Story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual
Atall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some tall tales are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories ("the fish that got away") such as, "That fish was so big, why I tell ya', it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!" Other tall tales are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the Europeancountryside, the American frontier, the Canadian Northwest, the Australian outback, or the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Events are often told in a way that makes the narrator seem to have been a part of the story; the tone is generally good-natured. Legends are differentiated from tall tales primarily by age; many legends exaggerate the exploits of their heroes, but in tall tales the exaggeration looms large, to the extent of dominating the story.
The tall tale has become a fundamental element of American folk literature. The tall tale's origins are seen in the bragging contests that often occurred when the rough men of the American frontier gathered. The tales of legendary figures of the Old West, some listed below, owe much to the style of tall tales.
The semi-annual speech-contests held by Toastmasters International public-speaking clubs may include a tall-tales contest. Each and every participating speaker is given three to five minutes to give a short speech of a tall-tale nature, and is then judged according to several factors. The winner proceeds to the next level of competition. The contest does not proceed beyond any participating district in the organization to the international level.
The comic stripNon Sequitur (1992–present) sometimes features tall tales told by the character Captain Eddie; it is left up to the reader to decide if he is telling the truth, exaggerating a real event, or fabricating a story entirely.
Annie Christmas – a Louisiana keelboat captain, who in real life was white, but in folklore and tall tales was turned into an African-American supernaturally strong woman who defied the gender norms of the time.
Mike Fink – the toughest boatman on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a rival of Davy Crockett. Also known as the King of the Mississippi River Keelboatmen.
Nat Love, also known as "Deadwood Dick", was born a slave in Tennessee in 1854. Tales of his adventures after emancipation, as a cowboy and as a Pullman porter, gained such fantastical elements as to be considered tall tales
Sam Patch – an early 19th-century daredevil who died during a jump on Friday the 13th
Paul Bunyan's sidekick, Babe the blue ox, sculpted as a ten-meter tall roadside tourist-attraction
Subjects of some American tall tales include legendary figures:
Paul Bunyan – huge lumberjack who eats 50 pancakes in one minute, dug the Grand Canyon with his axe, made Minnesota's ten thousand lakes with his footprints, and also has a blue ox named Babe who made the Mississippi River
Johnny Kaw, a fictional Kansan whose mythological status itself was in one sense a figment, in that it was created recently, in 1955. Adherents of this assessment deem such stories fakelore.
The Australian frontier (known as the bush or the outback) similarly inspired the types of tall tales that are found in American folklore. The Australian versions typically concern a mythical station called The Speewah. The heroes of the Speewah include:
The Babin Republic, in Renaissance Poland (1568), was a satirical society dedicated entirely to mocking people and telling tall tales.
Juho Nätti (1890–1964), known as Nätti-Jussi, was a Finnish lumberjack known for telling tall tales; his stories have also circulated as folk tales and been collected in books.
Legends of the Irish mythological hunter-warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill, also known as Finn MacCool, have it that he built the Giant's Causeway as stepping-stones to Scotland, so as not to get his feet wet, and that he also once scooped up part of Ireland to fling it at a rival, but it missed and landed in the Irish Sea; the clump became the Isle of Man, the pebble became Rockall, and the void became Lough Neagh.
The Cumbrian Liars, a United Kingdom association who follow in the seven-league footsteps of Will Ritson.[4]
"The Irish Rover" is a well-known Irish folk song about an implausibly large sailing ship with a fanciful cargo.
Oskar, later known as "Unsinkable Sam," was a ship's cat that was supposed to have survived the sinking of three ships during WWII: the German Bismarck on 27th May, 1941, HMS Cossack on 27th October, 1941, and finally HMS Ark Royal on 14th November, 1941. While photographs exist of a ship's cat purported to be Oskar on HMS Ark Royal, the historicity of this legend is debated.
