legends – Bone and Sickle

The Fates

By boneandsickle | July 9, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:48 — 57.0MB)

The Fates of Classical Antiquity not only survived in the form of related fairy-tale figures but also as the object of superstitions and rituals associated with newborns. In South Slavic and Balkan regions particularly, these customs represent a surprisingly long-lived and genuine case of pagan survival.

We begin our episode examining the fairy godmothers of “Sleeping Beauty” as embodiments of the Fates. Mrs. Karswell reads a few key passages from the definitive version of the story included in Charles Perrault’s 1697 collection, Histoires ou contes du temps passé (“stories of times gone by.”) We learn how the fairies fulfill the historical role of godparents at the newborn’s christening. We also note the peculiar emphasis on the quality of what’s set before the fairies at the christening banquet, observing how a failure there leads the wicked fairy to curse the Sleeping Beauty.

Czech illustration — 1874 illustration by František Doucha for a Czech edition of Sleeping Beauty

We then explore antecedents to Perrault’s tale, beginning with the 14th-century French chivalric romance, Perceforest. A peripheral story in this 8-volume work is that of Troylus and Zeelandine, in which the role of Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmothers are played by Greek and Roman deities, with Venus as supporter of Princess Zeelandine (and her suitor Troylus) and Themis cursing Zeelandine to sleep in a manner similar to Perrault’s princess. A failure to correctly lay out Themis’ required items at the christening banquet is again again responsible for the curse, though the awakening of Zeelandine by Troylus awakens is surprisingly different and a notorious example of medieval bawdiness.

Preceding Perceforest, there was the late 13th-century French historical romance Huon of Bordeaux, in which we hear of the newborn fairy king Oberon being both cursed and blessed by fairies attending his birth. From around the same time, French poet and composer Adam de la Halle’s Play of the Bower describes a banquet at which fairy guests pronounce a curses and blessings on those in attendance prompted again by their pleasure or displeasure at what’s set before them at a banquet. We also hear of the Danish King King Fridlevus (Fridlef II) bringing his newborn son to a temple of “three maidens” to ascertain the destiny pf the child in Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”).written around 1200 by Saxo Grammaticus. And lest listeners think such appeals to the Fates were strictly a literary motif, we hear Burchard of Worms, in his early-11th-century Decretum, condemning the not uncommon among the Germans of his region of setting up offering tables for the Fates. By this point, the connection between how fairy godmother types are served at a banquet and offerings made to the Fates to ensure a cild’s fortune should be clear.

We then turn back to the Greek Fates, the Moirai (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) and the Roman Parcae (Nona, Decuma, and Morta). Particularly in the case of the Parcae, we hear examples of their connection to the newborn’s destiny in the celebration nine or ten days after the birth of the dies lustricus, during which offerings were made to the Fates.

The Three Fates by Bernardo Strozzi, late 17th c

We make a brief side-trip to discuss the Norns (Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld), the Germanic equivalent of the Fates. These are more distant cousins, not strongly associated with the newborn and his destiny, though we do hear a passage from the Poetic Edda, in which the Norns are present birth of the hero Helgi. We also hear a gruesome passage from the 13th-century Njáls Saga, in which the Valkyries weave out the fate of those who will die in the Battle of Clontarf.

The Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Fates, the Wyrds, are also discussed, and we hear how the witches in Macbeth partook in this identity as the “Weird Sisters,” an association Shakespeare inherited from his source material, the 1587 history of Great Britain, known as Holinshed’s Chronicles.

We then turn our attention the Fates in Slavic and Balkan lands — the Rozhanitsy in Russia and Ukraine, the Sudičky among West Slavs, the Orisnici in Bulgaria, and the Ursitoare in Romania. As these customs survived into more recent times, there is a vast body of folklore to describe — much of it revolving around the setting up of offering tables and the communication of newborn’s destiny through dreams sent to mothers and midwives and confirmed by marks (visible or invisible) left upon the infant during their nocturnal visits on the third night after birth.

We also enjoy a couple entertaining folktales about Romania’s Ursitoare collected in the early years of the 20th century by folklorist Tudor Pamfile.

