Extra Reading Diary Post for week 14: Czech Folktales

The unit I chose for this week is Czech Folktales​.  My favorite was The Bear, the Eagle, and the Fish.  

Bear, Fish & Eagle

I love that this story is a happy ending fairytale.  This story reminds me a little bit of the story Beauty and the Beast.  The bear, eagle, and fish were all human princes enchanted by a spell just like the Beast was enchanted by a spell.  

The story diverges from the Disney movie where the women marry the enchanted princes in their animal forms and have children with them.  In the Disney movie, he turns back into a human before he and Belle marry.

I liked the suspense in the beginning of the father getting lost in the woods and needing the help of the three animals to retune home.  I also like the fact that the father had flaws just like all real humans.  This father had a gambling addiction which cost him to lose all his money even though he was given lots of money by each animal.

In the end, the father ended up defeating the magician who had cast a spell on the princes because each of the princes gave him tree things to aid him in his search for the magician.  The bear gave him three tufts of fur, the eagle gave him three feather and the fish gave him three fish scales.  The father used these special gifts to help him defeat the magician.

After the magician was defeated, the princes & their children turned back into their human forms and each of them were given part of the king's land to live out the rest of their days with their families.  Even though this story had a rough beginning with the father losing his daughters, his gambling, and losing his way in the woods and his money, the story ended on a happy note with the magician being defeated and the families living happily ever after together forever.

Czech Castle

Reading Diary A for Week 13: Italian Popular Tales

I chose the unit Italian Popular Tales and my favorite stories were Zelinda and the Monster and The Fair Angiola.

I really liked the story of Zelinda and the Monster because it reminded me of the story of Beauty and the Beast.  The serpent reminded me of the Beast because he had been enchanted by a witch's spell.  He looked like a serpent, but once the spell was broken he was actually a young, handsome prince.  The story also had an enchanted mirror in it which the serpent used to show the princess her dying father.  That is a similar storyline to the movie Beauty and the Beast as well.

Where the stories diverge is that the princess does not love the serpent and tells him every day that she doesn't want to marry him.  The serpent uses the knowledge of the princesses father dying to persuade her to marry him.  It's when he promises to save her father that she decides to marry him.  Beauty doesn't declare her love for the Beast until he dies in her arms.

The movie becomes similar again when both the serpent and Beast turn into handsome, young princes and they marry the women they love.  In both stories, they also live happily ever after.

Angiola and Prince

My second favorite story in the unit was about The Fair Angiola.  This story reminded me a lot of the story Rapunzel.  I liked this story a lot.  The stories are similar in how the princesses are taken away from their parents and kept hidden away in a tall castle far, far away.  Both stories have princesses with extremely long hair and they both let down their hair out of the castle window, so that their captors can come inside the castle.

The stories diverge with how the princesses were taken to the castle to be hidden away.  Angiola had met her captor many times on the path into town and had talked to her numerous times.  She knew that one day she would be taken away because her mother had told her so.  Rapunzel did not know she was kidnapped and raised by an evil woman.  She had never met her before being kidnapped and thought she was her mother all along.

The stories again become similar in regards to the princesses meeting the princes in the tall castle and they both ran away with their princes.  The princesses were also chased and threatened by the women who had kidnapped them.  They also both ended up getting married and living happily ever after.

Extra Reading Diary Post for week 12: Nursery Rhymes

The unit I chose for this assignment is Nursery Rhymes.  My favorite was Nursery Rhymes: Charms and Lullabies.  Here is the first one...

(Wikipedia: Rock-a-bye Baby)

HUSH-A-BYE, baby, on the tree top;

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock;

When the bough bends, the cradle will fall;

Down will come baby, bough, cradle, and all.

This lullaby is one of my all time favorites from when I was a child. I also sang this lullaby to my own children when they were little.  Even though it is a lullaby with an awful ending with the cradle and baby falling out of the treetop, little children don't know it has such a sad ending because the song is so catchy.  They don't really pay attention to the words...just the melody.

