking that the young lad is a wealthy noble, so that he is allowed to marry the princess and they subsequently live a life of ease. Along the way, the cat manages to trick an ogre who can change shape into transforming itself into a mouse that Puss can devour, allowing his master to seem to reside in the ogre's mansion when the king comes to visit.

Answer: They were unnamed

The dwarfs who gave Snow White shelter from the evil queen (in the original version, her mother; later her stepmother) who wishes her eliminated so that the magic mirror will confirm that the queen is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, are not named in the original tales.

In 1912, a stage play gave them their first names, along with distinct personalities: Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Quee, Snick, Whick. In 1937 Walt Disney's animated movie provided the names and personalities with which most people will be familiar: Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy.

There have been a number of other sets of names over the years, including Huckepack, Naseweis, Packe, Pick, Puck, Purzelbaum, Rumpelbold, used in the 1961 film "Schneewittchen".

Answer: One bad turn deserves another

Like most of Aesop's fables, this is short and sweet. A fox and a stork (or similarly long-billed bird) are friends. When the fox invites the stork to dinner, he decides to play a trick, and serve soup in a flat dish which makes it impossible for the bird to do more than dip its bill in; the stork goes home hungry. When the fox then visits the stork for a return meal, he is served soup again, but this time in a tall thin glass which means he cannot reach down to more than a few sips of the food. The moral is worded slightly differently in various translations, but always amounts to reminding us that we should behave nicely to others if we expect them to behave well towards us.

The other morals come from other fables: "Appearances are deceptive" is the message from "The Ant and the Chrysalis"; "He that finds discontentment in one place is not likely to find happiness in another" comes from "The Donkey and His Masters"; "Fair weather friends are not worth much" is illustrated by "The Swallow and the Crow".

Answer: Japan

The present most common version of the story of Momotaro has him arriving on Earth inside a giant clam peach ("momo", the local name for a popular variety of peach). When the elderly woman who found the peach floating down the river opens it, she and her husband discover the boy, and raise him as their own. (The "taro" part of his name means oldest son.) Many years later he sets out to battle the demons who have invaded a nearby island, a quest which he successfully completes with the assistance of a talking dog, a monkey and a pheasant he meets along the way.

The treasure they recover from the ogres allows the family to live in comfort for the rest of their lives.

Answer: False

In this version, and in that included by Joseph Jacobs in "English Fairy Tales" in 1890, the little pigs who built their houses of straw and of sticks are both eaten after the wolf blows each house down. The third pig, whose house was built of bricks, repeatedly outwitted the wolf, eventually catching him in a large pot of water as he attempted to enter the house via the chimney, and gleefully feasting on boiled wolf. Later versions have the first two pigs running for safety as each house collapses, and the three of them triumphing over the wolf, who either dies as in the original, or simply runs away never more to be seen.

In 1883, Joel Chandler Harris included a variant on the story in his "Nights with Uncle Remus", with Br'er Rabbit replacing the pigs, and Br'er Fox the wolf. In 1892 Andrew Lang included the story in "The Green Fairy Book", in a slightly different version in which the pigs were named (Browny, Whitey and Blacky), and their interactions were much more detailed. The fox who was attacking them took the first two pigs to his den, and the third pig rescued them after defeating the fox. Walt Disney produced a number of versions of the story, starting with a 1933 "Silly Symphony" cartoon in which they were named Fifer Pig, Fiddler Pig, and Practical Pig (the first two preferring to play their musical instruments instead of preparing themselves against danger).

Answer: Goldilocks

In the Russian story, Masha (or, in diminutive form, Mashenka) comes across an empty house as she is wandering in the woods. When the bear who owns it returns, she is held captive. She finally escapes by tricking the bear into carrying her home, hidden inside a basket that the bear believes contains some food being sent to Masha's grandparents.

The more familiar story of Goldilocks, who finds an empty house where she rests in three chairs, eats from three bowls of porridge, and tries to sleep in three beds before being surprised by the return to their home of three bears, actually comes from an older story in which the household invader is an old woman, and the three bears are all mature males. This story was first published by Robert Southey in "The Doctor" (1837). Twelve years later, Joseph Cundall changed the ugly old woman into a pretty young girl named Silver-Hair, a name which evolved to become Goldilocks. Over time, the three bears were portrayed with a number of different relationships before settling down into the family (Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear) with which we are familiar today.