While such customs have since died out in Greece, customs related to the Moirai preserved into the early 20th century, as we hear in passages of John Lawson’s Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals, written in 1900.

We end with a brief look at christening parties in modern Romania, at which costumed Ursitoare play an increasingly major role, this paired with an introduction to the popular song “Ursitoare, Ursitoare.”

Romanian Fates attend a christening party. Ursitoare show by FormatiiNunta

The Sin-Eater

By boneandsickle | March 24, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:20 — 51.9MB)

The Sin-Eater was a figure associated with funerals of the 17^th– 19^thcentury, mostly in Wales, and the English counties along the Welsh border. According to tradition, he was invited by grieving families to transfer the burden of sins from the deceased to himself by consuming bread and beer in the vicinity of the corpse, after which he might receive some financial compensation. He typically came from the fringes of society and was said to be motivated by a combination of poverty, greed, and irreligious indifference to matters of eternal judgement.

After a quick montage of clips from the generally terrible films made on the theme —Sin Eater (2022), Curse of the Sin Eater (2024), The Last Sin Eater (2007) — we review the historical references to the tradition, which are surprisingly few in number.

The first comes from a particularly early 1686 collection of British folklore written by John Aubrey, The Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme. His characterization of the custom is essentially that described above and despite the early date of the text, he describes the practice using the past tense, though qualifies this somewhat later mentioning that it is “rarely used in our days.” Mrs. Karswell, of course, reads Aubrey’s original text along with our subsequent examples.

Our next account from 1715 comes from antiquarian John Bagford (published later, in 1776) in John Lelan’s, compendium, Collectanea. It does not mention Wales but locates the custom in Shropshire, an English county bordering Wales. It also has the Sin-Eater remaining outside the house where the body lies as he consumes his bread and ale. Bagford also adds a verbal formula, which the Sin-Eater is supposed to pronounce, mentioning the deceased’s soul attaning “ease and rest,” for which the Sin-Eater’s soul has been “pawned.” These phrases are recycled in later literature on the topic.

The next text comes from 1838, appearing in the travelogue Hill And Valley: Or Hours In England And Wales by the Scottish novelist, Catherine Sinclair. It’s particularly brief, adding little detail other than specifying the tradition as one (formerly) belonging to Monmouthshire, in eastern Wales. She also characterizes the custom derisively as “popish,” or belonging to the Catholic past.

The next and final account (not counting clearly recycled retellings of those above) was contributed by Matthew Moggridge in an 1838 journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association. It also relegates the tradition to the past, placing it specifically in the Welsh town of f Llandybie. Moggridge removes the ale, keeps the bread, and
adds salt (used symbolically rather eaten). He also makes explicit the Sin-Eater’s pariah status.

Aubrey’s, Bagford’s, an Moggridge’s accounts received greater attention when collected in an 1892 article by E. Sidney Hartland in the journal Folk-Lore, the publication of the British Folk-Lore Society. Hartland’s “rediscovery” of these texts fueled the interest of the British public and corresponded with a rising fascination in such things as represented in the arts by the Celtic Revival instigated by William Butler Yeats’ 1893 work, The Celtic Twilight and the ongoing publication between 1890 and 1915 of James Frazer’s evolving work on folklore, The Golden Bough.

As there are no firsthand accounts describing sin-eating as a custom still in existence a misinterpretation or garbled accounting of another tradition may lie behind the concept of the Sin-Eater. The second half of our show examines the extent to which creative myth-making formed the concept along with the role older Catholic practices may have contributed to the tales.

The earliest literary Sin-Eater we encounter appears in a chapter of Joseph Downes’ 1836 novel, The Mountain Decameron. Mrs. Karswell reads an evocative passage or two describing a traveler stumbling into a scene of sin-eating while traveling through a haunted bog. Along with several other quick summaries of post-Hartland novels treating the topic, we hear a sin-eater clip from a BBC adaptation of Mary Webb’s 1924 novel, Precious Bane and learn how Christanna Brand’s 1939 short story “The Sins of the Fathers,” ended up in an episode of Rod Serling’s 1970s TV series, Night Gallery.

