16 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2023
    1. Traditions about Usal and the Zugubals are based on the story of Thoegay, a fiercewarrior, Zogo Le, and skilled navigator who commanded a ship crew of thirteen: a firstmate named Kang and a crew of twelve men, called the Zugubals. The group embarkedon a long expedition at sea on a hot day. Before long, the crew began consuming theirrations in zest. They were warned by Kang to conserve their supplies, but before longthey had consumed the water for the entire trip, including Thoegay’s. When Thoegayrealised this, he flew into a fit of rage and killed the 12 men. Because the Zugubals werealso spiritual beings, they could not die, so Thoegay cast them into the sky as two groupsof six stars: Usal (the six brightest stars of the Pleiades) and Utimal (the six brightest starsof Orion’s belt and scabbard). Thoegay then ascended into the opposite side of the sky,taking Kang and his canoe with him. He can be seen as a large constellation holding aspear in his left hand (the Southern Cross) and a Eugenia fruit in his right hand (theconstellation Corvus), standing at the bow of his celestial canoe (Scorpius) with Kang(Antares; Alpha Scorpii) sitting at the stern (Robinson 2016a).

      This is a great story, but interestingly, without the appropriate art to explicitly map the idea onto, it's much harder to remember or to help those unaccustomed to these ideas. Presumably the audience of this book doesn't/wouldn't.

      A simple drawing here or an overlay onto an existing image would be immensely helpful. Perhaps the Robinson reference has one? (it doesn't)

    2. The story on canvassymbolises the importance of traditional law, explains the transmutation of the Moon,and exposes the raw power of human emotion. T

      Notice how in the story of Garnkiny, the Moon Man, and Dawool, that the power of emotion is used as a means of strengthening not only the story, but the memory of the other associated elements.

  2. Jan 2023
  3. Dec 2022
  4. Sep 2022
  5. May 2022
    1. https://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/could-we-have-a-thread-on-welsh-customs/4068

      • robingoch
      • hawthorn
      • The Hamish Macbeth series By M.C.Beaton has superstitions of highlanders
      • Mari Lwyd
      • Siôn Corn
      • Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (1923) by J. Glyn Davies
      • Folklore of West and Mid Wales by John Ceredig Davies
      • Welsh Folk Customs by Trefor Owen
      • Welsh Folklore and Folk-Custom by T Gwynn Jones
      • Wirt Sykes including a volume on British Goblins
      • John Rhys
      • Welsh Folklore: Folktales & Legends of North Wales (1896) by Elias Owen
      • Calan Mai
    1. in the first public appearance of Siôn Corn (in Glyn Davies’ 'Cerddi Huw Puw"), he is described as a “rather benevolent spook”) himself! His basis seems to be a possibly family tradition concerning a pleasant bogeyman living up their family chimney, whose main interest seemed to be getting children to go to bed early, til he was introduced to a wider public.
  6. Oct 2021
  7. Sep 2020
    1. The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned DaviesIn You Goddess! we use “supernatural female” as a definition of goddess and this allows us to include the story of Blodeuwedd, who was created out of flowers by a wizard as a wife for his friend, but who kicks over the traces and finds her own partner. Bloeuwedd appears in this medieval collection of Welsh stories. The first English translation was published in the 19th century by the linguist, go-getter and driver of the Welsh renaissance, Lady Charlotte Guest. This 2007 translation by Sioned Davies is a fantastic contemporary version. In the past Blodeuwedd has been taken as a cautionary tale about adultery, but to modern readers she appears as a floral rebel breaking free from male control. Sadly things don’t end well for her and her metamorphosis from vegetable to human ends with her wizard enemy turning her into an owl. She lives on as the inspiration for Alan Garner’s The Owl Service.

      This has been on my list for a bit. I'm also reminded that I ought to get back to The Celtic Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends by Miranda Aldhouse-Green

  8. Aug 2020
    1. Though there were no graduate schools in America at the time, a loan from a benefactor, Jonathan I. Bowditch, to whom the book was dedicated, enabled Child to take a leave of absence from his teaching duties to pursue his studies in Germany. There Child studied English drama and Germanic philology at the University of Göttingen, which conferred on him an honorary doctorate, and at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he heard lectures by the linguists Grimm and was much influenced by them.
  9. Dec 2019
    1. the gentle ass

      In the fable by Aesop, a donkey becomes jealous of his farmer's lap-dog and tries to imitate it by jumping onto the farmer's lap, angering the farmer who punishes him. The moral is not to try to be something you are not. The Creature's situation inverts this lesson, however, since he is trying to be himself but is still rejected.

    2. Robin Hood

      The first definite reference to "Robin Hood" appeared in the poem Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) by William Langland, circa 1370. Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw and a highly skilled archer and swordsman depicted in English folklore. In some versions of the legend, he is depicted as being of noble birth. Having fought in the Crusades, he returns to England to find the Sheriff has taken his lands. In other versions, he is instead born into the yeoman class. In both versions, is said to have robbed from the rich to give to the poor.

  10. Dec 2015
  11. Nov 2015
    1. Fearing the use of loud instruments to communicate rebellions, Europeans created laws in the Americas to prohibit large numbers of enslaved people from gathering on their own time for funerals or other events.

      Europeans constantly feared rebellion

    2. In this way, those belonging to distinct groups, lineages, and ethnicities tended to view others as “foreigners.”

      Africans labeled each other.

    3. folklore of Africans and their descendants in the Americas was crucially fashioned not simply by an African past, but by the complex ways African cultures interacted with European and American peoples and cultures in the New World.

      their folklore was based on their lifestyle and encounters