

Stone Soup is an Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 1548 folktale. Folklorists place the Stone Soup story within the “clever man” category of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folklore classification system that they use to organize the entire folkloric tradition. This is the aspect of the story that folklorists have focused on. The Stone Soup story revolves around a clever man with a charismatic personality who can get people to help him when their first instinct is not to. You can listen to their lively retelling of the tale on Megaphone here or at iTunes here! Origin of the Stone Soup Folktale Title page to the 1808 British magazine with the first English version of the Stone Soup story The recipe published in 1808 is quite similar to the one in the version of the story made by the By Kids For Kids Story Time podcast in 2019. When the soup is made the stone may be thrown away.’ Published in The American magazine of wit, 1808. ‘ Take a large stone, put it into a sufficient quantity of boiling water properly season it with pepper and salt add three or four pounds of good beef, a handful of pot-herbs, some onions, a cabbage, and three or four carrots. ‘Give me a piece of paper’ (said the traveler) ‘and I’ll write it down for you,’ which he did as follows:-A receipt to-make Stone Soup. This story, about three hungry soldiers who outwit the greedy inhabitants of a village into providing them with a feast, is based on an old French tale.“Stone Soup,” engraving by Walter Melion for the cover of the first issue of Stone Soup Some Recipes for Stone Soup from 1732, 1808–and 2019!īoil stones in butter, and you may sip the broth. ( Fuller 1732) So much goes on in the pictures that children who have once heard the story will turn to them again and again, retelling the story for themselves.Ī French version of the story is available under the title Une Drôle de Soupe.įirst published in 1947, this picture book classic has remained one of Marcia Brown's most popular and enduring books. Marcia Brown has made of this old tale a very gay book, a carnival of activity, of dancing and laughter. Stone soup? Why, of course, they could make a wonderful soup of stones.but, of course, one must add a carrot or tow.some meat.so it went. There followed a battle of wits, with the soldiers equal to the occasion. So all the food was hidden under mattresses or in barns.


The peasants seeing them coming, suddenly became very busy, for soldiers are often hungry. Three soldiers came marching down the road towards a French village.