We then survey a number of transactional funeral customs possibly reinterpreted as Sin-Eater lore, among these: “funeral doles” and “avral feasts” at which property of the deceased was disbursed, unsavory pallbearers paid off in food and drink, and the distribution of “soul-cakes “and the custom of “souling” to assure the deceased’s heavenward ascent. Best of all, we learn about that cousin to the soul-cake — the funeral cookie.

Illustration of Sin-Eating from The Cambrian Popular Antiquities (1815)

Mélusine, the Serpent Fairy

By boneandsickle | February 18, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:51 — 63.9MB)

Mélusine is a female fairy of medieval legend. who suffers under a curse transforming her once weekly into a monstrous form. In various tales she becomes either a serpent or fish from the waist down, or fully transforms into a dragon. Mélusine can only break this curse via marriage to a mortal who is obliged to allow her certain secret freedoms. In return, her husband enjoys magical assistance and sees his fortunes flourish, at least until that day pact is broken.

The most famous version of this story, and the one to which we devote the bulk of the show is a French tale set down in 1387 by Jean d’Arras, Mélusine or the Noble Story of the Lusignans. The patron for whom he wrote, Duke Jean de Berry, belonged to the House of Lusignan, whose ancestral claims to the lands around Poitiers were portrayed by Arras as a matter of supernatural destiny involving the fairy.

We learn how Jean de Berry’s ancestor, Raymondin (Raymond) became engaged to Mélusine after a meeting at an enchanted fountain. Raymond is unaware that this encounter, and all that follows, is the subject of a prophecy set in motion by his accidental killing of his uncle. We hear the curious way in which this transpires, of Raymond and Mélusine’s wedding attended by a multitude of fairy folk, and of the building of Château de Lusignan through a sly collaboration of fairy magic, ingenuity, and human agency.

We then learn of Mélusine’s and Raymond’s offspring, all of whom are handsome and strong yet also betray their supernatural parentage via certain disfigurements — strange birthmarks, enormous stature, huge jutting teeth, or additional eyes. Much of Arras’ narrative is devoted to the sons’ heroic exploits, particularly as Crusaders in the Middle East, where the historical Lusignans gained lands and reputations, but our episode, focuses only only two sons, “Geoffroy Big-Tooth” and Fromont, whose stories are more intertwined with that of Mélusine herself.

Next comes the central drama, the breaking of the secret pact between Raymond and his fairy wife, which I’ll leave for you to enjoy without spoilers. Mrs. Karswell delivers a fine dramatic reading of this lengthier passage.

While that situation simmers, we hear how Geoffroy has returned from a giant-slaying adventure to discover that his brother, Fromont, is about to enter a monastery rather than devote himself to expanding the Lusignan empire. This doesn’t sit well with Geoffroy, whose disproportionately wrathful response is at once horrible and comic.

Reacting to the tragic fall-out of Geoffroy’s rampage, Raymond himself flies into a rage, accusing Mélusine of producing offspring supernaturally inclined toward evil. Cruel as his words may be, Mélusine seems to validate them, assuming a diabolical presence as she abandons their marriage, flying away from Castle Lusignan in the form of a dragon.

Finally, we examine the origins of the curse upon Mélusine, a strange backstory revealed through the discovery of a tablet in fantastic subterranean tomb, one which relates how she imprisoned her human father inside a mountain and installed there a giant as jailer.

Our episode then considers some folkloric parallels to the figure of Mélusine, a possible kinship with the Irish Banshee, the Scottish Bean-nighe or the Lavandières (“midnight washer women) of Brittany as well as earlier 13th-century literary sources for Arras’s tale including works by Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, Walter Map, and others.

By the late 15th century, the story by Arras had been retold by the French author Coudrette in a version that became broadsheet fodder for German publishers. We also hear how the tale was embraced in Luxembourg, where it attached to Siegfried, Count of the Ardennes, and the magical construction of Luxembourg Castle.

Finally, we look at some 19th-century retellings of the legend as German folktales, some of which made their way into Czech lands, where Meluzina’s doleful howling at her fate is heard in the moaning of winter winds. The show closes with a snippet of a modern Czech children’s song mentioning Meluzina, as an embodiment of the wind –“Vitr fouka do komina” (The wind blows in the chimney).

