Tall tale

A tall 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 European countryside, 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.

– a friendly folk-hero who traveled the West planting apple trees because he felt his guardian angel told him to

Johnny Appleseed

– an American football player whose reputation for wild behavior was as well known as his on-field play

Johnny Blood

– A Kentuckian frontiersman, Texas Ranger, and land speculator who fought for the Texan cause in the Battle of the Alamo. He is known for the Bowie knife which he used to disembowel opponents.

Jim Bowie

– blazed a trail across Cumberland Gap to found the first English-speaking colonies west of the Appalachian Mountains

Daniel Boone

– an Indian fighter of colonial Texas^[1]

Aylett C. "Strap" Buckner

– 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.

Annie Christmas

– a pioneer and U.S. Congressman from Tennessee who later died at the Battle of the Alamo

Davy Crockett

– 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.

Mike Fink

– American Revolutionary War hero

Peter Francisco

– a mighty steel-driving African American

John Henry

– a tough Wild-West woman

Calamity Jane

(1871–1935), a lumberjack and log driver from Maine who is known for his numerous off-the-job exploits, such as catching bobcats alive with his bare hands, and drunken brawls^[2]^[3]

Jigger Johnson

– a brave and gritty railroad engineer

Casey Jones

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

Nat Love

– an early 19th-century daredevil who died during a jump on Friday the 13th

Sam Patch

– a heroine of the American Revolutionary War

Molly Pitcher

spawned various tall tales surrounding his involvement with piracy from 1717–1718

Blackbeard

Rodney Ansell

Big Bill – The dumbest man on the Speewah who made his living cutting up shafts and selling them for post holes

mining

– A champion shearer who had colossal strength and quick wit.

Crooked Mick

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:

Another folk hero is Charlie McKeahnie, the hero of Banjo Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River", whose bravery, adaptability, and risk-taking could epitomise the new Australian spirit.

tales of Big Joe Mufferaw, a giant of a lumberjack and woodsman from the Ottawa Valley, loosely based on real-life lumberjack Joseph Montferrand

French Canadian

Johnny Chinook, a cowboy and rancher in Alberta.

Métis

Sam McGee, the hero of Robert Service's poem, "" (1907)

The Cremation of Sam McGee

The Canadian frontier has also inspired the types of tall tales that are found in American folklore, such as:

was one of the great tall tales of Estonia.

Toell the Great

The , in Renaissance Poland (1568), was a satirical society dedicated entirely to mocking people and telling tall tales.

Babin Republic

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.

(16th century) by the French writer François Rabelais told the tale of two giants; father and son.

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel

The many farfetched adventures of the fictional German nobleman , some of which may have had a folklore basis.

Baron Munchausen

Legends of the Irish mythological hunter-warrior , 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.

Fionn mac Cumhaill

, a Soviet film, depicts tall tales of the Pomors. A Pomor elder describes several stories, including a brown bear coating himself in baking soda to be acceptable to humans as a polar bear.

Laughter and Grief by the White Sea

The Cumbrian Liars, a United Kingdom association who follow in the of Will Ritson.^[4]

seven-league footsteps

"" is a well-known Irish folk song about an implausibly large sailing ship with a fanciful cargo.

The Irish Rover

Oskar, later known as "," 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.

Unsinkable Sam

Some European tall tales include:

– Tim Burton movie relating the story of a dying man exaggerating the details of his life to his son

Big Fish

Bill Brasky

Campfire story

Chuck Norris facts

Fairy tale

Folklore

Mythomania

Snipe hunt

The Most Interesting Man in the World

Unreliable narrator

Urban legend

Brown, Carolyn. (1989). The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press. 0-87049-627-1.