Haunted Houses - Im - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Today's Halloween celebration for many will be a visit to a "haunted house."  I remember a spooky old house near where I grew up in St. Louis that was supposedly haunted.  It was later torn down for added church parking lot space.  How sad!  Every area should have a place where the kids whisper "It's haunted!"  Commercial haunted houses are fun, but not really the same.

This month has included a few of the many stories I recommend in a wonderful book from 1913.  Here's a pdf from the University of Oregon where you, too, can prowl the many stories James Gale made available back then and are safely in Public Domain.  Both Im Bang, who was born in 1640 and was a government official in the early 18th century, and Yi Ryuk, who lived in the mid-15th century, preserved Korean folklore as it was told so long ago.  James Gale made it accessible and is definitely in the spirit of Keeping the Public in Public Domain.

At the same time I mentioned a modern book still in copyright, Which Was Witch.  I opened this month with Im Bang's tale of Wild-cat Woman that Eleanore M. Jewett did a beautiful job of turning into the title story of her book.  I want to close this month with yet another story which she transformed and expanded for story lovers.  Today's story is really several incidents, but she combines some of them into one story set Seoul's "Ink Town" district at the foot of what is sometimes called South Mountain, because it's in the south central area of Seoul. Wikipedia tells us it should really be Mount Namsan, which literally means Front Mountain.  Obviously today it's view of the downtown Seoul skyline is very different, but she does a beautiful job of not only combining incidents, but putting us back into Korea of old.  I strongly recommend seeing her version, too. 

Im Bang and Yi Ryuk's book is not the only source of tales for her book.

In the meantime, read today's selection and think about how you might tell it.

Maybe, like Jewett, you would like a bit more background on the story.  Here's information on Ink Town -- what a great name!  It is explained in this blog article about Seoul Subway Names which tells us they are a lens into Korean history and its legends and lore.

Line 7 - Mokgol

A mok is an ink stick, a type of solid ink traditionally used in East Asia for ink and wash painting. Historically, it is considered one of a scholar’s four precious possessions, along with paper, brushes or pens, and an inkstone. Mok was produced in great quantity in this area during the Joseon Dynasty, giving rise to the area’s moniker as ink town. Another theory suggests that the area was deliberately named after the ink stick to encourage the town’s prosperity and development.

Ink sticks, and the stone where it is ground and mixed with water, can be beautiful, too

The same blog, Korea Joongang Daily, also give a view of a zither which probably was the instrument Gale translated as a harp.  It reminds me of my Appalachian Dulcimer.  Like stories, instruments travel and make slight changes.

Gale's book includes 53 stories.  Thirteen of them are Yi Ryuk's 15th century tales, closing the book.  I've not posted them here, but if you look at that pdf of the book opening today's article, you might want to read number 41 (he uses Roman numerals, so XLI), The Old Man in the Dream; 43, The Propitious Magpie; 49, Who Decides, God or the King?; 51, Strangely Stricken Dead; and 52, The Mysterious Hoi Tree.  Those are the ones I like, but maybe you'll choose others.

Happy reading and storytelling!
******************
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.    


There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Im - Old Woman Who Became a Goblin - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Talking about

last week, I ended with "Because so much of the book fits the spooky nature popular during the month of October, I'm considering spending more time this month with stories from Korean Folk Tales.  We'll see.  It's like my answering machine message says: You just never know what I might be up to!"

Oh why the heck not?!?

I love spooky stories and this book has a few unusual ones I'd like to share.

Today's brief story has a goblin or two and a warning about hiring household help.

Of course the scholar's wife eventually failed to treat the "old woman" well, but this was somebody whose references certainly needed checking.

Be careful who you invite into your house.  They may want to stay and you can't get them out!

It's an old rule of scary tales, if you invite the creature in, you've asked for whatever may happen.

May your happenings this spooky month of October be only ones you want to invite in and your stories ones you enjoy telling!

******************
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.    


There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Im - The Wild-Cat Woman - Keeping the Public Domain

Last week on September 25, while I was working on a segment of Keeping the Public in Public Domain by today's author, I discovered this on Wikipedia's home page "In the news" section: A U.S. federal judge rules that the copyright to "Happy Birthday to You", claimed by Warner/Chappell Music, is invalid.

I'll try to avoid my rant about copyright here -- the end of my Keeping the Public in Public Domain segments clearly shows my sentiments -- but I'm ecstatic about this long overdue ruling!  Warner/Chappell earned $2 million a year on a song dating back to their piano arrangement in 1935.  Most or all of that money will never be repaid.  Thank heavens the public kept the song alive.  Public Domain was intended to keep our cultural heritage alive, which Sonny Bono and his 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, saving Micky Mouse from entering the Public Domain, has gone a long way away from that intent. 

