New-old stories

According to the Guardian, 500 "new" fairytales were recently discovered in an archive in Regensburg, Germany, where they had been stored for over 150 years. The stories are part of the collection of folklore gathered during the mid-19th century by historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz.

Oberpfalz cultural curator Erika Eichenseer published a selection of fairytales from Von Schönwerth's collection last year. According to the article:

[Eichenseer called] the book Prinz Roßzwifl. This is local dialect for "scarab beetle". The scarab, also known as the "dung beetle", buries its most valuable possession, its eggs, in dung, which it then rolls into a ball using its back legs.

Yeeeeah... I don't know if that's the direction I would have gone, but I look forward to reading these stories even if they are named after a dung beetle.