Sorcery Schools of Spain

By boneandsickle | January 26, 2024

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:18 — 58.7MB)

For centuries, Spain was said to be the home of secret, underground sorcery schools, Toledo being the first city with this reputation and later Salamanca. The notoriety of the latter was more enduring, and when the legend passed to Spanish colonies of the New World, the word, “Salamanca” was embraced as a generic term for any subterranean location said to be the meeting place of witches. We begin the show with a clip from the 1975 Argentine film Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf, which depicts just such a place.

A particularly early reference to this concept can be found in a romanticized 12th-century biography of a particularly interesting character, a French pirate and mercenary Eustace the Monk. Mrs. Karswell reads for us a passage written by an anonymous poet of Picardy, who describes Eustace’s occult schooling in the city of Toledo. Along with this we hear as a passage from a 1335 Tales of Count Lucanor by Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena, which adds another element to the legend, that of its underground location.

Curiously, a number of Spanish cities claim as their founder the Greek demigod Hercules, but in Toledo, he’s also credited with founding this school of magic, excavating a subterranean space in which he imparts his supernatural knowledge, at first in person, and later in the form of a magically animated sculpted likeness. Another Toledan legend, was later blended into this mythology. It’s the story in the Visigoth King Roderick, Spain’s last Christian ruler makes a discovery prophesying his defeat by the Moors in 711 CE. Along with a parchment foretelling this, Roderick exploration of this enchanted palace or tower results in the discovery of the Table of Solomon, a construction of gold, silver, and jewels also attributed with occult powers. Legends detailing this are believed to be of Arabic origin, first recorded in the 9th century and later appearing in One Thousand and One Nights. In later Spanish retellings, the treasure house is conflated with the Cave of Hercules, and the fall of Spain to the Moors is attributed to Roderick breaking of a spell woven by Hercules, to keep North African invaders at bay.

Tower — Roderick breaking into the tower of Hercules, 14th c manuscript.

By the 16th century, this site (now identified as an ancient Roman structure underlying Toledo’s church of San Ginés) had inspired such wild tales that Cardinal Juan Martinez Siliceo organizes a 1547 expedition into a subterranean space in hopes of putting the rumors to rest, but it hardly succeeded at that. Mrs. Karswell reads a dramatic 1625 account of that misadventure.

While talking bronze heads and magic mirrors were being added to descriptions of the Toledo site, in the late medieval period, similar legends began to be told in Salamanca. Being the site of one of Europe’s most ancient universities in a time when scholars were not infrequently misunderstood as magicians, legends of this sort would naturally be associated with Salamanca. But unlike the universities of Paris, Padua, and Bologna, Salamanca’s location in Spain made it a center of Moorish learning and the study of Arabic texts filled with strange calligraphy, figures and charts readily passing for books of magic.

As Salamanca’s reputation emerged later, in an era after the witch trials had begun, instruction no longer was provided by a figure from classical mythology but from the Devil, one of his demons, or a professor or student in league with the Dark One. A favorite character filling this role was the Marqués de Villena, a scholar who’d written books on alchemy and the evil eye. Villena appears in a number of literary works of the era, both in Europe and the New World. In the 1625 play, The Cave of Salamanca, by Mexican dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Villena figures into a scenario that became fairly standard in Salamanca stories, one involving the Devil’s payment for the lessons provided. This would be demanded in the form of a human soul, the victim chosen by lot among the seven students instructed at the end of a seven-years period.

In Salamanca, the underground location of this magic school is strangely associated with a Christian site, the Church of San Cyprian, a significant choice, as St. Cyprian of Antioch has strong occult associations throughout the Catholic world but especially in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions. Before Cyprian came to Christianity, this 3^rd-century saint is supposed to have been a sorcerer and is sometimes referred to as “Cyprian the Magician”. His story is mirrored in Portugal by that of Giles of Santarém, and both figures appear in Spanish and Portuguese literary works in which the saints play roles parallel to that of the Marqués de Villena, and the magic school becomes “The Cave of Cyprian.”