Fortunately it's often possible to find the sources to modern folktales.  (Unfortunately not always, but folktales are living oral literature, so storytellers also help preserve the cultural heritage of many countries.)  Today's story is one such source.  The 1913 book preserves Im Bang's introduction.  Those introductions throughout his Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts, and Fairies are both a blessing and sometimes a bit of a bore.  It gives a clue about what will follow and often explains the background, but the stories are where the audience wants to be.  I'll give both, it's an interesting explanation, but understand if you prefer to jump right to the story.

That story was re-told by Eleanore Jewett as the title story in her book, Which Was Witch.

I always recommend reading as many versions as possible, so if you want to re-tell it, you would definitely benefit from taking a look at how she expands it.  By the way, because Korean Folk Tales is safely in Public Domain -- and I found roughly 20 stories, from among the book's 53 stories, I'd gladly tell -- you can find it as a pdf at http://library.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/reada/dent.pdf
or at the online free book source, Chest of Books.








1913 translator James S. Gale in Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts, and Fairies tells us about both Im Bang and, the author of the last 14 stories, Yi Ryuk.

The jacket flap tells us Gale was a linguist, scholar, historian, and interpreter of Korean culture, but the Wikipedia article on James Scarth Gale gives us insight into how he fell in love with Korea even though it only mentions this important contribution to Korean folklore in passing.

Because so much of the book fits the spooky nature popular during the month of October, I'm considering spending more time this month with stories from Korean Folk Tales.  We'll see.  It's like my answering machine message says: You just never know what I might be up to!
************
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.    


There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Korea + Im - Man on the Road - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

"Stories from around the world and back through time" describes what I tell.  I love the historical storytelling, but also enjoy the wide world of folktales.  In the past I posted one Korean story here, The Enchanted Wine-Jug or Why the Cat and Dog Are Enemies and shared this personal information, "My daughters are Korean and as a result I've especially enjoyed collections of Korean folktales."  While I'm a huge supporter of American products and workers, I love their being Made in Korea.  

While I know someone who fought in the Korean War and even helped build orphanages during his off-duty times, I'm probably like most in the U.S. who grew up with an already divided Korea.  I was surprised to see today is the anniversary of the end of Second Battle of Seoul.  That hyperlink to a Wikipedia article shows urban warfare in 1950 that ended in Seoul's liberation on September 25.  

Nowadays Seoul is the very modern face of Korea, whose pop culture has been called the Korean Wave or even "kim chic."  Even the other main Korean cities are so modern that the country works hard to maintain its cultural continuity.  Korea wants the world and its own people to remember what life was like throughout most of its history.  The Korean Folk Village in suburban Seoul shows that traditional life.  

"Korean.Folk.Village-Minsokchon-08" by bzo - http://flickr.com/photos/bzo/15698399/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Korean.Folk.Village-Minsokchon-08.jpg#/media/File:Korean.Folk.Village-Minsokchon-08.jpg

To see even more go to the village's own multi-language site for further views of what they offer, including their current Autumn Harvest celebration.  My daughters were born in a farm village and folktales take us back there.

There are many books of Korean folklore in my library and I often re-tell three favorite Korean stories I can't reproduce here because of copyright, but recommend to you: "The Korean Cinderella" in Paul Anderson's The Boy and the Blind Storyteller (it even includes archery!); "A Dog Named Fireball" in The Story Bag by Kim So-un (I use a gong to help capture Fireball's attempts at carrying the too-hot sun and too-cold moon); and the title story in Eleanore Jewett's Which Was Witch? (more about that after today's story).

There are others I've told, but those top the list in frequency.  Today's book, Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts, and Fairies by Im Bang and Yi Ryuk, translated and published James S. Gale in 1913 has many stories worth getting to know.  If you prefer a PDF go to http://raskb.com/udenlibrary/disk2/161.pdf.  I've chosen an unusual story going back to an earlier invasion of Seoul.

Im was born in 1640 until well into the 18th century.  Gale talks about giving an old manuscript of Im's stories to the Western world, "Very gruesome indeed, and unlovely, some of them are, but they picture faithfully the conditions under which Im Bang himself, and many past generations of Koreans, have lived."  At the same time Gale clearly enjoys the supernatural.

Next week is the start of October, a month often calling for spooky stories.  I plan to tell Im's version of Witch Was Witch? next week and a bit more about the authors and translator.
************
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.    


There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!