Lullaby

(Wikipedia: Peter Piper)

PETER PIPER picked a peck of pickled pepper;
A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked;

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where's the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?

This is one of my favorite charms (or tongue twisters) from my childhood. It brings back memories of my other and I in her kitchen saying tongue twisters to see who would mess up first.  Unfortunately for me...my mother won most of the time.  Lol   We would make a game of it every week while I was int he kitchen helping her make dinner.   My mother has since past away (last year), but the memories of all the good times we had from my childhood remain with me.  Choosing this unit about nursery rhymes reminded me of all those good times.  After I became an adult, single mother and moved back in with my parents for a while, we had the same kind of fun with my first daughter as she was growing up as well.

Peppers

Reading Diary A for Week 12: More Celtic Fairy Tales

The unit I chose for this week is More Celtic Fairy Tales.  My favorite story is The Fate of the Children of Lir.  This was a three-part story in the weekly readings.

This story was quite different than all the previous stories I have read from the earlier weeks in this class.  I like how the story was written in regards to the chosen King wanting to keep peace with Lir even though Lir wanted to become King and was upset about not being chosen as the new King.  Instead of fighting and/or killing Lir, the new King chose to keep the peace with Lir by offering him one of his daughters to be his wife.

Lir had a happy life with many children born to them until his wife died after having his last child.  Both Lir and the new King were devastated by her death, but the Kind wanted Lir to have happiness again so he gave him another one of his daughters to marry.  They were all happy for a while, but then the story takes a dark turn with the new wife becoming jealous of Lir's children.

The new wife takes the children to a lake and casts a spell on them to turn them into swans for 500 years.  This is where the story starts to remind me of the story and movie called The Swan Princess.  An evil sorcerer turned her into a swan.  The new wife reminds me of the evil sorcerer and the children remind me of Odette, the Swan Princess.

Even though the story started out very happy, it ended in a very sad way with Lir's children never seeing their father again.  It wasn't until 500 years later when a man from the North married a woman from the South that the spell was broken.  After the spell was broken, the children turned back into humans, but they were no longer children anymore.  Lir's children were very old, fragile humans who ended up dying just a day or two later after the spell was broken.

I really enjoyed the story overall even though it had a very sad ending for everyone.  I tend to enjoy stories with a happy ending better though.  I probably would have preferred that the children be reunited with their father, but that is not the way the story was written.  Maybe I'll retell this story and put it as my next retelling of a story in my Portfolio.  I could change it to have a happier ending.

Lir's Children

Reading Diary B for Week 1: Celtic Fairy Tales

I chose to finish off the Celtic Fairy Tales unit and my favorite story was The Tale of Ivan.  This tale was a similar story to ones I've read in the past where the man goes on a journey to find better work, so that he can better support his family.  He does find work, but also learns quite a few life lessons as well.

As he is applying those life lessons on his way back to his wife, he learns a lot about the people around him and about himself too.  He holds steadfast to what he was informed to do and finally finds his way back to his wife, who is very happy to see him again.

This story also makes me think about my own life and how my husband would do anything he needed to support his family.  He also has very strong beliefs and morals and would have down exactly as the man in this story did on his way home.  The male character in this story reminds me a lot of my husband.  I can also relate to the wife character because I would have been loyal and waited for my husband to return like she did.  I have very high standards and morals as well.

I also like how the family was rewarded for their good deeds in the ending of the story.  The husband not only received his wages for the 3 years he worked for the farmer, but also was rewarded for doing exactly as he was advised to do.  He and his wife ended up living in a nice place and having money to support them.  It makes me think of the saying, "A good deed shall not go unrewarded".  I firmly believe that and try to do a good deed everyday at the minimum.  I love stories with a good moral and a happy ending. 

Ivan

Reagan Diary A for Week 11: Celtic Fairy Tales

I chose to read the Celtic Fairy Tales for my Reading Diary "A" submission and my favorite story was The Horned Women.

