Mooney - The Origin of the Groundhog Dance - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

This whole long holiday began on Thursday with the Fourth of July (although fireworks started up even earlier).  With Thursday being so close to the weekend, many have st-r-e-t-ched the holiday all the way to Sunday.  

I'll work Saturday since one of the things I do besides storytelling is substitute at two local libraries.  (I also am in the troupe performing The Dinner Detective -- so if you see me, don't tell as it might put you ahead solving the mystery!) 

At one of the libraries where I'm a sub I saw a sign celebrating Independance Day.  I like that idea since I love to dance.  It made me think back to the Degas exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts back in 2002 when I told "Stories That Dance."  Of course that made me want to put a story that danced here.  December the 31st of 2023 numerically was 123123, making it Waltz Day!  At that time I posted the Rabbit version of today's story, but the Cherokee version, collected by James Mooney in Myths of the Cherokee tells it as "the Groundhog Dance."  It's also a good choice for audience participation (more about the song Groundhog sings after the very brief story).

ORIGIN OF THE GROUNDHOG DANCE

Seven wolves once caught a Groundhog and said, “Now we’ll kill you and have something good to eat.” But the Groundhog said, “When we find good food we must rejoice over it, as people do in the Green-corn dance. I know you mean to kill me and I can’t help myself, but if you want to dance I’ll sing for you. This is a new dance entirely. I’ll lean up against seven trees in turn and you will dance out and then turn and come back, as I give the signal, and at the last turn you may kill me.”

The wolves were very hungry, but they wanted to learn the new dance, so they told him to go ahead. The Groundhog leaned up against a tree and began the song, Ha′wiye′ĕhĭ′, and all the wolves danced out in front, until he gave the signal, Yu! and began with Hi′yagu′wĕ, when they turned and danced back in line. “That’s fine,” said the Groundhog, and went over to the next tree and started the second song. The wolves danced out and then turned at the signal and danced back again. “That’s very fine,” said the Groundhog, and went over to another tree and started the third song. The wolves danced their best and the Groundhog encouraged them, but at each song he took another tree, and each tree was a little nearer to his hole under a stump. At the seventh song he said, “Now, this is the last dance, and when I say Yu! you will all turn and come after me, and the one who gets me may have me.” So he began the seventh song and kept it up until the wolves were away out in front. Then he gave the signal, Yu! and made a jump for his hole. The wolves turned and were after him, but he reached the hole first and dived in. Just as he got inside, the foremost wolf caught him by the tail and gave it such a pull that it broke off, and the Groundhog’s tail has been short ever since.

***

Mooney in his notes at the end of the book says: 

the song, which is without meaning, is Ha′wiye′ĕhi′ Yaha′wiye′ĕhi [twice]

Yu-u

Hi′yagu′wĕ Hahi′yagu′wĕ [twice]

Yu-yu.

If, like me, your Cherokee language is less than fluent, you may wonder how to chant that.  Mooney gives a glossary at the book's end, saying the "g medial (semisonant), approximating k" and this is how to pronounce these vowels:

a as in far

          i as in pique

          u as in rule

          the letter "e" has two different sounds:

e

as in they.

ĕ

as in net.

Since Mooney also says the song has no meaning, it would be fair to tell your audience you are teaching a slightly simplified version. I like the similarity in Ha′wiye′ĕhi′ and Hahi′yagu′wĕ so this is how I would shorten it, breaking it down into syllables.

Ha′ wi ye′ ĕ hi′ Ha′ wi ye′ ĕ hi′ Yu u for the first song and then for the second song Ha hi′ ya gu′ wĕ Ha hi′ ya gu′ wĕ Yu yu.

If even that seems too tough, you could use just one song (I'd use the first to avoid the troublesome "g ...  approximating k"  and let it be the same song for all seven of the trees.  If you do that be sure to say you are simplifying the songs as Groundhog sang a slightly different song at each tree, but those songs are made of meaningless sounds, just like in many lullabies.

Perhaps the Thompson Motif K606 "Escape by singing song" and K606.2 "Escape by persuading captors to dance" is a bit of folklore indexing that interests you further.  Thompson also lists variants in Africa, India, Indonesia, plus similar ones in Iceland and Ireland where the watchmen are sung to sleep.  

Enjoy your own Independance and don't let any wolves catch you!

 

 

 

New Year's Eve is Waltz Day!

I love to tell stories that dance.  

 

When the Detroit Institute of Arts had a special Degas exhibit I gathered quite a few and told them there.

 

The Cherokee have two very similar stories where dance is used to escape hungry wolves.  Stories have a way of traveling and changing slightly.  I like the Rabbit version, but you may prefer the Groundhog version.  You can find it, along with this story on Project Gutenberg's sharing of James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee.  After the story I want to share a bit more that fits both this and the Groundhog version.

