Macmillan - The Moon and His Frog-Wife - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

There have already been a half dozen tales here about the moon, but this week's travels by Artemis 2 around the dark side of the moon had me looking for more. I confess I wasn't happy with what I found until I discovered today's story. It even fits the idea of the dark side of the moon!

Photo by Chris Linnett on Unsplash 

Cyrus Macmillan produced more than one version of his Canadian Wonder Tales, starting in 1918, but this story didn't appear until 1920 and in later editions. I have a 1974 version which includes an illustration of the frog in this story, but that would still be under copyright. Frankly the 1974 frog illustration doesn't show the frog on the moon, so the story requires you to picture it anyway. Something else I found more challenging is the way the story explains the change in names for the Sun and the Moon. Telling the story is best set up by explaining this carefully until the audience understands that for the first part of the story they are the opposite of what they are now and this story explains how that happened. If the idea of Glooskap, the Canadian First Nations creator or first human, is new to listeners, that, too, should be explained although his role in the story is fairly obvious.

 

 

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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 20^th 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 them.

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.

See the sidebar for other Public Domain story resources I recommend on the page “Public Domain Story Resources."