Caleb's Myth-Folklore Assignments

 For the second part of the English Tales section I am taking notes on the story "Fairy Ointment" Illustration by John D. Batten (1890) Story A midwife is hired by a weird little fella with squinty eyes to come take care of a baby. The guy takes her to the house on a black horse with red eyes that moves insanely fast. When she gets there, there are a few other children and a mother in bed. She takes the baby and is told to rub a special ointment on its eyes the second he opens them. She does so. Curious as to what the ointment is meant to be, the midwife waits until nobody is looking and rubs some on her right eye. Immediately, the room transforms into a beautifully furnished place, the children turn into mischievous things with pointy ears and the woman is more beautiful than ever. These are pixies.     Eventually, the wife is good and the midwife is taken home. The next day she goes into market and sees the pixie taking things from the stalls but nobody notices. Wanting to

 For the first part of the English Tales section, I am taking notes on the story Binnorie. Illustration by John D. Batten (1890) Plot      Two princesses live near the bonny milldams of Binnorie. A man comes along and woos the elder sister. However, he eventually falls for the younger sister and leaves the eldest for her. Dramaaaa. The eldest sister blames her and hates her for it.     One day, the eldest suggests that they go down to the millstream and watch their father's boats. When they get there the eldest sister pushes the younger one into the water. The younger sister begs for help. The eldest sister denies her help because she hates her and anything she could be given in return would be hers if her sister died anyway.     The younger sister drowns. A miller and his daughter pull her body out of the water after the daughter saw her floating. A harper walks by and notices the beautiful woman. One day, he comes back and makes a harp from her breastbones and her hair and went

The Cookie Jar There it was. The great golden egg. The container of dreams. The genie's bottle. The cookie jar. Cookie Jar Clip Art from Pixy Mom had put it up on top of the fridge last week after she caught me with my "grubby little hands" inside, fishing around for the holy food. Well, it slowed me down. It wouldn''t stop me. It's simple really. I'm a child. That jar has cookies. Children eat cookies. I was going up there to get that jar. I went into the garage to grab the ladder. It wasn't there. I looked outside for it. There it was leaning up against the wall, wet with the day's earlier rain. No climbing that. So, I went to get a towel, to dry off the ladder, to climb to the cookie jar. For some reason the towel cabinet was locked. I went to dad for the key to unlock the cabinet, to get the towel, to dry the ladder, to climb to the cookie jar. Dad said he'd only give me the key if I brought him a cup of tea. So, I went to make a cup of tea

 For part B of the celtic tales section, I decided to take notes on Brewery of Eggshells. Illustration from Celtic Fairy Tales by John D. Batten (1892)  Plot This story is pretty short and simple. A mother has twins. She is one day called away to visit a neighbor rather far away. Although she doesn't want to, she leaves her children alone at home. She rushes back as soon as she can. She rushes even faster under worry when she sees a pair of "old elves of the blue petticoat" in the street. Her children were fine in their cradle. Over time, however, the twins did not grow. Their father proclaimed that they were not their children. Distressed, the mother went to the Wise Man of Llanidloes. He told her to cook and egg shell and offer it as dinner to the reapers (I'm not sure if this is the children or someone else). If the children say weird stuff for a child, toss them in the lake. If not, leave them be. The mother does so and the children say a weird rhyme: Acorn before

 For week 12 part A, I am taking notes on the story of Munachar and Manachar. Because of the nature of the story, these notes are a bit different than my usual notes. Illustration from Celtic Fairy Tales by John D. Batten (1892) "Plot" A manachar and a munachar go out to pick raspberries. As soon as Munachar would pick a berry Manachar would eat it. This pissed Munachar off and he wanted to kill Munachar. So, he decided to find a rod to make a gad to hang manachar. This began a sequence of requests. Rod needs axe to cut him Axe need flag to edge him Flag needs water to wet him Water needs deer to swim in him Deer needs a hound to hunt him Hound needs butter Butter needs a cat to scrape it Cat needs milk from cow Cow needs a whisp of straw from threshers Threshers need cake from miller Miller needs water from river Munachar tries to get the water with a sieve but it doesn't work. A crow comes by and "duabs". Munachar thanks the crow and daubs the sieve with clay

A Flintstone Knife ( Wikimedia ) October 15th, 1973 It was a cold and dreary night. The wind bit at my nose. The flooded street seeped into my shoes as I walked down 5th Avenue towards El Agujero.  I had been tracking the Sola gang for 6 months. They're operations sprawled across the city. Drugs, prostitution, trafficking. If it was somebody's vice, the Sola gang provided it. They didn't care who or what tried to stop them. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever stayed alive long enough. I thought I was different. We all do, don't we? Most people tried to take out the Solas gun blazing. They figured if they could take out the head, the body would wither. Nobody ever took out the head. Cops figured they could make it under cover. A total of three tried. The first made it 3 months before his head showed up at his kid's birthday party. The next lasted 1 month. His arms were safely delivered to his aging mother. The final idiot lasted a whole 3 days. His corpse was found sitting