MythFolklore Storybook Topic Brainstorm

Topic: Fire stories from Native American Tribes
Comments: Fire is a very important aspect of traditional Creek culture. I have never heard any folklore stories about the fire so I thought it would be interesting to research all of the fire stories from the southeast tribes. I know Felix Gouge, who the stories from  from Hillabee stomp ground in Hanna, Oklahoma. When I moved to Dustin, Oklahoma, Hanna was the next town over and where my step-dad, a medicine man, was also born and raised.
Possible Stories: It is said that each fire is it's own being. There are a lot of different stories about how the fire for each ground came to be. I'm looking forward to reading all of the different ones.
Sample Story Comments: This story is about a rabbit that goes across the ocean to bring the fire back to his people.
Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: Rabbit Steals Fire
Website Name: Totkv Mocuse/New Fire
(just FYI, the link you have in Online Books list for this book links to an old web page where none of the stories are listed. The link I have for the Website is the new link.)



Topic: Tar Baby Stories


Comments: As I was reading through the different Creek stories listed, I noticed there was one for The Tar Baby. That reminded me of the Brer Rabbit Tar Baby story. 
Possible Stories: Since there might be some kind of connection between the Brer Rabbit Tar Baby and this Tar Baby story, I thought I could maybe research some more stories from African American heritage and maybe come up with the origin and/or make my own.
Sample Story Comments: The Rabbit is one tricky little dude. He talks a wolf into taking his place when he is about to get scalded by a farmer.
Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: Tar Baby
Website Name: Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians



Topic: Witches
Comments: I am interested in witches and witchcraft. I thought I might be able to go through the different Units and see what there is on either one. I'm sure there is plenty out there.
Possible Stories: Since most stories are of evil witches, I thought maybe a story line about a good witch would be interesting.
Sample Story Comments: This story kind of had a Hansel and Gret(h)el feel to it. Maybe a re-boot where the children are wicked?
Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: The Old Witch
Website Name: More English Fair Tales


Topic: Fallen Angels
Comments: The idea of a fallen angel interests me. When I was looking through Dante's Inferno, I saw a link for Fallen Angels and thought it might be a good idea.
Possible Stories: I don't really have any good ideas today. My creative juices have hit a wall. I know there is something good there though, so I wanted to write it down.
Sample Story Comments: This story doesn't have too much to offer on it's own. I may have to go looking for more in the biblical section. Maybe when I read all of the Inferno stories, this part may make more sense.
Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: Cantos 8 and 9: The Fallen Angels
Website Name: Dante's Inferno

(The Divine Comedy Inferno "Canto 9: The Furies". Source: Salvador Dali Society)

Week 2, Extra Reading Diary: Welsch (Emerson) (First Half)

For my extra reading diary entry, I chose to read the first half of the Welsch Fairy Tales (Emerson). These stories were really interesting since it was mostly about Fairies. 

Old Gyilym
In this story, you learn to never tick off a bunch of fairies that are trying to help you! Old Gyilym Evans was going to town for his wife to buy groceries. He found a golden coin on his way and ended up getting drunk instead. On his way back, he passed out in the fairies house and woke up in a bunch of gorse. When he got home, he told his wife what had happened and she called him a fool and told him it was the fairies taking revenge for him waisting the money they gave him.

(Fairy Passage. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Old Man and the Fairies, Tommy Pritchard and Kaddy's Luck
In this story we find out the first rule of fairy club, is you don't talk about fairy club, to anyone! First an Old Man is given a bag full of gold. After his wife nagged him to death about where the coins came from, he finally told her. Overnight, the fairies took all the gold back. Little Tommy Pritchard used to pick up a coin every day on his way to school and he would spend it in the sweet-shop. His father noticed that he always had money and threatened to whip him if he didn't tell him where the money was coming from. Tommy told him and the fairies stopped leaving him a coin. And poor Kaddy used to hang out with the fairies when she was younger until she got married and had a child of her own. One evening while on their way to the fair, she was telling her husband about how she used to play with the fairies. The next day they found a different smaller baby in the crib, the fairies had switched them out.
So, the final rule about fairy club is don't talk about fairy club!

Week 2, Storytelling: The Becoming

(Deucalion & Pyrrha Repopulate the Earth. Photo Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Jupiter was flooding the Earth from above with rain. He had become so impatient at the time it was taking to flood the Earth that he called on his brother, Neptune, to help him flood the Earth with more water from below. Only two people made it out alive: Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha. In the aftermath, they looked around and realized they were alone. They appealed to the goddess, Themis, to help them. She replied that they should throw the bones (rocks) of their mother (Earth) behind them. They began to do this and one by one, my kind was created from the bones of our mother. After landing, we would soften and morph into a human form, and after a few minutes, we were free to walk, talk, and live. I was euphoric when I was thrown. This was my first moment on Earth. As I began to morph, I felt my bones being created and hardening, I felt my skin stretching over my muscles. I felt my eyes forming underneath my eyelids. I was Becoming. I was slowly opening my eyes when everything stopped. At first I thought maybe this was what was supposed to happen before I took my final form, but I knew that this was not right. This was not normal. Something was wrong. What had gone wrong? What had I done wrong? This was as far in the process of becoming a human in the re-population of the Earth as I was allowed to go.

I have spent thousands of years trying to figure out why I was not allowed to Become. No one answers me, no one can hear me. My soul is stuck in this slowly deteriorating form. No one noticed me after the Becoming. Everyone moved forward as Deucalion and Pyrrha threw the rocks, moved forward, and threw more rocks. I was left alone for a long time before someone found me. A young woman who had been wandering through the woods, half lost, was the first one to find me. She walked up to me and looked me in my half opened eyes. I thank the goddess every day that I had gotten my eyes open this far before things went wrong. To be immortal and blind would be the final sick twist to my situation. She slowly reached out to me and rubbed her hand down my arm. I could feel her, but I could not respond. I was screaming, trying to move a millimeter, but nothing would happen. After slowly moving around me, she grabbed both my shoulders and said she was taking me home with her. I was so relieved to be moved. No matter what happened, at least I would not have to stand out here in the cold, dark, nothingness by myself.

