Williston - Shippeitaro - Keeping the Public Domain

Today's story, like the two before it is a classic tale found in Frances G. Wickes' Happy Holidays, BUT you will notice the author listed in today's title is Williston.  Wickes credited and gave the text exactly as Teresa Peirce Williston published it in her Japanese Fairy Tales, but the Happy Holidays publisher's limitations on Gertrude Kay to one small black and white illustration misses the beautiful way the story is presented in Japanese Fairy Tales with full color illustrations by Sanchi Ogawa.  What little is known of Williston and Ogawa and more about the story can be saved until after seeing it, except for one bit, the pronunciation of our title character, Shippeitaro.

I'm so glad Williston included, "A Guide to Pronunciation"!  When names of people and places are from another language are used in a story it's such a help.  Rather than save it to the end, you should know Shippeitaro, is pronounced Shpay-tah-row.  (I added the "w" to show it's a "long o", there's also a "long a" in the first syllable and an umlaut over the second "a", but their pronunciation seems clear enough.  I underscored the middle syllable to show it gets the main stress.  All that's missing is the "music" of pronunciation by a Japanese speaker, but this lets you come closer.) 

These three stories given these past three weeks are found in Wickes' Happy Holidays along with the tale of "Wait Till Martin Comes."  All deserve to be kept in the Public Domain.  Just this past week I told "Wait Till Martin Comes" when students asked for a spooky story.  I had already opened my programs, which had the theme of "friends" with a story told in voice and sign language, so in the two instances where time permitted I asked what they wanted and I chose it specifically because it tied the program back to its beginning, letting me add to the drama by telling it in voice and sign, plus it wasn't as scary as some stories.

Similarly I find "Shippeitaro" seems to be a less scary version of a story I love to tell, "The Boy Who Drew Cats" as told by Lafcadio Hearn.  Waaaay back in October of 2014 I posted that story.  Hearn's source is quoted as being "The Picture-Cats and the Rat", but Hearn gave his own spooky touches and a different ending from the traditional one of the boy going back to become the abbot of his temple. Would I tell the two in the same program unless I was specifically using it as an example of their similarity?  No, but I might use it specifically when a less scary story was needed.  When a group of children are an audience and the request for scary stories is made without prior agreement, peer pressure and the inability to leave make it unwise to tell something very scary which some children may not be ready to handle.

As for our author, I could find nothing about Williston, herself, except that she also collected a second series as this initial book was so well received.  In each case she thanked a Mr. Katayama of Tokyo for his "great assistance in collecting these stories."  Her only other book is Hindu Tales Retold.  For both the first and second collection of Japanese Fairy Tales she stressed the importance of her illustrator, Sanchi Ogawa, in bringing the tales to life as vividly as possible.  We actually know more about him than Williston for she tells us he "is a native of Japan and a graduate of the Imperial Art School of Tokyo and combines the Japanese artistic instinct and classic tradition with a knowledge of American ideas and methods."

That wraps up a busy month on the road storytelling and next month I have reason to stay very close to home, but still busy.  I'll let it influence my choice of stories, but more about that next week.
*************************

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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
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!

Wickes - The Queer Company - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Two weeks ago I presented another "classic" spooky tale from the anthology by Frances G. Wickes, Happy Holidays.  Today's story was supposed to be published on schedule while I was on the road storytelling.  I just discovered I didn't get it out because I skipped one small step!  My apologies.

This story is also found in Joseph Jacobs' English Fairy Tales under the title of "The Strange Visitor."  Jacobs offers some important differences that I'll mention after the story and then, to make it more friendly for the youngest listeners, another idea will be given by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey from her Firelight Stories.

That last part is usually shouted out and aimed at the most vulnerable member of the audience.  It fits in a category of spooky tale called a "jump story" because it's meant to make the audience jump. 

I mentioned the story could be found under the title of "The Strange Visitor" in Joseph Jacobs' English Fairy Tales with some differences.  Jacobs uses the refrain of "Aih-h-h! -- late -- and wee-e-e moul" for every other answer by the Strange Visitor and Jacobs candidly confessed to not having the slightest idea what it meant, but it was in his original source, The Nursery Rhymes of Scotland by W. Chambers, published in 1842 and it was accepted by Jacobs' young listeners.  He further suggests "The prosaic-minded may substitute 'Up-late-and-little-food.' " Perhaps, but Wickes omits it and gives a more streamlined response.  Jacobs also gives directions as to how the Visitor sounds with his responses -- to just see his version of the tale go to https://americanliterature.com/author/joseph-jacobs/fairy-tale/the-strange-visitor
 and you will see that final answer is "FOR YOU!" and the teller is directed:

(At the top of the voice, with a wave of the arm and a stamp of the feet.")

