Blake's Mythology Blog

The Old Man and the Sparrow Sire, the third old man knew that he had to tell an even more incredible story than the first two in order to appease the fearful genius.  The first two men had shared such thrilling stories of their family being transmuted into animals, but the third old man had an even greater tale.  He carried with him at all times a small cage which contained a rather plain looking sparrow.  He fed it regularly but the sparrow was always despondent, rarely singing, instead preferring to sleep or sit still and silence.  The old man raised the cage in front of the genius and began his story thus: Oh, great one, this is not the first time that I have met a genius of your stature and power.  In fact, when I was quite young, one of my best and most beloved friends was a genius such as yourself.  I was small and carefree, living my life without fear or consequences, happy from one meal to the next, free to roam and explore the world. ...

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...