Week Fourteen Reading Notes Part B - La Fontaine

Source Story: Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks by W. T. Larned (adapted from La Fontaine), illustrated by John Rae, 1918.

And

The Fables of La Fontaine translated by Elizur Wright (1882).

Web Source.

• "Mice"
• Mouse, cat, rooster - a mousling sees a cat and a rooster and, by appearances, assumes the cat to be friendly and the rooster an enemy. His mother sets him straight.
• Mouse becomes maid - a Brahmin saves an injured mouse and has her turned back into a maid from her previous life. They seek the strongest husband for her and end up choosing a rat
• "More Mice"
• Rats and cat - a cat kills most rats in the area, so the remaining decide they must hang a bell on his collar; of course, no one will volunteer, so nothing comes of it
• Cat and mice - a great mousing cat plays tricks to get the mice out of hiding, but one older mouse is too wise to come out
• "The Tortoise; The Bat"
• Tortoise and birds - a tortoise wants to see the world, so she grabs a stick in her mouth and two birds carry each end of it into the air; she opens her mouth to brag about it and falls to her death
• Bat and weasels - a bat saves herself from two weasels in turn by first claiming to be a bird, then a mouse
• "Frogs"
• Frog and rat - a frog tries to trick a rat into drowning so she can eat him, but they both end up getting caught and eaten by a bird
• Frogs ask for a king - frogs ask for a king and are sent a log; they ask for a king that moves and are sent a bird who kills a bunch of them 
• "The Swallow; The Eagle"
• Swallow and hemp - a wise swallow warns other birds to eat up the seed or pull up the roots of a hemp field before its grown, but they ignore her and get caught in nets when the hemp is done
• Eagle and beetle - an eagle eats a beetle's friend, the rabbit, so the beetle breaks her eggs every year for three years. Finally the gods essentially separate them
• "Man and Beast"
• Bear and gardener - a hermit bear and a lonely old man become friends, but the bear accidentally kills the man when trying to get a fly off his face
• Man and adder - a man catches a snake and plans to kill it for being ungrateful, but the snake gets a cow, and ox, and a tree to testify to how the man is the more ungrateful of the two; the man gets angry and kills the snake
• "The Astrologer; The Dairywoman"
• Astrologer - an astrologer falls into a well because he is looking at the stars rather than what's in front of him (followed by much philosophical pondering)
• Dairywoman - a woman carries a pot of milk on her head to sell at the market, but gets so caught up in fantasizing about what to do with the money that she loses her concentration and drops the pot, breaking it and losing the milk
• "The God Mercury; Hercules"
• Mercury and woodcutter - a woodcutter loses his axe and prays to Mercury, who shows him a gold, then a silver, then a normal axe. The woodcutter says the normal one is his, so Mercury gives him all three for his honesty. Then everyone tries to copy it, but they get hit on the head instead
• Hercules - A man's cart gets stuck in the mud, so he calls on Hercules for help, who gives him instructions on how to help himself
• "Sun and Wind; Belly and Members"
• Sun and Wind - they bet on which can make a traveler take his cloak off first; the wind tries to blow it off with hurricanes and driving rain, but the sun wins out by making the man too warm to wear it
• Belly and members - the limbs decide to mutiny against the belly for not doing any work, but it fails; metaphor for people serving a king

The sun makes the traveler take off his cloak, from Wikimedia Commons

Week Fourteen Reading Notes Part A - La Fontaine

Source Story: Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks by W. T. Larned (adapted from La Fontaine), illustrated by John Rae, 1918.
And
The Fables of La Fontaine translated by Elizur Wright (1882).
Web Source.

• "Foolish Animals"
• Tortoise and the Hare - the classic race
• Donkey in a lion's skin - everyone is scared until a man realizes the truth and leads the "lion" to work in the field
• Frog and Ox - the frog wants to be as big as the ox, but puffs himself too big and explodes
• "More Foolish Animals"
• The dog and his image - drops the meat in the water because of his reflection
• City mouse and country mouse - get together for dinner but realize they prefer their own homes
• Joko the Monkey and Mouser the cat - Mouser burns his paw to get Joko chestnuts from a fire, but doesn't get any himself
• "Foxes"
• Fox and grapes - wants the grapes but cannot reach them
• Fox and stork - fox invites the stork for dinner but serves her soup on a plate so she can't eat it with her beak; she returns the invite but serves food in an urn that she can reach into with her beak, but fox cannot
• "Birds"
• Raven and fox - raven has a morsel that the fox wants; fox flatters him into singing and therefore dropping the food, which the fox steals
• Raven and sheep - raven sees an eagle swoop down and catch prey, so tries it with a sheep, but ends up getting caught in the wool and then put in the shepherd's birdcage
• Heron and fish - heron thinks he is too good to eat the fish he sees, so he ends up with only a snail for dinner
• "Insects"
• Grasshopper and ant - classic story
• Dove and ant - dove saves ant from drowning, so ant saves dove from being killed for a pie
• Lion and gnat - a gnat bites a lion and makes him scratch himself with his claws, but then the gnat gets caught in a spider's web
• "Foolish People"
• Hen and golden eggs - hen lays a golden egg for greedy man, who cuts off her head to see if there's more gold inside
• Acorn and pumpkin - a country bumpkin thinks acorns should grow on the ground and pumpkins in trees, until an acorn falls from a tree onto his head
• Man and his donkey - man, son, and donkey going to the market try to please everyone but finally decide to do what they think is best
• "Foxes and Wolves"
• Fox, wolf, and well - a fox sees the reflection of the moon in a well and thinks it's cheese, so he goes down in a bucket before realizing his error; he tricks a wolf into taking the bucket on the other side of the pulley to pull him up
• Fox, wolf, and horse - a fox and wolf are sizing up a horse and ask its name, so it tells them to read the name on the bottom of its horseshoe - it ends up kicking four teeth out of the wolf's mouth
• "Horses"
• Horse and revenge - horse wants revenge on stag for winning a race, so horse gets human's help to hunt the stag; inevitably, horse ends up stuck as human's servant forever
• Horse and wolf - a wolf pretends to be a doctor wanting to help a horse, but gets kicked in the mouth instead
• "Dogs"
• Dog and wolf - a wolf sees how well-fed a dog is and wants in on the action, until he realizes it comes at the cost of his liberty
• Donkey and dog - a dog wants food from the basket on a donkey's back, but the donkey will not let him, so when a wolf comes to attack the donkey, the dog doesn't help him either
• "Cats"
• Cat becomes woman - man loves his cat so much that she turns into a human and he marries her, but she still wants to chase mice all the time
• Cat, eagle, and sow - the three share a tree for raising their young, but the cat convinces the other two that each is trying to kill the other, so they all die of hunger and the cat gets the tree to herself

Image of a "wolf in sheep's clothing" from Max Pixel

Week Thirteen Reading Notes Part B - More Celtic Tales

Source Story: More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, with illustrations by John D. Batten (1895). Web source.

