Mythology and Folklore

(Eyes Crazy Funny from  Pixabay ) Author's Note: For this story, I chose to recreate the Italian tale of the Man, the Serpent, and the Snake. They key elements of the story are still there, but in this case I chose to replace the characters in the story with humans, and place it in modern day Britain. This gives the story, in my opinion, a more humanistic feel (obviously, I mean, it's with humans instead of animals). The characters of the horse and greyhound are portrayed a little differently though. One key term that is good to know is "bobby". In this case it is not a name, but rather a term that is used in the UK for a police officer sometimes. One day, a businessman was on his morning walk to work. As he strolled by the coffee shop he frequented, he noticed a Crook chained to a nearby lamp post. "Oi, mate, help me out o' this jam wouldja?" The crook asked the man. "Absolutely not you dimwit," the man started, "If...

(Cat and Mouse from  PublicDomanPictures )  For this set of reading notes in the Italian section, I decided to look at the story of The Cat and the Mouse. The reason I chose this story is that it is very... odd, to say the least. I think I don't fully understand it. For me, most ambiguous stories seem to have an end that has some metaphor or something like that, and perhaps there is one that I am missing. But with this story, it sort of just felt like things dragged on and on for too long, and then just sort of stopped. Maybe the underlying theme is something to do with gossip? How things get around? I'm really not sure to be honest. I think that as far as my notes go with this story, I think it's going to be more of a "what not to do" for me. I think I should refrain from dragging out my stories or having short, abrupt endings that don't really make much sense for the readers without some explanation.  Bibliography: The Cat and the Mouse, from...

(Northern-Watersnake-2-Returning-to-Rock from  Wikimedia Commons ) For part A of this week's reading notes, I chose to focus in on the story of the Man, the Serpent, and the Fox. I chose this story specifically because of the characterization within it. In the story there are two figures that represent cunning typically in stories: the fox and the serpent. Both are known in folklore to be personified as witty. Here we see a serpent trick a man into freeing him so that he may eat the man. They go ask a few different people whether the serpent should be allowed to. Two characters say yes: the greyhound and the horse. Both believe they are to die because of man, so both perhaps hold a grudge towards man for this. The greyhound believes those who do good will find evil, so it is simply the man's fate. The horse believes he is wronged for aging, so he thinks the man should die because he was wronged by man. These grudges are not directly mentioned, but seem to be implied th...