The stories’ props and actors are, of course, rooted in their specific cultures, but knowledge of the cultural background only adds some color, it is not a prerequisite for comprehension. For this, little decoding is required and interpretation, even by an outsider, is largely a restatement of the obvious. The people who tell and retell those stories describe in their own voices, unencumbered by either wishful thinking or ideological demands for moral reassurance, the basic layout of their world for anyone who cares to listen. Projective devices that they are, such simple folktales therefore are a direct, uncluttered source of insight into the philosophical fundamentals of a people's existence.

The following seven short folktales represent this genre. Actors and their concerns are down-to-earth, the setting is realistic (if one allows for talking animals), problems and their solutions are stated clearly, and right and wrong are not painted in the black and white mode of ideal time-space, but in the fuzzy outlines of the here and now. As cultural peculiarities do not distract from the basic messages, there is little need or scope for explanation or translation into our own cultural idiom.

Goats are the mainstay of the Bior Ahmadi s life, providing milk and meat for food, as well as wool for clothing and tents.

The particular cultural background of these stories is that of a tribal group in southwest Iran, the Boir Ahmadi. Numbering about 150,000 people, the Boir Ahmadi have been living for centuries in the southern ridges, valleys and plains of the high Zagros mountains. Primarily shepherds, goatherders and small-scale farmers, they move their tents of black goat hair, their few belongings and their animals up and down the steep mountains, and north and south, with the changing seasons. For the past twenty years, their traditional way of life has been changing quickly, as their formerly largely autonomous area is being integrated into the bureaucratic networks of the state.

The present of the stories is the traditional time of Boir Ahmad. Although their standards and modes of living have changed, the value system and the worldview which inform these stories remains alive. The tales are still told today, understood and agreed upon by adults and children alike.

Of the tales presented here, six were collected from oral tradition and translated by this author during several different anthropological field sessions in Boir Ahmad over the past twenty years.