Blake's Mythology Blog

Did I mention that Hans the Hedgehog  also rides a rooster?  What a boss. (Source) I had so much enjoyed reading the other Brothers Grimm fairy tales (from Crane's translation) that I really wanted to do another of their stories for the extra reading. The first story is called "Bearskin."  In this story, a brave young soldier has been decommissioned from the army but has nowhere to go.  Disheartened, he sits against a tree, contemplating his future life and what little promise it held.  All of a sudden, the Devil appeared before him and offered him a little deal.  If he would wear the Devil's coat and a bearskin for seven years without shaving, brushing his hair, or washing his face or cutting his nails, then he would be rich for life and the Devil could never have a hold of his soul.  So this he did, in the process becoming betrothed to a beautiful young woman whose older sisters committed suicide after the truth was revealed.  It was an odd...

The first story in this second unit is a tale of the six brothers who were transformed into swans by a wicked and jealous witch.  They had a younger sister who was spared the fate of her brothers, but in order to free them from their cruel state had to maintain silence for 6 years.  Nearly 6 years later, she has been betrothed to a neighboring king and has already wed him.  However, she has been accused by her jealous mother-in-law of killing her young children and is about to be put to death.  As the day of judgement nears, the allotted 6 years of silence came to a close and the young wife was able to exonerate herself and free her brothers from the curse of the swans.  This story was very similar to another one I had read in the Irish fairy tales unit. Next we have the story of good King Thrushbeard, who was rejected as a suitor by a beautiful princess who was too proud and haughty for her own good.  Her own father, disgusted and irritated by his daughte...

The first story in this unit is called The Fisherman and His Wife.  It is a classic tale of avarice and the dangers of greed.  It is interesting to know that these stories are mainly for children, due to the infamous nature of the book, but luckily, despite the "Not Safe for Children" tag, this story was really not too bad.  A fisherman finds a magical flounder which starts to grant his wishes, but as a lowly fisherman, he is content with the first small cottage that is given to him.  His wife, however, is not happy with what she has and asks for progressively bigger things, becoming a noble, then a king, then emperor, then the Pope.  Finally, she asks for the power over the sun and the moon, and her sorrowful husband goes to the fish and asks him one last time.  The fish, now very tired of this little game decides to undo all of the wishes that he had granted before.  Thus the couple ends up in a hovel again. The next story is about a little girl nam...

Angiola and the Prince (Source) The first story is called “Zelinda and the Monster” and is the retelling of “Beauty and the Beast.” It follows the exact same storyline, although set in Italy, apparently, there is no evil man that is also competing for the beautiful young woman’s attention. The next is titled “The Fair Angiola.”  We may be more familiar with it as the story of Rapunzel, for it follows the exact same storyline, essentially.  Angiola seems to be a very good girl though, while her mother and her sisters all bring about the problems on their own, simply because they wanted jujube fruit.  I researched them, and they do not sound good, so I don’t know what their problem was.  Luckily, everyone lived happily ever after. The next story was a delightful tale of the devil, who decides that it is high time he should marry a young woman.  He builds a wonderful house on top of a portal to Hell, and through his trickery, convinces two of three sisters...

Little mice must always beware of cats- even if they are asleep (Image Source) These stories are more retellings of the classics of Aesop's Fables, as translated from the French poetry into English verse. In the first poem, a brave young mouse goes out by himself to explore the world a bit.  From his sheltered and naive perspective, he comes across two different creatures, one of them harsh and terrifying and the other soft and gentle.  The scary one had great arms that beat and changed the wind, and a sharp mouth that looked as if it could pierce the heart of the poor little mouse in one strike.  It had scaly, clawed feat with fearful talons, and a great red chunk of what looked like raw meat hanging from its head.  Mouse ran as fast as he could from the frightful creature until he came upon another one, sleeping.  It was smooth and soft, with gentle curves and covered in sleek fur.  It was warm and had small paws that did not seem threatening at all ...

These stories are taken from the English translation of a French poetic retelling of the famous Aesop's fables. The first one is the Tortoise and the Hare, then followed by the Ass and the Lion's Skin.  This story is a quick little tale about how it matters what is on the inside, not outside that counts.  Although the donkey was able to scare the other creatures, once he was found out, he could do nothing. The next story is called The Frog in the Bog, and it is about a frog who sees a large ox and becomes jealous of his size.  He resolves to puff himself up, breath by breath, until he explodes.  Lesson learned: don't try to be something you're not. The next story (all of these are titled "Foolish Animals")  is about a dog with a bone in his mouth who sees in the reflection of the river another dog with a bone.  He jumps in and nearly drowns, losing his bone in the process.  Lesson learned here: be happy with what you have Next we have the country m...

Well, with a fresh round of fairy tales (quite literally in this case, they all have to do with actual fairies) we learn once again that if you have a good thing going with fairies (i.e. they are hooking you up with free money all the time) you do not spoil that by giving away their secret.  First a man named Robert Roberts (really?) kept digging up gold that the fairies hid for him, but after bragging to his friends about it he never found any more gold.  I guess he deserved that?  The other story was about a pretty girl who walked by herself quite often, and the fairies, seeing that she was alone and pretty decided to have compassion on her and so they put coins along her path.  She figured out that it was the fairies doing this, but after her mom found her gold stash and wanted to know where it was coming from, the little girl told her mother that it was the fairies.  Just like that, no more coins.  That's just what happens. Ok, the next story we have s...

