Mythology and Folklore MLLL 3046

Sadko by Ilya Repin on  Wikipedia For this week, I read the Russian Fairy Tales unit. I chose this unit because I have enjoyed all of the other fairy tales that I have read in this class this semester, and I did not know much about Russia’s storytelling. Some of these stories were pretty short with common themes, such as a greedy man who gets what is coming to him. Other stories are longer with more bizarre plots. I also learned from this unit that the days of the week are embodied as supernatural characters. One shorter tale about a greedy priest had a disturbing yet foreseeable ending. In The Treasure , an old, poor man must bury his dead wife. No one will help him dig a grave because he is poor, not even the priest. The priest is actually the rudest of all and declares that the old man cannot show his face to him again without money. The old man begins to dig a grave for his wife himself and hits a pot of gold. He uses the gold to bury his wife and...

Proverbs Those who see others with their hearts, not their eyes Must after all be very wise. Those who judge others only on looks Will end up no better than the most vile crooks! One who is rude unto another Shall get no pudding for supper! Tales Jenny took her little puppy dog out for a walk When suddenly she heard overhead a loud squawk. Looking up above her head poor Jenny did see A large bird, and her dog it was trying to thieve! Jenny picked up a rock and with one good chuck Knocked the bird in its head, ‘twas the puppy dog’s luck! One book, two book, three book, four. Little Fiona goes to the library every-day! She likes to read and do nothing more, And her dear mother tells her to go out and play. Fiona does not like scraping her knees outside Or especially getting burns from the sun. Instead, she will state with such pride, “Mother dear, reading is simply the most fun!” O Debt! my Debt! our fearful trip is done, This degre...

Image on  Wikimedia This is a continuation of my English Nursery Rhyme unit notes. I decided to read these poems because I had a large book with many of the same works when I was younger, and I thought that it would be nice to revisit some of them and to read ones that I had never heard of before. This second section of the unit is separated into categories such as Love and Marriage, Jingles, Natural History, Relics, etc. I like this format because the book that I had did not separate them, so it is nice to compare and contrast poems within the same category in this way. In the Jingles section, I came across Hey Diddle Diddle, but the version that I found in this unit was slightly different than the one that I am used to. I clearly remember it being, “And the dish ran away with the spoon,” but this version has it as, “And the dish ran after the spoon,” accompanied by a menacing-looking dish and a frightened spoon. Here, I like my version more bec...

Image on  Wikimedia This week, I read the English Nursery Rhymes unit. I chose these tales because I knew that I would find poems from my childhood that I wished to revisit as well as poems that I had never read before. Many of these poems were smaller than the size of a normal paragraph, and some were as little as two lines long. The unit is separated into sections like Tales, Proverbs, Riddles, Paradoxes, Games, etc. I like this format, because the large book of nursery rhymes that I had when I was a child just threw everything together. The Tales section were more bizarre stories about anything, commonplace or not. Here, you will find tales about three men going to sea in a bowl, two little children perishing in a wood, and even more famous poems such as The Man in the Moon and Simple Simon . I liked revisiting the poem There Was a Crooked Man because I realized that a song that I love by Charlotte Gainsbourg called “Greenwich Mean Time” uses lines from it....

Image on  Flickr For this week, I read the Welsh (Emerson) unit. I chose this unit because I have always wanted to travel Europe, and I know that I have some Celtic ancestry. Many of these tales were about fairies, and I realized that fairies were much more vengeful mythological creatures than I had thought. In the tale The Fairies of Caragonan , the main character is the queen fairy, although there are many important characters. Something that I liked about this tale was that it displays how fairies can use their powers for good or for revenge. Also, the story was very detailed. For example, we learn a little about the lives of two men that the fairies have helped, as well as one of their sons. The rest of the story then becomes about how this son helps the fairies kill an evil witch (who they casually chuck into a ditch and burn) and how the son is then rewarded with a beautiful wife. It’s a “happily ever after” tale. I also liked Three Sho...

Totem Pole Vancouver on  Flickr This is a continuation of my Pacific Northwest American Indian unit notes. I chose this unit because I have been to the Pacific Northwest three times. Each time I did some outdoor activities, and I absolutely loved the climate, foliage, and land. This helped me envision the imagery in these tales. Some of the stories in the second half had a different feeling than the first half of the unit. Often, they were more action-packed and the storylines sometimes went in bizarre directions which made it difficult to remember what exactly happened. Also, I noticed that a lot of the paragraphs were shorter and that sentences were often choppy and clipped. I prefer the writing style of the first half of this unit. One of these strange tales was a Nez Perce story, Cry-because-he-had-no-wife . The story title is the main character’s translated name, and he really does cry through most of the tale. Because of this, I did not find him to be a ve...

The lodge I visited on Lake Quinault. Image on  Wikimedia For this week, I decided to read the Pacific Northwest American Indian stories unit. I chose this unit as my father lived in the Pacific Northwest until recently, and I visited the area three times. On one trip, we drove all the way around Olympic National Park. Lots of places, such as Quinault Lake, are rich in Native American history. Anywhere I went in Oregon and Washington was so beautiful. There are mountains, rivers, coasts, trees, creeks, waterfalls, etc. everywhere. Reading these stories, it was easy to picture the scenery that they portrayed. A lot of the tales in this unit were creation stories as told from various tribes. Perhaps the most interesting was the Atsugewi tale of a Silver-Fox and a Coyote. The relationship between these animals was interesting, and I would like to know more about how it came about. In this creation story, the Silver-Fox serves as the Creator. He and the Coyote ...

The Plough on  Wikimedia This is a continuation of my American Indian Fairy Tales unit notes. Like the last section, this one is narrated by Iagoo, a wise old man who tells stories to the village’s children. Morning Glory is a curious little girl, and she was mentioned in the last section, as well, and her brother is Eagle Feather. Something that I like about this unit is that whenever there is a Native American word the author will put the English after it, even if the word occurs multiple times throughout the story. This is helpful when dealing with readings from other languages. One of the lengthy stories in this unit is How the Summer Came . It is a legend that also has a number of origin stories within. In this tale, a young boy lives on the Earth at the time when all of the animals get along with humans and there is only one season, Winter. Hearing that an Eagle had flown close to a crack in the sky and had felt warmth coming from it, the boy ...

Evening Star image on Wikimedia This week, I chose to read the American Indian Fairy Tales unit. This unit was the most intriguing one that I have read this entire semester. The imagery is so vivid and I can clearly picture the land the Native Americans were living on in these stories. This unit has a narrator, Iagoo. Iagoo is a favorite of the local children who come to hear his stories, and he is also the most knowledgeable person of the lands and how the Earth was made. So, many of these tales and legends are origin stories. The stories in this unit were longer, so overall there are fewer stories in this unit than the units that I had read previously. The tale of Shin-ge-bis Fools the North Wind is interesting in that the North Wind and South Wind not simply personified, but they are actually portrayed as people. When the South Wind blows, he brings along flowers and gives life to the valleys, and he is the depiction of the perfect Indian summer. When...