• "The Farmer of Liddesdale"
• A farmer whose family has all died and whose ploughman has deserted him hires a traveling ploughman as a last resort. The man agrees to take one burden-withe of corn in return for the work, and though he does the work differently than everyone else, he does a good job. When the harvest is in, he brings an enormous burden-withe and takes almost all the corn. The farmer makes an appeal to higher powers, and the mysterious ploughman disappears into clouds, leaving all the corn behind.
• "The Legend of Knockgrafton"
• A man named Lusmore with a hump on his back is looked down upon by everyone, and one night he hears fairies singing the words "Monday, Tuesday" over and over again. He adds in "Wednesday" to their song, and they are so amazed by his musical genius that they fix his hump and make him new clothes. Everyone barely believes it's the same man.
• "The Legend of Knockgrafton (cont.)"
• A woman comes to ask Lusmore how he got rid of his hump, so that she can help her friend's son, named Jack Madden, get rid of his. They take the son and tell him to do the same as Lusmore. He adds "Wednesday, Thursday" to the song, but he doesn't respect the fairies' music and doesn't pay attention to the rhythm/timing, so the fairies, angered, take Lusmore's old lump and put it on Jack Madden. He dies soon afterwards.
• "Elidore"
• A boy is tired of getting beaten for his laziness in the monastery, so he goes into the woods and finds some miniature men, who take him to their own land through a secret tunnel. He stays there happily for awhile, splitting his time between his mother and the land of the little people. His mother convinces him to try stealing a yellow ball from the little people, because she thinks it must be gold. He fails to do this, and because of his attempt he is never able to return to that land again.
• "How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery"
• King Cormac trades his family for a fairy branch that has the power to make people happy. Later, he follows the direction that the fairy youth took his family, and ends up seeing a number of strange sights which turn out to have moral lessons. He meets a couple who turn out to be the fairy king (who was also the fairy youth from earlier) and queen, and they return his family to him, along with several magical gifts.
• "The Ridere of Riddles"
• A king's second wife attempts to murder his son from his first wife with poison, but the new wife's son tells his step-brother and they run away together, taking the poison with them. In a series of events, the poison ends up killing a number of people and animals, and the brothers take their story to the Knight of Riddles in the form of a riddle, hoping to win his daughter's hand in marriage.
• "The Ridere of Riddles (cont.)"
• The princess's handmaidens go to the younger brother to convince him to tell them the answer, but he "takes their plaids" and doesn't tell them. The princess comes to the older brother, who takes her plaid and tells her. Then the king "guesses" the answer to the riddle, but the older brother shows that he knows the king cheated, so he gets to marry the princess, and the younger brother goes home and becomes king. Years later, they meet again and wrestle for awhile before recognizing each other, then the younger brother discovers he has twelve sons.

Image of a plaid tablecloth from piqsels

Week Thirteen Reading Notes Part A - More Celtic Tales

Source Story: More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, with illustrations by John D. Batten (1895). Web source.

• "The Fate of the Children of Lir"
• King Lir is angry because the council elects King Dearg to be the head king instead of him, so Dearg offers him the choice of three beautiful sisters for a wife as a peace offering. Lir marries the eldes, Ove, and they have four beautiful children before Ove dies. At her death, Dearg gives Lir Ove's sister, Oifa, who becomes jealous of the children and turns them into swans, banishing them to the waves. Lir realizes Oifa has done wrong by his children.
• "The Fate of the Children of Lir (cont.)"
• King Lir discovers that the children are now swans, and they tell him in their human voices that his wife has cursed them thusly until a certain man from the north marries a certain woman from the south. Lir tells Dearg, who turns Oifa into an air-demon forever. The children sing for the people for a long time, then fly away. They get separated by a storm, but they find each other again afterwards.
• "The Fate of the Children of Lir (end)"
• The swans fly back to their father's land after a long while, only to find it deserted completely. Saint Patrick finds them and takes them in, and connects them to each other with chains. The man and woman whose wedding is to mark the end of the curse are finally set to wed, and they try to get the swans from Saint Patrick, but when they try to take them, the swans turn back into the children of Lir, only now they are extremely old. Patrick baptises them and then they die.
• "The Vision of MacConglinney"
• King Cathal was a good king, but then a monster came to live in his belly that made him eat the land out of house and home. A scholar named MacConglinney decides to help, and ends up tying the king up and eating lots of food in front of him, then telling him about a vision he had about a house made of food
• "The Vision of MacConglinney (cont.)"
• MacConglinney tells more of his vision, where he sails on a food boat across a milk pond and meets a Wizard Doctor. Then he holds food in front of King Cathal, and the monster in Cathal's stomach comes up through his mouth, then jumps out to get the food. The monster disappears and the king is cured, and MacConglinney gets a rich reward.
• "Dream of Owen O'Mulready"
• Owen O'Mulready has never had a dream, but really wants to. He follows his master's instructions to have one, but it's a nightmare. He never wants to dream again.
• "The Story of the McAndrew Family"
• A rich man has seven stupid sons, and when he gives them all some cows, they get tricked into selling them for almost nothing, then waste the little bit they do get. When the father dies, the oldest son goes into town to waste his inheritance and gets tricked into buying a "mare's egg," which is really a painted barrel.
• "The Story of the McAndrew Family (cont.)"
• The brothers roll the "mare's egg" down a hill, and it frightens a rabbit out of hiding, which they assume is the foal but cannot catch. By and by, their neighbors trick them out of all their land, fields, and house, and they become homeless beggars.

Image of a swan from Wikipedia

Week Twelve Reading Notes Part A - Celtic Tales

Source Story: Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, with illustrations by John D. Batten (1892). Web Source.

• "Connla and the Fairy Maiden"
• A prince, named Connla, sees a fairy maiden who invites him to come and live with her in a land without sin or death. He is the only one who can see her, but his father hears her voice and gets his Druid to cast a spell and get rid of her. Before she disappear, she throws an apple to Connla, who eats only that for a month because it replenishes when he eats it. He falls in love with her during this time, but when she reappears his father again tries to call for his Druid to dispatch her. But before the Druid comes, Connla runs away with her on a glass canoe off to sea.
• "The Field of Boliauns"
• A man named Tom Fitzpatrick meets a leprechaun working on a holiday. He follows the leprechaun for awhile, and then begins to threaten the leprechaun, wanting to know where he's hidden his gold. He grabs the leprechaun, spilling his beer, and makes the leprechaun take him to the hiding place, which is under a boliaun in a field full of boliauns. He doesn't have a shovel with him, so he ties his red garter to the boliaun and makes the leprechaun swear not to move it, then goes home to get his shovel. When he returns, the leprechaun is gone and so is the garter, so he never gets his gold.
• "The Horned Women"
• A rich woman's house is taken over by weaving witches with horns on their heads. They tell her to make them a cake while they weave, so she goes outside to get some water. The Spirit of the Well tells her how to get rid of the witches, and once they leave, how to perform a series of rituals to keep them from coming back. She follows the instructions, and when the witches return, they cannot get back into her house, so they leave.
• "The Shepherd of Myddvai"
• A shepherd sees three beautiful maidens come out of a lake, and through trial and error and a lot of bread, he convinces one of them to marry him. She tells him she will be his wife, but if he strikes her three times without cause she will leave him. Twice he taps her on the shoulder and she counts it, and finally, when she bursts out laughing at a funeral, he grabs her shoulder roughly, so she leaves him and takes all the animals she brought with her back to the lake. She returns one final time later to give her sons gifts when they become men.
• "The Sprightly Tailor"
• A laird named Macdonald tells a sprightly tailor that he'll pay him handsomely if the tailor will sew him some trews at night in a haunted church. The tailor agrees and goes to sew them that night. A monster starts to rise out of the ground, and keeps asking the tailor if he sees the monster's great head/neck/arms/etc. The tailor just responds "I see that, but I'll sew this!" each time, and finishes the trews just as the monster fully emerges. The monster chases him, but the tailor is nimble and escapes, then receives a rich reward from the laird.
• "Munachar and Manachar"
• Munachar and Manachar went to gather raspberries, but Manachar eats all the raspberries that Munachar picks, so Munachar decides to hang him. He goes looking for a rod, who says he must first find an axe, who says he must first find a flag, and so on until he gets to a miller who tells him to bring a sieve filled with water. A crow cries "daub, daub," so Munachar daubs clay in the sieve so the water doesn't run out. After going through all the lengthy process to get the supplies to hang Manachar, he returns to find that Manachar has burst from eating all the raspberries, and is already dead.
• "Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree"
• An evil queen is mad because a fish says her daughter is prettier than her, so she tries to kill her daughter. She makes several attempts to murder the daughter, and is successful one time, but each time she thinks the daughter is dead, she is either mistaken, or the daughter comes back to life. So when she returns to the fish, expecting to be considered the prettiest, the fish always tells her that her daughter is prettier. In the end, the daughter's sister-wife helps trick the queen into killing herself. The daughter and her sister-wife live happily ever after with their shared husband, who is a rich prince.