THE RABBIT ESCAPES FROM THE WOLVES

Some Wolves once caught the Rabbit and were going to eat him when he asked leave to show them a new dance he was practicing. They knew that the Rabbit was a great song leader, and they wanted to learn the latest dance, so they agreed and made a ring about him while he got ready. He patted his feet and began to dance around in a circle, singing:

Tlâge′sitûñ′ găli′sgi′sidâ′hă—

Ha′nia lĭl! lĭl! Ha′nia lĭl! lĭl!

On the edge of the field I dance about—

Ha′nia lĭl! lĭl! Ha′nia lĭl! lĭl!

“Now,” said the Rabbit, “when I sing ‘on the edge of the field,’ I dance that way”—and he danced over in that direction—“and when I sing ‘lĭl! lĭl!’ you must all stamp your feet hard.” The Wolves thought it fine. He began another round singing the same song, and danced a little nearer to the field, while the Wolves all stamped their feet. He sang louder and louder and danced nearer and nearer to the field until at the fourth song, when the Wolves were stamping as hard as they could and thinking only of the song, he made one jump and was off through the long grass. They were after him at once, but he ran for a hollow stump and climbed up on the inside. When the the Wolves got there one of them put his head inside to look up, but the Rabbit spit into his eye, so that he had to pull his head out again. The others were afraid to try, and they went away, with the Rabbit still in the stump.

***

I mentioned the Groundhog version, which comes a few pages later in Mooney's book.  Margaret Read MacDonald in her excellent Twenty Tellable Tales uses the "Groundhog Dance.  I recommend looking up what she says afterwards.  Her "Notes on Telling" are definitely worth reading.  Beyond that her folklore-related "Comparative Notes" talks about this fitting the Thompson Motif K606 and says variants can be found in Africa, India, Indonesia, plus similar ones in Iceland and Ireland where the watchmen are sung to sleep.  

Stay up late to dance the New Year in, but maybe look up those other versions if all that dancing leaves you too wound up to sleep.  Any way you work it, may stories be with you now and in the New Year.

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

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

Mooney - The Bride from the South - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

This Native American Heritage Month my blog has a story each week from our greatly varied Native American folklore, one from each of the four directions, starting last week with Michigan's own Anishinaabeg in the North.  Today is probably my second favorite source of Native American folklore, James Mooney's wonderful Myths of the Cherokee for the south.  I've posted his work half a dozen times here starting back in February of 2016 when I said:

Not only did a Cherokee storytelling friend once verify the accuracy of the book by saying it didn't even make the elders snicker much -- as in their respecting its getting the material right! -- but the versions often tell well exactly as Mooney wrote it.  Today's story is wonderfully tellable.

Today's story is also tellable and has the benefit of brevity.  It plays upon both the idea of the directions I've made a theme for this month AND the changes in weather across our country.  

 

70. THE BRIDE FROM THE SOUTH

The North went traveling, and after going far and meeting many different tribes he finally fell in love with the daughter of the South and wanted to marry her. The girl was willing, but her parents objected and said, “Ever since you came the weather has been cold, and if you stay here we may all freeze to death.” The North pleaded hard, and said that if they would let him have their daughter he would take her back to his own country, so at last they consented. They were married and he took his bride to his own country, and when she arrived there she found the people all living in ice houses.

The next day, when the sun rose, the houses began to leak, and as it climbed higher they began to melt, and it grew warmer and warmer, until finally the people came to the young husband and told him he must send his wife home again, or the weather would get so warm that the whole settlement would be melted. He loved his wife and so held out as long as he could, but as the sun grew hotter the people were more urgent, and at last he had to send her home to her parents.

The people said that as she had been born in the South, and nourished all her life upon food that grew in the same climate, her whole nature was warm and unfit for the North.

***********

There's always a need to talk about the weather.  We're told "Everybody talks about it, no one does a thing about it", but it's good we don't have to "do a thing about it" this way.  Hmmm I never used the search label of Weddings before, but this might have additional uses for telling.

Until next week I hope your stories are all pleasant and you have enjoyed this changeable time for the weather often called "Indian Summer."  Unfortunately, just like this marriage tale, those of us in changing climates need to accept it can't last (darnit!).

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

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 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/ 
           - 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!

Ozaki - How an Old Man Lost His Wen - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Have you ever thought about Velcro and how it was invented?  

Today's story and a personal experience sent me thinking about this.

