Extra Reading Diary: Europa's Fairy Book

For the extra reading diary, I chose to do half of the Europa's Fairy Book. I have no idea what it's about, but the title of the unit makes it sound kinda cool.

This was actually super interesting. In the Czech Folktales unit, there was Nine at a Blow. In this unit, there is Dozen At a Blow. It's basically the same thing, with the giant's challenges, him leaving his house, etc. But it's different in that the man in this version is tasked by the king to capture a wild boar. The king promises his daughter's hand and half the kingdom to whoever can successfully trap  the boar. The tailor corrals it into an abandoned church and tells the king's men to come kill it because he didn't know if the king wanted it dead or alive. Then he tricks a unicorn into drilling its horn into a tree. THEN the king ask him to take care of two giants in the woods. He tricks them by having them kill each other. So the king gives him his daughter.

Eventually she finds out he's just a tailor. The king sends twelve soldiers to his bedroom so he can see if the man can truly kill a dozen at a blow. He hears them coming and pretends to sleep. While he is asleep, he lists off all the things he's done. The soldiers tell the princess she's basically S.O.L., and the princess decides she's proud of being married to the tailor. And they live happily ever after.

Source

Reading Diary B: Czech Folktales

I'm continuing with Czech Folktales for Reading Diary B.

The story I enjoyed most was Nine At a Blow. It's about a tailor who mends stockings when he has spare time. One day, flies are on his table and he swats them, killing nine at a blow (story title!). He notches that phrase into his belt, and decides to travel. He buys a finch from a boy on the road and puts it in his bag. Then a farmer's wife gives him some milk and cheese, so he puts the cheese in his bag too.

One day, a giant sees the tailor's belt and asks him if he's really killed nine at a blow. The tailor says yes, so the giant asks to see who's stronger. It starts with the giant saying he can throw a stone that won't come down for an hour. The tailor says he'll throw one that will never come down. The giant does his task, and the tailor takes the finch out and it flies off, so of course he does his too. After a couple more tasks, the tailor promises to teach the giant to fly.

When they were traveling, a king said he'd pay 1000 pounds to anyone who could kill a dragon that had been bothering him. They have a giant pair of tongs and a hammer made. They get to the dragon and it flings the tailor aside, and the giant kills it. The tailor says he meant to keep the dragon alive, and then tells the giant he'll teach him how to fly. So he counts to three and tells the giant to jump from the top of the church they're at. The giant kills himself, and the tailor keeps the money.

Neat golden dragon

DeviantArt user BenWootten

Reading Diary A: Czech Folktales

For the last week of this class before we do review stuff, I chose to do the Czech Folktales unit, mainly because I have Czech bloodlines in my family. My grandma actually used to make us Czech noodles from scratch, I wish I knew how to make them 'cause they were so good.

The main story I'm going to focus on is The Three Roses. Basically, a woman has three daughters. She is going to the market another town over. So she asks the girls if they want anything, and two of them demand a bunch of stuff. More than is probably reasonable. Then the third daughter says she only wants three roses. The mother obliges, and goes to buy all the stuff. She straps it on her back and starts to head home. Along the way, she gets exhausted and loses her way. Eventually she goes to a palace that has a beautiful rose garden. She forgot the roses! She takes three of them, and a basilisk shows up demanding her daughter in return for the stolen flowers. She gets scared and sends the third daughter to the castle.

Every day, she has to nurse the basilisk for three hours. He did this for three days, and on the third brings a sword and tells the girl to cut his head off. So she does it twice. He grows into a prince, and says because she delivered him from his serpent body, he must marry her. They have a big wedding, and lots of people show up to celebrate. The story ends abruptly the next paragraph with, "but the floor was of paper, so I fell through it, and here I am now." This was particularly odd because none of the other stories ended this way. That was pretty odd!

Basilisk, by J.J. Bertuch from the reading

Extra Reading Diary: Andersen Fairy Tales

For the extra reading diary for this week (which I'm also doing on Monday night, what?!), I chose Andersen Fairy Tales for no other reason than the Emperor's New Suit. This is mainly because I'm fairly certain the Disney movie, The Emperor's New Groove, is based on this story. If you haven't seen it, by the way, go watch it now! It's probably top 3 in my favorite kid's movies of all time. I don't know how many times I've seen it, but it's a pretty high tally. After a quick Google, it appears they only have a similar name, but I'm gonna leave it because I love this movie and feel like everyone should watch it.

