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Saturday, February 29, 2020

Stead - The Feast of the Lanterns - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

 
Great lantern photos at Flickr with Creative Commons photos by Anyar Changtong.

I've heard January 29th called "The Impossible Day."  When I started thinking about it I remembered people born on it have birthdays that really only happen every four years, although I imagine they celebrate on either the day before or after on non-Leap Years.  While it might seem eventually wonderful to eliminate 3/4 of your years, it got me thinking about the many stories where someone unknowingly stays young while their family at home ages.  It's a common theme from Rip Van Winkle to the Irish tales of Tir Na Nog, or tales of going to kingdoms under the sea, and I think I've found the perfect one.

Today's story was in the 1909 Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know edited by Nora A. Smith and Kate D. Wiggin, but it's only in the publishers' acknowledgements that we discover the story was found in the British book Books for the Bairns by W.T. Stead.  The Table of Contents identifies the story as being Chinese.  Not having the book available, I can't check to see how, if at all, they might have adapted it from Stead's story nor if any other attribution occurred in the British book.  I can only presume the story is derived from Chinese folklore.  Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know is the fourth and last of Smith and Wiggin's excellent Fairy Series which each earlier had slightly different emphasis in The Fairy Ring, Magic Casements, and Tales of Laughter.

My own copy is a paperback reprint, so to save its binding I'm reprinting the Project Gutenberg.org copy of the story, reformatting it to match the original, but that link would let you enjoy the whole book.  All but Magic Casements can be found on Project Gutenberg.  I'm not sure how they missed it, but you still can read that book online, too, at the Internet Archive.  The sister team of Smith and Wiggin brought stories everyone, regardless of age, should know.

There are indeed Feasts of Lanterns, both in Asia and in the U.S.  I'll put a little bit about that after the story.

The Feast of the Lanterns

Wang Chih was only a poor man, but he had a wife and children to love, and they made him so happy that he would not have changed places with the Emperor himself.

He worked in the fields all day, and at night his wife always had a bowl of rice ready for his supper. And sometimes, for a treat, she made him some bean soup, or gave him a little dish of fried pork.

But they could not afford pork very often; he generally had to be content with rice.

One morning, as he was setting off to his work, his wife sent Han Chung, his son, running after him to ask him to bring home some firewood.

"I shall have to go up into the mountain for it at noon," he said. "Go and bring me my axe, Han Chung."

Han Chung ran for his father's axe, and Ho-Seen-Ko, his little sister, came out of the cottage with him.

"Remember it is the Feast of Lanterns to-night, father," she said. "Don't fall asleep up on the mountain; we want you to come back and light them for us."

She had a lantern in the shape of a fish, painted red and black and yellow, and Han Chung had got a big round one, all bright crimson, to carry in the procession; and, besides that, there were two large lanterns to be hung outside the cottage door as soon at it grew dark.

Wang Chih was not likely to forget the Feast of Lanterns, for the children had talked of nothing else for a month, and he promised to come home as early as he could.

At noontide, when his fellow-labourers gave up working, and sat down to rest and eat, Wang Chih took his axe and went up the mountain slope to find a small tree he might cut down for fuel.

He walked a long way, and at last saw one growing at the mouth of a cave.

"This will be just the thing," he said to himself. But, before striking the first blow, he peeped into the cave to see if it were empty.

To his surprise, two old men, with long, white beards, were sitting inside playing chess, as quietly as mice, with their eyes fixed on the chessboard.

Wang Chih knew something of chess, and he stepped in and watched them for a few minutes.

"As soon as they look up I can ask them if I may chop down a tree," he said to himself. But they did not look up, and by and by Wang Chih got so interested in the game that he put down his axe, and sat on the floor to watch it better.

The two old men sat cross-legged on the ground, and the chessboard rested on a slab, like a stone table, between them.

On one corner of the slab lay a heap of small, brown objects which Wang Chih took at first to be date stones; but after a time the chess-players ate one each, and put one in Wang Chih's mouth; and he found it was not a date stone at all.

It was a delicious kind of sweetmeat, the like of which he had never tasted before; and the strangest thing about it was that it took his hunger and thirst away.

He had been both hungry and thirsty when he came into the cave, as he had not waited to have his midday meal with the other field-workers; but now he felt quite comforted and refreshed.

