Fire Stories from Native Tribes: Storybook Styles Brainstorm

Topic: I will be doing my Storybook on the different fire stories from different Native American tribes of the United States. Fire is a very important aspect of traditional Creek culture and so I was just going to focus on the South East tribes stories. I then decided that I wanted to expand it to get a little more flavor but apparently there are no other tribes in North or South America that have fire stories that I could find easily. I was a little disappointed and may have to expand my story hunting from just Native American stories to all myths. I may have to do a little more digging and see what is out there.

Bibliography Information:
"Rabbit Steals Fire" by Earnest Gouge, from New Fire (2004). Web Source: William and Mary Linguistics
"Bear, Tiger, Rattlesnake, and Fire" Web Source: Sacred Texts

"The Theft of Fire" Web Source: Sacred Texts

"Fire" Web Source: Sacred Texts

"Rabbit Obtains Fire" Web Source: Sacred Texts

Possible Styles:

Third-Person Storyteller: This is the style that I write in almost all the time. It is just the most natural for me. I may add this to the Inanimate Object as my style. I could also speak for the other animals in the stories in this way also. I will probably combine this and another type of storytelling to get the final product. The inanimate object and bed time story styles really seem like they are going to fit with what I think is going to be my final product.

First-Person Storytelling: This style would work if I wanted to tell the stories through the rabbit's eyes, whom is the most prominent figure in all of the stories, except one. In this style I could have the other animals from one story as characters, but not necessarily told in their voice. I also have humans to consider as a character.

Inanimate Object as Storyteller: This might be the best option for me to go with. The fire is the object in all of the stories, but it is not necessarily inanimate, as modern humans see it. In one story the fire is actually a teacher to the other characters and is old and wise.

Bedtime Story: This might be a good way to combine all the stories into one style instead of doing an anthology style storybook, since 3 of the 5 stories all have a rabbit as their main character. Also, I could have an original prompt question as a way to begin. I may have to tell it in a Third-Person Storyteller, Inanimate Object as Storyteller way.

"Fire" Source: Wikimedia Commons

Week 3, Storytelling: Fate's Hangover

(The Three Fates Tapestry. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

According to lore, Fate has never allowed Famine (the goddess of Starvation) and Ceres (the goddess of Agriculture) to meet. To allow Famine and Ceres in the same location at once would be certain doom. However, Fate had a different plan for this day.

One afternoon, Fate was drinking a glass of wine, going through her list of To-Do’s for the next day, when she started feeling ill. She had never been sick before. Goddesses didn’t get sick! But, right now, she felt as if she was going to be sick all over the Earth. She called her sisters, but they weren’t answering her calls. They had been ignoring her since last week. She “accidentally” cut someone’s life cord short before it was their time...it was a simple mistake! They could be so serious sometimes. It was just a human, no big deal, right?! After not being able to reach her sisters, she decided that she would just lie down for a minute until the room stopped spinning. Why was the room spinning...? Why was she feeling this way...? She had heard the humans talk about being drunk and the room spinning. She couldn’t get drunk, right? She then remembered who she had gotten the bottle of wine from last weekend, Loki. This was not going to end well!

Fate woke up the next day with a pounding headache. Her phone was ringing off the hook. She picked it up and saw that it was her boss calling. THE boss. Oh, sh*t, this is really not good. She was soooo going to kick Loki’s a$s for this! She got up, grabbed some Excedrin and picked the phone up again. She took a deep breath and called her boss back.

Yeah, this was NOT good. Leave it up to Famine and Ceres to pick the ONE night she was not paying attention to end up at the same club. They have both been pining for Hercules for CENTURIES and did NOT get along, AT all. According to the report, people started feeling so hungry but full at the same time and were so confused that they started eating themselves. It started in the club, but by the time she had woken up from her hangover, it had spread to the borders of town. How was she going to fix this?!?!

Fate pulled up to the club where Famine and Ceres were still duking it out inside. The catfight of the millennium! She really wished she could just sit there and watch this play out, but the boss wanted it stopped, now, so she had no other choice. She walked in and went straight over to Famine and Ceres. As she was trying to break them up, Famine caught her with a left hook. Man, that hurts...she was so going to make her pay for that! After grabbing them both by the back of the hair, she dragged them both out of the club and slung them down in the parking lot. She ordered Famine to go to the southern hemisphere and Ceres to go to the northern one allowing them to switch hemispheres every other year so no one hemisphere had to deal with one goddess forever. That should fix things! She put up a border spell on the equator to keep them from ever possibly being in the same place at the same time again.

Now, where is Loki...

(Loki with a fishing net from 18th Century Icelandic Manuscript. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Author's Note: This story was inspired by one line in the story of The Famine in Ovid's Metamorphosis III. “Famine” is a myth about how Ceres decides to torment men with hunger for cutting down her oak tree. In the second paragraph of this story, it is said that "fate does not allow Famine and Ceres to meet." In the myth, Ceres contacts a mountain spirit to contact Famine for her since they are not allowed to be near each other. I thought it would be a great story to tell from Fate’s perspective of falling down on the job and allowing them to accidentally meet. My first task was to figure out how to have Fate fall down on the job. I have, unfortunately in my younger years, failed to make it to work on time because of a hangover. So, to make this work, I thought I would make Fate basically a college girl that somehow gets hungover. My other main task was to figure out WHY the two gods weren’t allowed to meet. The obvious was that they provide subsistence and hunger at the same time, but I thought I would throw in a love triangle just to complete the college girl theme.

