Monday, October 20, 2014

Reading Diary Week 10: Indian Fairy Tales

Indian Fairy Tales


The grammar on this story seems a little off. Iagoo was very knowledgeable and for that reason the children loved him. This first story talks about the tradition of telling stories during the winter when the north wind howls. It introduces Iagoo as the narrator and ends the story by him starting to tell the next story we will read.

Talked about the seasons and an Indian Summer. Talks about a fisherman that is trying to brave the winter season to continue fishing. The north wind then planned on putting his fire out one night as a punishment for him not going south for the winter like his fellow humans did. But Shin-ge-bis fooled the winter wind and almost made him melt with his fire until the winter wind was no more. “Cheerfulness and courage can overcome even the North wind.”

Iagoo tells another story now about how the mountains were formed. All mountains were there from the beginning of time, except for one. He then introduces a young boy and girl and discusses the granulations of the place they once lived. Paying special attention the river in which they used to play in.  The two children one day fell asleep on a rock and while they were sleeping it grew up into a tall mountain. A worm had to inch its way up the mountain for a whole month and wake up the children to get them down and back to their parents.

Missing the O in the first word on this story. There were ten beautiful daughters and nine were married off. The last one was the fairest of them all and a really great person. Many men tried to marry her, but she said she could look into their heart and tell if they were good men, and none of them had good hearts thus far. One man came though that was poor and ugly, but she said he had a great heart so she finally married him. Her sisters made fun of her, but she didn’t care since he had a good heart. One day he went through a tree trunk after being ridiculed and to his surprise the enchantment that had him ugly broke and he was all of a sudden the most handsome man in the land. However the enchantment backfired and turned his lover into an old and ugly woman. However he decided to love her for the rest of their lives. Then when they went to feast the evening star intervened and changed everything back to beautiful. Things made of clay became silver and Oweenee became beautiful again! The two then had a son together. Since they now lived on the evening star, the little boy became very lonely though and desperately wanted to go to earth to play with other people his age. The story ended with the boy shooting a bird (which was actually a human) and them all being taken back to earth. It was an odd but cute story overall. I especially liked part two though where they get married and get their beauty back.


Iagoo leads up to his story with a mouse that was almost killed but the life of was spared. He then starts his story. The story starts with a brother and sister. The brother is a dwarf though, so the sister is the provider. The first part of this story ends with the sister giving the brother a bow and arrow. The first thing he shot and killed were some birds which he used to have his sister make a coat out of for him. The coat however shriveled up when he went out into the sun. He was so mad at the sun that he was determined to revenge it. He then caught the sun in a noose. This part didn’t make sense to me. But then the animals were completely in the heat of the sun. They were upset and so they awoke the dormouse, the largest animal in the kingdom, to cut it. As the dormouse was cutting it down the sun burned most of his body to ashes until all that was left was an animal the size of the normal mouse we see today. 


The introductions and interactions of Iaggo before the story actually begins are very long. It takes a while to get into the story because I’m already bogged down by the beginning. Talks about how there used to be a time without summer and how it was cold all of then time. Introduces the main character, a very great hunter. One day the hunter’s son who was 13 went out to try and shoot some game. He saw a squirrel and the squirrel told him that instead of shooting him, he would give him advice. The squirrel then talked to the boy about summer and told the boy that his father had the power to bring it back by breaking through the sky. So the boy told his father, and his father agreed. The father’s name is O-jeeg by the way. So O-jeeg travels to the tallest mountain in the world with some of his animal friends and is able to break through the sky and release all of the seasons down to the world. However, in the process he gets stuck up in the world above and is shot with an arrow. So he sacrificed himself for his son and the world to be able to enjoy all of the seasons. And now he can be seen as a constellation as a fisher with an arrow through his tail. Kind of sad but very heroic and sweet that he did all of this. Good story.


So this girl was different from the others. Rather than socializing she would go out into the woods. Her moth expected that she may be going and spending time with fairies. Although no one had ever seen the fairies, just their footprints. So the girl went out and hoped to see the fairies and be taken the land where it is always summer and everyone is always happy. That night when she went home, her mother told her it was time for her to marry. She would marry the hunter against her will, who was a tall man, and she was the size of a child/fairy. She did not want to marry this hunter at all. On the day of her wedding she was a sight to see. She went out into the woods one last time though before the ceremony. While in the woods though, a male fairy met her and whisked her away as his own wife and she was never seen again. Pretty good story, at least the girl got what she wanted.

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