To make it less frightening for the youngest listeners, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey in her Firelight Stories changed the ending ever so slightly so that after the Strange Visitor talks about his pumpkin head and the little old woman asks, "What did you come for?" she has this ending instead:

"TO KEEP YOU COMPANY," said Somebody, as he danced about the kitchen.

          So the little old woman was not lonely any more.

I leave it to you and your audience to decide what you find more appropriate.

Additionally last week I said I would give a bit more information about the illustrator, Gertrude  Kay, for this story and last week's story from Frances G. Wickes' Happy Holidays.  While neither of the two tales show all she was able to do, there is an interesting article about how she not only was a student of the famous author/illustrator, Howard Pyle and his slightly less famous sister, Katherine, who was also an author/illustrator, but Gertrude was also successfully an early 20th century illustrator in the male-dominated world of commercial illustration.

An excellent article about her and several samples of her usually colorful illustrations can be found at Illustration Art Solutions.com, which also mentions her travels in China and Japan and then, after that, to other lands.  Those first travels began right about the time Happy Holidays was published, so I can imagine how much she would have loved to do more with next week's Japanese story, "Shippeitaro."  Her samples include several from China and Japan.  The publisher of Happy Holidays kept the book's cost down by sticking to black and white illustrations even on those that were full page.

In looking at the source for next week's story, Teresa Peirce Williston, I decided it would be a shame to omit the illustrations in Williston's Japanese Fairy Tales, by Sanchi Ogawa.  The story Wickes presents faithfully enough, but Williston's telling of the story benefits immensely from Ogawa's illustrations.  I hope you'll see what I mean when I post it next week.
*********************************************

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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
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!

Wickes - The Conjure Wives - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

October used to be known as the "Storyteller's Christmas" because it was the busiest time of year for a storyteller, providing their "Christmas funds."  I've noticed since "9/11" it has been a bit less predictable, but there still is an interest in spooky stories.  This past week I prowled some of the old standards I've never tried.  Interestingly enough there were three I wanted to share, all found in Frances G. Wickes' Happy Holidays.  Since the book was published in 1921, it's firmly in Public Domain.  The link will let you get it free from Google.  You may also read it online at Archive.org.

The book may be old, but it is a goldmine of holiday material, even covering Labor Day, Arbor Day, Flag Day, May Day, and one I had to look up -- Bird Day, which can mean several different days and may vary depending on where it's celebrated.

How a noted psychologist and Jungian therapist like Frances G. Wickes also became a writer and playwright for children and teens is not known, but maybe her own son was the reason.  Possibly it was because she was a specialist in child psychology, writing the early classic in child psychology, The Inner World of Childhood.  That was written later in 1927, joining her other books in the field of psychology.

Fortunately Happy Holidays omits any deeper references and lets us discover tales deserving to stay in our cultural heritage as the concept of Public Domain was intended to uphold.  I'm going to be quite busy this month, so I want to set up now what I found for publication in these next three weeks.

Today's and next week's story are quite brief and include only one illustration by Gertrude Kay.  I'll say a bit more about her next week.  Just force yourself to look at it only when it comes up in the story and, while you're at it, the knocking in the story is a great feature for building up the suspense along with the repetition by the conjure wives -- another name for witches.

Even if you saw the transformation of the old women into owls coming, this story manages to avoid slipping into a hard to follow dialect, giving only a hint of it.  Wickes has a fourth Halloween tale I enjoy telling in voice and sign language because it, too, has suspenseful repetition, but she felt the need for dialect that I find hard to fit in today's world.  Fortunately other authors felt the same and so "Wait Till Martin Comes" is in many anthologies of spooky stories.  Unfortunately I've yet to find one in Public Domain that didn't contain that style of language.

Next week catch another short story from Happy Holidays and two different ways of using it.

Until then . . .
*************************

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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
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!

