Myth-Folklore Blog

  ("Young Silver Fox" by Matt Knoth via Flickr ) The story that I chose to focus on for this post is “ Coyote and Fox ” by Katharine Berry Judson (1917). This story is about the Coyote and the Fox in which the Fox outsmarts the Coyote in various occasions. The first is when Coyote was sleeping after eating a bunch of rabbits, he left some rabbits in the oven to which Fox took advantage of. Fox ate all the rabbits in the oven as Coyote was too lazy until eventually Coyote got hungry. Since there was no food left, Coyote ended up chasing the Fox but was never able to catch him. The next trick that Fox played on Coyote was when Coyote stole the robe that Fox made out of eagle feathers as Coyote wanted an upgrade of his magpie robe. Coyote was successful in stealing the robe, but Fox used magic to get the robe back. In this story as well as other stories in this section, I would say that magic is quite commonplace. In this story, the Fox uses magic to get his robe back, b...

  ("Sun over Earth" by NASA via Flickr ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Creation of the Earth ” by Katharine Berry Judson (1917). This story is about how the creation of the Earth as well as the how the moon, sun, and stars ended up in the sky. In this story, the Earth, Sun, Moon, and Stars are all characters with the Sun and Earth being spouses and the Moon and Stars being relatives of the Sun. The husband Sun always got yelled at by his wife, Earth and ended up getting kicked out of the house they shared because the Earth complained that the Sun made the house too hot. This happened a lot and Sun ended up moving away with his relatives Moon and Stars, leaving the Earth alone. Old Man went up to the Earth and asked why she was alone to which she told what had happened. The Old Man went up to the Sun, Moon, and Stars to send them up into the sky where they would never be able to desert or hide from someone again. The Old Man then...

Author’s Note: The original story relates thunder and lightning to a being a mother sheep and her ram. The ram often gets angry and causes damage to house and trees causing the mother to loudly yell at the ram to stop. The ram doesn’t listen and continues to cause trouble until the king eventually has to banish the sheep (thunder) and the ram (lightning) into the sky. The ram still causes damages, but you can sometimes hear the sheep rebuke the son unless she is too far away. For the most part, I kept my story close to the original, but I just added the fish representing the rain to the story. I added rain because rain typically goes along with thunder and lightning and I made rain a fish as fishes are typically associated with water. ("Lightning" by Diamond Hoo Ha Man via Flickr ) Long ago, thunder and lightning lived on the earth in the outskirts of the town far from the presence of others. They used to live inside the town however, lightning always caused trouble lea...

  ("Lightning" by Ben Napper via Flickr ) The story that I chose to focus on for this post is “ The Story of the Lightning and the Thunder ” by Elphinstone Dayrell (1910). I chose this story because I thought that it related to the story that I wrote the reading notes for Part A of this reading. This story tells about thunder and lightning while relating thunder to being a sheep and lightning being a ram. Lightning is thunder’s son and lightning always makes a lot of trouble. He knocks down trees, burns down houses, and destroys the land similar to what actual lightning does. The loud sound that thunder usually makes in real life is actually thunder yelling at lightning to stop making trouble according to the story. Lightning ended up causing too much trouble and the king of people banished both lightning and thunder into the sky. The story ends by saying that the thunder you hear sometimes is when thunder is rebuking lightning but sometimes when lightning runs too far...

  ("Sun and Moon" by Wonderlane via Flickr ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky ” by Elphinstone Dayrell (1910). This story is about how the sun and the moon, his wife, invited the water and his people their home. The water warned the sun that his people were numerous and that they would have to buy an extremely large compound to house them all. Once the water arrived at the sun’s house, a few of his people went in and filled the house until the water was knee-deep. Every now and then, the water would ask the sun if it was okay for more of his people to come in, to which the sun agreed. Eventually, the water filled the entire house until the sun and his wife had to escape to the roof. They eventually went up to the sky and stayed there ever since. This story and the others in this section all have a similar plot and ending to them. It usually ends with why something is the way it is such as w...

  (Inspiration Message by Bunny Jager via Flickr ) I’m quite satisfied with my progress so far as I’m on par to finish the course on the expected time. My routine is pretty consistent as I tend to do the assignments either the day before they are due or the day of. Since the assignments don’t take that much time, I could do them fairly quickly even if they are due the day when I start them. I enjoy the reading assignments the most as they bring new interesting stories for me to read. I haven’t done any of the extra credit options but that is something I definitely want to take advantage of starting with the second half of the semester. Overall, I think my progress in the class is okay but could definitely be better if I start working ahead and take advantage of the extra credit assignments.

I think that the feedback that I am receiving from other students is very helpful. I think that the shorter comments are good for seeing what I am doing correctly while the longer comments are super helpful for seeing what I am doing right as well as what I can improve on. Personally, for my feedback comments, I think that my longer feedback comments are good enough, but I could definitely improve on the shorter comments. I think that connecting to people through their blogs allows you to see a little bit of their personality both through their personalities and their writing style, so I think that it’s a good way to get to know people. For future feedback assignments or blog comments assignments, I might want to improve giving more helpful feedback in my shorter feedback comments. ( Negative Thoughts Cat by Laura Gibbs) I chose this particular image because I really believe in this message. If you keep negative thoughts in your head all the time, it will greatly affect your mo...