Image of the fish who kept calling the queen ugly, probably.
(Image of a trout from Flickr)

Week Eleven Reading Notes Part A - Hiawatha

Source Story: The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855). Web Source.

• "The Four Winds"
• After killing the great bear Mishe-Mokwa, Mudjekeewis' name is changed to Kabeyun and he becomes the West Wind. He gives the other three winds to his children - the East Wind is his son, Wabun. Wabun brings the sunrise and makes things beautiful but is lonely, until he finds a beautiful but lonely human maiden. He romances her with his beauty and then turns her into the Star of Morning, and now they can be seen walking together in the heavens.
• "The Four Winds (cont.)"
• The North Wind is given to his strong and fierce son, Kabibonokka, who brings the snow and the freezing of the lakes and forces everyone to migrate southward. But a diver (duck) remains with fish he has caught and logs for a fire, and despite Kabibonokka's best efforts to freeze him, and then to beat him in wrestling, Kabibonokka cannot defeat him. The South Wind is given to Shawondasee, who is fat and lazy and careless, and who brings about summer and crops and birds. Shawondasee falls in love with a beautiful maiden dressed in green and with yellow hair, but is too lazy to woo her. One day her hair is white like snowflakes, and he thinks his Northern brother has stolen her from him, so he sighs his sadness across the plains, and the maiden is blown away, because she was a dandelion all along.
• "Hiawatha's Childhood"
• A woman named Nokomis falls from the moon and gives birth to a daughter, whom she warns to be wary of the West Wind. The daughter does not listen and lets the West Wind seduce her, but he abandons her when she gives birth to their son, Hiawatha. She dies of heartache, so Hiawatha is raised by Nokomis, his grandmother, who teaches him everything. He learns how to talk to birds and animals, and Iagoo makes him a bow, with which he kills a red deer buck on his first try.
• "Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis"
• As an adult, Hiawatha learns of how his mother died, and decides to confront his father. He goes to the land of the West Wind, and he and his father sit and talk for many days. Hiawatha pretends to be happy to see him only to ask what his weakness is. His father says the only thing that can harm him is a specific black rock, and Hiawatha tells his father the only that can hurt him is the bulrush. Then Hiawatha tells his father that it was his fault that Hiawatha's mother died, and his father admits it.
• "Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis (cont.)"
• Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis fight violently, but reach a stalemate because Mudjekeewis is immortal. So Mudjekeewis admits that he was only testing Hiawatha's courage, and when Hiawatha is old and ready to die, he will instead become the North-West Wind. On the way home, Hiawatha stops to buy arrows and meets a beautiful but enigmatic maiden, named Minnehaha or Laughing Water, about whom he does not tell Nokomis.
• "Hiawatha's Fasting"
• Hiawatha goes into the woods to fast and pray for the "profit of the people." Mondamin, a friend of man dressed in green and yellow and sent by the Master of Life, shows up after Hiawatha has been fasting for several days and wrestles with him. They wrestle for three nights in a row, and then Mondamin announces that the Master of Life will give Hiawatha victory, and Hiawatha will get what he prayed for.
• "Hiawatha's Fasting (cont.)"
• Mondamin tells Hiawatha he will come and wrestle him once more, and after Hiawatha wins he must strip Mondamin of his green and yellow clothes, bury him, and watch over his grave until he comes up again and reaches for the sun. Hiawatha, though he has been fasting for a week and has refused Nokomis's food, wins the fight and follows Mondamin's instructions. Mondamin comes back as a corn plant (dressed in green and yellow) to serve as food for the people and fulfill Hiawatha's prayers.
• "Hiawatha's Friends"
• Hiawatha had two friends: Chibiabos, who was the greatest musician of all time, and Kwasind, who was the strongest man. When Kwasind was young everyone called him lazy - his mother asked for his help with the nets but he was too strong and broke them all. His father asked for help with hunting, but Kwasind broke the bows. Still, Kwasind cleared the path of fallen trees for his father, and dammed the river and caught the King of Beavers for the other young men.
• "Hiawatha's Sailing"
• Hiawatha asks all the trees and the hedgehog for parts of themselves to help him build a magical canoe. They agree, albeit unhappily. Then Kwasind clears the river of all logs and sandbars, and Hiawatha can sail it without paddles because of his magical canoe.
• "Hiawatha's Fishing"
• Hiawatha sets out to kill the King Sturgeon, but the sturgeon keeps sending other fish to grab his line and try to pull Hiawatha down. Finally, after the other fish have failed, the sturgeon swallows Hiawatha, the canoe, and the squirrel friend who is along for the ride, in one bite. Hiawatha, inside the sturgeon, kills it by attacking its heart, then the squirrel and some seagulls help him get out of the now-beached and dead fish. He instructs Nokomis to work at night turning the fish into oil for winter so the seagulls can eat it during the day as thanks.

"Westward, Westward, Hiawatha" painting by M. L. Kirk from Wikimedia Commons

Week Ten Reading Notes Part A - "Eskimo"

Source Story: "Eskimo Folktales" by Knud Rasmussen with illustrations by native Eskimo artists (1921).

• "The Coming of Men"
• The earth was created by falling from the sky, and then men crawled up out of the earth as little children. Eventually a man and a woman were there, and man grew to be many on the earth, and man got dogs and did not know how to die. There was no light or day, other than the light in man's homes. The earth was too crowded, so a great flood came and drowned many. Then two old women talked about whether it was better to have death and light, or no light and no death. The former was chosen, and light came about because, when man dies, he becomes a star in the sky.
• "Nukúnguasik, who Escaped from the Tupilak"
• Nukúnguasik lived among a set of many brothers who would bring him food since he had no wife. One day he discovered one of them creating a Tupilak (a magical creature created with the intent to harm someone) and telling it to kill Nukúnguasik. Nukúnguasik startles the brother to death, then returns home. He goes out with the other brothers looking for the dead man, and leads them to him, where the Tupilak is now eating his body. They bury him and go on with their lives.
• "The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster-Son"
• An old woman is taken care of by her village, and one day they give her the cub of a bear they killed. She raises it as her son and it grows up well-loved by the whole village. When it is older, it begins hunting with the men of the village to find food, but the men from a faraway village want to kill it, despite the old lady making a collar to mark it as friendly. One day the bear kills a man in self-defense, so the old woman tells it that it must leave her, so that nobody will be able to kill it. They both weep, and the woman marks the bear with oil before he goes. From then on, it was said that sometimes people would see a bear as big as an iceberg, marked with oil.
• "Qalagánguasê, Who Passed to the Land of Ghosts"
• A boy's whole family dies and leaves him a paralyzed orphan. He begins to see ghosts, and one day he sees several ghosts, including his sister. They tell him that if he doesn't tell anyone about them, he will stop being paralyzed, but as soon as he starts to feel stronger, he tells everyone and is immediately paralyzed again. The village ties him up and leaves to go to a singing contest, and the ghosts of his parents show up to take him to become a ghost with them. He goes willingly and becomes a woman ghost.
• "Isigâligârssik"
• A bad wizard steals Isigâligârssik's wife, so Isigâligârssik challenges him. The wizard stabs him, but Isigâligârssik goes home and puts on his childhood dress, which has healing powers and heals him. Then he takes a tiny bow and arrow and has a shootout with the wizard, who he kills. He gains his wife back and they live happily ever after.
• "The Insects that Wooed a Wifeless Man"
• A wifeless man is detested by all the women because he always sleeps in too late to go hunting. One day he goes out in the evening anyway, and helps a Noseless One whose kayak was overturned. After that, he does not struggle with his old sleepiness and becomes the best hunter around, and he gets the best wife. But she nags him until he tells her what happened, and then his sleepiness returns. His wife runs away and he chases her, and she sends a bunch of insects to try and seduce him. When this doesn't work, he crawls into the cave she is hiding in and she combs his hair and tells him to sleep until spring. When he wakes up, she's gone and so is the winter, and his kayak has rotted from old age.
• "Makíte"
• A man named Makíte is bad at hunting and hears that his wife is going to leave him, so he runs away to live along in the mountains. He meets a lone-dweller there who has floating lights in his house, and he threatens to kill the lone-dweller if he doesn't say where he got them. He tells Makíte that they are on top of a faraway hill. They get into a fight and Makíte kills the man, then goes on and meets some dwarves. He witnesses a fight between the dwarves and the inland-dwellers, who fight by sending waves of water towards each other. The dwarves win, and Makíte builds a house with them, and gets some of the floating lights from the hill, and lives there forever.
• "Atungait, Who Went A-Wandering"
• A man named Atungait leaves his wife to find a strong woman to go on a trip with. He finds one, and they travel around on his sledge, meeting several strange groups of people. They meet one group who is all lame, and he steals their copper plaything. They use magic to send an avalanche of stones after him, but his strong woman ties leather to the back of their sledge which stops the stones. After this, he tells the woman to stay there while he flies to see which way home is. When he arrives home, he sees his wife with another man. She says she hasn't kissed anyone, so he kills her, but the man she was with admits to kissing her, so he lets the man live. Then he marries the strong woman.
• "The Giant Dog"
• A man had a giant dog, who could catch whales and narwhals and on whom he and his wife could ride. He gave the dog an amulet that made it hard for the dog to die. After the dog killed and ate someone in their village, the man had to move somewhere else with the dog. A stranger came with three dogs as big as bears to kill it, but the dog killed all of them, and the dog also often killed inland-dwellers and brought their legs back to his master, which is why inland-dwellers are so afraid of dogs.
  

