"The Liar" is a famous old Armenian folk tale. The story begins with a King, who being bored one day decides to issue a challenge to all people in his kingdom. The challenge is that whoever can tell him the greatest lie he has ever heard will receive an apple made of solid gold. People from across the kingdom and from all walks of life traveled to the King's castle to tell him their lie, and yet the King, who had heard just about every grand lie in his lifetime, was not impressed by any of them. Just as he was about to end his contest without declaring a winner, a peasant walked into his throne room carrying a cauldron. The peasant claimed that the King owed him a pot of gold and that he had come to collect. The King denied this claim and called the peasant an outrageous liar. The peasant said that if the King thought he was such a big liar, he deserved the golden apple. But the King had grown fond of his golden apple, so he declined and said it wasn't an impressive lie. The peasant, however, retorted that he deserved the pot of gold the king "owed" him if he were not a liar. The King, caught in this dilemma, had no choice but to award the peasant the golden apple and declare him the greatest liar in the kingdom.
Retellings of the tale are easily found in just about any book of Armenian folktales. Animated Adaptations have been made of the folktale as well, one by Soviet Armenian animation studio Armen Film Animated Shorts entitled "Who Will Tell a Fable?" (in this version the stakes were made higher, the prize of the contest was half the kingdom), and more recently, it was adapted at the hands of Armenian-American cartoonist Hayk Manukyan, and can be viewed here
.
Tropes in "The Liar" include:
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The king intends to win by just “believing” each lie told to him. It works for a while, but then he comes across a specific kind of lie tailor-made to make this strategy fail.
- Morton's Fork: The peasant catches the king in this: either call out his bluff and give up the golden apple, or say he's telling the truth and give him a pot of gold. Either way, the peasant humiliates the king and gets a valuable treasure.
- Tempting Apple: The king offers to give a golden apple to the biggest liar in the kingdom. Eventually, a peasant wins the apple by using by stating that the king owes him a pot of gold. If the king denies it, the peasant wins the lying contest. If the king doesn't, well, he has to give the peasant the pot of gold. So the king parts with the golden apple instead.
- Xanatos Gambit: No matter what the king chooses, the peasant gets gold.
