Fielde - A Dreadful Boar - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Back at the end of 2018 I celebrated the regular New Year with a story, "Misapplied Wit", by today's author, Adele M. Fielde taking place during the New Year celebration.  I foolishly said "Stories about the New Year aren't plentiful.  This Chinese story mentions the New Year and I probably should save it for Chinese New Year, but you can always celebrate that with whatever celestial animal is the topic."

Yeahrightsure.

There are indeed lots of stories about pigs, but I wanted a Chinese story since this coming week is the start of the Chinese Lunar Year with all its celebrating and this year dedicated to the pig, or to be more precise the Brown Earth Pig, which also happens to be female.  Hunh?  To learn more than you probably want to know go to Chinese Fortune Calendar and wallow in the information.  That site has quite a bit to say about the coming lunar year and its timing, but the characteristics of the Pig are what I found most interesting.

Pig is the last animal sign of 12 Earthly Branches. Pig is in the Water group according to Chinese Five Element theory. Water is related to wisdom. Pig is connected to river or running water. Pig has wisdom, initiative and energy. Pig is not lazy. Pig Month is November, the first month of the winter. So Pig is the cold water in the winter. In Chinese I-Ching, Water is connected to the danger. When river water is overflowing, it might cause flooding. The sign of Pig is offensive and encroachment. Pig contains mainly Yang Water with some Yang Wood. Yang Wood is related to tall tree, landmark, boss or leader. The characteristics of Pig are kind, generous, magnanimous, warm-hearted and considerate with Leadership skill.

I have to say stories about pigs or even wild boars (today's story) are very hard to find in English stories with one notable exception.  At the risk of being a Bore, I'm going to talk about that exception after today's story.  In the same book as "Misapplied Wit", Chinese Fairy Tales, also known in an earlier edition as Chinese Nights' Entertainment, Fielde has a wild boar (with an "a") cause all manner of grief to a little old Chinese grandmother.  The old lady's crying shows what can happen if you keep asking for help.  The chaos that follows has been told in many forms in other cultures, but this version does it most thoroughly.

Don't cry; check out "Misapplied Wit"

It's commonly said there's "no use crying over spilled milk", but that old lady's tears were certainly worth crying.  O.k. she didn't get a Boar's Head dinner, but neither was her granddaughter Boar's dinner.

Now at the risk of boring you if you've never heard of the 16th century Chinese folk novel, Monkey or by its other name of Journey to the West, there is a famous Chinese pig character I would have liked to bring here.  Pigsy is a fellow traveler with Monkey in Wu Cheng 'en's folk novel, which has many translations, most notably by Arthur Waley, who abridged it mainly by omitting the poetry, leaving 30 of the 100 original episodes.  The name, Pigsy, is one of Waley's several renamings of the main characters.  As the study guide for Monkey:A Folk Novel of China, Gradesaver, says "It has been adapted numerous times -- in film, plays, anime, etc."

Gradesaver describes Pigsy as: Originally a marshal of the Heavenly armies, Pigsy was sent by Buddha to wait for Tripitaka and his disciples, and disguised himself as the wife of Blue Orchid. Rather unintelligent, upon his reincarnation, Pigsy accidentally took the wrong road and entered the womb of a sow, giving him his distinctive appearance. His weapon of choice is a nine-toothed rake; in addition, Pigsy can ride clouds, perform 36 transformations, and has a voracious appetite. He is also relentlessly teased by Monkey and seeks to revenge himself on these small offenses – but all of his plans backfire in some way.

In the end, Pigsy is also promoted to the status of Cleaner of Altars, which will give him the opportunity to eat all the offerings left by worshippers but not eaten by deities -- the perfect job for him. He is seen as accepting and optimistic, but rather pig-like in his lust, gluttony, and laziness.

Gradesaver also calls both Pigsy and another character, Sandy, "extensive dramatic irony in Monkey in the misunderstandings that occur between the four travelers and those who are there to help them, but appear to be monsters at first. "   For a slightly more earthy description of how he became a pig, and his bad behavior, go to Wikepedia's article on Journey to the West.  There are copies available at Internet Archive, some even in English, showing some of the range of versions.

Why am I mentioning all of this?  No, it's not today's story as I haven't found an English language version yet in Public Domain, but know graphic novels and Beijing Folk Opera productions loaded with fantastic gymnastics have brought this famous Chinese pig who traveled with Monkey plenty of attention.  I hope you also travel to see a performance of it sometime -- whatever lunar year it is.

