Van Dyke - The Other Wise Man, part 5 - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

The story stopped with this pearl and now continues.

You probably saw the ending to Artaban's story coming.  The tale was published in the beautiful 1902 volume of The Blue Flower.

The lovely cover and illustrations inside were anonymously created, but still worth keeping.  The physical pleasure of the actual book seems missing somewhat in its digital format.  In the book's Preface Van Dyke says the stories grew together like blossoms on a bush, with this story starting ten years earlier and the others, while he knew them quite well by heart, needed a good while before he could find time, in a hard-worked life, to write them down and try to make them clear and true to others.

The digital link above is to the Project Gutenberg text.  Similarly, here is the Wikipedia article about Van Dyke.  Both those projects deserve our remembering them with donations to keep them going and are non-profits which, if made in 2017, still earn U.S. taxpayers a deduction if that gives you an incentive.  I use both heavily and intend to include them in my year-end giving.  At the same time I always look a bit further and found the Van Dyke biography at The Famous People gave the best view of him.  My only reason for not giving it earlier was it revealed the story's end in a way no Spoiler Alert could rescue.

Van Dyke speaks for himself in these comments in the Preface, saying why he wrote this and the other stories in the book.

As the year draws to a close may that search succeed for you.  Last week I gave three sources for finding Van Dyke's quotes since I believe he had that rare quality...Wisdom.  Just in case you don't want to scroll back there, here they are again, starting alphabetically with today's Van Dyke look at the coming holiday of Christmas.

• http://www.azquotes.com/author/4271-Henry_Van_Dyke
• https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry_van_dyke
• https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/henry-van-dyke-239.php

May 2018 have us all looking on our own life, even as Artaban did -- thinking his quest had failed -- but knowing

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

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!

Van Dyke - The Other Wise Man, part 4 - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Imagine seeing the Great Sphinx at Giza while it was still unvandalized!  I thought I knew the story of it, but discovered myth and legends and contradictory hypotheses aplenty.

Artaban learned in last week's part of the story he must travel to Egypt if he wants to end his quest.  Along the way he looks up at the Sphinx seeking answers. 

Next week I'll post that story's end, but think it's time for an assortment of Van Dyke's "pearls of wisdom."

I found three major sources of quotes and, while it's difficult, will choose one from each.

https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry_van_dyke

Not much on illustration, but 6 pages of quotes http://www.azquotes.com/author/4271-Henry_Van_Dyke

Tons of illustrations go with the 62 quotes at The Famous People, making it sooooo hard to choose.

https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/henry-van-dyke-239.php

While we're at it, you might want a look at the Wikipedia article about Henry Van Dyke.  The man led a fascinating life and certainly burned his own candle in service to others.  I'd also like to suggest you consider this message from Wikipedia (it's too small if not shown in the original size, but otherwise the message either is cut off or goes over the sidebar of labels here).  Oh, and in case you wondered, donations to Wikipedia are tax deductible. in the U.S., U.K., and the Netherlands.

 ********************

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!

Van Dyke - The Other Wise Man, part 3 - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Is it ever right to lie for a good cause?  That's part of today's journey with The Other Wise Man, Artaban.  Three days behind the other Wise Men, all alone he finally reaches Bethlehem.  If you remember, by now he has given up one of his three jewels to help a traveler in need, but he still has his pearl and ruby to offer the King.  It may not be Gold, Frankincense, or Myrrh, but he is eager to give it.

The woman was definitely Jewish and using the blessing given by Moses to Aaron in the book of Numbers, which would have been well known to her.

If you have time you may find this article about this familiar blessing shows even more inside its Hebrew roots which could be translated to mean "Yahweh will kneel before you presenting gifts and will guard you with a hedge of protection" -- as the author says, his first thought was 'Wow!'

Artaban has only his pearl remaining.  The journey is not over, but from here on, just as we all are at our most busy, the story segments will be brief indeed.

There are many images of the Slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem that day, but Artaban prevented it from entering yet another home.  He asks "I have spent for man that which was meant for God.  Shall I ever be worthy to see the face of the King?"

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

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!

Van Dyke - The Other Wise Man, part 2 - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

 Horse lovers can enjoy today's continuation of the story of "The Other Wise Man."

from the Unwanted Horses Coalition (.org)

Today's section of the story is only slightly shorter than part one, but it's the turning point in the quest by this Magi.  From here on it picks up speed like the horse, Vasda, who shoulders a huge role in this journey.  There are images of people with a horse bearing the name, but here I believe the images in an audience's mind are more powerful.  The journey also includes an unfamiliar term for distance, the parasang, but I believe the story's explanation of how far a traveler on horseback can go is sufficient.  That Wikipedia link says an army could travel five parasangs in a day and compares the ancient Iranian/Persian term to the European league.  It's sufficient in my mind to notice the love and familiarity Van Dyke shows for the partnership between Artaban and his swiftest horse.

As for the geography and the history behind today's story, I'll leave it for the end since the story shouldn't be delayed.  I will say that maps don't reveal the terrain Artaban and Vasda traveled.  Here are two quick views.

The river Orontes shows in this view from Biblical Geographic.com, a site you might find fascinating if Biblical history interests you

The view from that height is contrasted with this 1836 print by British artist, William Henry Bartlett showing the Turkish port near the mouth of the river Orontes, with Mount Cassius or Jebel al Aqra near the Turkish Syrian border.

Clearly the trip on horseback was quite an undertaking and Artaban must hurry if he hopes to join with the other magi.

While Van Dyke's book, The Blue Flower, doesn't illustrate this part of the story, I bet you pictured the story of "The Good Samaritan."  Many artists have tried to show their view of this act of mercy. The closest to what I picture in this story is 

by Dutch painter, Pieter Lastman, in the 1600s

From here on the story will move in much shorter sections matching Artaban's own haste and our busy lives at this time of year.

For those wanting to look at the geographical and historical information Van Dyke liberally sprinkles through the text, start where Artaban did, in Ecbatana.  You can get the larger picture in an article about what is now called Greater Iran.  That territory encompasses way more than present day Iran or its neighbor, Iraq, so it's probably better to call it Greater Persia

and recognize the Parthian Empire and its twin rulers of the period, Phraates V (seen only on a coin) and his mother and later wife, Queen Musa, titled the Queen of Queens.  She has quite a story, starting as a Roman concubine given by the Roman emperor, Augustus, to Phraates IV.  By all means take a look at the link about her for a tale of palace intrigue and murder!

Here's a few more Wikipedia links of locations mentioned in the story for those wanting "just a bit more." Nisaea, which had plains of horses, Bagistan in Uzbekistan, and as for the Temple of Astarte, it's simplest to say she got around and, of course, the 400 pillars of her temple is now a ruin.  Some of the names like Concabar lead nowhere, but I leave it up to you if you wish to search a bit further. 

I prefer to think how might Van Dyke talk of all this.

I hope you return for the rest of this story.  If it could last for more than a century and move audiences, including me remembering hearing it years ago, I think you will find it worth the "time."

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

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!