Tony Beaver is a character in several

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 n ...

s, often in tandem with stories of

Paul Bunyan Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack and folk hero in American and Canadian folklore. His exploits revolve around the tall tales of his superhuman labors, and he is customarily accompanied by Babe the Blue Ox. The character originated in the o ...

.Brown, Charles Edward (1930). ''Paul Bunyan and Tony Beaver tales.'' C. E. Brown Beaver was a

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

woodsman Woodsman (also, woodsmen, pl.) is a competitive, co-ed intercollegiate sport in the United States, Canada and elsewhere based on various skills traditionally part of forestry educational and technical training programs. In North America, the sp ...

located up Eel River, often described as a cousin of Paul Bunyan, and champion griddle skater of the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

.Shay, Frank (1930). ''Here's audacity!: American legendary heroes.'' The Macaulay company The stories appeared in print in the early 20th century and were later compiled by Mary E. Cober.Fischer, Marjorie (November 29, 1953). Busy Beaver; The Remarkable Story of Tony Beaver, Montana. (review). ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' "Tony Beaver" is also the title of a folk operetta by Max Berton (lyrics and libretto) and Josef Marais (music), published in 1954 by G. Schirmer. As the introduction to the libretto puts it: "When you have met Tony Beaver, you may say, 'The things that happen to Tony can never happen to me,' and no doubt you will be right. For in your workaday world, the

melon A melon is any of various plants of the family Cucurbitaceae with sweet, edible, and fleshy fruit. The word "melon" can refer to either the plant or specifically to the fruit. Botanically, a melon is a kind of berry, specifically a " pepo". Th ...

s you plant can turn out to be no more than melon-sized, while in Tony's realm, melons may grow as big as moons. For Tony has all the resources of folklore at his command, its ingenuity, its wonder, and he walks hand in hand with fabulous kinsmen...inhabitants of a realm where the unbelievable is believable, where the fantastic is commonplace, where the dreams and the doings are scaled to tall measure.... Perhaps you cannot hope to match Tony's doings, but you can match his dream." The musical play "Tony Beaver" was first performed at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, Idyllwild, CA, in 1955.

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Tony Beaver, griddle skater.
via Open Library * West Virginia culture American folklore Tall tales Paul Bunyan {{fict-char-stub