My "Roadie", my husband, has been in the hospital, so one night I had to walk our "Malamutt" (Husky/Malamute now a breed being called an Alaskan Husky) with a flash light.  Days are getting shorter and we'll surely do more, but hopefully without the "natural Velcro" of burs.  (The word is also burr.)  That Wikipedia link tells, among other things, how Velcro "was the inspiration for hook and loop fastener, also known as Velcro."  I tried to stay on an actual path, although I knew my dog would visit the edges of all trails and possibly have burs.  My fleece cape, however, became so fastened with tiny burs that my thoughts went to Velcro.  (The dog actually only had a few on his plume of a malamute tail!)  

This article about "Plants with Burrs" says "Some burrs are so small as to be nearly unnoticeable, while others are large enough to result in a flat tire."  Mine were tiny and a nearby nature trail pointed out what type of bur they might be.  The photo shows a flower that's prettier than what now remains on trails & it has many common  names boiling down to Tick Trefoil (Hylodesmum glutinosum for those wanting the scientific name).  In daylight I can watch out for it, although it's fairly unassuming unlike larger burs. 

This got me thinking about stories where something acts like a bur.  The closest to actual folklore on burs that I found was in James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee.

 I certainly don't have the memory of a bur, nor would I want to risk any problems.  That sent me further to Asian stories.  I recalled Elizabeth Scofield's title story from Hold Tight, Stick Tight: A Collection of Japanese Folk Tales where a voice calls "Hold tight or stick tight." An old man answers "Whatever you like" and gold pieces fly and stick to him.  When his greedy neighbor tries it, he winds up covered in tar.  To make matters even worse, the neighbor's wife drops a candle setting him on fire.  The book is still in copyright, but I decided to look at my various Japanese anthologies in Public Domain.  I didn't find that story, but one that again has many of the same elements.  The greedy neighbor trying to get the same "reward" and instead being punished is very common in Asian tales and I'll briefly give a Chinese version I love to tell after today's story.  

Before starting I should probably explain what a "wen" is.  It's defined as "A harmless cyst, especially on the scalp or face, containing the fatty secretion of a sebaceous gland."  (A variety of online dictionaries say essentially the same thing.)

 

That's from Yei Theodora Ozaki, a surprisingly modern woman for a woman of the late 19th and early 20th century.  Her childhood was in Japan, but her life was both in Europe and Japan, she earned her own living, and an interesting postal confusion over her name resulted in her marrying the Japanese politician, Yukio Ozaki.  The book where this originated has two names, but Project Gutenberg's copy of Japanese Fairy Tales is the 1908 version and says it is "Profusely Illustrated by Japanese Artists", while my 1903 Japanese Fairy Book in the Preface says "The pictures were drawn by Mr. Kakuzo Fujiyama, a Tokio artist."

I mentioned this story has many similar stories in Japan and beyond in Asia.  While I have enjoyed telling this, I also love telling a Chinese variant called "Candy Man" where a brother carrying syrup falls, is coated with the syrup and at the mercy of goblins.  He escapes with their magic drum which produces food.  His brother tries for similar fortune only to have the goblins give a nose so long the greedy brother must carry it over his arm to avoid tripping.  The greedy brother's wife asks for help from her brother-in-law, who learns the drum can also shrink the nose.  The wife's impatience results in her husband's nose disappearing into his face, the drum breaks and he was left without a nose.  Aside from various humorous moments in the story, it once again is a tale of the greedy getting what they deserve.

I believe there's a prayer asking God's mercy and not what we deserve.  May it be true at this time when we all could use a bit of humor and mercy instead of what we deserve.

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

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 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/ 
           - 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!

Mooney - The Ice Man - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

HIBERNATION!

I'm ready for it and think it sounds like a delightful idea.

Within the past week winter has definitely reared its unwanted head again with rain turning to ice and freezing rain (my least favorite weather) and then on to snow and bone chilling temperatures.  Even my "malamutt" (husky/malamute mix) has had difficulties with it.

He wants to be in with his "pack", but then he's too hot.  He wants to be on the trail -- after all I do call him my "cross trainer", but zero degrees or even zero wind chill leaves me . . . well, cold.  He's also getting old enough that at times being indoors seems to strike him as tempting as I find the idea of hibernation.

Usually a warm up in a place beyond correctly mitten-shaped Michigan sounds good, but travel right now is even less delightful as the government shutdown stretches on.  My other alternative is to get involved with rehearsals and production of a show.  O.k.  I've just been cast in a small but fun part in You Can't Take It With You.  Fortunately it's not big enough to take away my working on a major program I'm developing about Prohibition.

It's called High Times in the Dry Times and will look at how prohibition got a head start of two years in Michigan and then we supplied what has been estimated to be 3/4 of the smuggled alcohol for the rest of the nation.  I'll preview it February 21 at Brandon Township Library.  If you are interested, that link will let you register.  The description of  

Michigan started Prohibition two years before the U.S. enacted the Volstead Act in 1919 and wound up being a pivotal player with its prolific waterways.  Lois Sprengnether Keel explains how people went to extremes to secure alcohol - by any means necessary.

hints at some of the very large topic, but omits that it will include music and opportunity for audience participation and more.