He sat there some time longer, and noticed that as the old men frowned over the chessboard, their beards grew longer and longer, until they swept the floor of the cave, and even found their way out of the door.

"I hope my beard will never grow as quickly," said Wang Chih, as he rose and took up his axe again.

Then one of the old men spoke, for the first time. "Our beards have not grown quickly, young man. How long is it since you came here?"

"About half an hour, I dare say," replied Wang Chih. But as he spoke, the axe crumbled to dust beneath his fingers, and the second chess-player laughed, and pointed to the little brown sweetmeats on the table.

"Half an hour, or half a century—aye, half a thousand years, are all alike to him who tastes of these. Go down into your village and see what has happened since you left it."

So Wang Chih went down as quickly as he could from the mountain, and found the fields where he had worked covered with houses, and a busy town where his own little village had been. In vain he looked for his house, his wife, and his children.

There were strange faces everywhere; and although when evening came the Feast of Lanterns was being held once more, there was no Ho-Seen-Ko carrying her red and yellow fish, or Han Chung with his flaming red ball.

At last he found a woman, a very, very old woman, who told him that when she was a tiny girl she remembered her grandmother saying how, when she was a tiny girl, a poor young man had been spirited away by the Genii of the mountains, on the day of the Feast of Lanterns, leaving his wife and little children with only a few handfuls of rice in the house.

"Moreover, if you wait while the procession passes, you will see two children dressed to represent Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko, and their mother carrying the empty rice-bowl between them; for this is done every year to remind people to take care of the widow and fatherless," she said. So Wang Chih waited in the street; and in a little while the procession came to an end; and the last three figures in it were a boy and a girl, dressed like his own two children, walking on either side of a young woman carrying a rice-bowl. But she was not like his wife in anything but her dress, and the children were not at all like Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko; and poor Wang Chih's heart was very heavy as he walked away out of the town.

He slept out on the mountain, and early in the morning found his way back to the cave where the two old men were playing chess.

At first they said they could do nothing for him, and told him to go away and not disturb them; but Wang Chih would not go, and they soon found the only way to get rid of him was to give him some really good advice.

"You must go to the White Hare of the Moon, and ask him for a bottle of the elixir of life. If you drink that you will live forever," said one of them.

"But I don't want to live forever," objected Wang Chih. "I wish to go back and live in the days when my wife and children were here."

"Ah, well! For that you must mix the elixir of life with some water out of the sky-dragon's mouth."

"And where is the sky-dragon to be found?" inquired Wang Chih.

"In the sky, of course. You really ask very stupid questions. He lives in a cloud-cave. And when he comes out of it he breathes fire, and sometimes water. If he is breathing fire you will be burnt up, but if it is only water, you will easily be able to catch some in a little bottle. What else do you want?"

For Wang Chih still lingered at the mouth of the cave.

"I want a pair of wings to fly with, and a bottle to catch the water in," he replied boldly.

So they gave him a little bottle; and before he had time to say "Thank you!" a white crane came sailing past, and lighted on the ground close to the cave.

"The crane will take you wherever you like," said the old men. "Go now, and leave us in peace."

So Wang Chih sat on the white crane's back, and was taken up, and up, and up through the sky to the cloud-cave where the sky-dragon lived. And the dragon had the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow and the claws of a hawk.

Besides this, he had whiskers and a beard, and in his beard was a bright pearl.

All these things show that he was a real, genuine dragon, and if you ever meet a dragon who is not exactly like this, you will know he is only a make-believe one.

Wang Chih felt rather frightened when he perceived the cave in the distance, and if it had not been for the thought of seeing his wife again, and his little boy and girl, he would have been glad to turn back.

While he was far away the cloud-cave looked like a dark hole in the midst of a soft, white, woolly mass, such as one sees in the sky on an April day; but as he came nearer he found the cloud was as hard as a rock, and covered with a kind of dry, white grass.

When he got there, he sat down on a tuft of grass near the cave, and considered what he should do next.

The first thing was, of course, to bring the dragon out, and the next to make him breathe water instead of fire.

"I have it!" cried Wang Chih at last; and he nodded his head so many times that the white crane expected to see it fall off.