Image of a dog sled from Wikimedia Commons

Week Nine Reading Notes Part B - West Africa

Source Story: "West African Folktales" by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

• "The Moon and Stars"
• Anansi and his son Kweku Tsin are captured by a dragon one day while they're out hunting. The dragon takes them back to his castle where they are guarded (along with many others) by a great white rooster. Kweku devises a plan to distract the rooster and make a ladder to climb up into the heavens, using a bag of bones and a magical fiddle to keep the dragon at bay as they climb. The gods make Kweku into the sun, Anansi into the moon, and all the others into the stars.
• "How the Tortoise Got His Shell"
• The gods decide to throw a party, so they send Klo (the tortoise) to get some wine from the chicken. Klo is very fast, and he gets there quickly. The chicken and the tortoise fight for the right to the wine and the palms that produce it. Klo wins, but there is too much wine for him to carry in his pot, so he drink all the leftover wine, then slings the pot onto his back along with all the trees. Being drunk, he is too slow getting back to the party and finds himself locked out in the rain for two months, during which time he dies under the weight of the pot. When they find his body, the gods are able to bring him back to life, but the pot had so melded to his body that it became part of him, and that's how tortoise got his shell.
• "The Hunter and the Tortoise"
• A hunter finds a singing tortoise in the woods, and takes her home to sing to him every day. She agrees with the condition that she will only sing to him, and not to others. But of course he tells everyone about it, and tells them they can kill him if it turns out that he's lying. They agree that, if he is telling the truth, he may punish them however he sees fit for disbelieving them. But the tortoise doesn't sing in front of them, because of the agreement they made. After they kill the hunter, the tortoise finally speaks, and explains that the man brought it on himself.
• "The Leopard and the Ram"
• A leopard and a ram mistakenly choose the same place to build their house, so they decide to live together. When Leopard realizes that Ram brings home as much meat from hunting as he does, he asks his son to find out how Ram kills animals. Leopard's son and Ram's son reveal to each other how their fathers hunt, and Leopard gets the information from his son that Ram backs up a bit, then rams forward with his head to kill an animal. One day, the rain makes the floor very wet, and Ram slips backwards. Thinking Ram is about to kill him, Leopard takes his son and flees into the woods, despite Ram's calling out to him. This is why rams are domestic (they continue living in the house) while leopards are wild (they flee into the forest).
• "King Chameleon and the Animals"
• The animals decide they need a king, but because they cannot agree on one, they decide to have a race to determine their ruler. The first one to sit in a certain stool should be the king. Hare, the fastest, makes it to the stool first, but finds that Chameleon has hidden himself on Hare's tail and jumped off at the last second to steal the seat. The other animals honor their agreement to make him king, but they are all unhappy with the outcome, so they leave Chameleon lonely forever, with no subjects to rule.
• "Elephant and Wren"
• The king tells all his subjects that anyone who can cut down a certain large tree with only a wooden axe will receive an elephant as a reward. Spider takes the challenge, but secretly uses a steel axe instead. However, he doesn't want to share the elephant with his family, so he ties it to a tree while he tries to catch a wren to give them to eat while he hides the elephant in the woods to eat by himself later. He fails at catching the wren, and the elephant escapes.
• "The Ungrateful Man"
• A hunter comes across a pit with a serpent, a rat, a leopard, and a man all trapped in it. He helps them all out, despite thinking that the man was the only one he should have saved. The serpent repays him with a powerful antivenom for snake bites (which must be mixed with the blood of a traitor), the leopard supplies him with meat for many weeks, and the rat brings him a bundle of riches. The man from the pit, however, only becomes envious of the hunter and mooches off of him until he finds an opportunity to do him wrong. He wrongly accuses the hunter of stealing from the king, and the hunter is sentenced to death. Before his execution, however, the hunter is able to save the king's son from death by a snakebite using his antivenom mixed with the blood of the ungrateful man, who they kill for being a traitor. The hunter is set free and given many riches.
• "Why Tigers Never Attack Men Unless They are Provoked"
• A tiger and a hunter befriend each other and take turns staying at each other's homes. The hunter's father dies, so the tiger and his cub come to visit to console their friend. As they are leaving, some of the hunter's friends shoot the tiger, who fortunately does not die, but worries that his friend has betrayed him. The tiger pretends to be dead to see what the hunter will do. The hunter is deeply grieves and stays by the tiger's side all night, crying, to protect the body. The tiger reveals that he isn't really dead and explains what happened, then promises to never attack a man unless the man provokes him first.
• "How Mushrooms First Grew"
• A pair of brothers racks up a lot of debt, but they decide to try to pay it off honestly by farming. A bird eats all their seed, so the debt transfers to the bird. The bird tries to lay eggs to sell, but a silk tree's branch smashes them, so the debt goes to the tree. The tree tries to make silk to sell, but an elephant takes down all the pods, so the debt goes to the elephant. A hunter kills the elephant, so the debt goes to him. A tree stump trips the hunter and breaks his leg, so the debt goes to the stump. A colony of white ants (termites) eats through the stump, so the debt goes to them. They all pool their money to buy linen thread, which they weave into pieces of cloth to sell to pay off the debt. They sometimes lay this cloth out on their anthills, and people call it "mushrooms."
• "Farmer Mybrow and the Fairies"
• Farmer Mybrow sets out to make a field next to the home of some fairies. The fairies help with whatever task he begins (clearing the field, planting, etc.). He keeps the field and the fairies a secret from everyone, even his wife. But eventually his wife finds out the location and goes there to gather some firewood, after promising her husband she won't answer any questions she hears there. She pulls an unripe ear of corn from a stalk, and the fairies ask what she is doing. Forgetting her promise, she tells them she is pulling down an ear of corn. The fairies immediately help her with her task, pulling down all the crops before they are ripe and ruining the field.

