- Genre
- Animal tale
- Source status
- variant tradition
- Motifs
- wolf, crow, broken promise, ingratitude
The tale: an editorial retelling
A wolf was eating carrion when a bone stuck in his throat. He struggled and suffered, but could not bring it out.
A crow flew past. The wolf addressed her sweetly. “Help me! Pull out the bone, and I shall reward you.” The crow believed him. She put her head between his jaws and removed the bone.
When the wolf could breathe freely again, the crow asked for her payment. The wolf snapped, “Is it not enough that you got your head out unharmed? I could have shut my jaws and bitten it off. That is your reward.”
About this version
E. Rūkštelytė recorded this version in Salakas in 1938 from seventy-eight-year-old Marijona Rūkštelienė. Its archive reference is LTR 1713(62), and its anthology number is 19. The helper here is a crow; other tellings of this international plot use different birds.
This is the whole short narrative. The wolf breaks his promise, and the storyteller adds neither revenge by the crow nor a later punishment. Such a resolution is absent from this particular version.
Telling and discussing the tale
Read the wolf’s two speeches: the sweet request and the cold reply. What changed between them? The crow’s willingness to help does not remove the wolf’s responsibility for breaking his promise.