He struck a light, and set the grass on fire, and it was so dry that the flames spread all around the entrance to the cave, and made such a smoke and crackling that the sky-dragon put his head out to see what was the matter.

"Ho! ho!" cried the dragon, when he saw what Wang Chih had done, "I can soon put this to rights." And he breathed once, and the water came out his nose and mouth in three streams.

But this was not enough to put the fire out. Then he breathed twice, and the water came out in three mighty rivers, and Wang Chih, who had taken care to fill his bottle when the first stream began to flow, sailed away on the white crane's back as fast as he could, to escape being drowned.

The rivers poured over the cloud rock, until there was not a spark left alight, and rushed down through the sky into the sea below.

Fortunately, the sea lay right underneath the dragon's cave, or he would have done some nice mischief. As it was, the people on the coast looked out across the water toward Japan, and saw three inky-black clouds stretching from the sky into the sea.

"My word! There is a fine rain-storm out at sea!" they said to each other.

But, of course, it was nothing of the kind; it was only the sky-dragon putting out the fire Wang Chih had kindled.

Meanwhile, Wang Chih was on his way to the moon, and when he got there he went straight to the hut where the Hare of the Moon lived, and knocked at the door.

The Hare was busy pounding the drugs which make up the elixir of life; but he left his work, and opened the door, and invited Wang Chih to come in.

He was not ugly, like the dragon; his fur was quite white and soft and glossy, and he had lovely, gentle brown eyes.

The Hare of the Moon lives a thousand years, as you know, and when he is five hundred years old he changes his colour, from brown to white, and becomes, if possible, better tempered and nicer than he was before.

As soon as he heard what Wang Chih wanted, he opened two windows at the back of the hut, and told him to look through each of them in turn.

"Tell me what you see," said the Hare, going back to the table where he was pounding the drugs.

"I can see a great many houses and people," said Wang Chih, "and streets—why, this is the town I was in yesterday, the one which has taken the place of my old village."

Wang Chih stared, and grew more and more puzzled. Here he was up in the moon, and yet he could have thrown a stone into the busy street of the Chinese town below his window.

"How does it come here?" he stammered, at last.

"Oh, that is my secret," replied the wise old Hare. "I know how to do a great many things which would surprise you. But the question is, do you want to go back there?"

Wang Chih shook his head.

"Then close the window. It is the window of the Present. And look through the other, which is the window of the Past."

Wang Chih obeyed, and through this window he saw his own dear little village, and his wife, and Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko jumping about her as she hung up the coloured lanterns outside the door.

"Father won't be in time to light them for us, after all," Han Chung was saying.

Wang Chih turned, and looked eagerly at the White Hare.

"Let me go to them," he said. "I have got a bottle of water from the sky-dragon's mouth, and—"

"That's all right," said the White Hare. "Give it to me."

He opened the bottle, and mixed the contents carefully with a few drops of the elixir of life, which was clear as crystal, and of which each drop shone like a diamond as he poured it in.

"Now, drink this," he said to Wang Chih, "and it will give you the power of living once more in the past, as you desire."

Wang Chih held out his hand, and drank every drop.

The moment he had done so, the window grew larger, and he saw some steps leading from it down into the village street.

Thanking the Hare, he rushed through it, and ran toward his own house, arriving in time to take the taper from his wife's hand with which she was about to light the red and yellow lanterns which swung over the door.

"What has kept you so long, father? Where have you been?" asked Han Chung, while little Ho-Seen-Ko wondered why he kissed and embraced them all so eagerly.

But Wang Chih did not tell them his adventures just then; only when darkness fell, and the Feast of Lanterns began, he took his part in it with a merry heart.
Spades Park hosts the Feast of the Lanterns. Image: courtesy Jill Pierce
Anyone who has ever gone to places where they used to be, but have been away for a while, can certainly understand the disorientation and other feelings Wang Chih experienced when he returned to the formerly familiar place that had been his home. 

As for the Feast of the Lanterns, it still happens, even in the United States.  Each year in late summer in Indianapolis, Spades Park hosts the Feast of the Lanterns.  The event is hosted by the Near Eastside Community Organization.  Historic Indianapolis readers already know the history of this festival, which dates back to 1908.  Visitors are invited to listen to live music, enjoy delicious food, and soak up the last of the season’s halcyon days. 

