Extra Reading Diary: Persian Tales

For the extra reading diary, I chose to do Persian Tales, mainly because of two reasons: 1) I had no idea about most of the other options, and 2) werewolves were mentioned and werewolves are awesome. So here goes. 

The first one I read was The Wolf and the Goat. The first thing that stuck out to me was the rhyming in the story; it kind of made it seem like a kid's fairy tale (which it may be, I'm not sure). Edit: it is a fairy, so there's that. Basically, the premise is the wolf kidnaps (ha, get it KIDnaps) the young goats and starts to make a soup. The mother goat throws some dirt in it and challenges the wolf to a fight. The goat makes a present to take to a guy so he'll sharpen her horns and he does. The wolf fakes a present to trick a dentist into sharpening his teeth, but the dentist pulls all his teeth out. The wolf and goat try to jump a river, but the wolf falls in because he drank too much water and then the goat rips his stomach open. Kinda gruesome all things considered when you think of the light-hearted rhyming and such. 

I enjoyed The Wolf-Aunt a lot more than the first one, because the first wolf story was surprisingly lacking in werewolves. Luckily, this one has a werewolf in it! Hooray! The premise of this story is a man slaves day after day to provide for his wife and seven daughters. Maybe he should've realized he couldn't support them before he had seven of them. Anyways, one day a woman appeared in front of him and said she was rich and would support them. They sent their daughter over there to offer a gift and she saw the woman was a wolf. The wife told the husband about this but he wouldn't listen. They go, but when the husband goes to bed the wife (wisely) takes the kids and gets the hell out of dodge. The wolf then ate the husband, the end. Pretty quick ending. But I'd say he got was coming, should've listened to his wife. 

Sketch artist rendering of the husband's "sister."

Storytelling Week 5: The Three Not-So-Delicate Wives

After a while, the goblin spoke up and offered a story to the king. This is what he told him.

So there was an honorable king named Virtue-banner who had three beautiful wives. One, Crescent, another Moon, and another named Star. The king loved them all dearly, and would do whatever he could to make them happy. They were some of the most delicate women in the entire land, something Virtue-banner valued highly.

The king was playing with Crescent one night, and a flower petal fell into her lap. She immediately began to scream bloody murder as if she was in excruciating pain. The king wasn't really sure what was going on, it was only a flower pedal! Surely she couldn't be serious! She asked if she could turn in for the night as she didn't feel well, so the king begrudgingly agreed. He asked his top physicians to look after her and find out just what exactly her deal was. So fifty of his men went to assist the queen.

Queen Crescent overreacting, per usual.

As the king pondered what had just happened, he came upon his other wife, Star. She was tired from all the commotion that had occurred earlier with Crescent, and soon had fallen asleep on a couch with the king. As she was sleeping, she too began to scream as if in pain. The king tried to awake her because he thought she was having a nightmare. She was most definitely awake, but could not be soothed. The king pleaded with her, "Star, my dear, what is the matter?" But she could only muster the strength to point at her arms. Virtue-banner looked her arms up and down but saw no signs of any injury whatsoever.

But she continued to insist, "My arms are burned, make it stop, please!" The king asked more of his physicians to aid her as they had done with Queen Crescent, and they took her to her chambers to find the source of her non-existent burns. The king's frustration continued to grow. So he went to find his third wife, Moon, in hopes of salvaging what was supposed to be a relaxing night.

He called her name, and she appeared from her room at his wish. Virtue-banner tried to begin to explain what his night had been like, but as soon as he started to talk, she too began to scream. Virtue-banner had had it with these faux displays of pain from his wives, as nothing ever appeared to be wrong with them! He asked what was wrong, and she explained she could hear a grain mill grinding in the distance.

"That's odd," he thought, "There aren't any grain mills for miles around, what could she be talking about?" But she insisted her ears were in pain. So once again, the king told his physicians to take care of him, as he had expended all patience he had for the day. And he went to bed alone, frustrated, and exhausted from the days goings on.


"So which was the most delicate?" the goblin asked King Triple-victory. The king pondered this question for a long time.

"There is no correct answer to this question," he explained, "as they were all imagining things. None of them actually had anything wrong with them, outside of the very obvious mental disorders they have. So my answer is none -- none of them were delicate, just crazy."

And the goblin snuck down and returned to his tree for the king to fetch for the sixth time.

