ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The Cannibal Master of School () is a story-type found mainly in the countries of the Middle East and Mediterranean (especially in Greece), codified ATU 894 in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification (series 800-899: Evidence of fidelity and innocence). It has been studied by various folklorists, including Emmanuel Cosquin, Nicole Belmont or Emmanouella Katrinaki. It is a rather sinister tale and little good for young children: a little girl, who saw her schoolmaster devouring a death (sometimes a child), is then persecuted by him while she persists in asserting that she has not seen or told anyone anything. Once married, she sees her children being taken away from her by the cannibal master, who lets her accuse of having eaten them herself, before finally leaving her alone and returning them to her.

Area of diffusion

The story meets mainly in the Arab countries of the Middle East (Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt...) and the Mediterranean basin (Turkey, Greece, Italy, Balkans, Maghreb...) However, there are also Irish versions, and European settlers have acclimatized it in Canada; It is also attested in the former USSR. The English title of The Ghoulish Schoolmaster and the Stone of Pity refers doubly to its oriental origin, with gules being monstrous creatures of Arab and Persian folklore, and the "stone of pity" (or: stone of patience, etc.) also constituting an oriental motif.

Autonomous story or introductory episode?

Tardly introduced into the Aarne-Thompson classification as a "new tale", entry AT 894 was questioned by various researchers. As defined, it seems to have originally relied almost exclusively on a Sicilian variant reported by Laura Gonzenbach in her Sicilianische Märchen (1870); It presents the peculiarity of chaining two distinct sequences, though with similarities (mainly the theme of the long patience of the heroine and its symbolic duration, and the motif of the associated stone of patience).

In the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification, Hans-Jörg Uther indicates that the type tale ATU 894, which includes the previous types 437 ("The Supplanted Fiancée") and 707A ("Introduction to the Three Golden Sons: The Ogre Schoolmaster"), is presented in two main forms:
In one, a princess married to a foreign prince gives birth to several children, who are kidnapped by a cannibal teacher. The latter makes it seem that the princess herself killed her children; She's in jail. While the prince went on a journey, his wife, from his prison, asked him to bring him three objects, including a stone of patience and a knife, which he did. He soon surprises the princess as she tells her misfortunes to the stone, while trying to kill herself with the knife. The finished stone