Pacific Grove, CA has a site about their own Feast of lanterns that dates back to 2016 and is quite detailed.

While we've already spent a lot of time recently talking about Chinese New Year, also called the Lunar New Year, the website, Christmas traditions in China, goes beyond Christmas into the lunar New Year mentioning "The greatest spectacle takes place at the Feast of the Lanterns, when everyone lights at least one lantern for the occasion."  Right now the world wishes we could change much about this year's gathering and its role in the dispersal of Coronvirus, but at least this story lets us enjoy this long overlooked Tale of Wonder from the book, Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know, that surely deserves to be better known and told.
******************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  



At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!



Saturday, February 22, 2020

Three Sneezes (An Estonian Folktale)

I remember when talking about our family friends, the Vannaks, and their celebration of Estonian Independence Day, my younger daughter, Jamie said, "Stonia?  Who wants to go to Stonia?"

The country of Estonia may not be covered well in United States Social Studies classes.  (Rant alert:  Don't get me started on the whole topic of how the subjects of History, Geography, and Civics now are lumped together as one subject so that today's students receive less information in all three subjects!)  Estonia is a country east of the southern half of Sweden, but across the Baltic Sea and just south of Finland with it's smaller Gulf of Finland (and Estonians speak the second-most-spoken Finnic language) yet it touches Russia (the former U.S.S.R.).  That touch -- one of many centuries of foreign rule by Germans, Danes, Swedes, Poles, and Russians -- caused the most recent celebration which goes back to their brief independence after World War I.  They were definitely Vikings and I confess I can just picture the father, Vaivo, retaining that Viking spirit in his passion.  I fondly remember times with their family, including when the Soviet Union broke up enough for the Estonian Independence Day to truly be celebrated both in Estonia and their home in Toledo, Ohio.

What got me thinking about all of this again was, of all things, the terrible turn that the Lunar New Year took at the start of this month.  I mentioned earlier this month that one of the beliefs behind Chinese New Year is that whatever you do at the start of the year will keep recurring all year long.  The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now believes this will prove true with the Corona Virus staying with us beyond this year.

Along the way while planning this month's possible responses to that unfortunate development I discovered an Estonian tale not in my Public Domain anthologies, but retold in a blog no longer produced, but was syndicated by Andrews McMeel Universal.  I originally contacted one of the authors, Amy Friedman, and she pointed me in their direction for permission.  She was sure they would grant it, but it took a while (rather like the development of the unfortunate virus now abbreviated as COVID-19, as it actually was first reported on December 31, 2019).  Fortunately we can sit at our computers and other digital devices and enjoy a tale stretching back to a style of story about silliness known as Noodlehead stories.  Let laughter and smiles still stretch around the internet with this bit of humor to celebrate Estonian Independence Day on February 24th.

Three Sneezes (An Estonian Folktale)





Once upon a time, in a little village not far from Tallinn, on the Gulf of Finland, there lived a farmer whose name was Kalev. Kalev and his wife, Johanna, had many children. As time passed, their children married and had children of their own. After some time, the children began to ask their father who would inherit his farm.


The eldest child was Kati, and she thought the farm would be hers. But Paavo, the oldest son, said, "Shouldn't you pass your farm to me, your oldest son?"

The children began to bicker, particularly at the holidays when they visited. Over the meal, they talked as if Kalev was no longer there:

"It will be mine, won't it, Father?" asked Kati.

"No, mine," pleaded Paavo.

Kalev and Johanna listened closely, and late at night they talked about what would become of their farm and their children. Kalev was worried, for he did not know when he would die, and he had made no decision.

"I'll go see the Sage of Finland," he announced to his wife. "I'll ask him how many years I have to live, and then I will know when to decide."

"A wise idea," Johanna agreed, and so Kalev set off to see the sage.

The sage looked just once at Kalev, and he solemnly said, "You will know death has come when you have sneezed three times."

And as Kalev traveled back home, he was deeply saddened, for he could not stop thinking about sneezing. Just as he walked into his own yard, he froze. There was the honeysuckle vine, and the scent always tickled his nose. Sure enough, before he could stop himself, he sneezed.

"Oh no!" he cried. "Just two more left."