This was a story about a woman who was approached by twelve witches each with a different amount of horns on their foreheads.  They bewitched the woman and tried to get her to do their bidding for them.  As she was trying to perform some tasks for them, she heard a voice that told her to say and do certain things to make the witches go away.  She did as the voice had told her by putting feet water around the house, making a cake with blood from her family members and other things like that to save her family from the witches return.

When the witches returned, they weren't able to reenter her home because she had performed the tasks that the voice of the Spirit of the Well had told her to do.  The witches finally went away and left her family alone for over 500 years.  Her family kept the traditions alive so that their family would continue to be safe from the witches (horned woman).

I really admire the woman's tenacity and willingness to do whatever it took to save her family from the witches.  She was a mother of young children and good mothers will do anything in their power to protect their children.  She showed a great strength even though she was originally overcome by the witches spells in the beginning.  She believed that her family would be safe if she listened to the voice and did what it said.  Because of her actions, her family remained safe for many hundreds of years.

I can relate to how the character felt about her family because I would do anything I could to keep my family safe.  I think that is why I liked this story so much because I can see myself in this story's character.  We can all be fooled by false or bad people at times, but once we figure out they are trying to hurt people we love, then that's when the "momma bear" personality in me comes out.

The Horned Women

Extra Reading Diary: Nigerian Folktales

The unit I chose for this reading post was Nigerian Folktales​.  My favorite story was The Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull.

This story about the disobedient daughter was a wildly creative and imaginative one.  The story was about a snooty, beautiful girl who decided she would only marry the most handsome man in the area.  This news intrigued a skull from the ghostly world and he set forth to win her affections.  This is where the story gets imaginative.  The skull decides to borrow body parts from the most handsome men around him.  Once he was finished acquiring the body parts, he won the fair maiden's affections and they got married.

Once he returned to his world, he returned all the borrowed body parts and was just a skull again.  Even though the maiden was frightened, she stayed with him and helped him and his mother for quite some time.  The skull's mother took pity on her and sent her back home on a gentle breeze.  The young maiden promised her parents that she would not be so vain anymore and would marry whomever they chose for her.  She ended up marrying her father's friend and lived happily ever after for many years.

One of the morals of this story is don't judge a book by its cover.  There are many nice looking men in the world, but just because they look nice doesn't mean they are nice as they appear.  Another moral in the story is to listen to your parents because they have you best interest at heart.  All her parents were trying to do was marry her off to a man who may not have been the best looking guy, but one that would be able to take care of her properly.  She didn't listen and ended up marrying a stranger who turned out to be something completely different from what she expected.

I like the fact that the maiden was portrayed as a brave and loyal character even under the strange circumstances of marrying a skull.  She may have been a stubborn character in the beginning of the story, but she became a very loving and devoted character to the husband that was chosen for her in the end of the story.  I liked this story because the main character, the young maiden, learned a valuable lesson and it made her a more humble person in the end.

Woman and Skull

Reading Diary A: Chinese Fairy Tales

The unit I chose for this week was Chinese Fairy Tales.  My favorite stories were Why Dog and Cat are Enemies and The Favorite of Fortune and the Child of Ill Luck.

In the beginning of the first story, I like how the cat and dog were friends and got along well.  They both loved their owners and their owners loved them too.  After their owners had sold their golden ring and started to lose their wealth, the cat and dog created a plan to return the golden ring to their owners.  They worked together, side by side, and did find the ring together.  On their way home, the cat ended up getting home faster than the dog and took full advantage of this fact to get all the praise and adoration from the owners.  This infuriated the dog because all he received was scolding and punishment.  In this story, I can see why that would cause a huge rift between the cat and dog.

I liked this story a lot even though the cat and dog are enemies in the ending.  The story reminded me somewhat about how some human relationships turn out.  Sometimes even someone you've known for a long time can turn on you and become your worst enemy.  I have seen it happen to some of my friends before and it's a horrible feeling for them.