Bibliography: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000)

Week 3, Extra Reading Diary: Welsh (Thomas) (First Half)

Welsh (Thomas)

Arthur in the Cave
This story is about a Welshman that was in London. He had a walking stick that a sorcerer was interested in because of the type of wood it was made out of. The sorcerer told the Welshman that if he took him to where he cut his stick from, he would make him rich. The Welshman led him there and they found a passageway underground. When they came to an opening, there were thousands of warriors asleep and there was King Arthur on his throne, also asleep. The sorcerer told the Welshman not to ring the bell that was towards the entry, but after gathering their gold, he could not help himself. King Arthur and all of the warriors awoke, but the sorcerer told them it was not time yet, and they went back to sleep. I thought this story had a good beginning, but lacked on the ending. I think I could come up with something a little more interesting :)

The Red Dragon
In this story, King Vortigern was instructed by all of his "wise men" to build a fortress in a certain location. They also told him that he would need the blood of a child to sprinkle on the land before he could build. The King then sent out men to look for a child that had no father. They found one in an open field that was playing with other children. The child was taken back to the King and started questioning everything: from why he was there to why the King was building a fortress. The child challenged everything that the "wise men" had told the King. He showed them up at every turn and even predicted the King's triumph over his enemies. The King immediately put the boy in charge and had his "wise men" put to death. The boy grew to become Merlin, the most famous wizard of all.

(Nuremberg Chronicles: Merlin. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Week 3, Reading Diary B: Ovid's Metamorphosis III

Ovid's Metamorphosis III

Orpheus and Eurydice

This story is about the marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice. After getting married, Eurydice was walking through some grass and was bitten by a snake, and died. Orpheus then went to Persephone to see if he would revive her. He was told that it would work, but he could not look back as they were leaving until a certain point. Of course, Orpheus looked back and she disappeared back to whence she came.

Ganymede and Hyacinthus
In this story a couple of guys, Phoebus and Apollo, get naked, get olive oiled up and start throwing a disc around. Somehow, something went wrong and Hyacinth died. Apparently this is the mythological creation story of the Hyacinth flower. This Greek mythology just gets weirder and weirder the more I read. I still haven't come across anything that just jumps out at me for a story...

Myrrha and Cinyras
Okay, you know when the Greeks think that something is taboo and terrible, it has GOT to be bad. This story is something else. Okay, so there is a man who has a daughter Myrrha. At some point, for some strange reason, she wants to BE with her father and Myrrha falls in love with him. Myrrha then tries to kill herself and the nurse comes in and tries to help her by offering her help. She ends up working out a way for Myrrha to be with Cinyras. As if it wasn't bad enough she wanted her father, she ended up getting pregnant by him. She ended up running away and became a tree...then gave birth to a child...This is one of the weirdest stories I have ever read.

(The Bed of Cinyras, Solis. Source: Wikipedia Commons)

I still have not found anything that made me think of a side story to pull out of either the first or second half. I'm hoping that after some thought, something will work it's way out.

Week 3, Reading Diary A: Ovid's Metamorphosis III

Ovid's Metamorphosis III

Not as interesting as Ovid I. I didn't find any of the stories in the first half inspiring, but here are a few of the more interesting ones:

Philemon and Baucis
This story, and the following one, are the two best out of the whole half. In this story, Jupiter and Mercury visited a village where they were met with locked doors, which kind of reminded me of of Mary and Joseph in the "no room at the inn" story. Finally, they were let in by a married couple, Baucis and Philemon, who were poor. Even though they did not have furniture or food worth of gods, they still provided them somewhere to sit and something to eat. 

(Philemon and Baucis with Jupiter and Mercury by Orest Kiprenskii. Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Transformation of Philemon and Baucis
In this part of the story, we continue to hear about Philemon and Baucis' trying to prepare and scrounge up some stuff for the gods. As they are eating, they notice that the mixing bowl and wine, when empty, were refilling themselves. They were going to kill their one and only guard goose to cook, but Jupiter and Mercury told them not to bother. The gods stood up and told them to follow them because they were fixing to level the neighborhood for being jerks. The only thing that was left when they looked back was their hovel. Their house then turned into a temple and the couple requested to be keepers of the temple. In their old age, they were turned into trees to forever watch over the temple.

The Famine
This story was not that interesting until the end. Long story short, this guy cut down a tree that was really a nymph. The nymph's sisters decided to get revenge by asking Famine to visit the man. The man would sell his daughter over and over to get food, since he was never satisfied. In the end, the guy ended up eating himself! That was the coolest :)
One thing that caught my eye was in this story. In parenthesis, it was said that Fate does not allow for Famine and Ceres to meet and now I want to know why. If I can't find anything or if nothing else catches my eye in the second half of Ovid's Metamorphosis III, I will probably write about this.