 The first story is called "The Fairies of Caragonan" and has to do with the story of a sick old man and the fairies who cure him.  He has been "witched" by a witch and cannot find any cure until the curious daughter of a fairy queen sees him and entreats her mother to heal the poor man.  This she does, and the man helps to build a fairy circle for them.  It turns out that the fairies and the witch have had a long-standing dispute.  Neither had been able to prevail over the other, and so the fairy turned to the old man to help defeat the old witch. After building the fairy circle, the Queen fairy was able to spy on the witch and enlists the aid of a small boy.  They have a mirror that they set up in order to spy on the witch, but the boy is the one that has to use it.  They trick the witch into changing herself into a rabbit, which the boy chases and kills.  In return for his help, they bless the boy with a wealth of treasure. The next pages ...

The first story, called The Farmer of Liddesdale, gives a familiar tale of a man being tricked out of work and reward by a fairy-like creature that works and ploughs his whole field, then harvests everything perfectly, and tricks the farmer into taking all of his harvest.  The farmer prays and is blessed with seeing the trickster's bag break and his crops staying in his field.  It was strange. A field in Ireland (Source) The next story tells the tale of a small humpback, who, although ugly, sings sweetly and weaves beautiful baskets.  One day his beautiful singing impresses some fairies, who bless him by taking away his hump and transforming him into a handsome man.  When the townspeople hear about this, one of them becomes greedy and goes to sing the same song to the fairies, hoping for a similar reward.  Instead they are offended by his terrible singing and curse him with the same hump that the hunchback had. Another tale recounted the story of a small b...

Ruins in Ireland (Source) The first story in this reading is called "The Fate of the Children of Lir" and is about how they are changed into swans by their jealous stepmother.  I may be rewriting the story, so it will be helpful to list the names of the characters and locations.  They are:King Lir, his first wife Ove, second wife Oifa.  His firstborn daughter was Fingula, followed by her twin brother, Aod.  Two smaller children followed, named Fiachra and Conn.  King Lir is the minor king, and King Dearg is the king of all the land.  Much of the action is taking place at the Lake of the Red Eye. Lir goes out to find his children upon hearing of their disappearance, and discovers that they have been turned into swans by his wife Oifa.  King Dearg turned her into an air demon, and she flew away forever.  The swans are near Erin, a town, which comes to love them and their beautiful singing and resolve to never kill a swan. The swans sing quite...

A coyote (Source) In the first story about the legendary “trickster coyote” we see him conspiring to steal a poor man's wife. While the man is away, the coyote does this and escapes with the rest of the camp down into a valley. Eventually the man returns however, and starts inquiring about his missing wife. After some searching, he finds his wife in the tipi of Coyote. He rescues his wife and hatches a plan to punish Coyote for his evil trick. He hears up some rocks in a fire and wraps them in fat, then gives them to Coyote. Coyote eagerly wolfs them down, but after a bit falls over dead. This is the first story of Coyote. I had assumed that Coyote was a protagonist kind of trickster, like the raven of last week, but I was wrong. There are still several stories with Coyote left in them however, so I am interested to see if they are continuous or if they are not connected. Turns out most of the stories are not connected, or at least the reports of Coyote’s death were greatly ...

Taos Pueblo, New Mexico (Source) These stories in this collection are a very close translation of traditional Apache stories.  As such, they do not always make the most sense, and are very vague with a lot of their words.  Something I noticed in particular was the use of pronouns, which was particularly confusing.  I hope that when I am rewriting my own story, I can do it a lot more clearly so that the reader understands and knows exactly what is going on. In one of the stories, Naiyenesgani, a monster hunter, is commissioned by a tribe of people to go and rescue some of their families from a kind of swamp monster that is guarding them.  He uses four different hoops to drain the water, then goes in and kills the monster.  The hoops are black, blue, yellow, and mixed colors, which also happen to be the same colors that the are centered in many of these stories.  Whenever I write my story, I will make sure to incorporate this. In other stories, which a...

Although the men searched far and wide, they could  not find the sun.  (Image Source) One of the interesting stories in this second half of the reading is a legend about how the first women came to live with the Alaskan people.  In the story, there is only one woman that exists in the land, and an enterprising fisherman is able to marry her.  However, another man becomes jealous and attempts to steal the fisherman's wife.  He is only halfway successful, however, because he and the fisherman split the woman in two during a tug-of-war.  She survived, remarkably, and the two men fashion her missing halves out of wood.  This was a very interesting story, and although it seems a bit cruel, it is a funny explanation for the clumsiness of the southern dancers and the awkward hands of the northern women. Another story tells the origins of the wind, and how a doll crafted by a childless couple goes out to all the cardinal directions and cuts holes in the c...

