Mooney - The Ice Man - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

HIBERNATION!

I'm ready for it and think it sounds like a delightful idea.

Within the past week winter has definitely reared its unwanted head again with rain turning to ice and freezing rain (my least favorite weather) and then on to snow and bone chilling temperatures.  Even my "malamutt" (husky/malamute mix) has had difficulties with it.

He wants to be in with his "pack", but then he's too hot.  He wants to be on the trail -- after all I do call him my "cross trainer", but zero degrees or even zero wind chill leaves me . . . well, cold.  He's also getting old enough that at times being indoors seems to strike him as tempting as I find the idea of hibernation.

Usually a warm up in a place beyond correctly mitten-shaped Michigan sounds good, but travel right now is even less delightful as the government shutdown stretches on.  My other alternative is to get involved with rehearsals and production of a show.  O.k.  I've just been cast in a small but fun part in You Can't Take It With You.  Fortunately it's not big enough to take away my working on a major program I'm developing about Prohibition.

It's called High Times in the Dry Times and will look at how prohibition got a head start of two years in Michigan and then we supplied what has been estimated to be 3/4 of the smuggled alcohol for the rest of the nation.  I'll preview it February 21 at Brandon Township Library.  If you are interested, that link will let you register.  The description of  

Michigan started Prohibition two years before the U.S. enacted the Volstead Act in 1919 and wound up being a pivotal player with its prolific waterways.  Lois Sprengnether Keel explains how people went to extremes to secure alcohol - by any means necessary.

hints at some of the very large topic, but omits that it will include music and opportunity for audience participation and more.

Even with You Can't Take It With You at Pontiac Theatre IV and working on High Times in the Dry Times, looking at the forecast of sub-zero days leaves the idea of Hibernation tempting me.  In the past I've found stories about bears and how they don't truly hibernate, but instead go into a "torpor", and maybe that's more the state I'm seeking.  Then I saw about alligators in true hibernation in the ice

and that brought me back to ICE!

Yikes.

There's just something about ice that called to me this week, the very same week that the 2019 GEICO U.S. Figure Skating Championships are being held here in Detroit.  That link would let me buy tickets and they're fairly reasonable, but I think I'll just let torpor lead me to the television.  Our area will host this again for the first time since the 1994 great scandal of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan here that was tied to Tonya Harding.  Searching those names gives plenty of drama, but I want to stick to a short story from the Cherokee about an Ice Man and how he could put out a dangerous fire.  James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee gives us a story to curl up and enjoy.

I understand why firefighters also must wish humans could enter either torpor or hibernation as people wouldn't be tempted to heat their residences in ways that lead to fire and, right now, ice.

Stay warm.  Stay safe.  (Want more Public Domain stories?  Suggestions follow in my usual "small print" for Keeping the Public in Public Domain entries.)
**************************************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Sandburg - ...Jason Squiff & Why He Had a Popcorn... - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

I'm an addict. . .
a POPCORN addict.
January 19 is National Popcorn Day and I need to tell both my own story and some related much loved nonsense from Carl Sandburg.

I grew up in St. Louis and my parents lived in the Tivoli Theatre Apartments over the theater and my dad's store was in the building, too.  The apartments were supposed to be for adults only, but, since they already lived there, I was able to be there, too.  Shortly before starting kindergarten they bought a house and we moved out, but my dad's store meant I still was there a lot.  I was the unofficial theater mascot able to see all the areas of the theater, back behind the screen, the projection area, but also, any time I wanted, I was welcome to have all the day-old popcorn I wanted.  I definitely wanted it.  To this day I'm an addict unable to resist the smell.  Remember when Sears stores used to have popcorn machines at the entrance?  I do.  I also remember having the last bit of the flu and smelling it there, wanting it so badly.  That's probably one of the few times I resisted my addiction.  Love it! ! !

Last week I gave a story here that had just become Public Domain, from Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Pigeons.  As I said then, I've loved that particular story for years and have wanted to tell it.  I became so excited I accidentally hit Publish too soon and so the story of "Deep Red Roses..." appeared right away, even though I "edited" it to have the right date.  Today I'm just as excited, but will try to hold my popcorn addiction in check.  Rootabaga Stories squeaked into Public Domain before the shutdown and I recommend following the Sandburg link beyond last week's story and go down to my April 9, 2016 article for more about the reason he was part of the copyright extension.

If you think last week's story had a long title, today's is even a bit longer: The Story of Jason Squiff and Why He Had a Popcorn Hat, Popcorn Mittens and Popcorn Shoes.  Truly a story for popcorn addicts.  It's the middle of a trilogy of stories in the Rootabaga Stories, so I should probably give it a bit of introduction. 