Image of a tortoise from Public Domain Pictures

Week Nine Reading Notes Part A - West Africa

Source Story: "West African Folktales" by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

• "How We Got the Name: 'Spider Tales'"
• Spider was jealous of Nyankupon for being the subject of all the folk stories, so he asked for all the stories from then on to be called Anansi stories, after him. Nyankupon agrees on the condition that Spider bring him a jar full of bees, a boa constrictor, and a tiger. Spider uses his cunning to trick all the above creatures and brings them to Nyankupon, so after that the old stories were called Anansi (Spider) Tales.
• "How Wisdom Became the Property of the Human Race"
• Father Anansi, who possesses all the wisdom in the world, becomes angry with some men and decides to punish humanity by reclaiming all the wisdom he has shared and placing it in a pot, then hiding the pot on top of a tree. He hangs the pot from his neck, and therefore he cannot climb the tree to hide it there. His son, who has been watching, suggests that he carry the pot on his back. Realizing that his son has more wisdom than he, Anansi throws the pot down, breaking it and releasing all the wisdom across the world to humans.
• "Anansi and Nothing"
• Anansi and his rich neighbor, named Nothing, go to town to find some wives. On the way, Anansi trades clothes with Nothing so that he appears rich while Nothing appears poor, so Anansi gets many wives and Nothing gets only one. When they get home, Anansi's wives realize how poor he is and leave him for Nothing. Anansi tricks Nothing into a deathtrap, killing him. Nothing's first wife is heartbroken and makes food to share with all the children of the land so that they will cry with her, which is why children are often said to be "crying for Nothing."
• "Thunder and Anansi"
• Anansi and his family have no food and are starving, so Anansi goes in search of some coconuts, only to find an underwater cottage where Thunder lives, who gives him a magic pot that provides food out of nothing. Afraid that the pot's magic will run out, Anansi keeps it from his family, allowing them to starve while he fattens himself up. His son, however, shapeshifts into a fly and spies on him, then takes the pot to share with his family. Anansi's wife, in anger, accidentally destroys the pot while cooking a meal to share with all the hungry people in town. Angry, Anansi goes back to Thunder and tells him the tale, whereupon Thunder gives Anansi a magical stick that beats him to a pulp. Anansi is left feeling remorseful for being so foolish.
• "Why the Lizard Moves His Head Up and Down"
• A king offers his three daughters as wives to any man who can discover their names, which Anansi does through trickery. He tells the name to his friend Lizard, who agrees to act as his herald when he meets with the king. However, since Lizard is the one who actually says the names, the king gives him the princesses instead of Anansi. Anansi frames Lizard for the crime of killing the king's rooster, and pours boiling water into his mouth to make him unable to speak. When the king's men find him, he can only bob his head up and down and is unable to defend himself, so the princesses are taken from him and given to Anansi, and since then all lizards bob their heads up and down.
• "Tit for Tat"
• During a terrible famine, Anansi's oldest son discovers a good hunting place where he finds meat to sell in the village. Greedy, Anansi uses trickery to track his son to his hunting place, then drives him off in order to kill all the animals himself and sell them to become rich. His son returns the trickery, though, by creating a fake god to scare Anansi into leaving behind all the meat, which his son then takes to sell, becoming rich and eventually telling the story to all the neighbors, which shames Anansi into temporarily giving up his evil ways.
• "Why White Ants Always Harm Man's Property"
• During another terrible famine, Anansi finds a dead antelope and tries to take it home to his family to eat, but Wolf and Leopard steal it. So, he tricks them into letting him hang them from a tree by promising to sharpen their teeth for them, then takes back the meat and hosts a huge party right in front of them where the whole village eats the antelope meat. Later on, a family of white ants (termites) passes by and helps Wolf and Leopard escape their bonds, so the two animals offer to prepare a feast for the white ants a few days later. Anansi hears and dresses his own children up as white ants, and they go and eat the feast themselves. When the real white ants arrive, Leopard and Wolf assume they are really Anansi's children and kill all of them but the father, who in anguish vows never to help anyone again, and only to destroy.
• "The Squirrel and the Spider"
• Anansi uses trickery to steal the crops which Squirrel has so carefully tended, by pretending that the fields were his all along because he built a roadway to them, where Squirrel always came by the trees. He and his family carry away all of the crops to sell them, but a huge storm makes them drop their crops to hide. When they return, a crow has his wings spread over the crops to keep them dry, whereupon the crow claims the crops as his own and takes them to sell himself, leaving Anansi with no reward for his theft.
• "Why We See Ants Carrying Bundles As Big As Themselves"
• Anansi and his son both need rain to make their fields grow, and a dwarf comes along to his son and offers his help. The son taps the dwarf lightly with two small sticks, which makes it rain. Anansi, thinking to make the dwarf produce double the rain, beats him so hard with two large sticks that he dies. Anansi tries to frame it on his son, but his son is too clever and tricks Anansi into taking the dwarf (a close friend of the king) to the king himself. The king is angry and has the dwarf's body magically sealed in a box which is placed on top of Anansi's head to carry forevermore. The only way to get rid of the box is to get someone else to carry it for him. Anansi tricks Ant into carrying it for him, which is why we always see ants carrying such heavy loads.
• "Why Spiders Are Always Found in Corners of Ceilings"
• Anansi's family has a magnificent harvest, but Anansi wants it all to himself, so he tricks his wife and son into leaving for awhile, telling them he'll be gone on business, and when he returns they will all feast together. Really, he stays and eats half the harvest himself. His son discovers that someone has been stealing from them and sets up a rubber man, to which Anansi gets stuck. Out of shame when he is discovered by all the townspeople for stealing from his own family, he shapeshifts into a spider and hides in a corner of the ceiling, which is why spiders always hide there.
• "The Grinding-Stone that Ground Flour by Itself"
• During a great famine, Anansi's cousin discovers a stone that grinds flour of its own accord, next to a stream of honey, but he only ever takes enough to feed his family. Realizing that his cousin's family is not starving like everyone else, Anansi tricks his cousin into showing him where the stone is. Rather than only taking what he needs, and against the stone's begging, Anansi takes the entire stone from village to village, carried on his head, and sells the flour, making a lot of money. But when he tries to take the stone off his head at the end of the day, it refuses, and instead grinds him up, which is why we often find lots of small spiders under huge stones.

Spider image from Good Free Photos

Week Six Reading Notes Part B - Sindbad

Source Story: "The Voyages of Sindbad" from Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

• "Fifth Voyage"
• Sindbad buys his own boat and sets sail with some other merchants. They come upon an island with a roc's nest, and, despite Sindbad's warnings, the merchants hack open the egg and eat the baby roc. The parent birds sink Sindbad's ship, and Sindbad is washed ashore on another island, where an old man tricks him into carrying him around all day and night on his shoulders to reach the best fruit.
• "Fifth Voyage (cont.)"
• Sindbad makes some wine while carrying the man around for days, and the man drinks the wine and becomes drunk enough that Sindbad is able to throw him off and escape. He comes upon a trading vessel, and the captain takes him and tells him that the old man was the Old Man of the Sea, and Sindbad is the only one who has ever survived him. They teach Sindbad how to trick monkeys into throwing down coconuts from the high trees, and then Sindbad amasses many treasures and returns home.
• "Sixth Voyage"
• Sindbad embarks again and a storm shipwrecks the crew on an island covered with the bones, shipwrecks, and treasures of innumerable seamen. He outlasts all his crew mates because he eats less than they do, then realizes that a river on the island goes underground through caves filled with gemstones. He builds a raft, collects a bunch of treasure, and sets off on the river into the caves.
• "Sixth Voyage (cont.)"
• After eating the last of his food and passing out, Sindbad awakes to find that some kind men have pulled him from the river and he is at last above ground. They take him to their king - the king of Serendib - and he relates his tale and enjoys many days there. Then the king gives him gifts and a message/gift to take back with him to the Caliph, and sends him on his way home.
• "Sixth Voyage (end)"
• Sindbad gives the gifts and message to the Caliph, who asks whether the king who sent them was really as rich and powerful as he says he is. Sindbad assures him that he is, then goes home with presents given him by the Caliph.
• "Seventh and Last Voyage"
• Though he has decided never to go sailing again, the Caliph demands that he return to the King of Serendib to return the gesture by giving him gifts. On his return voyage, his vessel is taken by pirates, who sell him into slavery. His new owner gives him a bow and arrow and tells him to kill and elephant, which he does, and they bury it to come back later for its tusks.
• "Seventh and Last Voyage (cont.)"
• Sindbad kills an elephant a day for two months, and then the elephants kidnap him and drop him off in their own elephant graveyard, which is full of elephant skeletons complete with tusks, so that he will stop killing them. His master is thrilled and admits that the elephants have killed tons of their slaves before, and Sindbad is the only one who has survived. He sets Sindbad free and gives him a fortune in thanks, and sends him back to Bagdad. The Caliph is happy to see him back and records all his adventures, and Sindbad stays in Bagdad forever.

