The Master Thief

The Master Thief

From The Three Ravens Podcast by Three Ravens

April 16, 2026 · 44 min · Season 10 · Episode 42

About this episode

The episode discusses the tale of The Master Thief, exploring its historical context and themes of social inequality.

For today's Lang Fairy Tales episode we have a tale with its very own ATU number - The Master Thief! First recorded, to our knowledge, by Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. the story became popular in Europe due to a single writer in the Italian Renaissance who popularised the "Rise Tale" - the story of someone from a more modest background outwitting the rich to become rich themselves. In this case, with the Langs taking their version from Asbjørnsen and Moe, we have a youngest son who is a trickster, cross-dresser, huntsman, passable fake corpse, and torturer of priests. Is he a hero? Perhaps not - but is that perhaps the point, with European society being so unfairly organised that only the deceitful can succeed within it? Naturally we have a chat about all that, and about the story's clear roots in commedia dell'arte, at the end. If you are unfamiliar with the Lang Fairy Tales, these seminal collections were assembled between 1889 and 1913 by a married couple, folklorists and translators Nora and Andrew Lang, with most of the work done to compile them completed by Nora, also known as Leonora Blanche Alleyne. Assembled and published in 12 colour-coded "Fairy Books," the corpus…

People in this episode

Host: Three Ravens

Topics covered

  • fairy tales
  • trickster
  • European literature
  • commedia dell'arte
  • social commentary

Keywords

  • Master Thief
  • Lang Fairy Tales
  • Herodotus
  • trickster tales
  • European folklore
  • commedia dell'arte
  • social inequality

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