Caitlyn's Blog for Myth-Folklore Fall 2018

Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course - Mythical Places (Flying Spaghetti Monster: Image by dopplerduck ) I really enjoyed these videos. One of my favorites parts of them was in the Mythical Caves and Gardens video. I thought the story about people originally living underground but having different features and such was really cool. I also liked the cameo of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that was made during that part. I also liked seeing the story involving the greedy king and the mountain that held valuable things in the Mythical Mountains video. I can definitely recognize the tropes usually related to mountains that were discussed in the video, as I have witnessed them in other stories as well. I really enjoyed the Tree Myths video as well, since many of the trees it mentioned are trees I recognize from other stories or video games, especially Norse trees like Yggdrasil. Norse mythology in general is pretty common in video games. It was also interesting to see the imp...

Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane) Part B (Swan: Image by pixel2013/2133 images ) This section of the Brothers Grimm (Crane) unit was interesting and fun to read, just as the first was. The Six Swans was different than I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it. I liked that the king's daughter was brave enough to go and look for her brothers after they were turned into swans. Not only that, she went through hardships staying quiet for such a long time trying to break the spell that had been put upon her brothers. The Three Spinsters was also a refreshing story in a way. Normally when people making promises to other characters such as the spinsters in this story, they end up breaking those promises and suffering consequences for it. That was not so in this story, as the main character kept her promise to the spinsters and had a happy ending because of that. It was wonderful to see the the story of Snow-White here as well. As a big fan of the other iterations of this s...

Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane) Part A (The Robber Bridegroom: Illustration by Walter Crane ) The first part of this unit was an interesting read. I was only familiar with the Cinderella story that was included, but I still enjoyed the others as well. It was a little upsetting that the fisherman in The Fisherman and His Wife never stood up to his wife bossing him around and requesting outlandish things. I wish we had been given more information about the fish, as he was an interesting character. As for the story of Cinderella, or Ashenputtel , I have heard this story before in several other forms. My favorite version of this story is probably the movie Ella Enchanted. The story in that film is not as close to the original as many others are, but it includes several of the same setting elements such as Ella having wicked step-sisters and a step-mother. The Robber Bridegroom was also quite an interesting story. It definitely surprised me that cannibalism was involved. I...

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course - Tricksters (Coyote: Image by U.S. Department of Agriculture )  I have always liked trickster characters, so it was fun to watch these crash course videos that focused on them. I was saddened when it was mentioned in the first video, Tricksters: An Introduction , that trickster characters are always male, since I generally prefer female characters. I think making a trickster character female would be great. I was not familiar with the Anansi character before watching this video, but it was interesting to see how the story about that trickster is used to explain why ants are often carrying very heavy things. I liked the video about Hermes and Loki for the information it provided on the invention of the lyre and its importance in telling stories. Also simply because it involved Loki, as it is always fun to hear about him. I thought the Coyote and Raven, American Tricksters video was interesting as it highlight the differences between Nat...

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 reali...

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, ...

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 c...

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...

Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends , Part A  (Raven: Image by Nikon D7200 ) I found these stories to be very interesting. From the start, I liked The Raven Myth: Raven's Creation by Katharine Berry Judson. I thought it was cool that the raven from this story had the power of creation. I have not read many stories at all that show a specific animal that has that amount of power. I enjoyed the rest of the raven myth stories that followed, since they all focused on a similar thing, where the raven is the creator and cause of many things. Similarly, a few of the stories that followed these described how some of the traditions of the Alaskan tribes came to be, which are all credited to the raven as well. I found it to be interesting that the raven is often written in a way that depicts a human in these stories. At least, I end up accidentally imagining a human when reading about the raven sometimes, due to the wording that is used. The Raven and the Seals is one of the stories th...

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course Myth- More Pantheons (Part of the Indian Pantheon from the Crash Course Video ) From the start, these videos were interesting to me since I have never known much about the Indian, Norse, or African pantheons. My limited knowledge of many of the deities included in these pantheons comes from their names or likeness being included in video games that I have played. It is interesting for me to see that many of the details I have seen about these deities in video games are actually quite accurate. I had always wondered how accurately they were being portrayed. The Indian Pantheon video taught me a lot. I did not know what Sanskrit was before watching it. The idea of avatars was also quite interesting. It was also cool to see the explanation of Norse mythology and its Germanic roots which was presented in the Norse Pantheon video. It was interesting to see all of the parallels between the African Pantheons/Orishas and the mytholoy of Native Ame...

Reading Notes: Myths of the Cherokee Part B by James Mooney (Fruit bat: Image by Kdsphotos ) This section of the reading had more variety in comparison to the previous section. This section still included stories that focused on how certain animals came to be, or how they developed one of their physical traits. For example, the stories The Terrapin's Escape From The Wolves  and The Ball Game of the Birds and Animals both do this. While I still enjoyed these stories, I most liked the stories that differed from these by explicitly mentioning the Cherokee or other tribes. The stories  The Uktena and the Ulûñsû'tï and  Âgän-uni'tsï's Search for the Uktena both have more of an explicit focus on the tribes while still telling a mythical story. The idea of the Ulûñsû'tî being this powerful object that the tribes used was quite interesting. The stories mention that white men should not ever see this object, so I think it would be interesting to see what happens...

Reading Notes: Myths of the Cherokee Part A by James Mooney (Diamondback Terrapin: Image by U.S. Department of Agriculture ) I had fun reading the majority of these stories. Many of them were about creation. I found How The World Was Made to be especially interesting. In contrast to other creation stories I have read, this one often notes that no one knows who created the first of many things. This was different for me, since the creation stories I am familiar with are more certain of who or what created something. Some of the other creation stories in the unit that followed this one did not express the uncertainty that was present here. I enjoyed those other stories as well. It was interesting to see some of the details about certain animals being explained by something that happened to them that was caused by other animals. For example, the rabbit has a stubby little tail because the bear pulled the rabbit's previous tail off in How the Rabbit Stole the Otter's Coa...

Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course Ancient Mediterranean (Herakles and the King from Crash Course videos) It's always fun to come back to Crash Course videos. The explanation of pantheons was very interesting to me since I have not ever heard this much detail about them. It was cool to learn about the Egyptian gods since I think those are some of the gods I am less familiar with. A large amount of details from the other videos related to Greece was very interesting to me as well since I have actually been playing a game that has many prominent characters from those times in them and includes historical events and icons. Though I was more familiar with some of the information about the Greek and Roman pantheons, I still learned quite a bit from the video that focused on that. The video that focused on Herakles was probably my favorite. I always loved the movies based on Hercules, so it made it all the more interesting for me to hear the original story about Herakles....

Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki) Part B (Watanabe from The Ogre of Rashomon ) Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki The second part of this unit was somewhat different from the first, though I enjoyed this part as well. The Ogre of Rashomon is quite similar to a story I read a few years ago in my Japanese literature class. It was interesting to notice all of the similarities between the two stories. I enjoyed the story overall, but thought that the ending was somewhat unfulfilling because the ogre got away and it was not mentioned that Watanabe ever found the ogre again. The Story of Princess Hase was also interesting, as it had a Cinderella vibe to it. I was unsettled by the part where the step-mother killed her own child by mistake. Really, her behavior and attitude towards Princess Hase was unsettling the entire time, but the story ended well with Princess Hase being reunited with her father and the step-mother went away. I wish she had been actually b...