There are also legends that the magical secrets of the pre-conversion Cyprian were preserved, and on the Iberian Peninsula particularly (but also prominently in Scandinavia) grimoires and spell books attributed to Cyprian began circulating as early as the 16th century. After a brief look at the history of these magic books, we turn our attention to the New World and their legacy there. In particular, the use of such books in Portuguese folk magic brought Cyprian the Magician to Brazil where, where he was absorbed into the syncretic religions of that country. The practice of Macumba, one of these religions synthesizing West and Central African beliefs with those of Catholicism, and 19th-century Spiritism, Cyprian the Magician is transmogrified into São Cipriano dos Pretos Velhos, or Saint Cyprian of the “Old Blacks” an embodiment of the departed African Ancestors. Our show ends with a Macumba chant dedicated to this figure and a Spanish prayer to St. Cyprian for protection against witches, curses, and the evil eye.

Russian Vampire Tales

By boneandsickle | July 1, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:02 — 27.5MB)

The folklore of Russian vampires describes a creature slightly different than what we’re accustomed. In tonight’s show we share a number of traditional tales from the 1873 volume Russian Folk-Tales by W. R. S. Ralston, a leading light of the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia and author of The Songs of the Russian People.

Animal Ghosts

By boneandsickle | May 16, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:27 — 32.6MB)

Tales of animal ghosts are usually relegated to the periphery of ghost story collections, but in this episode, we showcase this class of apparition. Our stories were collected in a volume from 1915 called Human Animals by Frank Hamel. It covers werewolves, animal transformations through witchcraft, possession by totemic animal spirits, and the phantom animals that haunt lonely roads, ancestral homes, and the storytellers’ imaginations.

Strange Births and Monsters

By boneandsickle | April 14, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:39 — 27.1MB)

For centuries, strange births, often sounding like mythological monsters, were regarded as portents of ill omen. We hear a number of these fantastical accounts, including a description of the birth of the”Monster of Ravenna” believed to foreshadow not only the defeat of Louis XII’s forces during the 1512 Battle of Ravenna but also taken later as a sign of God’s wrath and religious turmoil roiling up in the Reformation.

The accounts related are compiled in the 1820 volume, edited by R.S. Kirby, and entitled Kirby’s wonderful and eccentric museum; or, Magazine of remarkable characters. Including all the curiosities of nature and art, from the remotest period to the present time, drawn from every authentic source.

An Irish Ghost Story

By boneandsickle | March 16, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:28 — 31.4MB)

An Irish ghost story seems a good way to add a bit of Halloween spice to your St. Patrick’s Day. Our selection, which will be read by Mrs. Karswell, comes from the 1825 publication Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. It’s the first of three volumes of stories told by the Irish antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker, one of the earliest collector of the island’s folk tales.

Croker's book — Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.

A Remarkable Circumstance

By boneandsickle | February 9, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:55 — 28.5MB)

A potpourri of peculiar tales culled from a favorite 19th-century volume. This episode features some outstanding British eccentrics, an extraordinary case of delusional morbidity, lethal religious fanaticism, graveyard shenanigans, and more. Plus, more black-humored poetry from Harry Graham in “Karswell’s Corner”

Master of the Wolves: Transylvanian and Balkan Wolf Lore

By boneandsickle | September 12, 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:28 — 58.9MB)

The Master of the Wolves is a supernatural figure central to Transylvania’s (modern Romania’s) voluminous body of wolf lore, a mythology that extends more broadly into Balkan regions once occupied, like Romania, by the ancient Dacians.

We begin with a snippet from a contemporary recording of the 1857 poem “St. Andrew’s Night,” by the Romanian poet and statesman Vasile Alecsandri. The poem’s association between the undead strigoi and moroi and the Romanian St. Andrew’s Night (November 30) was explored in our Transylvanian Vampires episode last year, but there is perhaps an even deeper connection between the St. Andrew, Romania, and the wolf.

Naturally, this brings us to the topic of werewolves. There are two wolflike monsters in Romanian folklore, the vârcolac and the pricolici, the latter being a closer match to our idea of the werewolf.

We discuss pricolici superstitions, which overlap largely with beliefs about the undead, of which the pricolici is often said to be a member.