Stockbridge - What to Drink part 2 - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Part 2

It's been like being in a time machine while in Charlevoix devoting myself to their Prohibition history and incorporating it into my program, "High Times in the Dry Times" which is finally beyond the Preview stage.  The northern Michigan era may not have been part of the way so much of what was seen in the Detroit/St. Clair area when we supplied 75% of the smuggled alcohol during Prohibition, but they certainly knew how to join in roaring through the Roaring '20s.  The early Twentieth Century was when they began to develop into one of Michigan's resort areas.  It's an interesting area and the northern part of Michigan is at least a week or two ahead of metro Detroit's entry into autumn colors.

I promised to give recipes from a recent book called What to Drink: Non-Alcoholic Drinks and Cocktails Served During Prohibition by Bertha E.L. Stockbridge, which is a reprint of a 1920 book, What to Drink; The Blue Book of Beverages; Recipes and Directions for Making and Serving Non-Alcoholic Drinks for All Occasions.  That link takes you to Archive.org's online version.  Part One of this included the Table of Contents and I presumed I'd be giving some of the Fruitades, but confess there's been enough of a chill in the air I decided instead to give some hot drinks served in Prohibition and beyond.  I'll also include a variety of "mocktails" as that's the essence of Stockbridge's purpose.

I'll end with a nod to those who worked to create the "Noble Experiment" that might have succeeded if the Depression hadn't convinced people, along with the rise in crime, that it was time to return to alcohol, if nothing else to regulate and tax it.  The parallels to the legalization of marijuana have to be left to my audience as my persona telling about "High Times in the Dry Times" is firmly in the 1930s.

What could be more innocent than having a Malted Milk at the local ice cream shop?  When you hear the term, "Blind Pig", maybe it doesn't make sense to present day listeners.  During Prohibition it meant going to a location that, unlike a "Speakeasy", claimed to be legitimate, like an ice cream shop, but served knowing customers alcohol.  If you ordered a malt there it might be a bit different than these recipes.  I also am only used to this being a cold drink.  These warm versions, even one with coffee, are a bit different.

Of course we're used to Hot Chocolate or Cocoa, but here's something a bit different, two Creole versions and one from New England.

I confess I'm not likely to make the first version requiring grating the chocolate, but maybe you're more of a "foodie" and want to see the difference French chocolate makes.

While discussing malts, I mentioned coffee and realize nowadays coffee recipes and coffee shops are everywhere, but here's the '20s look at it with a bit of international versions.  I found the comment about Parisian housekeepers interesting.  My Scottish ancestry makes me wonder if I should try this in my Mr. Coffee?

I wasn't overly impressed with Stockbridge and tea except for these ideas: she suggests a spray of orange blossom in the tea or mint and then pour the hot tea over it.

Now for a few of her cocktail substitutes.

Not exactly a typical "Virgin Mary" was it?

I can't say that highballs are as popular nowadays, but they were favorites for a long time, so here's the non-alcoholic version.

The concept of a Fizz was new to me, but confess it sounds interesting.

Finally I want to include a Mint Julep, and also a Ginger Ale version.  Hmmm Mint Juleps sound like something for the Kentucky Derby, but this names Georgia for its origins.

That's just a taste of what our ancestors may have tried, especially if they were in the Women's Christian Temperance Union.  Before starting to discuss these "Drys", I told my audience I needed to put on my sourest expression.  They started the nation thinking about Prohibition and then were overshadowed by the men of the Anti-Saloon League.  Still it's interesting that they were considered one of at least three possible reasons why the Charlevoix party boat,  the Keuka, known for its dance floor, gambling, and, of course, alcohol might have sunk!

Here in this area near Holly, Michigan, the most famous member of the W.C.T.U. was Carry or Carrie A. Nation, and, yes, that was her real name and she used both spellings. 

That hatchet was her trademark and to this day people in this area talk about how she attacked the Battle Alley area of downtown Holly.

I've had the fun of being in the old Carry Nation Festival Holly held for well over 30 years.  As a lover of history, I hope some day they bring it back.

Well that's at least part of my story for this past week.  It's a bit different than my usual article or even stories from the "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" series, but I  hope you'll see what storytelling possibilities exist in my presenting "History as seen by the 'average' person."
*************************

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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
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!