Dog and Cat

In the second story about the child of ill luck, it starts out with a King's daughter who has chosen someone to marry that the King does not approve of at all.  He is so enraged at the act that he throws them both our of the kingdom to live on their own.  They barely survive, but one day the husband decides to go out and seek his fortune.  After 18 long years, the husband returns to find his wife still waiting for him.  He found his fortune and shared it with his wife after he realized she had done what she had promised.  The story ends with her only living for a short while after being rescued by her husband.

Even though this was a pretty sad story, I still liked it.  I admire the wife's loyalty, trust and honesty.  I aspire to have those same qualities in my own life, but to be honest, I'm not sure if I could have waited for eighteen long years for my husband to return.  I probably would have considered him long gone or dead after several years had passed.  I can relate to the part of the story where she chose a husband to which her father didn't approve of.  She was young and I remember doing that very thing when I was a young teenager as well.  She sounds like she was a pretty rebellious girl and that is a trait in myself that I can relate to in this story.  This story also makes me think of the Disney story Aladdin.  The princess falls in love with a beggar and her father is against it at first.  Then, in the end, they get married and share in the kingdom's fortunes.

Princess Jasmine & Aladdin

Extra Reading Diary--Turkish Fairy Tales

Today I chose to read the first half of the Unit called Turkish Fairy Tales.  My favorite stories were The Fish-Peri and The Fish-Peri (cont.).  This was an interesting story about a man who lost his family and didn't know what to do with himself after that loss.  He ends up catching a fish that turns into a beautiful maiden.  This story may have a sad beginning, but it turns out to have a very happy ending.  The fish maiden helps out the man with every task the King throws at him.  I like how the fish maiden was loyal to the man because he had spared her life when he found her.

My favorite character would be the fish maiden.  She is very beautiful, kind-hearted, forgiving, loyal, and helpful to the man and I admire those qualities in a person.  I like the fact that she chose to help him by cleaning his house and helping him with all the difficult tasks that the King threw at him to do.  I also admire the quality that she possesses with helping someone in need.  I can identify with this character because of her qualities.

The illustration is a perfect picture of the Fish-Peri and the man.  I think it is a beautiful picture and I think the font of the title is perfect.  The chosen font is wavy and flowing like the water and a fish's tail.  Tome, the picture also looks like it depicts a castle in the background.  In the story, one of the difficult tasks that the King asks him to do was build him a beautiful, golden castle.

Fish-Peri

Extra Reading Diary: Santal Folklore

The unit I chose for this blog was Santal Folktales​ and my favorite stories were The Raja's Dream and The Raja's Dream (cont.).

Golden Snake

I thought this was a great story.  It starts off with a somewhat sad storyline about a man who can't have children by his first wife, so he decides to marry a second woman because his first wife can't have children.  After his second wife has children by him, his first wife ends up bearing him child.  The man can't choose which son will inherit his fortune, so he kicks the first wife and her son out of the palace.  The father then has a dream about a golden, tiger, snake and monkey.  No one is able to interpret his dream, except for the son from his first wife.  He then sends all his sons on a journey to find these golden creatures.

The son from his first wife goes out on a journey to find these golden creatures while the two sons from the second wife just complain and sulk because they think there are no such creatures.  While on his journey, the son from the eldest wife meets several uncles and each one tells him to carry on and he shall find his animals.  He ends up finding a snake princess and marrying her.  After some trials and tribulations, he is given a magical ring and he heads back home.  With the help of his snake princess (who has magical powers) and the ring, he shows his father the golden animals and he is ultimately chosen as the successor to the throne.  The second wife and her children are then thrown out of the kingdom.

I love how the story ends with a happy ending with the son from the first wife being named the successor to the throne.  This son ended up with a wonderful princess bride who always believed in him and helped him every time he needed it.  The other sons were dismayed and never even attempted to look for the animals, so they were cast out.  The story has a moral to it as well.  The moral of the story was if you persevere through the trials and tribulation in your life and believe in yourself, you will be rewarded in the end.  This story also has another moral to it.  This moral is if at first you don't succeed, try and try again.  This saying also applies to the first wife's son.