Now for my usual "fine print" about Public Domain and resources I recommend online:
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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 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 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.

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

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
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!

Fielde - Misapplied Wit - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Stories about the New Year aren't plentiful.  This Chinese story mentions the New Year and I probably should save it for Chinese New Year, but you can always celebrate that with whatever celestial animal is the topic.  You're probably wondering when the Chinese New Year is for 2019, since the date changes, and what animal is chosen for that coming celebration.

http://www.when-is.com says

Chinese New Year in 2019 is on Tuesday, the 5th of February.

According to the Chinese 12-year animal zodiac cycle, the Chinese year beginning in 2019 is the year of the Pig. Each Chinese zodiac year begins on Chinese New Year's Day.

Pig years are believed to be the most unlucky for people born in previous years of the Pig.

Chinese New Year, also known as the "Spring Festival" in modern Mainland China, is China's most important traditional festival, celebrated at the turn of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar, which consists of both Gregorian and lunar-solar calendar systems. Chinese New Year can begin anytime between late January and mid-February.

China's Spring Festival public holiday starts on the Chinese New Year, and lasts for 7 days.

As it turns out, today's story also include a boar's head and I just couldn't wait!  I trust you will enjoy it, too, as you may have become curious from the story's title.  (I'll add a bit at the end about the author and the anthologies where it can be found.)

This illustration was the second page of the story and I picture our "young literary graduate" there.  I'll give a bit more information at the story's end.

  

Now a reveal: The head is papier mache at http://art-of-patience.blogspot.com/2012/01/vegetarian-boars-head.html

My copy of the story is in Adele M. Fielde's Chinese Fairy Tales which was a 1912 reissue of her earlier 1893 Chinese Nights' Entertainment, which only added a new Introduction where she states "This book reveals the Chinese mind as it was when untouched by foreign influences."  It's prophetic that she closed her introduction with this statement:

What lies in the future for a persistent nation possessing these characteristics, or what influence such people are to have on the destinies of the other three quarters of the human race, is a problem that in this twentieth century is presented to every serious mind.

As we look at the twenty-first century that continues to be true.  

Adele M. Fielde (March 30, 1839 – February 23, 1916)

See a very brief article about the protest at the National Museum of American History website

Wikipedia's article about Fielde is brief and neither of today's books are mentioned, but she was a fascinating woman prominent in the women's suffrage movement dying shortly before passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.  (I can just picture her in the afterlife loving this woman's protest at the White House on 1917, a year after Fielde's death!)

Wikipedia does mention her missionary work and there's more on that at Boston University's School of Theology "History of Missiology" blog.  Surprisingly that article tells at first she "did not fit in with the Baptist missionary community. Her dancing, card-playing, and associations with the diplomatic community resulted in her dismissal from the mission."  She was later reinstated and went back for 20 very influential years.  The article mentions all her books and even includes her "Journal of American Folklore" article on “The Character of Chinese Folk-Tales.”

Thinking about her twenty years in China, it's interesting that her books of Chinese tales are dedicated "To THE WOMEN OF FAR CATHAY Who were my beloved companions in serious work and in needed recreation" -- for such a serious woman, she managed to add to our recreation.

All illustrations in the books are by anonymous Chinese illustrators

The Chinese proverb quoted on the title page fits the following section on Public Domain.

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Photo by Jarred Craig on Unsplash

Public Domain Day

From Wikipedia.org's article, "2019 in public domain":
2019 is the first year since 1998 in which the majority of media from a previous year enters the public domain after the expiration of its copyright term.  2019 is also the first year in this annual process, where 1923 work become public domain that year, then 1924 works in 2020, and so on forward.
Under the Copyright Term Extension Act, books, films, and other works published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain in 2019.  Additionally, unpublished works whose authors died in 1948 will enter the public domain. Foreign works from 1923 that were never published in the United States may be in the public domain as well. This is the first time since January 1, 1998, that a new group of works will enter the public domain in the United States. From now on, works governed by the Copyright Act of 1909 will enter the public domain at the end of the 95th calendar year from publication. For example, 1924 works will enter the public domain on January 1, 2020, 1925 works in 2021, and so forth.

The article gives additional information, including about foreign works and authors works that had time added after their deaths.

Please check other entries in "Keeping the Public Domain" here for sources of Public Domain stories to read.  For January 1, 2019 I'm celebrating the return of works entering the Public Domain in the United States.

from all-free-download.com