I think that reading and writing assignments are super helpful in creating stories for my project. It also helps as I can see different styles of writing throughout all of the stories that I read. I’m pretty satisfied with how my blog and project is going so far. The reading notes for each week are also pretty helpful when writing my stories for each week as it gives me the background information on the stories that I read. My favorite reading so far is “Twenty-two Goblins” by Arthur W. Ryder (1917) as I thought that the concept of all the stories were pretty cool. It really makes you think about the answer to all the riddles in each of the stories.  (("the goblin in the tree" by Perham W. Nahl via  UN-Textbook ) The reason I chose this image is because it from “Twenty-Two Goblins” because as I mentioned before, I liked the stories from this section the most overall. In the future, I hope to just read more unique style of stories and hope to incorporate some of those st...

Author’s Note: The original story is about three men who had a sister. They all had a wife and one day the three men gave the sister a portion of the food that was supposed to go to the wife of the youngest brother. The two wives of the oldest brothers got jealous and decided to kill the sister. After the brothers found out, they ended up killing the two wives. I changed the story by making it into a diary from the perspective of the wife of the youngest brother. I told about what she would’ve seen and experienced as the two wives killed the sister. ("Diary" by Barnaby Dorfman via Flickr ) They want to kill her, but I do not know why. Why is there so much hate in their hearts for her? She only ate what was offered and the portion of meat given to her was mine anyways. They were not like this before marriage and the longer I think about it, the more I feel bad about it. She is a delicate and sweet girl, never really causing much trouble. So just why do they want t...

  ("The Three Hunters" by Mildred Bryant via UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ The Three Hunters ” by A.L. Shelton (1925). I chose this story because I honestly enjoyed the ending as I believe that the characters got what they deserved. The basic plot of this story is that there are three brothers who each have a wife and they all share a sister. The three brothers treat the sister very well and two of the wives feel as if they like the sister more than them, causing them to feel great jealousy. The two wives plan to kill the sister and they eventually kill her when the three brothers went out to go hunting. The third wife took no part in this and when the brothers came home, the wife of the youngest brother ended up telling the brothers what had occurred. The three brothers become furious and end up killing the two wives. This story along with many other stories use magical elements with the magical element in this sto...

  ("The Ingratitude of Man" by Mildred Bryant via UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to do reading notes for this post is “ The Ingratitude of Man ” by A.L. Shelton (1925). I chose this story because I really enjoyed the message of the story. The story is about a man, a crow, a rat, and a snake falling off a cliff and they get saved by a passing traveler. They all promise to help the traveler in the future in return for saving them. The traveler thought that the rat, the crow, and the snake would not be able to help him while the man would be able to. However, the three animals ended up helping him in the end while the man ended up betraying him. This story along with the others have this Tibetan proverb or message that the story shows or proves throughout the story. The stories of this section include both people and animals, but the unique thing is that the people and animals are able to communicate between one another. Another thing that many of these stories use...

("Heracles' Labors" by Egisto Sani via Flickr ) For my Story Lab assignment this week, I watched these three Crash Course videos about myths. Myths are quite interesting because it’s hard to tell where it originated, as many myths with known authors are just retelling of the stories. Therefore, I’m quite curious on how these myths started and how they were able to spread out throughout history, especially the older ones since literacy wasn’t giant back then. I also found it interesting how Crash Course explains how there isn’t just one way of interpreting a story. Stories can be interpreted in many different ways based on the person and their perspective and while these views on the story may differ, none of them are wrong. One major thing that I took away from the first video is that myths are not the same things as folktales or fairytales. I thought of them to be the same at first, but now I have a deeper understanding of what a myth actually is. As for the seco...

("Ahilya Ghat" by Ken Wieland via Wikipedia )                                                                                           The story that I chose to do reading notes on is “ The General’s Wife ” by Arthur W. Ryder (1917). I chose this story because I really enjoyed the characters in this story. This story is similar to other stories in this section as it has the same kind of storyline where the king needs to answer a riddle given by a goblin in a dead body and when he answers correctly, the goblin runs away. As most of the stories have a similar plot and storyline, I focused more on the details of the story. One thing that I noticed in this story and all the other stories is that the names of the characters are very unique. They aren’t the ty...

("the goblin in the tree" by Perham W. Nahl via UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ The Three Lovers ” by Arthur W. Ryder (1917). The stories for this section of the reading are based around a very wise king that is supposed to deliver a dead body that houses a goblin to a monk. However, on the way back to the monk, the goblin tells a riddling story to the king and if he gets it right, the goblin runs back to the beginning position (a tree) where the king first found him. If the king knows the answer but answers incorrectly so the goblin won’t run back, then the king’s head will explode. Therefore, all of these stories start out in the same way with the king going back to the tree to grab the goblin. Then the goblin tells a story and at the end asks the king a riddle. The king answers correctly every time and the goblin ends up running back to the tree. The stories that the goblin tells usually have a similar plot. It u...