- Genre
- Endless tale
- Source status
- variant tradition
- Motifs
- wolf, gate, repetition
The tale: an editorial retelling
There lived an old, grey wolf. His ears stood upright and his legs were spread wide. He went through a gate and caught against its swinging leaf. Now we shall tell the story from the beginning.
There lived an old, grey wolf. His ears stood upright and his legs were spread wide. He went through a gate and caught against its swinging leaf. Now we shall tell the story from the beginning.
About this version
This is the whole narrative loop. No further adventure follows the gate: the last sentence leads back to the first. Two rounds are printed to make the return visible.
The Lithuanian anthology records this as tale 292 and identifies a source in the 1905 reader Vaikų skaitymėliai, page 61. This English retelling preserves the wolf, the gate and the repeated beginning rather than reproducing the Lithuanian wording.
Telling and discussing the tale
Tell the first round slowly. On the second, pause at the gate and let a listener supply the beginning. Agree on a gesture for stopping: the story itself provides no final resolution.