The main characters from The Emperor's New Groove.

Characters left to right: Yzma, Kronk, Emperor Kuzco and Pacha. 

In the Emperor's New Suit, there lives an emperor who only wants to wear the newest and most stylish clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day. One day some dudes rolled up to his overly festive kingdom and said they could make the finest clothes the emperor had seen. Their clothes had the ability to be invisible to any ruler unfit to rule or one who was exceptionally dumb. The king agreed to pay them a lot of money.

They began "working" on the clothes, when really they were just pretending to make them and taking the fine silk and gold cloth the king gave them and storing them away. The king couldn't see what they were making, so he sent his most trusted minster to check on them, because surely he wasn't unfit for office. When the minster couldn't see anything either, he pretended he could so they wouldn't think he was unfit or dumb. One other person, the king himself, and eventually all the people acted like they could see the clothes the men were making.

Once it was "ready," the men acted like they were carrying things to the king, and gave him all of his new clothes. He puts them on, and still, everyone pretends like they can see the clothes so no one thinks they are dumb. The king's servants even carry the "train" to the cloak, when in reality they were holding nothing at all. Everyone "saw" the clothes, until one small child spoke up. "He's wearing nothing at all!" the kid said. His father agreed, and eventually so did the rest of the people. The king thought these people were right, but carried on as if he was wearing the finest cloaks and garments possible. 

Reading Diary B: Dante's Inferno

Doing something I don't think I've ever done so far in this class and getting the reading diaries done in the same night! Like in the first diary post for Dante's Inferno, I'm just gonna keep this one fairly short again to save up some material for the storybook and storytelling. 

Dante's most recognized work is considered the best Italian literature ever created, and one of the world's greatest works as well, up there with the obvious choices like The Odyssey or Hamlet. It took him twelve years to write and has 14,233 lines. That's not a typo, that's fourteen THOUSAND lines, all perfectly within his terza rima rhyme scheme. By the way, all of this information is readily available on Wikipedia. 

One interesting aspect of The Inferno is that while each Canto, what Dante used to divide each section of his journey, is a different tale in a way, the entire poem is an allegory. But there are other ways to interpret the poem, according to Dante himself. The entire first poem, from his first encounter with the leopard blocking his way to Heaven, all the way down the Inferno to Satan himself, has other political, religious, and philosophical undertones that may not be entirely apparent on the first read. This is why almost 700 years later, people are still studying the various techniques and intricacies of Dante's greatest poem. 

Super interesting cover art of the three sections of The Divine Comedy

Source: DeviantArt user TyrantWave

Reading Diary A: Dante's Inferno

Well, I've been working on Dante's Inferno for a while, what with my storybook being about Dante and Virgil's adventures through Hell, so I figured why not do this unit to get more background to make writing in my storybook easier! This won't be very long, just cause I want to save my writing for the storybook and storytelling, but there are a couple things I'd like to hit on from the unit!

One thing you have to realize when dealing with Dante is that he was an extremely knowledgeable writer. All of the characters throughout his writing are either real people, or real legends that would have been popular or at least somewhat known throughout his lifetime. Take Cerberus and Plutus for example. Cerberus is one of the most famous beasts of the underworld, described as a dog with three heads, with a snake's tail and lion's claws. Dante ties all these characters into his epic seamlessly, with not a one seeming out of place.

Pretty impressive depiction of Cerberus

Done by: DeviantArt user GENZOMAN.

Dante also created a new rhyme form when he was writing The Inferno, the first in his series, The Divine Comedy (untranslated as Divina Commedia in Italian). Dante decided to write the entirety in his new form, Terza rima. According to that Wikipedia article, the scheme is as follows: a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d. There is no set rhythm, but iambic pentameter is preferred. Pretty interesting stuff!

Extra Reading Diary: Celtic Fairy Tales

For the extra reading diary for this week, I wanted to do the reading for Celtic Fairy Tales.

The story that made me want to do it is the Celtic version of Snow White, called Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree. In it, a king has a beautiful wife and daughter, Silver-Tree and Gold-Tree, respectively. One day, the queen asks a trout if she is the fairest in the land, to which he replies that she is not, but her daughter is. From this moment on the queen vowed to eat her daughter's heart and liver, which seems a bit extreme all things considered.

