A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

The black beetle who demands to be addressed as Sister Nazi adorns herself with goat-hair webbing and an onion-skin veil. She says she is travelling to Hamadan to marry Ramazan, but the opening also says she intends to marry the Mouse; the text does not explicitly identify Ramazan as his personal name. After she falls into a hoofprint, the mouse rescues her with his tail and carries her along. While supposedly finding food he marries Mistress Ant. The beetle discovers his deception, rejects his denial and drowns herself. Her angry wishes that passers-by become beetles or mud are not shown taking effect.

The mouse then leaves sheep’s trotters cooking with his ant wife, warning her not to open the pot. During his long absence she tries to take out the food, falls in and drowns. The mouse’s lament spreads to a speaking tree, crow, spring, ibex and hare, whose increasingly extravagant responses continue into a human household. The company eventually buries the ant with music and disperses in grief. This Bakhtiari account differs from the Kermani Susku and Mushu tale in its second marriage, the identity of the cooking-pot victim, the mouse’s tail rescue and the ending; its animals are not silently treated as alternate names for the Kermani protagonists.

Speaking beetle, mouse and antCumulative lamentDistinct regional version
01

Origins & earliest records

Bakhtiari storytelling, Iran

02

Records & interpretation

Complete XLV, pp. 297–303, directly read in original-edition OCR.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    Persian Tales

    D. L. R. Lorimer and E. O. Lorimer, collectors/translators · 1919

    Bakhtiari tales; XLV, The Sad Story of the Beetle, the Mouse, and the Ant, pp. 297–303

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.

Primary records and illustrations

Direct primary record

D. L. R. Lorimer and E. O. Lorimer, Persian Tales (London: Macmillan, 1919)

Bakhtiari tales; XLV. Bakhtiari tales; XLV, The Sad Story of the Beetle, the Mouse, and the Ant, pp. 297–303

Complete XLV read through burial and final dispersal. Named beetle and unnamed mouse/ant grouped as one version-specific account; no assumption that Ramazan names the mouse, no enacted transformation from spoken curses, no conflation with IV Susku/Mushu.

Inspect the digitized plate · Source collection manifest

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Historical translated folktaleLorimer, Persian Tales (1919), Bakhtiari tales; XLV, The Sad Story of the Beetle, the Mouse, and the Ant, pp. 297–303Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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