ATU 1096 "Sewing Contest"

Hello, and welcome to the July 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 1096 "Sewing Contest." Let's begin with a British poem of the tale type that pits a humble tailor against the Devil himself.

"The Devil and the Tailor"

There was a tailor in our town,
Who was a worthy wight;
All through the day
He worked away,
And halfway through the night.

He had a wife whom he did love,
And he had children bright;
To find the meat
For them to eat,
Did puzzle the tailor quite.

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Greetings! I'm Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran. I hold B.A. in Celtic Studies from the University of Toronto, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Maine, and a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. I'm also an author, poet, and musician under the name C.S. MacCath. My long-running Folklore & Fiction project integrates these passions with a focus on folklore scholarship aimed at storytellers, and I bring a deep appreciation of animism, ecology, and folkloristics to my own storytelling. You can find me online at csmaccath.com, folkloreandfiction.com, and linktr.ee/csmaccath.