Silver-Tree and Gold-Tree

Credit: DeviantArt - Degare

Now one day, the queen is sick and tells the king that she will be well if he brings her the heart and liver of Gold-Tree. Gold-Tree was arranged to marry a very rich prince from another kingdom, so of course the king couldn't let that happen! He went and had his lads (as the story put it) find a male goat and gave its heart and liver to the queen. She rose from bed and was fine again. One day she was walking by the brook, and asked the trout again if she was the fairest in the land. The trout again said no, Gold-Tree is. This is when the queen learns her daughter is alive and well. So she asks the king to arrange for a ship to take her to visit Gold-Tree.

When Gold-Tree sees that her mother's ship is coming, she tells the prince that surely she will die at her mother's hand. So the prince hides her in a room and locks it. Silver-Tree asks that her daughter come see her, but Gold-Tree says no. So Silver-Tree asks her to put her finger through the door so she could kiss it, but instead puts a poison spike in it and kills her.

This is where it gets kind of weird. Rather than bury her, the prince keeps her body locked in a room and keeps the key with him. Eventually he remarries and his new wife accidentally finds it. She removes the spike from Gold-Tree's hand, and she comes back to life. The new wife offers to leave, but the prince says he's happy with both of them. Silver-Tree finds out, and again sails to the land to try to kill her daughter. When she gets there -- she brought a poisoned drink this time -- the second wife says they'll go meet her.

Once the queen offers Gold-Tree some of her drink, the second wife says its custom for the person bringing wine to drink it first. When the queen goes to drink it, the second wife hits her hand so she drinks all of it, and she dies. The three lived a happy life after that together. The story ends "I left them there," which is the Celtic way of saying they lived happily ever after.

Reading Diary B: Alice in Wonderland

So continuing with Alice in Wonderland, I'm going to do the same thing and focus on one story since the second half is just a few stories as well. I'll be focusing on the Mad Tea Party.

This story begins with the March Hare and Mad-Hatter having tea and using a Dormouse as a cushion for their elbows. Alice thinks it looks uncomfortable, but since it's asleep, she supposes the mouse doesn't mind. The three are all in one corner of a very large table, and Alice sits down without being invited.

The Hare offers her some wine, but there isn't any. Alice says that wasn't very nice to offer it without being there, and the Hare says it wasn't very nice to sit without being invited to do so. The Hatter's first remark is about how Alice needs a haircut, and she gets offended. The rest of the first part of this story is nothing but riddles and snide remarks between the three, so I won't go into too much detail.

Alice had been asked one of the riddles, and couldn't figure out what the answer was, so she asked the pair what it was. They had no idea. She suggests doing something better with time than wasting it asking riddles with no answers. They say time isn't an IT, but a HE. These little word games continue on for quite a while in the story until they tell the Dormouse to tell a story. He begins, and in the middle tells Alice to have take some more tea. She said she hasn't taken any yet, so she can't take more. The Hatter says she can't take LESS, because it's always possible to take more than nothing.

The rest of the story is really just the Dormouse telling the story, Alice not understanding what's going on, and then finally her leaving because she can't take it any more. It's best to just read the story to get an understanding of it, it's way too complex given how much space I have to write this!

Alice, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare

Source: Disney's Alice in Wonderland, 1951

Reading Diary A: Alice in Wonderland

So for Week 12, I'm going to be doing Alice in Wonderland. The first reason I'm doing this unit is because I'd like to see how I can change one of the stories up for the storytelling portion of this week. The second reason is I've been playing Borderlands and one of the DLC packs is a sort of twist on Alice in Wonderland. So there's that. Since the stories are each three sections, I'm just going to focus on the first one, Down the Rabbit Hole.

In the first story of the unit, Alice comes off as a restless little girl. As her sister reads a book peacefully, Alice is off wondering about arbitrary stuff, and gets distracted by a rabbit. It's wearing a jacket and talks to itself, but Alice doesn't notice anything odd until it pulls out a pocket watch, as if the first two qualities weren't odd enough for her to pay attention to.