Answer: Pulling a giant turnip out of the ground

The story "The Gigantic Turnip" (which can also be translated as radish) was included in "Russian Folk Tales", edited by Aleksandr Afanas'ev and published around 1860. It tells of a man who has grown a turnip that is so large he cannot pull it out by himself, so he asks his wife for help. When more help is needed, they successively recruit their granddaughter, their dog, their cat, and finally a mouse. The moral of the story is that nobody's contribution is without merit, as it was only when the smallest and weakest member of the group added their assistance that success was achieved.

Part of the popularity of this story lies in the fun of the rhyming names of the participants, which are repeated as the group grows: the turnip is "repka", the old man (termed the grandfather to get the word pattern working nicely) is "dedka", the grandmother is "babka", the granddaughter is "vnuchca", the female dog is "zhuchka", the female cat is "koshka", and the female mouse is "myshka".

Answer: True

While no details are known, the town records of Hamelin (in Germany) have an entry in 1384 which reads, "It is 100 years since our children left." That ambiguous statement does not explain how or why they left - speculation has led to suggestions including a plague of some sort leading to widespread death, or starvation due to food shortages, or large scale death due to some disaster such as a landslide or flood. The suggestion is that the figure of the Pied Piper is a personification of Death. Around 1560 the story was embellished with the addition of a plague of rats, leading the town to call for someone to rid them of the pests, and the story began to evolve into its modern form, in which the piper leads the children away when the town officials refuse to pay him for his services.

If you are interested in a modern take on the story, you might find Terry Pratchett's "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" intriguing. Set in the fantasy Disc World, it tells of a talking cat who has trained a group of rats (who have only recently become able to speak and read) to stage fake infestations in the town they are visiting, so that the people will pay Maurice to have the young boy who accompanies him play his pipe and entice the rats away. It is a successful scam, until they try it in Bad Blintz.

Answer: Aladdin

The story originally referred to Aladdin as a Chinese boy, but once it had been included in a 19th century translation by Antoine Galland of "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights" ("The Arabian Nights"), the stories ostensibly told by Scheherazade to avoid her execution, its setting was sometimes altered to fit more comfortably with an Arabic background.

In essence, Aladdin is tricked by a sorcerer into recovering the oil lamp (complete with powerful genie trapped inside) from a cave full of magical and deadly traps. Aladdin succeeded, helped by the genie in the ring the sorcerer had lent him, despite the sorcerer trying to trap him in the cave.

The genie of the lamp helps him become rich and powerful, and he marries the sultan's daughter, Princess Badroulbadour.

After yet another run-in with the sorcerer, and then with the sorcerer's brother, Aladdin and his wife settle down to live happily ever after.

Answer: Roc

The stories of Sinbad's voyages first appeared in Sir Richard Burton's 1885 translation of "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights" ("The Arabian Nights"), where they appear near the middle of things. They are set in a framework in which a poor man named Sinbad is bemoaning his lot as he rests outside the house of a rich merchant, who (on discovering that they share the name Sinbad), proceeds to describe how he acquired his wealth - he certainly wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth! Sinbad the sailor appeared to have an unfortunate habit of being shipwrecked or accidentally abandoned by his shipmates, but manages to turn each of these misadventures to his advantage. On his second adventure, he is stranded on an island inhabited by rocs as well as the giant snakes which inhabit a diamond-laden valley.

The locals gather these diamonds by throwing a piece of meat into the area; the diamonds stick to the flesh, and the hungry rocs carry them back to their nests, where the merchants can collect them. Sinbad manages to collect a large sack of diamonds himself, then straps one of the pieces of meat to his back so that a roc grabs him with it, and carries him back to its nest.

When he eventually gets back to Baghdad, he is set up for a life of leisure. (Of course, he soon gets bored, and heads off for more adventures, but that's for another quiz.)