Caitlyn's Blog for Myth-Folklore Fall 2018

Reading Notes: Grimm (Librivox) Part B Fairy Tails by the Brothers Grimm (Fox: Image by 12019/10266 images )  I enjoyed the rest of this unit very much. I liked The Queen Bee , as the other brothers greatly underestimated their dwarf brother and in fact, made fools of themselves compared to him for most of the story. The story really showed how bad arrogance is, as it clearly affected the brothers who thought so little of their dwarf brother. I also enjoyed The Fox and the Horse . It is nice to see a story where a fox is not just mischievous or evil, as this fox helped out the horse. I felt bad for the lion, however, as he was deceived by the fox. I thought that the farmer did not deserve to have the help of the horse again, since he treated him so poorly. The story The Willow-Wren and the Bear was also quite interesting. At first, I thought the idea of the King and Queen birds going to war against the bear was silly. However, the next few lines of the story made me realize t

Reading Notes: Grimm (LibriVox) Part A, Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm   (Rapunzel letting down her hair: Image by Anne Anderson )  My favorite story to read from this section of the unit was Rapunzel , as I had previously heard or seen other versions of this story. My favorite version of the story happens to be the movie Tangled, but I found the version in the movie/musical Into the Woods has the most accuracy when relating back to this version. I still enjoyed this version very much. I also liked the theme in The Mouse, The Bird, and The Sausage . Though I think all of the characters dying at the end was too much, the story showed that people do not realize how things are for others and what kind of effort they put in. It also showed that sometimes it is best for everyone to specialize in something they are good at. I was also pleasantly surprised by the story The Travelling Musicians , as it seems that some of the movie Rock-A-doodle may be based on this story, and I lov

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course - Monsters, Horses, Dragons (Sigurd and Fafnir: Image by Hermann Hendrich ) It was fun to watch Crash Course videos again, as I recognized many of the things that were mentioned in them. From the Monsters video, I have seen several of these monsters in video games that I have played or movies that I have watched. A very accurate depiction of the Greek Sphinx that I witnessed recently came from a video game where the Sphinx guarded a ruin my character needed to access, and in order to be allowed in I had to solve a riddle presented by the Sphinx. I have also played a game that had a good depiction of a Wendigo in terms of how it came to be and what kind of mannerisms it had, though its appearance differed from what was presented in the video. I found it interesting that centaurs are considered more like horses, in the Horses video. The Dragons video also presented dragons that I am mostly familiar with from video games. Fafnir has been depi

Reading Notes: Alice in Wonderland , Part B by Lewis Carroll (Alice at the Tea-Party: Illustration by Sir John Tenniel ) The second section of the Alice in Wonderland unit was just as delightful as the first. I was excited to read about the famous tea-party scene in A Mad Tea-Party . Similar to previous parts of the story, my favorite part of the tea-party was the banter that occurred. This time it was between characters rather than between Alice and herself. The characters present at the tea-party all had unique personalities and were expressed quite well. The next scene that stood out to me was the introduction of the queen in The Queen's Croquet-Ground . The queen's personality and such was as I expected, though her introduction was still quite entertaining. Alice is again showing why she is my favorite character with how quickly she stands up to the queen and points out her nonsense. The mystery of Who Stole the Tarts? was also just as interesting as I remember, w

Reading Notes: Alice in Wonderland , Part A by Lewis Carroll (Alice: Illustration by Sir John Tenniel ) This reading was one of my favorite of the semester, since I have always loved Alice in Wonderland. However, I had only seen movies about Alice or played games that featured her story before reading this. It was fun for me to see what happens in the original story. My favorite parts of the stories were when Alice bantered with herself. It is comedic and adds even more charm to her character. The things she says and thinks while falling down the rabbit hole in Down the Rabbit Hole and Down the Rabbit Hole (cont.) was probably my favorite instance of that. Even beyond Alice talking to herself, I love the way the dialogue was written in general between all the characters. As I expected, Alice is still my favorite character from this story after having read these parts. 

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course Myth - Epics and Heroes (One of the versions of Gilgamesh from game series, Final Fantasy: Image by PlayStation Europe ) I was quite excited to see that Gilgamesh was talked about in this batch of videos, specifically in The Epic of Gilgamesh . I did not know much about the actual story of Gilgamesh before seeing this video, but I was excited to learn more about him because he is featured in one of my favorite video game series and is quite notorious in them. Enkidu is also involved in some of the iterations of Gilgamesh in the game series I mentioned, but my favorite version of him is one where he is just a little green chicken that helps Gilgamesh. It was also interesting to learn about Rama and the Ramayana, as I believe I was the least familiar with the information from that video. I have heard about the holy grail several times before, but not in the detail that was presented in the Galahad, Perceval, and the Holy Grail video. I did rec

Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales , Part B by Joseph Jacobs (Goose: Image by Henry Hemming ) The first story in this section of the unit, King O'Toole and His Goose , was interesting. I enjoyed the story but found the way of speaking used to be somewhat difficult to understand. The context seemed to be enough to understand the meaning for the most part, however. I also found the story  The Shee An Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire to be interesting because of how it was broken up into sections. I enjoyed The Tale of Ivan the most. Ivan ended up being paid with advice for the job he was doing instead of getting money. I liked how the advice he received ended up paying off greatly and Ivan was also able to help people because of it. Overall the ending was very positive and I felt like the idea that money isn't everything and you can help yourself by helping others was being expressed.

Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales , Part A by Joseph Jacobs (Raspberries: Image from Pexels ) These stories were interesting to me. I did have to look up some of the terms used since I was not familiar with everything that was being talked about in these stories. I liked the story The Sheppard of Myddvai , mainly for the maiden character. She was interesting and I liked how the story ended because of her. I also liked The Sprightly Tailor . It was funny to see the tailor not care at all about the apparition that bugged him the entire time. I then thought something bad would happen to the tailor when the apparition started to chase him, but luckily nothing did. Munachar and Manachar was another story I found to be interesting. I thought Munachar would be stuck in a infinite loop of speaking to animals and things to get what he needed to hang Manachar. Just when it seemed like that had really dragged on for too long, Munachar finally was able to get all the things he needed onl

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course Myth Gods and Goddesses (Baldur, from the Crash Course video The Dying God ) The first video, Great Goddesses , was quite interesting. Like in some past videos, famous psychologist Carl Jung was mentioned again. As a psychology student, I have mixed feelings about Jung, but at least Freud was not mentioned again. I thought it was interesting that primitive societies were more matriarchy focused than patriarchy.  The video about the Fire and Buffalo Goddesses immediately made me think about the movie Moana since it started by talking about the goddesses that controlled lava and other things. I had also not previously heard about the white buffalo calf woman before this video, so I found that to be interesting. The Archetypes and Male Divinities video was probably the one that presented the least new ideas to me, since the archetypes associated with male gods are quite common and obvious in my opinion. I thought The Dying God video was cool

Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part B (The Moon: Image by dunc ) I liked this section of the Alaskan Legends unit by Katharine Berry Judson, just as I did the first one. It was interesting to see that the first story in this section, Origin of the Chilkat Blanket ,  is about a blanket. The raven from the previous stories did pop up again in this one. I liked this story because you can tell how important this blanket is to the Alaskan tribes. The Land of the Dead was the next story that really struck a chord with me. It reminded me of some details from my favorite video game. The woman's grandfather is referred to as a shade, since they are dead. The word shade is used consistently in the story to refer to other dead people or animals. A similar thing occurs in the video game I am talking about. However, the shades in that represent the souls of people because their souls were not able to return to their bodies. I also enjoyed The Lost Light . I did not imagine the small