She follows the rabbit down a hole and falls for what seems like forever. She even wonders if she'll end up in New Zealand or Australia, which again, doesn't make much sense. After about 4 paragraphs of falling, she ends up in a hallway with locked doors. She finds a key that won't open any of them, but realizes it opens one tiny tiny door. She won't fit, so she drinks a mysterious substance (which she checks first for a descriptive "poison" label), which of course, makes her very small.

She walks to the door, but forgets the key on the table, which is much taller than she is now, and can't manage to get on top of the table again. So she starts crying, as little girls are wont to do. After crying for a bit, she pulls herself together and notices a cake with the words "EAT ME" on it. She starts growing and growing, until her head hits the ceiling. She grabs the key and opens the door, but she's too big to fit through now, so again, she starts crying. And that's where this section of the story ends!

Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Source: Disney's Alice in Wonderland, 1951

Extra Reading Diary: Nursery Rhymes

For the extra reading diary, I chose to do the Nursery Rhymes unit, mainly to see if I remembered them correctly.

The first section I really read in-depth was the Riddles section. There were a couple that stood out to me.

THOMAS A TATTAMUS took two T's,

To tie two tups to two tall trees,

To frighten the terrible Thomas a Tattamus!

Tell me how many T's there are in all that.

The answer is two (2 t's in "all that").

This one has a clever answer as well!

ELIZABETH, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess,

They all went together to seek a bird's nest.

They found a bird's nest with five eggs in,

They all took one, and left four in.

These are all the same person, just called different names.

I also read through the Paradoxes section, and they were all pretty interesting. This one in particular stood out to me.

THE man in the wilderness asked me

How many strawberries grew in the sea.

I answered him as I thought good,

As many as red herrings grew in the wood.

This paradox was interesting because of the use of the red herring. It's a logical fallacy used in an argument to distract your opponent by bringing something up that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. In this paradox, the red herring fallacy is exemplified by an actual red herring, which I thought was super interesting. Paradoxes are cool, man. 

Just one example of a pretty common paradox.

Reading Diary A: King Arthur

Growing up, I was a big fan of King Arthur, so I've chosen it as my unit for this week's reading diaries/storytelling post!

I couldn't start this unit off without covering the Drawing of the Sword. This is hands-down the most recognized story of King Arthur and his exploits. The summary is this for those who haven't heard of it.

Basically, Uther Pendragon died, and England had no king. Naturally, lots of knights wanted to become king, but Merlin made sure only the true king would rule. So he sealed a sword, Excalibur, in a stone which could only be drawn by the person who was destined to be king. So that everyone had a fair shot, they held a tournament to win a chance to pull the sword. Arthur's brother, Sir Kay, rode to the tournament to enter, but realized he had forgotten his sword. Arthur went back home to get it, but the door was locked. So his thought process was pretty much, "He doesn't have a sword, there's a free sword in the courtyard, I'll just take that one." He rode up casually, grabbed the sword, and rode off to take it to Kay.

Excalibur in the stone. 

Now Kay took the stone to their dad, Sir Ector, and claimed he drew the sword himself. But Ector made Kay swear on a holy book and say where he got it from, to which he responded that Arthur gave it to him. Ector went back with the two to where the stone was and tested the brothers. Kay strained, but couldn't get it. Arthur slid it out easily, even though he wasn't even a knight as Kay and Ector were. 

After he drew it, Kay and Ector kneeled before him, which confused Arthur. Ector then told Arthur he wasn't really his son, but that he was the son of Uther Pendragon, and Merlin had simply brought him to Ector when he was born. Ector made Arthur promise that he would make Sir Kay his seneschal of the lands. Arthur assured that he would for as long as he was in power.

After this had happened, they went to the Archbishop to tell him what happened. Arthur drew the sword again in front of some of the knights, who were angry such a young boy should be king. He did it once again in front of everyone, and then he was declared the rightful king. 

Reading Diary B: Alaskan Legends

So continuing with the Alaskan Legends unit, here are my thoughts on a few stories.

The Origin of Winds is an Eskimo legend from the Lower Yukon. To keep the summary short, a doll that a man and his wife made adventured to the edge of the world where the sky and the earth meet. The sky is a wall according to this story, and the doll found a hole in the "sky wall" and cut a bigger hole with his knife. He told the East Wind to blow through the whole sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, and sometimes not at all. He repeated this 4 more times with the west, southwest, south, and northwest. And then he returned to his village.