Image of an elephant by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

Week Seven Reading Notes Part A - Lang

Source Story: "Japanese Fairytales" from The Violet Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1901).

• "The Two Frogs"
• Two frogs dwell in Japan, one in Osaka and one in Kioto, and both happen to decide at the same time that they wish to travel and see the other city. They meet at the top of a mountain just by chance, and decide to peer off from the mountain towards the cities they intend to visit in order to decide if the journey is worth it. However, they mistakenly each look at the city they are from instead and, each believing the city they intend to visit is the same as the city they are from, they simply go home.
• "The Stonecutter"
• A stonecutter's wishes of becoming a rich man are granted. Then his subsequent wishes of being the next great thing continue to be granted, and he is in turn a prince, the sun, a cloud, and a large stone, only to become a stonecutter again and be content with his own life.
• "The Maiden with the Wooden Helmet"
• A once-rich but now impoverished couple has a daughter of surpassing beauty. They both die, but before she passes the mother entreats the daughter to keep her beauty hidden beneath a wooden helmet to keep herself safe from men who might do her ill because of it. She does this, and works for a rich man and his ailing wife, until their eldest son catches a glimpse of her with her helmet tilted back and begs to marry her. His parents protest, so she says no, but after her mother comes to her in a dream to urge her to get married, she consents. Before the wedding, she and the maids attempt to take the helmet off, but it will not come off, so she gets married in it. When the marriage ceremony is finished, it breaks off and pours precious stones on the floor. She and her husband live happily ever after.
• "The Envious Neighbour"
• A poor old couple has no children, so they dote on their dog, who finds a treasure buried in their yard. With their new riches they treat him even better than before, but their envious neighbor begs them day in and day out to borrow their dog so he can find a treasure, too. When the dog instead digs up stinky old bones, the neighbor kills the dog and lies about it to the owners, who are heartbroken. The dog comes to the old man in a dream and tells him to cut down their tree and use it to make a mortar, which ends up turning rice into gold. The neighbor borrows the mortar, but it turns his rice into smelly berries and he breaks and burns it. The dog comes again in a dream, and the old man takes the ashes from the mortar and sprinkles them on a bare cherry tree in front of the Daimio, which causes the tree to fill with blossoms and the Daimio gives him rich gifts. The neighbor takes some of the ashes to try it as well, but instead the ashes blow into the Daimio's eyes and he has the neighbor arrested.
• "The Sparrow with the Split Tongue"
• A kind old man and his mean wife live in a mountain, and the old man saves a sparrow from a raven. He takes good care of the sparrow, but while he's gone his wife catches it and cuts its tongue, and it flies away. He searches for it for a long time, and after finally giving up, finds a little house with a maiden who says she is the sparrow, and who gives him food and drinks and a choice between a large chest and a small one. He takes the small one and goes home to find that it is filled with treasure. His wife is angry that he didn't pick the big chest, so she goes to the little house and demands a gift, and chooses the large chest. It turns out to be filled with snakes, who kill her.
• "The Cat's Elopement"
• A cat named Gon falls in love with a cat named Koma, but their owners each love their cat too much to sell it to the other. So the cats elope, but a dog attacks them, and Koma hides while Gon steels himself for a fight. Instead, the servant of a princess saves him and takes him to live with the kind princess. Gon kills a snake who is in love with the princess and annoys her constantly, so she takes excellent care of Gon. One day, he finds Koma being harassed by another tomcat, and saves her, then takes her back to the princess, who happily takes Koma in as well. The princess marries as well, and both couples have lots of children and live happily ever after.

Here are two more personal photos of my very lovey cat, Atticus. You're welcome.

Week Six Reading Notes Part A - Sindbad

Source Story: "The Voyages of Sindbad" from Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

• "First Voyage"
• Sindbad tells of how he was on board a merchant ship and, with others, stopped to explore an island. The island turned out to be the back of a sleeping whale, and when the whale dove under he was left behind accidentally by his fleeing shipmates, only to float to another island, where he finds some men caring for the horses of that island's king.
• "First Voyage (cont.)"
• The king takes him in and takes care of him, then his old ship shows up and aims to sell his possessions and give the money to his family, thinking he is dead. After he convinces the captain that he is Sindbad, the captain gives him back his things. He gives gifts to the king and receives some in return, then trades out his stuff and continues to trade successfully all the way home, where he sees his family.
• "Second Voyage"
• Sindbad sails with another merchant ship but finds himself forgotten on a deserted island, where he finds the nest of a gigantic bird. He ties himself to the bird's foot and it flies him to an island, where he disembarks, that turns out to be filled with huge diamonds and huge snakes.
• "Second Voyage (cont.)"
• Sindbad realizes that there are merchants throwing down chunks of meat in hopes that diamonds will stick to them and be carried up by eagles, so he collects a bunch of huge diamonds and ties a chunk of meat to his back. An eagle carries him up, and he is saved from the eagle's nest by the merchants. The merchant who owns that nest takes only one of his diamonds for helping him. Then he goes to an island with giant camphor trees, and sees an elephant and rhino fight each other only to be carried off by a roc. He returns to Bagdad and gives money to the poor.
• "Third Voyage"
• Sailing again, Sindbad and his crew are attacked by hairy dwarves, who steal their ship and drive them onto an island. There they find a cyclops, who roasts and eats their captain, then goes to sleep.
• "Third Voyage (cont.)"
• Sindbad and several others stab the cyclops in the eye, blinding him, after making rafts for escape if need be. Instead of dying, the cyclops returns with a horde of other cyclopes, who sink all the rafts except the one on which Sindbad and two other men are riding. They end up on another island, where a giant snake eats both of Sindbad's companions.
• "Third Voyage (end)"
• Sindbad builds a shelter to keep the snake away, then gets the attention of a passing ship, which rescues him. He discovers that the captain of the ship from his second voyage is there, along with Sindbad's own merchandise, because they believed him to be dead. His stuff is returned to him and he trades successfully, then goes home and gives money to the poor.
• "Fourth Voyage"
• Sindbad and his crew are shipwrecked onto an island full of cannibals, who capture them. Sindbad sees that they are feeding his crewmates to fatten them up and eat them, so he refuses food and becomes too lean to eat, then escapes. He finds some men and returns with them to the city where their king lives, and teaches them how to make and use saddles and bridles, so he becomes rich and important in their city.
• "Fourth Voyage (cont.)"
• The king asks Sindbad to marry a beautiful woman he has picked out and to stay in that country forever. Sindbad marries her but still plans to escape, when he discovers that a law in this country dictates that, if one spouse dies, the living spouse must be buried with them. Soon, Sindbad's wife gets sick and dies, and he is buried in a massive tomb with her and a little food and water.
• "Fourth Voyage (end)"
• Sindbad survives off his food and water until someone else is buried alive, who he kills so he can have their food and they will have a faster death. He does this several times before he notices a small animal in the cavern and follows it through a narrow passageway onto the beach. He goes back in and collects the riches from the floor of the cavern, then hails down a passing ship and goes home to Bagdad.

Illustration of Sindbad's encounter with the giant by H. J. Ford

Week Five Reading Notes Part B - Tales of a Parrot

Source Story: Tales of a Parrot by Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi (1801).

