The Table and Nails

My friend, Jennie Kelly, is in Albania with the Peace Corps. Jennie has no shortage of wonderful stories to tell, but decided instead to send me something a little different. I received an email from her containing two sound files. Jennie had recorded one of her new found Albanian friends, Xheni Pema, telling a simple Albanian folktale. In the first recording, Xheni (whose name is pronounced just like Jennie's) tells the story in Albanian, and in the second, she tells the story in English. The following is the English version of the story:

There was a man and he had a little boy. This boy makes a lots of mistakes, and he was a bad boy, so this man was thinking about to find a way to make his son good... a good person.

So one day, he took a table and some nails, and he went to his son, and tell him that "For every bad thing you would do, you would put a nail on the table."

Day after day, this son... his son makes lots of mistakes, so he puts lots of nails on the table, and the table was full. So the son was worried, and he decided to ask his father for another way to put... to take off the nails from the table.

So his father answered him and say that "For every good thing you do, you would take off one nail."

So the son... his son decided to make good things, and day after day he take off all the nails. So he was very glad and walk to his father and said to him that "I am now a good person. I... The table has not the nails anymore."

So his father said to him that "You really are a good person, but the table is not like before because the nails are... (Jennie assisted Xheni with the word, "holes.") Holes. Make holes on the table. And before you make a mistake, you will think twice, so there (not) will be a mistake."

I would like to thank both Jennie and Xheni for this wonderful fable. It amazes me to think of the thousands of folktales like this one that never travel to audiences in other countries. This story, in so few words, summarizes how a person's life is affected by their actions. Imagine how much more effectively we could teach our children and ourselves if we spent more time listening to the stories of the world.

Hopefully, the audio files containing both versions of this story will be available on The Anecdote shortly.