And finally, to keep the topic of origins going, I read The Boy in the Moon. A boy falls in love with his friend's sister. One day the girl climbed a ladder to the sky. The boy saw her after being yelled at by his brothers (I'm not sure if this kid is in love with his sister or is in a different family entirely), and chased after her. She floated away, and the girl became the sun and the boy became the moon. The sun and moon are in opposite sides at all times because no matter how much the boy pursues her, he can never catch up to her (the sun).

They're never together.

Source

Reading Diary A: Alaskan Legends

For Week 10 (only a few more weeks to go!), I'm doing Alaskan Legends for my unit of choice.

The first story I really enjoyed was The Origin of the Tides. There have been lots of stories that explain why nature works the way it does, but this was the first one I've seen that explained the tides, which I thought was super interesting! Basically, Qa (Raven) found a rock in the middle of the earth, built a house under it, and put a hole and door through it that controlled the levels of the ocean. When it was open, the low tide would come in. When it was closed, high tides were in. I thought this was a clever way to explain why the tides work the way they do since they didn't know about the moon controlling it at the time!

One thing I found curious as well was the fact that Raven is what I gathered to be their God character. In the beginning of the unit, he is described as a bird that can change into a man whenever he wants. It also turns out that Raven was responsible for creating everything, from the ground man walks on to the animals that live in the world. Kind of an interesting animal for them to choose as God!

I also liked Bringing of Light by Raven. For a while, only the light of stars lit up the northern land. The shamans tried to bring it back, but Raven (disguised as a young boy) mocks them and says he can bring it back easily. Raven found the reason there was no light in his village, and stole the ball of light from a man who lived alone in a hut. As he flew away, he broke off pieces of the light, mixing dark and light throughout. Again, this is a really interesting way to explain the ways their world worked. We now know why Alaska has long stretches of darkness and daytime, but that must have been really odd for them back then!

The Midnight Sun in Alaska, where it doesn't set for nearly two and a half months.

Credit: University of Alaska Fairbanks

Extra Reading Diary: Apache Tales

For the extra reading unit, I chose to do half of the Apache Tales unit.  Here are my thoughts.

First thoughts on reading Culture Heroes and the Owl was, "Wow, that language is weird, and kind of hard to read." Which is probably what most people think when they read the story for the first time. The hoop and poles game is something I'd never heard of.

Drawing of the Apache hoop and poles game

I also learned that owls aren't very fond of magic according to the Apache people!

After reading a few more stories, I realized I have no idea how to pronounce their words. I tried multiple different ways to say them, and the letters just don't add up to something that makes any sense. I'd have to talk to an Apache who speaks the language to properly understand it I'm pretty sure! I'm definitely glad I chose Cherokee as my language, the syllables always follow the same general rules, and vowels are always pronounced the same, which I don't know if I can say for Apache!

Reading Diary B: Cherokee Stories

So in continuing the second half of the Cherokee Stories unit, I just want to focus on a couple stories that I liked.

I found The Race Between the Crane and Hummingbird particularly amusing. In it, a crane and hummingbird are both in love with the same woman. She says whoever flies around the world back to her can marry her. She did this because she preferred the hummingbird and figured he could fly the fastest so he would surely win. The hummingbird is fast, but the crane can fly all night. The hummingbird takes the lead at the beginning a few other times, but ultimately the crane wins the race since he doesn't have to rest for a night.

Now you're probably thinking, "What's so special about this story? The crane marries the woman, the end."

Right?

Wrong. The woman decides she would just rather be single. THAT'S the end. I love stories like this that have an ending that's just so atypical from what you expect!

Although, I don't know, that's a good looking crane.

I also liked Red Man and Uktena. The Uktena is a giant snake that had previously been a man. But anyways, two brothers go hunting. One went to go find deer to hunt, and came upon a man being choked by Uktena. The hunter shot and killed the beast. It rolled down the hill, dead. The man who he had saved was the Red Man of Lightning. He promised to give the hunter a medicine so that he can always find something to hunt. He made a fire using wood from a tree that had been struck by lightning, and gave the medicine to the hunter.