Golden Tiger

Reading Diary A: The Praying Baker

The Praying Baker in the Unit Persian Tales would be my favorite for this week.  This story was one of the few stories that had a happy ending.  Most of the stories in this unit had horrible endings with people getting eaten, killed or hurt in some way.  This story was about a baker who was asked by a King to find his ring or he would have to give his life if he didn't find the ring.  The King gave him 10 days to find it.  Upon the tenth day, the baker's wife found the ring in the belly of a fish while she was preparing it for dinner.  The baker presented the ring to the King and the Kind ended up making the baker his favorite person and gave him a huge reward.  There was quite a bit of trickery in this story as well on the part of the King.  This story had several plot twists which I thought made it more interesting.  The picture that went with the story was of a fish and I thought it was quite appropriate for the story.

I guess you could say that I wasn't really a fan of this unit overall because most of them ended up with people getting hurt in the most horrible of ways.  This main character in this story threatened the baker with death if he didn't find his ring, but he lived at the end because he had found it.   The story leads you to believe that it was because of his faith in God that the ring was found by his wife and his life was spared because of that.  I also like the fact that in this story that the man's wife is the one who found the ring.  In general, all the stories in this unit make the females out to be stupid or unworthy.  In this story, the baker's wife is the actual hero because she was the one to find the ring and told her husband to present it to the King.  The only thing that has me puzzled about the stories in this unit is that they always end with "and the sparrow never got home".  I'm not exactly sure what to make of that last comment.  It almost seems like it doesn't belong in the story, unless there is some meaning to it that I'm not comprehending.

The fish & the ring

Extra Reading Diary Post: Saints and Animals

In the unit Saints and Animals unit, my absolute favorite story was The Wolf-Mother of Saint Ailbe.  It was a wonderful story about a wolf foster mother who took in a human baby to raise as one of her own.  This story made me think about my own life and how similar it is to this story.  I was engrossed in this story from the minute I started reading it and couldn't wait to find out how it ended.  It was like I was reading the story of my own life, but written from a foster child's perspective.

In the beginning, the parents abandon the child and this is an unfortunate commonality with fostering in present day.  The children are found in horrible conditions or without parental supervision at all, and then they are given to foster parents to raise.  As in this story, the wolf foster mother loved the child as if he was her own pup.  She did not treat the human child any differently then her biological pups.  This is the same way that good foster parents feel about their foster children.  We love them, even when they don't look or act like us, and we raise them as a member of our family until they are reunified with their parents (or other family members) or become a permanent, legal part of our own family.  When the human baby was taken from the wolf mother, her heart broke for the loss of that child.  As foster parents, we do mourn the loss of a child when they are returned to their biological family, but we also know that is the goal from the beginning of our journey with the child.  After many years Saint Ailbe grew up in the castle with his new family, but also longed and thought about his wolf family too.  This is also a normal part of a foster child's journey.  We've had children who have grown up after leaving our home and have looked us up so that they could see us again.  I loved how Saint Ailbe saved his wolf mother and took care of her and her family after the hunters had captured her.  Often times when we see kids after they've left our home, they are extremely excited to see us and talk to us again.  As in this story, the wolf mother has fears and reservations about the child's new family, but they all became a happy family in the end.  We have also had many similar happy ending with our former foster children and their biological families. 

Saint Ailbe

Reading Dairy A: Week 3--Saints & Animals Unit

My favorite story from the Saints and Animals unit is the story of Saint Blaise and His Beasts.

