I know it's Friday, but I had a spotlight scheduled for yesterday so I pushed my weekly tale back to today.
"The Death of the Little Hen" is one of the Grimms' stories that I'd never heard before. It's not a happy tale, starting out with the hen's death and ending with the line "And then everyone was dead." Lovely, huh?
The little hen and a little rooster go to Nut Mountain and agree to share a nut when they find one, but when the hen finds a big nut she decides to be selfish and keep it all for herself and swallows it whole. And chokes on it. She sends the rooster for water and he runs off to the well, but the well sends him to the bride and she sends him to the willow and all in all by the time he gets back, the hen's dead.
The little rooster was very sad. Six mice built a carriage, hitched themselves...
Today's story comes from Hawaii. "Pi's Watercourse" is one of the tales of the Menehunes. The Menehunes are said to be a people, sometimes described as small in size, who live in the deep forests and hidden valleys of the Hawaiian Islands, far from the eyes of normal humans. Their favorite food is bananas, but they also like fish. They were superb craftspeople. Legends say that the Menehune built temples, fishponds, roads, canoes, and houses. They are said to have lived in Hawaii before settlers arrived from Polynesia.
Pi was an ordinary man living in Waimea, Kauai, who wanted to build a dam across the Waimea River and a watercourse from there to a point near Kikiaola. When he picked the best lace for it, he went up to the mountains and ordered all the Menehunes that were living near Puukapele to prepare stones for the dam and stream. The Menehunes were divided, some to gather stones and others to cut them. All the material was...
Those of you who follow me on Instagram or are my friend on Facebook may have noticed we spent a few days this week at Hershey, PA. I'll probably post some photos Saturday, but I wanted to share a chocolatey folk tale today. This one is from the Visayan people of the Philippines.
Many years ago, at the foot of Happy Mountain, there lived a wealthy couple who had an only daughter. The daughter was good-looking, but she was arrogant, mean, and lazy. She was called Amada. The couple had a neighbor, a wise woman and mother of twins. The twins were called Ruben and Teresa. They were kind to everyone, and they grew to love God's creatures around them. Everyday they knelt and bowed their heads to pray.
One bright morning Amada, Ruben, and Teresa were playing in Amada's garden when an old woman came by and begged for alms. Ruben and Teresa dug into their pockets but did not find anything. So...
I have mixed feelings about Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Some are just so moralistic and some just too sad. "Thumbelina," however, has a happy ending and though there are a few sad moments it's overall an enjoyable story. The version I read was from Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Mrs. Henry H. B. Paull, 1875.
The tale opens in a rather traditional way with a woman who desperately wants a child. She goes to a fairy for help and the fairy sells her a barleycorn which she plants in a flower pot. It grows a lovely flower and when the flower opens, a tiny girl, Thumbelina, also called Tiny, emerges. Thumbelina has a lovely life with the woman until one night, when she is asleep in her walnut-shell cradle, she gets carried off by a toad who wants the miniature maiden as a bride for her son. With the help of friendly fish and a butterfly, Thumbelina...
Andrew Lang included "The Mermaid and the Boy" in The Brown Fairy Book, 1904, but the tale comes from Northern Europe.
A king, having been married a year, set out to settle some distant subjects. His ship caught on rocks and the wind was becoming fierce. A mermaid promised to free him in return for his firstborn, and the king had to agree.
Their son was born, and finally, when he was grown, the king told the queen that they could not keep him by them, because that was where the mermaid would look. He told the prince about the mermaid and sent him out into the world. The prince met a lion and shared his food with it; it gave him the tip of its ear, and told him it would transform him into a lion. The prince traveled for a time as a lion, but found that he got tired of walking like one. The next day, the same thing happened with...
Do you ever just stare at your bookshelves, not necessarily looking for anything to read, just enjoying all the spines? I might do it more than I care to admit. This morning, I was looking at some of the kids books we have downstairs and saw this retelling of Rip Van Winkle retold by Kay Brown that my grandma and grandpa gave to me in 1980. I would have been 5 years old.
Rip Van Winkle was written by Washington Irvin in 1819. This version is simplified, making it a good read for children. The original takes place before and after the Revolutionary War, but Brown simply tells us that it happened a long time ago in a village surrounded by the Catskill Mountains.
Rip Van Winkle was a kind man, well-liked by all the villager and especially the children to whom he told stories and played marbles. However, he was lazy and escaped work around the house by sneaking out and going to...
