Folklorists and Lost Media Enthusiasts I need Help
There's this story I'm researching at the moment called "The Magic Thread" in the Book of Virtues by William Bennett from 1993, and the trail has gone cold.
The book of virtues calls this a 'french tale', and cites an English collection simply called "Fairy Tales", which I don't have access to from 1987, that book seems to be related to the series of books published in German in the 80s which was translated to french here
I've gotten the German book Der Zauberfaden which was seemingly published as part of this series in the 80s (85?) but it has essentially no publication information on it (no copyright page etc.)
And this version mentions the "French" part on the cover, but gives no further information about where the author found the story. Which means it's very hard for me to find anything earlier than this.
So basically, I am quite skeptical about whether this story really is French, but I'm unsure. If Wanner wanted to write his own original fairy tale, why call it French? Other tales listed in the series seem to be real and well attested, if it isn't his own original tale, is there an earlier version than this?
If anyone can find a version of this Magic Thread story (boy finds a thread and can pull on it to speed up his life) that predates the 1980s I would be thrilled to hear about it, regardless of whether it's in French, German, or any other language.
Please let me know if any of you can find anything!
