Jacobs - The Buried Moon - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

When I do spooky storytelling I love using my hooded cape and it's especially needed when telling The Buried Moon.  You'll see why as you get into this story I love to tell from Joseph Jacobs' More English Fairy Tales.  The full-length cape also flows well for movement.

By the way, my picture above was taken at the fence railing outside a cemetery crypt here in Clarkston.  Notice the one bent spike?

My telling of the story nowadays isn't the same as folklorist Jacobs.  I don't use all the same wording (my memory doesn't work that way, for one thing!) He admitted using the archaic dialect, but he believed this added to the fun of it.  Here in Keeping the Public in Public Domain segments I let you judge from the original.  However ages ago I must have made a few minor alterations in writing.  As needed I'll insert them if they seem unclear.  For a variety of reasons I was playing up the Bogles in the story.  I love that Scottish or Northumbrian term and give the Wikipedia link for you to start learning a bit more about them.

My first introduction to the story came from Susan Jeffers' illustrations of it for the book using Jacobs' text.  Go to Rivka Stein's Book Artists and Their Illustrations to see it all.  That's also a site many will enjoy prowling for its coverage of illustrators.  The Jeffers page on her illustrations for The Buried Moon will not only give you her complete work on the story, but also take you to another Jeffers illustrated tale, Thumbelina, and yet a different illustrated version of The Buried Moon.

This is one of those stories where I urge you to form your own visions of the action first.  Yes, Jacobs' book, as always, has an illustration from John D. Batten, but fortunately it's the third page in, so try to create your own image first.  When done with the story, you might want to prowl Google Images for Buried Moon images .  You'll see a few more books and it inspired theater productions, lyrics, a YouTube video of the musical version by the French symphonic metal band, Wildpath, and even a book called Buried Moon combining "stories and yoga for children during difficult times" which might give you additional ideas for the value of this story for dealing with fears and anxiety.

Save all that for later.  Let's make our own images.  (A few pages are a bit fuzzy on the edges due to the tight binding, but legible enough.  I'll insert text clarification as needed.)

Next I substituted "frightened" for "feared", which sounds like a mistake to modern ears.

(my changes from here on still show the original)

Haunting isn't it?  I always think of this story on nights when I'm out and the moon is missing.  May it haunt you in only the best way and Happy Halloween to you this coming week.
*******************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

 

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

   

You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/.  
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Jacobs - The Old Witch - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

  'Tis the season to tell spooky stuff!

(as if losing Net Neutrality isn't scary enough)

Of course some stories are scarier than others.  Today's story is on the gentler side, incorporating a familiar Tale Type I won't name before presenting it.  Next week I'll give a very different story I find especially haunting.

Both come from Joseph Jacobs' More English Folk Tales.  That link takes you to the five stories I've already used from his various anthologies.  He collected such a variety of folklore I haven't scratched the surface of his work.  All of his books were illustrated by John D. Batten.  I've mentioned Batten in the past because my own maternal lineage has Batten roots.  Fortunately the internet continues to grow.  The Batten link from Wikipedia is from this year and more recent than Sur La Lune's gallery  of his illustrations from ten years ago when they were unable to give further information about him personally.  Wikipedia's biographical information isn't very extensive, but it shows him living in England through his death in 1932.  Guess it was only the most distant of connections, if at all.  His artwork, however, is so interesting I must go back and edit previous posts to tag and credit him.

The Jacobs anthologies are pure gold mined in the days when folklorists were still beginning to preserve the oldest tales of Britain, Ireland, and Europe.  As a result I know I'm not familiar with all he collected and today's story is one I've missed before, but now find very useful.  (Those Tale Types I mentioned earlier are how storytellers can identify themes.)

 

There might be other versions, scarier versions where the witch might treat the other sister worse, but the thing I found most interesting was its use of the Kind and Unkind Girls Tale Type.  To understand more about this classification system, the Wikipedia article, The Aarne-Thompson classification systems, tells about it, including why, since 2004, it's now the ATU  types since Hans-Jörg Uther updated it.  (I also recommend following the link there to the Wikipedia article on Motifs as Thompson's motif index supplements tale types.)  A discussion of this particular tale type can be found on the SurLaLune Fairy Tales Blog article, Not really a Cinderella type: ATU480 the kind and unkind girls.  Personally I have found Asian tales where it's neither females nor even relatives, but the idea of one kind person being treated well, while an unkind person receives punishment.  This is good for pointing to the benefit of good actions without being didactic.

Next week I will present another Jacobs story.  It's one of my favorite tales to tell when spooky stories are requested.
*************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

 

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

   

You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/.  
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Building a Better World Is Still Needed

Evil will always find a way, but now is the time to train our children to Build a Better World.  Character education needs to happen if we want to grow better adults.

Priscilla Gorilla helped lead cheers about reading and more this past summer when Build a Better World was the summer reading program theme in libraries across the country.  There's a reason I think those cheers are still important. It's called an "earworm."

Sounds bad, but it doesn't need to be.  You've had earworms before when a song gets in your head and refuses to leave.  Cheerleading, like songs, can stick with you, popping out when needed or even unexpectedly.  A perfect example of that is an incorrect saying: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.  O.k. we know that's not true or verbal bullying wouldn't be a problem. 

Here's a picture of the building blocks from which audiences can choose to hear stories and cheers.

