Farmer - Dandelion Stars - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Hot on the heels of last weekend's Mother's Day I found myself once again wondering about something my mother used to say whenever she saw a lawn with dandelions.  "Oh the old man spilled his bag of gold!" she would shout with great delight.  I have searched and searched to find out what was behind that exclamation.  

If you know please tell me.  I suspect it was something going back to her childhood.

Aside from having dandelions on my own lawn, over on X, look at https://twitter.com/VenetiaJane.  

That inspired me to hunt once again hoping to learn more about Public Domain stories of Dandelions.  I found this in Florence Virginia Farmer's book, Nature Myths of Many Lands.  I recommend it as a very useful book for storytellers and naturalists.

once

I told VenetiaJane about Farmer's version.  She did a bit of prowling her own files as she remembered the story a bit differently and found this from the Journal of Education 

October 17, 1912 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION page 409

NEWTON SPELLING

[Continued from page 405.]

Here are some sentences used for spelling

orally and in writing: -

 

Did you see the sky last night?

The moon was shining.

The stars were bright.

The moon is the mother.

The stars are her children.

Can you tell who is the father?

One night some stars were cross.

They would not shine.

They hid behind à cloud.

Mother moon felt very sad.

Where are my baby stars?

Why are they not shining?

We do not want to work.

Let the other stars shine.

We are too sleepy to-night.

You were born to shine.

I will have no lazy stars in my home.

You must go to the earth below.

The lazy stars shook with fear.

They lost their hold.

Down, down they fell to the earth.

The little stars fell on the grass.

All night they lay there.

They wished they had been good.

In the morning father sun looked down.

He saw the little stars.

He was sorry for them.

How cold they look!

Come, clouds, send down some snow.

Cover the baby stars with a soft blanket.

All winter the stars slept in their warm bed.

The stars above shone down on them,

But they never woke.

At last the spring came,

Father sun sent his warm beams to the earth

It is time to wake, little stars.

The stars opened their sleepy eyes.

They looked up into their father's kind facc.

He smiled at them.

These stars now live on the earth.

They shine all day long.

Children call them dandelions.

*****

I edited out parts of that page unrelated to the Dandelion story.  <sigh!>  That was from an idea for teachers shortly before my own mother was born.  I intend to keep looking for what inspired mom's cries of "The old man spilled his bag of gold!"  Perhaps it was something created by a teacher she had. I can certainly tell you her lawn never tried to eliminate dandelions.  

Whether you want dandelions or not, if you love nature, especially plants, I want to give a shout out to https://www.venetiajane.co.uk/ as well as her work on X (Twitter), Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.  Her photography is both lovely and lovingly done with cards, calendars, and photos.  She mixes those images with folklore, literature, and history.  Here in the mitten-shaped state of Michigan I sometimes see her part of the United Kingdom warming up before us.  As winter tends to drag on too long, it's wonderful to see what she sees.

You may see dandelions as a weed taking over your lawn, but my mom, VenetiaJane, and I see so much more.  Blow on those dandelion stars to spread them and, while you're at it, spread a story about them.

Asbjørnsen & Moe - One's Own Children Are Always Prettiest - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

I tend to use the original Index to Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends by Mary Huse Eastman, published in 1915, to guarantee Public Domain stores.  I plowed through the stories for Mother's Day and others with Mother in the title.  Maybe it was the mood I was in, but everything just seemed too "quaint" and I wasn't happy with telling them in the 21st century.  In telling Public Domain stories it's sometimes necessary for the storyteller to modernize the language.  "Thees" and other quaint word choice isn't needed to tell the story and can keep a present day audience from hearing what is meant.  These stories just struck me as having an antiquated view of motherhood or children.  

Quite by accident I discovered today's story and believe it will always fit the way mothers view their children.  This translation originally appeared in Sir G. W. Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse, but is the Kay Nielsen illustrated version of the Asjornsen and Moe tales titled East of the Sun and West of the Moon; Old Tales from the North.  That's a Project Gutenberg link, but Nielsen's work has had many reprints and I strongly recommend seeing it in book form as both the full-color and black and white illustrations really shine in print. 

The story itself is about a Snipe.  I will say a bit more about it after the tale.

ONE’S OWN CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS PRETTIEST

sportsman went out once into a wood to shoot, and he met a Snipe.

“Dear friend,” said the Snipe, “don’t shoot my children!”

“How shall I know your children?” asked the Sportsman. “What are they like?”

“Oh!” said the Snipe, “mine are the prettiest children in all the wood.”

“Very well,” said the Sportsman, “I’ll not shoot them; don’t be afraid.”

But for all that, when he came back, there he had a whole 204 string of young snipes in his hand which he had shot.

“Oh, oh!” said the Snipe, “why did you shoot my children after all?”

“What! these your children!” said the Sportsman; “why, I shot the ugliest I could find, that I did!”

“Woe is me!” said the Snipe; “don’t you know that each one thinks his own children the prettiest in the world?”

***

Snipe in Water, by Ohara Koson. Japan, 1900-1930

LoiS again:

I've long heard about Snipe Hunts and presumed they were hunting for something fictitious.  Not so. . . well not entirely.  The Wikipedia article on the Snipe mainly incorporates the old Public Domain article found in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).  I wanted an update on the bird and find it as the Common snipe, which is not a North American bird.  This is why a "Snipe hunt" -- at least in North America -- is considered a prank or practical joke.  There are however North American birds, known as Wilson's snipe, which had been considered a subspecies until 2003 when it was changed to its own species.

Along the way on my own literary Snipe Hunt I learned the term "sniper" came from the bird because of its ability to hunt and also camouflage.

 All of that may be far more than you ever cared to know.  Mr. Nielsen frequently marks the end of stories with an illustration that seems appropriate to this little known tale which ends the book.  (Note the short bird bills, so they are not snipes, but they hide 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

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - 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 the late 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 December 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.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - 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

Giddings - Yaqui stories of San Pedro and Jesucristo - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Sunday is Cinco de Mayo.  As it is indeed a Sunday, I think there are some stories from Mexico that are a lot of fun about San Pedro and Jesucristo (St. Peter and Jesus).  They come from the Yaqui, an Indigenous people of Mexico.  Ruth Warren Giddings didn't renew her copyright on Yaqui Myths and Legends nor any of the other contributors, Harry Behn the editor nor the illustrator, Laurie Cook, so it became Public Domain.  The entire book is available online.  That online book includes the following review from https://sacred-texts.com/:

About the Book
"This is a delightful collection of Yaqui folklore, illustrated with line
drawings which invest Mexican folk-art motifs with quaint atomic-age
cheerfulness. The Yaqui are part of the Southwestern Native American
culture-group, and live in the Sonoran desert on the west coast of northern
Mexico, opposite Baja California. The stories here are a mixture of ancient
folklore blended with Mexican Catholic themes. Coyote and other
zoomorphs walk in the same cycle of tales with figures such as Jesuschristo
(who figures in several comic stories) and Columbus (who appears briefly as
a villan)." (sic)

European folklore includes such stories.  I recognize the first story about the "one-legged chicken."  I am including it and the other three such stories.  For my part they are my favorite stories in the book!  

May you enjoy these light-hearted tales in your own fiesta!

**********************

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

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - 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 the late 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 December 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.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - 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