He told him that the hunter's brother would be sick when the uktena scale was near, but gave him a cure for the sickness as well. The next day, the brothers went hunting and had no trouble finding game at all. 

I liked this one because of the oppositeness of the other story. In the first one I discussed, there is a twist ending. In this one the story ends how you expect. Both make for good stories!

Reading Diary A: Cherokee Stories

ᎣᏏᏲ! That's hello in Cherokee, pronounced osiyo (oh-see-yo). It wasn't even a question what unit I was going to pick for this week, as soon as I saw Cherokee Stories I knew what I had to do! 

I don't think I'm gonna go too in-depth on the stories this time, but I did want to see how the language compared to the language I've learned. I spent 3 semesters learning Cherokee as my foreign language, which in reality won't really help me in the future, but I'm terrible at Spanish, and I heard French is hard. So I chose Cherokee and it was one of the best decisions I made because the professor was my favorite professor at OU so far, besides possibly Al Eschbach. 

The first use of actual Cherokee names starts at the first story, How the World Was Made. Now, I learned lots of words and phrases. But never have I seen Cherokee phonetically written like this name -- Gälûñ'lätï. I don't even know how to pronounce that. Semi-related, my Cherokee name was ᏌᎶᎵ, which is pronounced saloli (sah-low-lee), and means squirrel! We got to pick our own names, so after I got stuck trying to pick a name, I asked a girl at a party I was at and the first thing she said was squirrel. So that became my name for 3 semesters! 

These phonetic differences could be because of the inconsistencies in how Cherokee is pronounced. Like most languages, there are dialects that change based on where you live. So it could just be the way the dialect of these people was spoken. Although after a quick search, the pronunciations used in the Cherokee Dikaneisdi (dee-ka-nay-ees-dee) or word list. So that would explain the pronunciation.

The Cherokee Syllabary

I did like how most of the stories were animal based, like Why the Possum's Tail is Bare. We didn't learn a lot of history in my classes, but we did learn how most of the main animals are said in the language. I do know they were a big part of Cherokee culture. That is clearly reflected in their legends. 

I'm gonna save my analysis on individual stories for tomorrow's post, I wanted to switch up my reading diary this time! 

ᏙᎾᏓᎪᎲᎢ! (Till I see you again)
The pronunciation for the above is, by syllable or character (each character is one syllable), doe-nah-dah-go-huh-ee. Cherokees say till we meet again, or till I see you again rather than goodbye because goodbye implies you won't see each other again, while they believe they'll see each other again regardless of if it's this life or the next. 

Extra Reading Diary: Chinese Fairy Tales

For the extra reading diary for Week 7, I've decided to do Chinese Fairy Tales (well, half of it).

My favorite story was Why Dog and Cat Are Enemies. As someone with both cats and dogs back home -- not in Norman, unfortunately, my apartment doesn't allow pets :( -- I love hearing people argue about which pet is better. Dog and cat lovers can be almost as hostile towards each other as their pets can! In this story, a dog and cat go to get a ring back. The dog helps the cat across the river twice so that they can go get it. But on the way back, there is a house in the way. The cat goes over and gets to the house first with the ring, so he gets all the praise. The dog sadly gets beaten, while the cat doesn't say anything. Of course it would be the cat who does something mischievous and gets away with it!

Cats are always into stuff! 

Photo credit

I also thought The Cave of Beasts was an interesting story. A father's daughters eat the eggs he selfishly was going to keep for him and their mother, even though the mom offered them some. So he takes the two youngest ones to the mountain and drops them off, cause that'll show them, right?! They happen to find a cave that a fox and wolf have hoarded loads of gold and jewels in. They kill the fox and the wolf (who don't find them by chance), and take over the cave. The father then goes back and finds the cave on accident, and the daughters and he take all the gold and live wealthily forever. 

I didn't like the ending of this story. The girls just give all that stuff to the dad? That seems kinda dumb, considering he dropped them off out there and left them to die at the hands of vicious wolves. Not a very fatherly thing to do! He should've had to beg them for forgiveness or something. One of the few times I didn't enjoy a happily ever after ending (although I rather enjoyed the story as a whole). 

Reading Diary B: Jamaican Anansi Stories

So like I mentioned in my last reading diary, I picked one of the hardest units for Weeks 6 and 7. With that being said, I'm gonna stick with it and get this unit knocked out.