Not everyone can experience those stories, but these two past blog articles from 2017, June 17 and January 28, tell a lot about the program including several of the stories. Topics are Anger Management, Conflict Resolution, Cooperation, Courage, Creative Thinking, Forgiveness, Honesty, Patience, Persistence, Respect, and Responsibility.  Only one cheer, the one for Anger Management, has been posted and I'll repeat it here and the actions are given in parenthese.  Then come the others to use as your own resource.
Hey you angry folk
Come and clap your hands (clap, clap)
Stomp your feet (stomp, stomp)
You've got the beat (clap, clap)
Feel the groove (clap, clap)
Start to move (stomp, stomp)
Now have no fear / Take it in one ear
Just wait and send it out
Yes, twice just shout it out:
IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER!
IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER! 

F-R-I-E-N-D
F-R-I-E-N-D
To have a friend
Be a friend
Yes, indeed
F-R-I-E-N-D
F-R-I-E-N-D

I forgive you.
It doesn't change the past,
but it may change the future.

Build it up
BUILD IT UP
Let's get to it.
BUILD IT UP
You can do it --
BUILD A BETTER WORLD

(This next one fits several topics, just fill in the blank line with the negative action for the first and the positive for the second.)
Hey hey, ho ho
____________
has got to go!
Hey hey, ho ho
____________
is here to stay!

The final cheer uses part of a song's lyrics, but it's so appropriate for character education.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Of course repetition is so important.  When used in schools, it's a vital resource for teachers to use again and again.

I hope schools can bring this program to their schools as they have daily exposure to the problems and the daily opportunity to cope with it.  The wisdom of the book of Proverbs 22:6 is the earworm coming to me as I close this: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Pandora (different versions) - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

By Frederick Stuart Church who was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan

I admit I'm a "News Junkie", but this week . . . We've all heard about Pandora's Box, but how many of us have really looked at the myth and how it fits our world?  I confess it took some digging and, depending on how you translate a Greek word, there is more than one way to interpret it ... especially after a week with yet another horrific mass shooting this story's worth a further look.

No, I don't favor guns, but understand gun control laws have too many ways around them.  The slogan about "only outlaws will have guns" could become true.  All of this made me surprised to hear about part of the Pandora's Box legend worth remembering. 

O.k. I'll give a hint.  The word is ἐλπίς.  What you don't know it?  The transliteration is Elpis and when I looked at the story, it makes a huge difference between whether it is Hope or Foreboding (some others translate it Expectation).  Since we're not Greeks living in classical times, earlier English versions will show why I think it's worth knowing about this long told story.  By the way, Hesiod's ancient Greek poem combines a farmer's almanac (now that's an Old Farmer's Almanac!) with the tale of Prometheus, which leads into that of Pandora, and the five ages of mankind.

Prometheus Carrying Fire by Jan Cossiers (Wikimedia Commons)

Go to Wikipedia's article for the Greek word and a brief summary of a story you may think you know.  You will discover the ancient Greek says it was a jar, how it was mistranslated as a box, and also discover the importance of Prometheus and his brother, Epimetheus -- not a frequently mentioned character.  The article doesn't say much about Erasmus, who mistranslated the jar as box, but he also is the reason our early English versions use the chief Roman god, Jupiter, instead of the Greek name for the king of the gods, Zeus. Erasmus was translating into Latin and he's the source of our English versions even though authors may claim Greek mythology and Hesiod as their source
Sheesh!  Is it any wonder many find mythology confusing?  At the article's end is a very helpful summary of Wikipedia links to ancient Greek mythology and religion.

On to the story! . . . or a trio of versions plus added illustrations.

Let's start with James Baldwin's Old Greek Stories, but you will note he uses Jupiter -- although Baldwin does give the alternative names when they first appear in the book -- and see how he translates ἐλπίς.  Back in 1895, when he published it, it was a third grade reader.  Can't help wondering how many third grade classes could manage it today.  I open with the second chapter after the theft of fire by Prometheus.

Can't find any information naming the illustrator with the faint signature

card by John William Waterhouse

I did search online and in Baldwin's biography in The Junior Book of Authors, but the illustrator remains ignored, even among all the Pandora art at Wikimedia Commons.  Here's another illustration from that collection of Pandora art which seems to hint at Foreboding.

So Baldwin used Foreboding and considered it good to have it trapped and unable to escape.

What started me on this search was hearing that Hope was in the box.  Here's the version librarian, writer, and anthologizer of many folktales, Frances Jenkins Olcott, crafted in The Wonder Garden.  She claims it's "Retold from Hesiod and Other Sources", but I notice her use of Jupiter.  Still she tells a good story, while keeping it simple. 

by Charles Lenoir (Wikimedia Commons)

Thomas Bulfinch is even more succinct in his The Age of Fable, keeping it to a single page if we pick the story up where Pandora appears.

I bothered with this, not only because Bulfinch is a standard reference to mythology, but also because he discusses the role of hope keeping us from becoming "completely wretched."  I also find interesting his discussing the other idea that she was sent in good faith to bless man.

Because Pandora was the Greek's name for the first woman, many have compared her to Eve.  A more recent book, Classical Mythology by Mark P.O. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon was begun with its first edition in 1971.  It's often used as a textbook or reference book for the topic.  Classical Mythology discusses the Biblical Eve comparison, but, more important to today's discussion, Hope is questioned if it's a "good" or an "evil."  Does it help us survive life's terrors or prolong the misery?

To see no hope or to see it as only prolonging our misery seems to me as deserving the label of Clinical Depression.  I have an idea for working with that hope which I plan to discuss next week.  Until then, one source I didn't use because the story is so changed by the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys (on pages 78 to 99) , but the title continues "with 60 Designs by Walter Crane"and they are a story unto themselves.  So however you view the story, I hope you enjoy Crane's artistic vision.

*************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

 

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

   

You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/.  
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!