Sandburg makes full use of his "poetic license" in the Rootabaga books with nonsense written for his daughters that deserves to be read aloud for full appreciation.  That first story of Blixie Bimber introduces us to the "gold buckskin whincher" and its strange powers.  "What is a gold buckskin whincher?" your logical mind probably wonders and with good reason for it's found only in Sandburg's tales.  I looked, just in case.  The recent children's production of a musical called "Rootabaga! A MusiCarl" had the reviewer ask that same question and answer it as "a charm with magical powers."  The reviewer admits

The language of the show can also be a challenge, given its nonsensical nature, and at times I had difficulty understanding words and phrases. But, the nonsensical aspect of the play is ideal for younger kids who will find humor in the rhymes and rhythms and not be bothered by the non-linear storyline.

She specifically mentions Blixie and that gold buckskin whincher.  She omits the way the letter "X" is important to the story.  In Blixie's adventure she loses the gold buckskin whincher after it plays havoc with her dating life.  Jason Squiff, on the other hand, has a totally different adventure because of the letter "Q."

The only other thing I probably should explain, for an audience unfamiliar with the concept of a cistern, is it's a waterproof storage area for water, often rainwater.  Remember the musical The Music Man's song "Trouble" about the problem of "your parents are caught with the cistern empty on a Saturday night"?  Jason is a cistern cleaner and would agree.

 

I admit cistern-flavored popcorn could probably be resisted even by this popcorn addict.  Here's a further bit of personal story about my addiction to popcorn.  A great many years later I saw the refreshment stand in Heman Park still has the sign: Mustard on Popcorn 5 Cents Extra!  Yes, I'm the reason for that sign originating with my own childhood adventures there.

Of course that gold buckskin whincher is on to yet another adventure.

Whether your name has an X, Q, or a K in it or not, may you enjoy discovering the nonsensical side of Carl Sandburg now that we can Keep the Public in Public Domain for his stories.
*******************************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Sandburg - How Deep Red Roses Goes Back and Forth... - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

INDECISION!

We all have it at times.  For years I've loved and wanted to tell this story about indecision, but, unlike the earlier posting of a story from the companion book, Rootabaga Stories, today's anthology, Rootabaga Pigeons, has finally entered the Public Domain.  The author, Carl Sandburg, even played a role in how soon stories entered the Public Domain.  There were good reasons for that initial delay.   That doesn't sound like my usual rant on the delay of 20th century material.  Go to that link on Sandburg here to see that story and also why I understand the initial (but do not support the more recent) delay in releasing works into the Public Domain.

Beyond all of that, it is finally time to enjoy a story that sticks in my mind, especially when Indecision arises, and seems appropriate to the indecision changing Public Domain.


The story has a "frame" about the telling of the story.  That is omitted here, but I do open and close with the delightful illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham.  They are the original illustrators of both Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, but they also have illustrated not only work by others, but also books of their own and I recommend them highly.  The Wikipedia link I gave under their name says they "were American writers and illustrators who helped set the direction for illustrated children's books as known today."  Talking further about their work, the article says "many were recognized with important awards or critical acclaim. They are known for technical excellence, exuberant color, and the introduction of international folk and modernist themes."

************************** (The fine print for finding even more Public Domain stories)

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Bouvé - Old Glory and New - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

HURRAY FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN REOPENING!

Photo by Jarred Craig on Unsplash

Currently on sale at Amazon for a mere $8

As mentioned last week, our cultural heritage of the Twentieth Century has reopened in 2019 with a gradual trickle of material from 1923!  Checking my personal library collection, fifteen books are now available to publish online for "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  At this time I have a book I was all prepared to post until I realized it was unavailable until this year,Lamp-Light Fairy Tales and Other Stories by Pauline Carrington Bouvé.  That link, by the way is not one of the many ubiquitous Wikipedia articles.  Although she's mentioned in various other Wikipedia articles, she has yet to receive one of her own.  That link is actually to a fascinating article about her at Find-a-Grave's section on Green Hill Cemetery's tour of "Avenue of the Armies"  related to the United States Civil War and is under an article about her uncle, Confederate surgeon, Dr. George W. Rust.   The source of the thorough coverage about Lena, as she was familiarly called, is attributed to Cenantua’s Blog by Robert H. Moore, II licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.  Based on a work at www.cenantua.wordpress.com.  More about her and her family background after the story.  For now I want to post a fascinating story spanning last month's Civil War Christmas program and posts and my coming World War I "Hello Girl" programs.