He dared not tell Johanna the news, and so that night he avoided her questions, and early the next morning he set off for the mill to grind some grain. While he was there, working away, the dust from the mill tickled his nose, and he sneezed once again.

He sighed deeply. "Just one more left," he said under his breath, and he ran out of the mill as fast as he could.

Alas, the next morning he realized he had to pick up the sacks of flour he had left behind, and so he walked back to the mill. He walked carefully inside, lifted a sack, threw it over his shoulder and raced for the door.

He rushed out into the warm summer air, but his nose was full of dust. He knew he was going to sneeze. He tried to stop himself.

He inhaled and cried, "No!"

But it was too late. He let out an enormous sneeze.

He placed the sack upon the ground and groaned, "My time has come too soon!"

But he knew he must accept his fate, and so he lay upon the ground and stretched out. He closed his eyes.

The miller's hogs noticed the sack of flour upon the ground, and they rushed through the open gate to the sack and began to rip it open.

When Kalev heard their grunting, he turned his head, opened his eyes and looked at them.

He sighed deeply. "If I were alive, I'd punish you for this, you scoundrels!" he shouted. "Alas, I am dead."

And he closed his eyes.

The miller heard the grunting of his hogs, and he rushed outside to investigate. There he saw Kalev on the ground. He stood over him.

"Why are you lying here?" he asked. "How could you let the hogs go wild?"

Kalev opened his eyes once more. "What can I do?" he sighed. "I'm dead. If I were alive, of course, I'd drive away your hogs, but a dead man can only rely on those who are alive to do his will."

"Ah," said the miller, grinning ear to ear. "So you are dead. That's very sad."

The miller reached for his whip and raised it over his head, preparing to flog his hogs, but when they heard the crack of the whip, they ran away.

The miller whirled that whip to the ground, and it grazed Kalev's arm. The jolt rushed through his body, and he sat up fast.

"Oh my!" he cried with joy. "You've brought me back to life! What a friend you are! If not for you, I'd still be dead."

And feeling happier than he ever had, he heaved what was left of the flour onto his back and hurried home.

From that day on, whenever his children began to argue, he stood up and roared, "I'll hear no talk of death in my presence!"

Kalev and Johanna lived happily ever after for many more years.

This story:  TELL ME A STORY © by Amy Friedman & Meredith Johnson. Reprinted with permission of ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. All rights reserved.

I know many of my readers enjoy a good story, so you might enjoy a trip to the Tell Me A Story archives.  You will see some years where Amy Friedman and Meredith Johnson no longer created the site.  It actually ran from August of 1996 to the end of 2017, so click on a year for more stories.  Nothing lasts forever, with or without sneezing.
May you stay well!
******************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  



At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Saturday, February 15, 2020

Steel - Bopoluchi - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

By the time you read this Valentine's Day will have ended.  Hopefully yours ended safely.  The media seem determined to warn people about all the tricksters out to cheat unsuspecting seekers of love.  Here in the Detroit metro area a man using a dating app was murdered.  SHEESH!  Sometimes modern life seems determined to show us a dangerous world, but yet some of our oldest stories are cautionary tales from Red Riding Hood to Bluebeard.  They show we always should keep alert.

While I wasn't seeking a cautionary tale, I've been spending more hours in support calls to India than probably the average person there spends in a week or even longer.  I believe my new computer is finally working correctly and thank the HP technician, Sukanya, a woman of persistence and humor.  Along the way I learned she loves to relax by reading and might even find this a site to visit.  For her I went specifically looking for something from India.

Flora Annie Steel traveled India searching for stories, carefully keeping their humor, drama, and poetry.  Her 1894 book, Tales of the Punjab, was further documented by Major R.C. Temple, and illustrated by Rudyard Kipling's father, J. Lockwood Kipling.  (I decided just to use "Kipling" as a subject label so that later I might include some of Rudyard's work.)  Two of the notes can wait until the story's end, but one word tripped me up, "billhook."  The internet showed me billhooks and the sickle shaped tools can vary in size with the smallest being used for harvesting rice and the larger ones like this used for tasks like cutting firewood or clearing paths.  In medieval times it also was a weapon on a pole.  On seeing it and hearing about its agricultural usage, I realized it was what I commonly call a "brush hook."  I suspect our heroine, Bopoluchi, had the small version.

