Valery Carrick’s goat and ram display a wolf’s head beside the wolves’ cooking pot
The travelling goat and ram frighten their hosts by repeatedly presenting the same wolf’s head as though they carried several. The head on the ground, the pair and the cooking wolves belong to this particular episode; the illustration does not show them actually killing a wolf.
Overview
A household expels its goat and ram for consuming corn without helping support their owners. The pair makes a bag, finds a wolf’s head in a field and carries it away. At a fire they encounter three wolves cooking porridge and threatening to eat the visitors afterward. The goat repeatedly asks the ram to show a bigger head, although the same single head is produced each time. The wolves mistake the display for a bagful of victims and separately invent excuses to leave.
After eating the porridge, the goat and ram flee. The wolves reconsider and pursue them into a tree, where the goat sits higher and the frightened ram lower. The ram accidentally falls onto a wolf; the goat turns the mishap into another apparent attack by shouting for the largest specimen. All three wolves run away. The tale attributes survival to improvisation and mistaken appearances, not actual wolf-slaying, enchanted heads or a transformation of either domestic animal. Their independent speech and actions belong to this animal tale.
Origins & earliest records
More Russian Picture Tales: The Goat and the Ram, printed pp. 11–23, with following illustration page 24. Valery Carrick, translated by Nevill Forbes; the selected undated title carries copyright 1914 and 1920. No collecting locality or actual oral narrator supplied.
Records & interpretation
Complete selected animal-tale dialogue supports speech, threats, deceptive appearances and the stated ending. The figures are literary anthropomorphic animals, with no added supernatural anatomy or biological species record.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
More Russian Picture Tales: The Goat and the Ram, pp. 11–23
Complete tale through the three wolves’ final flight; one found head, not an actual collection of slain wolves.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textCarrick/Forbes: More Russian Picture Tales, complete selected animal taleResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
Historical illustrationValery Carrick’s goat and ram display a wolf’s head beside the wolves’ cooking pot
The travelling goat and ram frighten their hosts by repeatedly presenting the same wolf’s head as though they carried several. The head on the ground, the pair and the cooking wolves belong to this particular episode; the illustration does not show them actually killing a wolf.
