Stone soup

For other uses, see Stone soup (disambiguation).

Stone Soup is an old folk story in which hungry strangers persuade local people of a town to give them food. It is usually told as a lesson in cooperation, especially amid scarcity. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as button soup, wood soup, nail soup, and axe soup. In the Aarne-Thompson folktale classification system it is type 1548.^[1]

Story

3 soldiers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travellers. So the travellers go to the neck of the stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travellers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavour, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with carrots to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travellers again mention their stone soup which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.

Ethnic variation

In the French and Hungarian versions of the tale, the travellers are soldiers: three returning home from the Napoleonic Wars play the role in the former, and a single, starving one, who encounters several hardships on his journey back to his homeland, is depicted in the latter.

In the Portuguese tradition, the traveller is a monk and the story takes place around Almeirim, Portugal. Nowadays many restaurants in Almeirim serve stone soup, or sopa de pedra.

The story is most commonly known as nail soup in Scandinavian and Northern European countries. In these versions, the main character is typically a tramp looking for food and lodgings, who convinces an old woman that he will make nail soup for the both of them if she would just add a few ingredients for the garnish. In Eastern Europe the variation of the story (having more in common with the Northern European rendition) is called axe soup, with an axe being the catalyst. In Russian tradition a soldier eats axe kasha (Каша из топора).

Historical reference

U.S. Army General George S. Patton, Jr. referred to the "rock soup method" of acquiring resources for attacks in the face of official disapproval by his superiors for offensive operations. In the military context, he sent units forward ostensibly on reconnaissance missions, to later reinforce them when resistance was met and eventually turned small scale probes into all out attacks; he notably did this during the Battle of Sicily in the advance on Palermo and again in the campaign in northwest Europe, notably near Metz when his 3rd US Army was officially halted during Operation Market Garden.^[2]

Adaptations

• The story was the basis of a 1947 children's book, Stone Soup (ISBN 9780689878367), by Marcia Brown, which featured soldiers tricking miserly villages into cooking them a feast. The book won a Caldecott Medal in 1947.
• This book was read aloud by the Captain (played by Bob Keeshan) on an early episode of Captain Kangaroo in the 1950s, as well as at least once in the 1960s or early 1970s.
• Another children's book based on the story, also called Stone Soup, written by Jon J. Muth and set in China, was published in 2003.
• Jim Henson's Storyteller series contains one tale called 'A Story Short' in which the Storyteller himself (played by John Hurt) is the main character. In the beginning, he arrives at a castle where a man is thrown out for begging for food. He proceeds to trick the King's cook into making 'Stone Soup'. After they are happily fed, the cook realizes what has happened and pleads with the King to let him boil the Storyteller in oil; but the King instead offers a way out – to tell him a story every day for a year instead.
• The movie Fandango (1985 film) contains a wedding sequence towards the end which builds on the Stone Soup theme. The heroes of the movie need to hold a wedding ceremony, but they lack any funds to do so. They set up a folding card table by the main street of a sleepy Texas town, dust it off, and invite passersby to come to the wedding. As they concoct stories of delinquent caterers and crashed champagne trucks, the friendly towns people contribute their time and resources, the result being a magical wedding ceremony.
• Shel Silverstein's song, "The Wonderful Soup Stone" tells a version of this story. Bobby Bare recorded the song on his 1973 Lullabys, Legends and Lies album.

References

1. ^ D. L. Ashliman, Stone Soup: folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 1548
2. ^ Farago, Ladislas Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (Ballantyne, 1970)

External links

• The Story of Stone Soup
• The Story of Stone Soup (alternate link)
• Stone Soup: An Old Tale Retold (based on the 1947 book)
• Recipe of stone soup from Almeirim's most famous restaurant (Portuguese)