Now for the story, complete with a recurring refrain of warning, which always makes for a tellable tale.
That's certainly a bit of folklore that includes female empowerment!  Oh, okay she should have listened to the warnings, but once she accepted her situation she certainly acted.

Now about those notes I thought were better to wait.  Several of them give the original word for parts of the story and Bopoluchi was certainly named well for it means Trickster.  As for that scarlet bridal dress, we are told in the notes "Every Panjabi bride, however poor, wears a dress of scarlet and gold for six months, and if rich, for two years."  https://www.culturalindia.net gives a whole section to Indian Weddings and under regional weddings the Punjabi wedding says:
The Punjabi bride is a sight to behold. Resplendent in a gorgeous lehenga and lots of fashionable jewelry, she walks in beauty. Punjabi brides are very picky when it comes to their wedding lehenga and love to go all the way for the perfect one. Although Red is the traditional wedding color for all Indian brides, Punjabi brides are known to go for other colors like green, gold, fuchsia and orange. She pairs the lehenga with a matching dupatta with which she covers her head. She wears a lot of jewelry, some of it made of gold while some of it may be modern costume jewelry. Some compulsory components are maangtika, bangles, Nath, Chooda (a traditional red and ivory colored bangle set in multiples of four), kamarbandh and Paijaniya. The sister-in-law of the bride ties a set of Kalire to her wrists. These are gold or silver ornaments that are dome shaped with multiple danglers attached to them.
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_wedding_traditions

Surely the traditional wedding was what this young orphaned girl dreamed of having, like her friends. Dreams are sometimes dangerous if you don't examine them carefully.  Folklore is frequently  criticized as living in a "fairy tale world", but our ancestors often looked beyond the "happily ever after."
******************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  



At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Mutt - The Clever Peasant Girl - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

A story has been haunting me as I look a bit ahead to Valentine's Day.  I knew the story's ending impressed me as a wonderful proof of love, but couldn't remember the story's source or even its country.  This wasn't as hopeless as it seems because I went looking in Margaret Read MacDonald's excellent reference book, The Storyteller's Sourcebook: A Subject, Title, and Motif Index to Folklore Collections for Children. -- Don't let that part about children stop you, this is definitely a story for mature adolescents and adults.  At the end I'll say a bit more about the motif index which helped me find it, but here are the many cultures that tell this motif in the order MacDonald gives them:  it is found in anthologies for Serbia, the Kirghiz (of Kyrgyzstan), Estonia, Czechoslovakia (when published still one country with no sign if the story is Czech or Slovak), Wales, Rumania, Poland, Russia, Netherlands, and Italy.  Stories do travel and clearly this has traveled from Central Asia and across Europe.

By the way, it's also a story loaded with riddles and that, too, is a common element in many stories.  I challenge you to try and answer them before seeing how the Clever Peasant Girl answers them.

I have many of the anthologies MacDonald cites and the best known version is probably Parker Fillmore's "Clever Manka" in The Shepherd's Nosegay; stories from Finland and Czechoslovakia, but both the original book and the story's reprint in May Hill Arbuthnot's Time for Fairy Tales Old and New are ex libris complete with library binding which preserves the book, but makes it hard to scan.  

Looking further at those anthologies, another version rose to the top, the Estonian one.  I have long-time family friends who are Estonian American and also know later this month is Estonian Independence Day, so I checked my two books of Estonian tales.  The more recent (and still in copyright) The Moon Painters and Other Estonian Folk Tales by Selve Maas is a lot of fun, but it includes many of the same stories found in the older Fairy Tales from Baltic Shores; Folk-lore stories from Estonia by Eugenie Mutt.  The two books each give their retellings of "The Clever Peasant Girl."  The older volume also includes wide margins perfect for scanning as well as being a graphic gem with full color and small black and white illustrations and page design by Jeannettte Berkowitz -- although I quibble a bit with where the publisher inserted them. 

Let's see it!