In the story Rain and Fire, there are two separate sections. The Goat is trying to run away from Anansi and realizes he can't get across the river to get away. So he magically turns himself into a stone, which the Dog sees. The Dog asks Anansi to throw the stone over to him because Anansi doesn't know it's the Goat. So he does, and the stone turns into the Goat on the other side and gets away.

I didn't know there was so much magic in Jamaican lore, which would make sense since I'm pretty sure voodoo is pretty big down there (I could be wrong).

Anyway, in the second half of the story Anansi invites Fire to his house (yes that kind of fire) even though his wife, who is a bird, says that's a horrible idea. Fire tells Anansi he can't get there without some dry brush to walk on. Anansi's wife continues to plead with him not to do that, but he does it anyways. Sure enough, when Fire comes around he burns everything except Ground-Dove, Anansi's wife. I like the humanization of Fire in this story while still maintaining the physical properties of actual fire.

Anansi's hut (recreation)

I also focused on Spider Marries Monkey's Daughter. I realized Anansi is a weird dude, because he never seems to want to marry other spiders. He just marries or whatever he does whoever he wants. Species don't seem to matter much in the Jamaican stories! But whatever, they're just stories, and logic doesn't matter!

Reading Diary A: Jamaica Anansi Stories

For Week 7, I've decided to do the Jamaican Anansi Stories unit. I don't really know why I picked it, I kind of just wanted to see what Jamaican English was like in a story.

Anansi the Spider

Okay, so this might have been a bad idea. The first story I read, Tying Tiger, was pretty hard to read. The basic gist is that Brer Nansi (which is apparently a spider of some sort?) wanted some mangos from the Tiger's tree. The Tiger told him no, so he made up a story about a law being passed that the owners of mango trees must tie themselves to them because of the storm coming up. So he tied the Tiger to the tree and ate his mangoes. Eventually Anansi (Nansi) tries to take advantage of the tiger and gets found out and kicked out.

This might not be the most helpful diary I've ever done for anyone that reads it. Trying to understand Jamaican dialect is pretty hard when you can't hear them say it out loud.

The next story that stuck out was Long-Shirt. Anansi, Tacoomah and Tiger were a band and went to a place where no one had clothes except the head leader. He had a long shirt on. Anansi wanted his shirt, so after they had played everyone to sleep he went and took it. After it was found that the shirt could talk, he traded the shirt with the goat. The goat then ran and ran and buried himself in the dirt. But the head leader found him, and cut off his horn. They threw all the wet slops on him, and he wrung everything out except his beard. That's why goats smell so bad!

These stories are interesting. But they are extremely difficult to comprehend (to me). Trying to get the storytelling section done in a reasonable amount of time will be pretty hard I imagine, just because of how long it took me to understand just these few stories on my first read through!

Extra Reading Diary: Folklore of Laos

For the extra reading diary, I chose the Folklore of Laos unit, mainly because it is such a small country and I was curious as to what kind of stories could come out of an area like that. Here are my thoughts.

So I kind of skimmed around the titles and the first one that caught my eye was The Man In the Moon, partially because I love Kid Cudi and it reminds me of his album, Man on the Moon.

Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon album

But regardless, the story is an explanation for the face on the moon seen on the light side. The basic premise is that a blacksmith got tired of being a blacksmith one day. So he asked a wise man who controlled everything to be a stone on the mountain, then several others things, until eventually he asked to be the moon. The guy got tired of the blacksmith asking to be different things, so he got stuck being the man in the moon. Thus you have the face on the moon. Kind of an interesting way to explain how it got there!

Then I read The Origin of Lightning, because I was kind of curious how they would explain lightning based on the last story. Basically a man's wife dies and is reborn as a young girl. When it came time for her to marry, her husband came from heaven in the form of an old man. Her wreath (symbolizing who she would marry) landed on his head and everyone made fun of him. But he and his daughter rose into heaven. The father of the girl tried to shoot them down, which is what is really happening when lightning strikes.

I really didn't enjoy that story too much, it was super confusing trying to figure out who was who and what was what, but that's probably the first story I've read all semester that I didn't really understand! 

The other stories were kind of interesting, but to conserve the amount of space this takes up, I won't go into all that!