Blue Ogre was gone.

Red Ogre walked slowly back to the village until he came to the place where the bonfire had been held weeks before. He sat down on a rock and tried to remember how proud he had felt the night there had been so much dancing and feasting and celebrating.

Now the ashes covering the ground made the place cold and lonely. Red Ogre looked up at the empty branches of the giant pine tree and began to cry.

Blue Ogre was the closest friend he would ever have in the world. “And now I have lost him forever!”

Traditions of storytelling

What distinguishes a folktale from other types of stories is the central image, or seed, that makes the tale unique and tellable. Cinderella conjures up the image of glass slippers; likewise, who would tell the story of Snow White and omit the evil stepmother’s famous line: “Mirror, mirror on the wall …”? The seed of a folktale is the nucleus around which the storyteller weaves his narrative and the sign the listeners wait for to be assured that the plot is following a familiar, well-trod path. A folktale is a form that calls for both innovation and repetition; by recognizing the seed of a story, a skilled teller knows which elements of the story are immutable and which call for improvisation.

The seed of our tale is this: There are two ogres, one red and one blue; the red ogre is crying. The effectiveness of the tale, in fact, relies on the contrast between the ogre who cried and the parade of wicked ogres encountered in other tales. The seed of the story invokes all tales of ogres, even if these tales never enter the actual words of the narrative.