Saint Blaise icon

The story is about a boy who is born to a wealthy family, but chooses to be something different than the other boys around him.  He loved all animals and wanted to take care of them, as well as, people too.  When he grew up, he studied medicine and chose to heal the sick...wild animals, tame animals, people, etc.  All the animals loved him too because he took care of them with kindness and love in his heart.  He decided to go live in the forest among the animals.  A cave became his home and all the animals came to see him and never disturbed him if he was in prayer.  He had chosen to be a Christian in a time where Christians were not treated kindly.  Once the Christians around him chose him to become their Bishop, the people and animals rejoiced.  But little did the animals know that making his faith known would put him in harms way.  For there was a cruel Emperor ruling over the land and he enjoyed torturing Christians.  Once it became known to the Emperor that Blaise was a Christian, and a highly revered one at that, he sent out his men to find him.  His men found him in his home, the cave in the forest, and were amazed at how the animals treated him.  After they got over their amazement, they captured Blaise and took him to the Emperor's prison.  They tortured him, tried to drown him and finally ended up beheading him at the end of the story.  All of the animals and Christian people were deeply saddened when Blaise was finally killed.

The part I like most about the story is the character, Blaise.  I can relate to him because I love all animals dearly too.  I love where we live in Moore because there is such a wide variety of wild and tame animal life around my home.  I would never harm an animal and neither did Saint Blaise.  My chosen career path is also in the medical field where I can help people.  Blaise chose medicine while I chose Psychology.  They are similar in the chosen field, but he chose to heal the body while I choose to heal the mind.  I also admire Blaise's tenacity to stick to his faith and not waver in his decision.  I feel the same way about sticking to my moral and principles.  Overall, I felt that this story was my favorite and the one story I could relate to the most in the unit.

Extra Reading Diary: Women Saints

In the second part of the Women Saints readings, I found that a lot of the reading were quite interesting reads.  I found one story in particular to be the most intriguing.  It was the story of Saint Martha.

In this story, she is an unmarried, virgin who believed in God and devoted herself to converting people to Christianity.  Saint Martha comes upon a beast, a dragon, who has killed everyone before who had dared crossed the river where this dragon resided.  It was interesting to me that all she had to do to stop the beast was to speak some words and make the mark of the cross.  Once she caused the dragon to be still, she defeated the dragon by tying it up with her girdle.  After the dragon was tied up, the townspeople played the dragon with swords.

Later, in the story, a man was so enticed by hearing her speak that he attempted to cross the river, but never made it across because he drowned.  Once Saint Martha found out about the man's death, she prayed over the body and was able to raise him back to life with the Lord's help.

This story is quite different from all of the other stories in this section.  No other story that I can recall ended with the woman saint remaining alive at the end of the story.  I believe this is why I find this story so intriguing.  The characters actually sought her out to hear her words of the gospel instead of martyring her for her beliefs.

15th-century painting of Saint Martha

Reading Diary A: Women Saints

The Women Saints unit was filled with an abundance of stories about virginal women who sacrificed themselves for their beliefs.  Some died in monasteries, while others were beheaded for their beliefs.  Here are a couple of my favorite stories from this unit:

Saint Pelagien:  The attribute that I admire most about her is that she stood up for what she wanted and believed in, which was not getting married and taking care of herself.  She was so devote in convictions that she cut off her hair to disguise herself as a male so she could live in a monastery. While living in the monastery, she was accused of getting a woman pregnant and was treated terribly because of the accusations.  Saint Pelagien denied the accusations against her in her story.   I'm most intrigued by this story because no one ever figured out she was a male until she had written a letter exposing her true identity upon her death.   When her true identity was discovered to be of a virginal woman, her body was then exhumed and buried where she truly belonged...with the nuns.  A truly fascinating story to read.

Saint Marine:  This story is very similar to Saint Pelagien's story, but the details are quite different.  She did not move into the monastery to escape marriage, but was taken into the monastery by her father who disguised her as a boy.  Saint Marine also lived out her life there and while living in the monastery was also accused of fathering a child.  Saint Marine chose not to deny the accusations that she fathered a child while living in the monastery.  She chose to keep her gender a secret and took in the child as her own and raised him.  Even though she never admitted that she was indeed a woman, she was found out to be a woman upon her death.  She was then blessed and buried as the virginal woman too.  It truly amazes me that no one in either monastery ever found out the women's true genders until their deaths.

Saint Marina by joeatta78