The vârcolac, as we see, is rather different. Originally, it seems to have occupied a very limited and specific mythological niche as a creature that rises into the heavens at night to eat the moon, thereby causing an eclipse, or sometimes, the lunar phases. Over time, the vârcolac seems to have merged with more widespread werewolf beliefs.

The animal form associated with both pricolici and the vârcolac, however, is not always strictly defined as wolf-like. While the pricolici is sometimes said to assume the form of any number of “unholy” (but real-world) animals, the vârcolac has sometimes been compared to a dragon.

This wolf-dragon hybridization can also be found in the draco battle standard carried into by the Romanian Dacians in their wars against Rome. In its original form, the draco, consisted of a wolf head crafted of light metal, trailing a dragon-like windsock body. When in motion, a sort of whistle within the head emitted a shrieking sound that contributed to the Dacian’s fearsome reputation as warriors.

The historian Herodotus commenting on this reputation, also offered some observations on a particularly brutal Dacian rite, that of sending a “messenger” to their god Zamoxis. Mrs. Karswell provides the gory details in her reading of this account.

More modern Romanian myth-making brings together the man-god Zamolxis and the Dacian wolf, in the legend of The Great White Wolf, also read by Mrs. Karswell. This tale of a wolf leader seems to borrow from genuinely old legends describing St. Andrew as the “Master of the Wolves.”

Cave of St. Andrew — Romanian cave said to have been the home of St. Andrew

In this role, Andrew is said to return to earth on his night to share with the wolves what prey they are to be allotted in the coming year. The gathering of wolves from all quarters and apparition of the saint on the occasion is a sight mortals witness only with dire consequences, as we hear in another legend related by Mrs. Karswell. Nor is it a good time to be abroad with wolves racing off after their pray, especially so as they’re sometimes said to be supernaturally enabled on this night.

The Master of the Wolves myth did not exclusively attach St. Andrew and his day (or night). St. Martin’s on November 11, can be the setting as in Greece and Germany. (Germany is is also home to a folk tradition discussed, Wolfauslassen (“Letting out the Wolves” or “Ringing in the Wolves” in which shepherds returning from the fields for the year parade through towns ringing bells to let the wolves know they are free to roam the pastures.

As well as on St. Martin’s day, the Wolf Master can also appear a bit later, on December 6 when St. Nicholas serves as the Master of the Wolves in Russia and Poland.

While generally associated with the late fall and winter when dwindling food sources makes wolves more aggressive, the Master of the Wolves could also appear in the spring, when the herds would return to pasture, and predators might require a different sort of magical wrangling. The saint controlling wolves in these cases is almost always St. George.

While versions of this figure are found throughout eastern Europe and Russia (and certain parts of western Europe), it is in Romania where the wolf is most prominent — celebrated with no less than 35 designated “wolf holidays,”of which St. Andrew’s is only the most well-known. This season runs from October into January and its observance is marked by an arcane body of superstitious practices designed to keep the animals at bay. These include reciting prayers, locking corrals with charmed locks, and binding scissors to keep shut the predator’s jaws, and the like. A folk figure called “St. Peter of Winter” appears at the end of his season with dire consequences for those who have neglected the requirements of the season.

Strangely, the most dreaded wolf of all during this season, is a lame wolf, who not only attacks livestock but man. Several of Romania’s wolf holidays pay homage to this figure in their name, such as “Lame Philip,” ostensibly named for the apostle Philip, but undoubtedly rooted in older pagan tradition. In Serbia, which shares Romania’s Dacian heritage, a similar figure appears during this season as Lame Daba, a demon portrayed in the company of wolves.

A possible clue to this association between lameness and a dreadful power over human life may lie in Romania’s version of the Three Fates, the ursitoare. The third member of this trinity, the one given the ultimate power to cut the thread of human life, is traditionally portrayed as lame.

We end the show with a look at a wonderfully bizarre 1976 Romanian-French-Russian co-production, Rock and Roll Wolf AKA Mama, a retelling of a Romanian tale also collected in Germany by the Grimms as “The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.” Here’s a short preview clip of the film, which you can find in its entirety with English dubbing here on YouTube.