A snowy raven, perhaps like the trickster in these legends (Source) Stylistic Notes: Most of the first story is told in quotations, with Raven talking directly to Man that he had created.  Raven himself is the one that explains how the various animals are created.  Man also replies, also in quotations. In the next story, Raven talks to himself as he continues to create different animals. The Raven in this story is much more helpful to the humans that it created then it is to the other beings in the world that it lives in. The other story focuses on the creation of other animals.  Each of their creations is somehow related to Man, who is traveling with Raven and being turned different animals by him.  I almost always compare the references to a creation story to the traditional Biblical account.  It is interesting to see the difference, especially how they see the creation of different species and land.  It is also interesting to see how many of t...

An idyllic landscape in Laos ( Source) The first story is a little bit different, it tells the story of a woman who becomes so enraged that she leaves her Laotian village and dwells among the beasts of the forest.  She lives there until she is no longer angry, and returns to her village as a hero, having protected the villagers from wild beasts.  This left me with so many questions, like: Why did she become so angry? What happened to her? Why did the animals love her specifically? How often were they attacking the village and why? What was the point of this story?  I am very confused. Since these stories are folklore, I a suppose that there does not have to be an exact point to each story.  The next one tells the tale of a kind of "garden of eden" that exists for hunters who faithfully chase game up and down mountains.  That is it, the entire story.  There is nothing else to it.  The author does try to throw in an element of faith in the story, bu...

A tortoise in the desert (Source) This series of stories now seems to be less focused on the machinations of the trickster god Anansi and instead on other themes, such as value lessons. One of these is a story of a tortoise and a hunter who finds it in the woods.  It is singing, and the hunter, enthralled by its voice, takes it home with him, promising that he will keep her to himself.  Eventually he breaks this promise, trying to impress the village.  This eventually leads to his death.  Anansi is not even part of this tale. Another story talks about a chameleon who, by his tricks, becomes king of the animals.  None of them are happy with this outcome and they all abandon him. Then we get back to Anansi, who continues to teach us lessons through his selfish and immoral actions.  He had an opportunity to take home a whole elephant for dinner, but because he did not want to share it with his family, he instead chased after a small wren to give to his ...

Some termites All of these stories about Anansi are quite entertaining and I found myself laughing out loud at many of them.  It was interesting how although Anansi is a great trickster, he himself often seems to be getting tricked as well.  In one of the stories, he is tricked by a rubber man, which is probably what the tar baby story of Brer Rabbit is based on. Each of the stories has both a kind of moral as well as an explanation for some natural phenomenon in the world, normally about animals.  This explains why termites are so pesky, or why spiders hide in corners, for example. Also interesting is how Anansi is such a terrible character, he does despicable things and has killed several people already.  He is also completely selfish and often takes advantage of other people, lying and cheating them often.  Like many tricksters in mythology, he does seem to get outplayed quite often by fellow conspirators. Story Source: West African Folk-Tales , compi...

Three Men and a Tortoise In this story, a goblin (which is apparently a kind of spirit that inhabits a dead body) is hanging in a tree.  A monk has requested that the king bring him the goblin, for some unknown purpose.  As the king goes to retrieve him, the goblin tells him a story, or a kind of riddle.  If the king answers the riddle correctly, then the goblin jumps back into the tree he is hanging from.  If the king does not know the answer and gives an incorrect response, then nothing happens and they may continue walking.  However, if he knowingly gives a wrong answer, the goblin will split his head in two. So far in the overall story, I am a little confused as to what is going on and why there is a goblin, or why the king even continues to play this little game.  Why wouldn't he just ignore the goblin?  I hope that this is resolved later. Each of the riddles or stories that the goblin tells the king hinge around a similar kind of premise....

Source The second part of the reading is all about the story of  Aladdin and his lamp, but in this version (as opposed to the Disney version with which we are all familiar) he has also a magic ring.  I thought it was interesting in the story how the evil magician pretends to be his uncle but only wants to manipulate him.  The story detailed the consequences quite clearly for the evil actions of the African magician, but did not do such a wonderful job with looking at the consequences of Aladdin's acts.  He commits several morally questionable acts, but never seems to face any really consequences for this.  He essentially kidnaps several people, commits robbery and fraud, and many other things, but never seems to face that head on.  Unlike many other stories like this, it does not seem to contain a moral lesson of any kind, rather than simply being an entertaining story. Story source:  The Arabian Nights' Entertainments  by Andrew Lang and il...

Image source The story of Scheherazade begins with the classic and well known tale of the sultan who, each night, married a girl and then had her killed in the morning.  He had done this for many years and Scheherazade was determined to put a stop to it. Scheherazade then begins to layer her stories, one after another, in a kind of "story-ception" in order to maintain the Sultan's interest and prevent her from being killed.  The first story is that of a genius (or genie) who is going to kill a man for killing his son, however unwittingly. I did not quite understand how that happened, but that is ok. In the story of the genius, there are three old men who also begin to tell stories.  The first is a strangely familiar one of a vengeful and bitter wife who is turned into a deer for her black magic and murder.  The other is another similar story about shapeshifting humans, where two vengeful brothers are meted out the punishment for having attempted to ki...