Even with You Can't Take It With You at Pontiac Theatre IV and working on High Times in the Dry Times, looking at the forecast of sub-zero days leaves the idea of Hibernation tempting me.  In the past I've found stories about bears and how they don't truly hibernate, but instead go into a "torpor", and maybe that's more the state I'm seeking.  Then I saw about alligators in true hibernation in the ice

and that brought me back to ICE!

Yikes.

There's just something about ice that called to me this week, the very same week that the 2019 GEICO U.S. Figure Skating Championships are being held here in Detroit.  That link would let me buy tickets and they're fairly reasonable, but I think I'll just let torpor lead me to the television.  Our area will host this again for the first time since the 1994 great scandal of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan here that was tied to Tonya Harding.  Searching those names gives plenty of drama, but I want to stick to a short story from the Cherokee about an Ice Man and how he could put out a dangerous fire.  James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee gives us a story to curl up and enjoy.

I understand why firefighters also must wish humans could enter either torpor or hibernation as people wouldn't be tempted to heat their residences in ways that lead to fire and, right now, ice.

Stay warm.  Stay safe.  (Want more Public Domain stories?  Suggestions follow in my usual "small print" for Keeping the Public in Public Domain entries.)
**************************************

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!

Mooney - How the Redbird Got His Color - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

This week we've had the dubious pleasure of being the only power outage in our neighborhood, not once, but twice.  We came home Wednesday night to a dark house and figured the storm had blown out power somewhere.  Thursday we found out we were the only ones affected and figured that put us low on the priority list for DTE Energy.  I just hoped our freezer contents survived the delay.  Thursday evening before dark two DTE trucks and several men came up our long hill to inspect.  With a certain amount of difficulty, but experienced skill, they maneuvered an incredibly long extension pole up our power pole and through a tree that straddles that pole.  SUCCESS!

We figured that was the end of it except for their sending a tree trimmer out to once again trim back that tree.  It's the same tree or power pole that annually attracts a mockingbird to sit up there and perform a concert of all the songs the bird has learned.  I hope this won't lose the bird, but want power even more than the birdsong.

Supper was better than previous attempts without power.  Life was good, then BANG!!!  I remembered the DTE representative asked if there had been a loud bang or pop and I had been unable to answer because the Wednesday outage happened while we were away.  There was no mistaking what we heard Thursday night, however, and we figured those branches had again hit our transformer.  Called in a new power outage and the automated message, just like Wednesday night, guesstimated power would be restored by 2:30 a.m.  Yeahyeah I thought and, after unplugging items as the message advised, went to bed.  

At about 1:30 in the wee hours of the morning DTE returned.  They cut down a section of the tree big

This is NOT our raccoon, but a photo by Marcel on Stocksy

enough to be a young tree, but still leaving plenty of tree.  Out with the big long pole and down comes a body.  This time the source of our problems turned out to be a RACCOON!  He was huge, but all those warnings about not touching power sources must never have reached the Raccoon Network.  The poor fellow was minus his ears and tail.  That tail was on the ground, well burnt.  We can't swear it was this fellow on Wednesday night, but bet it was him and he was luckier on Wednesday than on Thursday night.

We're high up on a hill and the wind of the past few days and today have been strong, but I'm betting and hoping our dead raccoon ends our current power outages.  We do have high wind advisories for our county and the wind loves our hilltop.  I'm just grateful it didn't last too long and also came in warmer weather.  I've lost a very full aquarium of tropical fish in past outages, but this time it was both brief enough and warm enough that I see the dark helped add a large school of baby fish -- large enough to open a baby fish school district.  

In honor of our dead raccoon I went looking for a good raccoon story and happily found this brief Cherokee tale collected by James Mooney in his Myths of the Cherokee.  It captures the rascal nature of raccoons and their tendency to climb trees, while giving an interesting pourquois tale about another creature I enjoy.

That "Redbird" is indeed the "northern cardinal."  Coming from Saint Louis, home of the baseball Cardinals and, when I was growing up, still was the home of the football Cardinals, it's a natural that I love those birds.  We get a few to brighten up winter, but here's a screenshot from Voices and Vocabularies of a cardinal duet explaining more about their song.  If you go to that link, you can hear it, too, as well as discover a site dedicated to birds and the environment.

As I write this, 260,000 in our area have lost power because of wind damage on Friday and they expect to be out until Sunday evening.  For their sake, I pray it's sooner.  Hopefully my own power continues as otherwise there was no way I could bring today's story to you even if I went and borrowed a library computer. 
******************** 

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!