My informant is Persian and he told me a story that his mother used to tell him when he was little. In Farsi, a lot of the words in the story rhyme and flow a bit better than the english translation.

“The story is called Aunt Margy. So Aunt Margy had a lot of chickens and a rooster. Every morning she would take them out of the chicken coop to come and eat their food. At night, Aunt Margy asked them kindly to go to their chicken coop, so they can stay safe and away from the wild animals. One night, Aunt Margy went to go put them in the coop, but the rooster was very arrogant and didn’t want to listen to her. He was running around and didn’t go in. Aunty Margy decided to let him stay out and deal with the consequences that night. It started to rain very hard and Aunty Margy decided to keep him out and get punished. The next day the rooster did the same thing and he was very sick and he kept sneezing. He was sitting by Aunty Margy’s door desperately. Aunt Margy told him, ‘See what happens when you don’t listen to me?’ So she brought him in, made him some soup, and he felt better. Next day when Aunty Margy was calling for everyone to go in the coop, he was the first one to go in and he learned his lesson. This was one of the stories that my mom used to tell me as a kid and it was obviously in Farsi. In Farsi, a lot of the words rhyme, so it was meant for kids.”

This story takes place in a fictional world where roosters can talk, and is intended to entertain and educate its audience. These attributes make the story of Aunt Margy a tale. It also follows Axel Olrik’s Epic Laws of Folk Narratives. The first one is that the tale does not open or close abruptly. The second is the use of repetition. Repeating things in a story helps the audience follow along easier, especially if they missed information the first time around. Another law that the tale of Aunty Margy follows is that it never has more than two characters to a scene. It becomes difficult for children to keep track of characters when there are too many introduced at once.