I am changing one thing about the way Bouvé arranged it in the book as each story is preceded by an illustration by Mabel Betsy Hill, (who does have a Wikipedia article about her illustrating other authors and her own books, including the "Judy Jo" series).  Here's a quick title page sampling of Hill's work.

The illustration for today's story gives us too much advance information, but I do begin with Bouvé's poem.  Her original poems introduce each story.  This book uses a frame of the telling of the stories to a group of children.  Normally I omit that, but this story may benefit from seeing how the book handles it.  The stories can definitely stand on their own, but it gives a bit of flavor from 1923 children's literature.

If you look closely at Mabel Betsy Hill's drawing, you not only see both Old and New Glory in it, but also Joe Jessop in his coach-and-four saluting.

I checked and wish I knew if that was a true story in the sense that it actually happened that way, but, as I sometimes reply when asked "Is that a true story?" -- "Did you believe it?  If so, then it was true for you."  Certainly much of the story is true for soldiers throughout the ages.

I promised to say a bit more about the author.  Bouvé's actual "Find a Grave" listing is mainly dry genealogical information, but it does give a bit more resources if you wish to learn more about her and her family.  Instead I want to look at that Cenantua’s Blog by Robert H. Moore, II mentioned initially and talk about her Confederate roots. Moore's blog carries this overall description:

As a Southerner and native of the Shenandoah Valley, I offer reflections on the Civil War-era South… and sometimes a little more. But… expect the unexpected.

 His November 21, 2112 article about her is titled "A Confederate general’s daughter embraces New England" and tells of how she came to be the author of a 1927 book (I have) on Tales of the Mayflower Children and her embracing both her Southern roots and her adopted New England home.  She is cited for her 1899 ground-breaking look in novel form at the Nat Turner rebellion, Their Shadows Before: A Story of the Southampton Insurrection, which, in her day,

Some critics have averred that this book will hold a higher place in the future in the literature of the war than even Uncle Tom’s Cabin will hold. Their Shadows Before had a great sale in London, and was translated into French.

 Even in recent times it has stood up to scrutiny as Moore states:

In 1999, Bouve’s novel, along with many others written about Turner, was analyzed by Mary Kemp Davis in her book, Nat Turner Before the Bar of Judgement: Fictional Treatments of the Southampton Slave Rebellion (LSU Press, 1999). In short, Davis discusses Bouve’s work as showing Nat Turner as a charismatic preacher as opposed to the more radical portrayals. Furthermore, as recent as last year, Bouve’s work was brought up again in a lecture series (Race, Ethnicity, and Constructions of National Identity Lecture Series) at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, where Joseph Young lectured on the “Erasure and Retrieval of the Public Memory: Artful Deceit in Mary Johnston’s ‘Prisoner’s of Hope’; and Subtle Disclosure in Pauline Bouve’s Their Shadows Before.”

 According to the website featuring details about the presentation, Young’s book manuscript-in-progress (“Broken Fetters and Heroic Slaves”) demonstrates the “cultural war conducted between two literary artists over the question of whether African-Americans should be included in the mainstream during the emergence of segregation in the last part of the twentieth century. Johnston uses the 1663 unsuccessful slave revolt of colonial Virginia as interaction between civilized and savage rather than as an attempt by slaves and Native Americans to secure their identity as human. Bouve offers a narrative to undo the violence wrought by the racist narration of history that excludes the non-European voice.”

 The rest of his article provides both information on her father, General Albert Rust, who had "Unionist connections" as "near the end of the war he became quite outspoken and bold critic of the Confederate government".  He went on to serve "in the U.S. House of Representatives and was even a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1869, before he withdrew his own name from candidacy."  His sudden death came as his youngest child, Lena, was 10.  The family moved from Arkansas to be near family in Virginia and, as an adult, she moved herself to Massachusetts where she married a young Harvard poet/author, Thomas Tracy Bouve (1875-1938), who also had Civil War ancestry, a 4th Massachusetts Cavalry major for a father and a mother who was a distant cousin of President Lincoln.  Moore really does an excellent job of giving us more about her personally and as an author.

That's a bit of background on an author I expect to come back to with future stories.  Right now I look forward to more celebration of the re-opening of Public Domain next week with an author I've long linked with the closing, Carl Sandburg, and his Rootabaga Pigeons which now can join the 1922 Rootabaga Stories I love so well and have wanted to be able to pass along legally.
************************* (The fine print for finding even more Public Domain stories)

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!