Author's Note: I used The Three Delicate Wives as a basis for my story. In it, the three queens are each affected by the things that I used in my story, but they are all actually physically harmed. I changed my story to reflect a more realistic world in which the only ailments they suffer from are mental. And rather than being patient and understanding, the king gets more and more frustrated as the story goes on, which I felt was a more proper response to what would've seemed like plain ridiculousness.

Bibliography:
Twenty-Two Goblins
Arthur W. Ryder
1917

Reading Diary B: Twenty-Two Goblins

For Reading Diary B, I will be continuing my thoughts on Twenty-Two Goblins. Here are the stories I chose for the second half of the unit.

The first story I read was the Snake's Poison. A man loses his wife, and thinks if he gives everything to the Brahmans and searches the countryside, he'll eventually find her. He stumbles upon a house where a kind woman gives him food. He sets the food under a tree and goes to wash up. While he's doing this, a hawk kills a snake which drops poison in his food. After eating the food, the man goes to the kind woman and tells her to get a doctor or she will be a murderer. He eventually dies and the goblin asks the king who was to blame? The king says the dead man is to blame for he accused one of the virtuous people of killing him. Then the goblin runs back to the tree.

Now at the end of every story, the goblin runs back to the tree. That's gotta be super frustrating for the king, having to walk back and carry him every single time. But that's just me musing over the situation.

Did the thief weep or laugh when he saw the merchant's daughter approaching him at the stake? This is the question posed by the goblin in the Girl and the Thief. A merchant has a beautiful daughter, and everyone pines for her hand in marriage, but she hates the idea. Eventually a thief ravages all the cities. He amasses much gold and jewels.

How I pictured the thief enjoying his spoils.

The king tries to go find him, and eventually does. He takes his army to the thief's place and the thief just goes bonkers on an entire army. But the king wrestles him down and takes him to the city alive. Of course, the merchant's daughter falls madly in love with the thief. To summarize, because this is getting lengthy, the daughter asks Shiva for two things: for her father to have a hundred sons for when she kills herself, and to bring the thief back as an honest man. Shiva grants both, and they get married and yadda yadda. The king then answers the goblins question thusly: the thief wept from grief for he couldn't repay the merchant's kindness and laughed from astonishment because the girl chose him over kings. Then the goblin goes back to the tree AGAIN. What did I take away from this story? Women are unpredictable! Haha. 

Reading Diary A: Twenty-Two Goblins

For Week 5, I've decided to read Twenty-Two Goblins because the description said he talks in riddles and I absolutely love riddles. So here are my thoughts on the first half of this unit.

The goblin Vetala hanging in the tree (unit picture)

The first story I enjoyed was the story of the Three Lovers. In it, a girl dies and the three men who had been vying for her hand in marriage each did different things. One takes her ashes and sleeps with them in the cemetery, one takes her bones and dips them in the Ganges River, and the third wanders the country. The third one finds a spell to bring her back to life, and the three men end up fighting even more. So the goblin asks the king who deserves to be her husband, which he answers by saying the man who slept with her ashes in the cemetery deserved to. That definitely wasn't the answer I figured it would be, but it makes sense when you think about it.

Next was the Girl, Her Husband and Her Brother. I've been wondering what the Sanskrit names are, since the translation names are things like Lovely and White and Clean-cloth. As I read through, I really questioned White's thought process. He decides the best sacrifice to the goddess is his himself, so he somehow manages to cut off HIS OWN HEAD. Then, his brother sees him dead in the temple and he cuts off HIS OWN HEAD ALSO. What is wrong with these people? The wife of White decides she's gonna off herself as well, but the goddess saves her. She promises to revive the men, but Lovely puts the wrong head on each body. The riddle is "which one is truly her husband?" The king says the one with her husband's head. I actually got that one right.

The riddle for the last story I read, Food, Women and Cotton, is "which out of the specialists in food, women or cotton is the cleverest?" Basically, each shows to a king how specialized they are in their respective fields. The food specialist doesn't eat the rice because it smells of corpses, as it was grown near a cemetery. The women specialist is disgusted by a woman in his presence because she smells of goats, as she was raised on goat milk. The cotton specialist can't sleep on a bed covered with seven quilts because a single hair touches his body. The king tells the goblin the cotton specialist is the cleverest, because he couldn't possibly know the hair was there, while the other two could know about the problems with their specialties. I definitely got this one wrong!