• "Of a King and His Sons"
• Again Khojisteh wishes to go to her lover, but the parrot keeps her from her adulterous act by distracting her with the story of a prince who walks past a snake that had just caught a frog. He saves the frog and gives a piece of his own flesh to the snake to eat instead. Both animals transform into men and ask to serve him. The prince enters the service of a king, and the snake and frog each perform a task for him which pleases the king, then they return to their own habitats.
• "The Merchant Whose Daughter Was Lost"
• Same thing. A merchant's beautiful daughter insists that she will only marry someone very wise or very skillful. Three men offer themselves up: one who can find anything that is lost and tell the future, one who can make a flying wooden horse, and one whose bow never misses. The girl is kidnapped by a fairy and each man puts his skill to use in saving her, but in the end the archer wins her hand because he is the one who risks his life to save her.
• "Of a Brahmin Falling in Love"
• Same thing. The story is of a brahmin who falls in love with the daughter of the king of Babylon. A magician disguises him as a woman and convinces the king to take "her" in to stay with his daughter. When the daughter realizes who he really is, they steal her father's riches and run away together, and the king never finds them.
• "The Son of the King of Babylon"
• Same thing. The son of the king of Babylon falls in love with a beautiful woman and promises an idol that he will cut off his head as a sacrifice if she will marry him. They do get married, so he goes back to the temple and cuts off his head. His brahmin comes in and sees him dead, and so cuts off his own head. The woman comes in and is about to cut her head off as well, but the idol tells her to reattach their heads to their bodies and they will live again. She accidentally puts the wrong heads on the wrong bodies, and the men argue about which one of them should be her husband. The parrot tells Khojisteh that the man with the head of the prince should get her because the head is the "seat of wisdom."
• "The Merchant's Daughter"
• Same thing. A merchant has a beautiful daughter whom he offers in marriage to the king. The king sends his viziers to see if she is beautiful enough for him to marry, and they lie to him, telling him she is unremarkable, because they worry that he would neglect his royal duties if he married someone so beautiful. So the girl is married to someone else, but the king happens upon her one day and falls in love with her. He accepts his advisers' reasoning, but when they tell him to demand that the woman's husband give her up to him, he refuses, choosing instead to die of lovesickness.
• "The Nobleman With a Snake"
• Same thing. A snake is being chased by a man who wants to kill it, so a nobleman allows the snake to hide in his sleeve. Once safe, the snake tells the man that he shouldn't have trusted a snake, and now he will kill the man before leaving. The man distracts the snake and kills it.
• "The Soldier and the Goldsmith"
• Same thing. A soldier entrusts a goldsmith with some money, but the goldsmith hides it and pretends the soldier never gave it to him. The Cazy hides two people in the goldsmith's house, and they overhear him confide to his wife about stealing the money and where he hid it. The soldier gets his money back and the goldsmith is hanged.
• "Of the Merchant and the Barber"
• Same thing. When a rich merchant gives away everything he has in charity, he is blessed with a dream saying that a brahmin will arrive and, if he hits the brahmin on the head with a stick, the brahmin will turn into infinitely regenerating gold. He does this, but his barber witnesses it and starts hitting a bunch of brahmins on their heads with a stick, thinking they'll turn into gold. The merchant is called before the judge after the barber tells his story, but they believe the merchant, who says the barber has gone crazy.
• "The Frog, the Bee, and the Bird"
• Same thing. An elephant knocks a bird's eggs out of her nest while scratching himself on the tree, so she joins together with a long-billed bird, a bee, and a frog, and they together manage to kill the elephant. They do so by having the bee buzz in his ears to distract him will the long-billed bird plucks out his eyes, then the frog leads him blindly into a place he can't escape from, where he dies of hunger and thirst.
• "The Elk and the Ass"
• Same thing. A donkey and an elk are friends, and they sneak into a garden to graze at night. The donkey wants to sing, but the elk warns him that his braying will wake up the gardener, who will catch them both and make them prisoners. The donkey sings anyway, and the gardener wakes up and takes them prisoner.
• "A King Falls in Love and the End of Khojisteh"
• Again the parrot distracts Khojisteh from going to her lover by telling the story of a king who pillages Rome to gain the marriage of the Roman Emperor's daughter, whose father forbids her to tell her new husband that she leaves behind a son from a previous marriage. She misses her son, though, so tricks the king into bringing him there, but the king suspects that the boy is her lover, and has him killed (but the murderer hides the boy instead of killing him). An old woman helps the wife tell the story truthfully but blamelessly to the king, who is delighted to hear that his wife has been faithful and that her son is still alive. After this story, Miemun returns and the parrot tells him that Khojisteh has fallen in love with someone else and has killed the other bird. Miemun kills Khojisteh, the end.

"Parrot Addressing Khojasta" by Akbar 

Week Five Reading Notes Part A - Tales of a Parrot

Source Story: Tales of a Parrot by Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi (1801).

• "Miemun and Khojisteh"
• A great prince longs for a son and is finally blessed with one, whom he names Miemun and marries to a beautiful woman named Khojisteh. The two of them are incredibly close. Miemun finds a parrot in the marketplace and buys it after it gives him good business advice foretelling which spice will be in the greatest demand and earning him a good deal of money. Miemun also buys another bird, called a mina.
• "Khojisteh and the Parrot"
• Miemun leaves for a long time on a business trip, and while he is gone a prince from another country catches Khojisteh's eye and tells her that he will present her with a ring if she will come to his house at night for four hours. She plans to do so, but asks the mina bird first, who is a female. The mina bird tells her this would be a heinous action and she shouldn't do it, so Khojisteh kills the bird. Then she turns to the parrot, who realizes that if he rejects the idea he will also be killed, so he distracts her with a story.
• "The Parrot of Ferukh Beg"
• The parrot tells her a story about a merchant who leaves his wife and house in the charge of his own parrot. His wife cheats on him and when he finds out from a neighbor, assumes the parrot told him and tries to kill the bird. He survives, though, and helps her to make peace with her husband, pretending that God sent him back from heaven to convince him of her fidelity. And so Khojisteh spends the whole night listening to the story and doesn't have time to go to the prince.
• "Goldsmith, Carpenter, Taylor, and Hermit"
• Again, the parrot distracts her from going with a story. The story tells of the four men mentioned above who, in tandem, create a woman out of wood, gold, clothing, and prayers, then argue about who gets to marry her. Three other men claim she belongs to them, so the matter is taken to a Decision Tree, which opens for her and swallows her up, given that she was made out of wood. Again, Khojisteh doesn't have time to go to the prince.
• "The King of Kinoje and His Daughter"
• Same thing with parrot and Khojisteh. The story is of a derveish who wishes to wed a princess. The rajah says he may have the girl if he can produce an elephant load of gold, which the royroyan generously donates. So the rajah requires the head of the royroyan in return for the girl. Again, the royroyan acquiesces, going willingly with the derveish and offering up his head. The rajah is moved by the royroyan's generosity and offers the daughter to him to give to the derveish in marriage.
• "The Fowler, the Parrot, and Her Young Ones"
• Same thing. The story is of a parrot who is captured by a fowler but tricks him out of capturing her young, planning to escape him and return to them later. She gets him to sell her to the sick king, telling him that she is a trained doctor. She half-heals the king then tricks him into letting her go, whereupon she flies away to her young and never returns.
• "The Merchant and His Wife"
• Same thing. The story is of a man who travels a long time for work while his wife cheats on him at home. He returns home to find he can't get into his house, so he lodges elsewhere and sends a procuress to find a beautiful woman for him to sleep with. It so happens that she sends his own wife, who claims she came because she knew he was there and has neglected her. They make peace.
• "The Old Lion and the Cat"
• Same thing. The story is of a lion who keeps getting woken up at night by mice, so he hires a cat to keep watch and scare the mice away. The cat doesn't kill them so as not to lose her job, but one day she has her kitten keep watch while she is away, and the kitten kills them all. The cat loses her job.
• "The Commander of the Frogs, and the Snake"
• Same thing. The story is of a well full of frogs who have a ruler named Shapoor. Shapoor is not a good ruler, so they elect a new one and he leaves, seeking assistance from a snake. He gets the snake to eat all the frogs in the well as revenge, then tricks the snake into letting him go.
• "Four Rich Persons Who Became Poor"
• Same thing. The story is of four rich friends who become poor and go to a philosopher for help. He puts a magical ball on each of their heads which is to fall when they reach their destiny, and they are to dig where it falls. The first man finds a copper mine and offers to share, but the other three keep going. The same when the second man finds a silver mine and the third finds a gold mine; the fourth man keeps going. He finds an iron mine and is dissatisfied, so he tries to find his friends again and join them, but cannot, nor can he find the philosopher.
• "Besheer and a Woman Named Chunder"
• Same thing. A man named Besheer sleeps with a married woman named Chunder, so her husband takes her far away. Besheer goes with his Arab friend to see her, and the Arab pretends to be Chunder with her face covered so Besheer and Chunder can spend the night together. He takes a massive beating from her husband, which makes her feel bad, but he sleeps with her sister without telling her.