Now how did I find it and why did it seem so appropriate to me?  MacDonald used the Aarne-Thompson Motif classification to group types of stories.  The general group is J for "The Wise and Foolish" and I found J1545.4 "The exiled wife's dearest possession.  A wife driven from home by her husband is allowed to take her dearest possession.  She takes her husband."  I'll admit this clever wife found a more comfortable way than I seem to remember, but none of the other anthologies are in Public Domain, so I didn't read them for my faintly remembering she picked her husband up and carried him out on her back!  In this case an exiled Queen would surely not do that and would be allowed a coach to carry her and whatever she valued most.  ("Clever Manka" also had a wagon to carry out her burgomaster.)  Clearly whether it's used for love and Valentine's Day, Estonian Independence Day (February 24), or saved for Women's History month, it's a story worth Keeping the Public in Public Domain.

Not in Public Domain, but I've been given permission to post another Estonian tale I found online and wanted to use at the start of this month and the lunar New Year.  I hope that tempts you to return here for a humorous story which may have another application to the Year of the Rat.
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Saturday, February 1, 2020

Cornplanter/Canfield - The First Winter - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

This is not the start of winter (thank heavens!), but we still have a lot of it left.  This past week I saw the first hopeful sign...the local parks have changed their sunset closing to half an hour later!  It means the days are finally a bit longer with more coming.  Winter is starting to leave -- HOORAY!  Okay, it's a long way until it's over, but it fits with today's story.


Recently I was able to purchase The Legends of the Iroquois which is officially listed as being written by William W. Canfield, but he attributes the source to "The Cornplanter", a Seneca who died in 1836 at the age of 104.  I have quite a few Iroquois books, including one by J.(Jesse)J. Cornplanter which is a reprint from Iroqrafts, so it is recognized as an important book to the Iroquois (originally published in 1938 and still under copyright because of renewal).  Jesse died in 1957 and was a descendant of the chief commonly called "The Cornplanter."  Jesse's father worked closely with the Seneca folklorist, Arthur C. Parker, whose books are starting to enter Public Domain.  The Seneca are among the five original (and still are) members of the Iroquois Confederation or League.  Their own name is the Haudenosaunee or "People of the Longhouse."  Living so long and training his son and Arthur Parker was not the extent of the Cornplanter's passing on of Iroquois folklore, so when I saw this book with its close reproduction of legends, I had to get it!

None of my half dozen other books include this story which matches my delight in the lengthening of daylight.  After the story I will include the notes accompanying the story, but first let it speak to us as we huddle in our "shorthouses."  (Yes, I made up that name, but the longhouses of the Haudenosaunee were perfect for this elder's passing along their traditions.)  Canfield explained it was during the last twenty years of his life the Cornplanter "recalled and told (the legends).  He did not speak of them generally, for he held them sacred, but reserved them for the ears of those in full sympathy with the people of which he was one of the last true representatives."  May you receive them with respect.
The notes show the work of William C. Canfield in interpreting and explaining the stories.  The type size in the Notes is truly the "fine print" so I will provide it here for your understanding and "full sympathy" with the Haudenosaunee values.
The Indians were taught never to speak ill of any of the celestial bodies or of the works of nature.  They must never complain of the glare and heat of the sun, lest they be stricken blind; nor must they complain of the clouds for fear that they might be shut up in caves in the mountains where no light could enter.  The moon must be treated with the same respect and consideration, for those who said aught against her were in imminent danger of death by a fall of rocks from the sky.  The most severe storms of wind, snow, frost or hail must be treated only with great respect.  Those who complained about them were by this act unarmed and could not resist their attacks and rigors.  In fact, they were taught to 'take the bitter with the sweet' without making wry faces.  This training through long generations rendered the race cold and stoical, apparently indifferent to suffering.  They probably suffered the same as others, but they bore it without a sign.  This legend was a very common one and was frequently told the young in order that the lesson might be deeply impressed upon them that they should never set themselves up in opposition to the Great Spirit or complain of the enforcement of his laws.
Canfield calls the legend "a very common one", but I find it interesting none of my other major Iroquois sources give it.  This is both a "pourquois" tale explaining how something came to be and a cautionary tale.  It does indeed offer lessons, but the trick is for the teller to avoid becoming "preachy", turning off the listeners.  The common saying about the weather is "everybody talks about it; no one does a thing about it."  This story shows an extreme our common grumbling, thank heaven!, doesn't create.  I plan to keep on grumbling, but am grateful something like this isn't caused by it.

Until next week "that's my story and I'm sticking to it!"
******************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  



At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!