After leaving me for some time, the young woman returned with men. They all looked me over, trying to figure out where my base was. I wanted to tell them that I was not a statue, that I was supposed to be a human. I was supposed to be like them. I was supposed to Become. After prying my feet from the ground, they carried me gently to her palace. The young woman would stop and stare at me sometimes, like she knew there was something different about this statue, but she was always going somewhere else, never staying long enough to follow her hunch. The young woman grew into an old woman, who had young women of her own. I stayed on the palace grounds for a very long time. I saw countless wars, famine, empires rise and fall. At some point, I just became a part of history. Over the next millennia I have been moved from museum to museum, from storage to storage, from person to person. I have lost limb and head, but I still remain.

(Unknown Statue. Photo Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Authors Note: The story Deucalion and Pyrrha is about how the god Jupiter decides to flood the Earth with the help of his brother Neptune. Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha survive the flood by landing in their boat on the top of Mount Parnassus and become good pagans who worshipped the gods and goddesses and made offerings unto them. After appeasing the goddess Themis, she decided to allow them to repopulate the earth. To do this they were to pry rocks up from the ground and then throw the rocks behind them. When they would do this the rocks would soften and morph into a human like form and then would become new women and men. I first thought this myth would be a good one to adapt into a story about one of the rocks who was to become a man or a woman that didn't quite make it all the way to their human form. I thought about what would happen to them if they were stuck half-way between “becoming” a human. The flow of the sentences in the first paragraph is supposed to be choppy, to show the urgency and to mimic how I thought becoming a person would happen, in short spurts.

Bibliography: Story source: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000)

Week 2, Reading Diary B: Ovid's Metamorphosis I

For some reason, this half was a little harder for me to get into. I don't know if it was me or the stories, or the fact that the weather has been so nice the past couple of days that I didn't want to sit in front of a computer reading. I compromised and printed out the stories for me to read on paper. I'm old and old school, for some reason reading on a laptop just doesn't float my boat. Anyway, on to:

Ovid's Metamorphosis I

Echo
I thought this was a very interesting story. Continuing on from the first half, again, Jupiter and sex. This man! This time he is not out pillaging and raping, but arguing with him wife about whether women or men enjoy sex more. They decide to go to this guy, Tiresias, who had been turned from a man, to a woman, and back to a man--all by whacking two snakes on the head who had been mating (WTF?) Anyway, he confirms Jupiters accusation that "women do gain more...from the pleasures of love". This ticks off Juno off so she blinds the man, however, Jupiter feels kind of bad and makes him knowledgeable of the future...seems legit!
The story goes on to talk about Narcissus and what a pain he would be because he would fall in love with himself. This story also tells the story of Echo, who used to talk to Juno to keep her from finding Jupiter with other women, and how she came to be 'but an echo', only able to repeat the last words of other people. It explains that she retreated to a cave after being rejected by Narcissus, which I thought was an interesting way of explaining why there is an echo in caves.

Narcissus
His story was really boring, but at the end of this section, it talks about how "he had been received into the house of shadows". I thought this might be an interesting story to take off on for the storytelling part.

Perseus and Medusa
This story...I could make a dirty story out of it...but that would not be appropriate for class :)

(painting by Piero di Cosimo)

Week 2, Reading Diary A: Ovid's Metamorphosis I

Ovid's Metamorphosis I

Short, Sweet, and to the Point!

Deucalion & Pyrrha:
This story is about how Jupiter has the Earth flooded and only Deucalion and Pyrrha survive. They were good little pagans so they were allowed to throw rocks behind themselves to make new women and men. I thought this may be a good story to tell about one of the men or women that didn't quite make it all the way to human and are stuck in their statue form.

Io:
Oh, poor, poor, Io. This poor woman is raped by Jupiter and then turned into a cow so his wife (Argos, Saturnalia, Juno) wouldn't know about her, although it seems that she does know. This story, even with the help at the top, just confused me in the beginning. Anyway, lo is to be watched over by the wife's brother Argus, who by the way, has 100 eyes! Then Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus so that lo can turn back into her previous form. Eyes freak me out for some reason, so I will probably stay away from this story.

Callisto:
So, now this poor woman gets raped by the same god, and he gets her pregnant too! She is then shunned by her group, which includes the goddess Diana, for being pregnant, even though she was raped and not her fault. After giving birth to her son, Juno turns her into a bear. At the age of 15, her son Arcas sees the bear, who is his mother, and tries to kill it. Jupiter, seeing what was about to happen, decided to stop it and make them both into the constellations of Little and Big Bear. Why that was the natural progression of the story baffles me. There is no "reason" why it jumped from bear and human to stars?!?!

(Jupiter and Semele, by Gustave Moreau Source: Mythology and Folklore UnTextbook)

Semele:
So, again, Jupiter rapes another poor woman and gets her pregnant! This time Juno disguised herself as an "old woman" and cons Semele into getting Jupiter to amass all his power into him at once and then embrace her. This, of course, kills her. Her baby is ripped from her stomach and attaches to Jupiter's leg (ew, gross!) until it is born.


First, off, Jupiter needs to be neutered. He has serious issues! Other than that, it was interesting to read the Greek myths, since I have never actually read any before. I know most of their names and attributes from movies, constellations and such, but it was nice to see read their stories. I definitely liked the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha the most out of the first half of this Metamorphosis.