Image of a parrot by Angie Toh from NeedPix

Week Four Reading Notes Part B - Homer's Iliad

Source story: The Iliad by Homer (retold by Alfred J. Church)

• "The Rousing of Achilles"
•  The Greeks and the Trojans fight over the body of Patroclus, and Hector puts on the armor of Achilles, which angers Zeus. Achilles's two immortal horses weep for the death of Patroclus, but Zeus bids them leave so that they won't be taken by Hector too. Finally, the Greeks send Antilochus to tell Achilles of Patroclus's death.
• "The Rousing of Achilles (cont.)"
• Achilles is heartbroken by the news, and his mother offers to get him new armor from Hephaestus to wear into battle to defeat Hector in vengeance, although she tells him that when Hector dies, he will soon die, too. In the meantime, he yells across the trench and Athena makes his voice terrifying, so the Trojans fall back and the Greeks recover the body. Then Hera makes the sun set early so the sad day will end. Hector says he will meet Achilles in battle.
• "The Slaying of Hector"
• With his new arms, Achilles rejoins the Trojans in the fight and nearly overtakes the city, but Apollo interferes and saves the Trojans. Priam calls to Hector, begging him to come inside the city gates so that Achilles will not kill him.
• "The Slaying of Hector (cont.)"
• Hector weighs his options and decides to stand against Achilles, but at the last moment is terrified and flees. They run around the city three times, and the gods discuss whether or not to help Hector, but they decide against it (though Apollo attempts to help him anyway by helping him run). Finally Athena tells Achilles to catch his breath and she will make Hector come to him.
• "The Slaying of Hector (end)"
• Athena pretends to be Hector's brother and tricks him into facing his death at the hands of Achilles. Hector begs Achilles to send his body back to his father and mother, but after Achilles kills him, he drags his body back to the Greeks behind his chariot. Andromache is heartbroken when she finds out.
• "The Ransoming of Hector"
•  Achilles has the body of Hector drug around his friend's grave daily, but finally the gods tell him he must sell it back to the Trojans. So Zeus sends Hermes in disguise to guide King Priam with all his treasures unseen to the tent of Achilles, where the gods have made Hector's body remain unblemished.
• "The Ransoming of Hector (cont.)"
• Achilles agrees to ransom the body of Hector, and after eating together and agreeing on a nine-day truce between their armies for the burial and mourning of Hector, Priam sneaks away in the night, guided by Hermers again, with his son's body, to avoid getting caught by the Greeks in their own camp. They are able to bury Hector well and nobly.

"Achilles Dragging the Body of Hector Around Troy" Mezzotint after G. Hamilton

Week Four Reading Notes Part A - Homer's Iliad

Source story: The Iliad by Homer (retold by Alfred J. Church)

• "How the War with Troy Began"
• The king of Sparta had a beautiful daughter named Helen, who married Menelaus. Menelaus became king, and Paris, prince of Troy, carried off Helen and quite a bit of treasure. All the men of Sparta had agreed before Helen had married that, whomever she married, they would come together to get her back should this exact situation arise. So for nine years they attacked Troy but could not get through the walls, and they began to pillage nearby cities.
• "The Quarrel"
• The god Apollo rains death upon the Greeks because they stole a daughter of his priest for Agamemnon, and refused to return her. A prophet tells Agamemnon he must not only return her, but give up some of his spoils as well. He refuses, and he and Achilles get into an argument about it. Achilles threatens to leave, and Agamemnon bids him go, but says he will take Achilles' portion of the spoils as his own. Achilles prepares to slay him, but Athena stays his hand, telling him to wait and Agamemnon's actions will bring their own consequences. So he says his final words and lets it be.
• "The Quarrel (cont.)"
• Agamemnon takes the girl who was given to Achilles to replace the girl he had to return to the priest (who prays and stops the plague). Achilles is kind to the heralds who unwillingly come to fetch her, and she goes to Agamemnon against her will. Then Thetis (daughter of the sea) hears Achilles weeping and agrees to go to Zeus for him when Zeus returns from a feast and convince Zeus to make the Greeks flee before the Trojans, so that Agamemnon will miss Achilles's help and realize that he has wronged him.
• "What Thetis Did for her Son"
• Thetis convinces Zeus (against his better judgment and much to the anger of Hera) to make the Trojans beat the Greeks in battle at least for awhile to do honor to Achilles. So Zeus sends a Dream to Agamemnon to convince him to go into battle against the Trojans right away without Achilles.
• "Hector and Andromache"
• Prince Hector of Troy comes in from the battle to convince Paris to come fight. He asks his mother to make an offering to Athena to ask for her help, but Athena rejects them. Paris agrees to come to the fight, and Hector goes to search for his wife and child to say goodbye to them in case he dies.
• "Hector and Andromache (cont.)"
• Hector and Andromache talk about what will become of them; he tries to comfort her, for she says that Achilles has killed all her family, so Hector is the only family she has now. Hector prays that his son will grow up to be a great warrior, then tells Andromache not to worry, because he will only die if it his fate, and no one can escape fate anyway. Then he and Paris rejoin the war.
• "Embassy to Achilles"
• Ulysses, Phoenix, and Ajax visit Achilles to try to convince him to come back and help, because without him the Greeks are losing. They feast together. Agamemnon has sent with them all kinds of gifts as an apology for his behavior, and Ulysses accuses Achilles of being too proud and being the reason for so many Greek men dying.
• "Embassy to Achilles (cont.)"
• Achilles rejects Agamemnon's gifts and says he will not help him. Instead, he plans to return to his own country and settle down with a wife. He tells that his mother Thetis told him to choose between life (if he returns to Phthia, he will grow old but not be famous) and fame (if he attacks Troy, he will die). He asks Phoenix to join him and encourages Ulysses and Ajax to go to their own homes and avoid Troy, because it is "dear to Zeus."
• "The Deeds and Death of Patroclus"
• Patroclus, Achilles's companion, convinces Achilles to allow him to lead Achilles's people into battle in his stead, wearing his armor, so that the Trojans will retreat a little and give the Greeks some breathing room. Achilles relents, but tells Patroclus not to get cocky and approach the wall, but to stop fighting after saving the ships from burning.
• "The Deeds and Death of Patroclus (cont.)"
• Patroclus stops the burning of the ships but (shockingly!) forgets Achilles's warning and pushes towards the wall of Troy, slaying Trojans as he goes. He kills the Trojan hero Sarpedon, who calls out with his dying breath to Glaucus, asking him not to let the Greeks take his body.
• "The Deeds and Death of Patroclus (end)"
• Patroclus tries to overtake the city but Apollo pushes him back, saying it is not for him or Achilles to do this. Hector fights Patrolus and wins, destroying the armor of Achilles and killing Patroclus.

"Achilles Against Hector" - From Nikos Karakasidis on Flickr