WHAT YOU MISSED

 

Last month was the live, face-to-face Kalevala in the Elm Tree! (Marvellous – not least for the sense that Lemminkäinen was a foolish male loudmouth who was always getting himself into trouble and having to be rescued by his mother! We were left with the sensation that the subtitle should be: Wonderful Women of the North. Darning socks and sweaters for blokes was obviously just training for putting your son together out of bits of flesh and bone and entrail – the brain? Can you find one? Don’t worry – leave it out – he’ll never notice – he doesn’t use it, after all!)

This month, though, on Zoom, had the usual suspects, Ian, Dan, Paul, Jane, Gary and Mike as tellers, with Maddie, Norman, and a first-time guest Trixie Sparkles (who said she’d come again, and would like to learn some stories to tell) as listeners.

Jane started us with a self-composed story (done for a wedding) in which the princess, fleeing a marriage her father wanted to arrange with the next door Bluebeard-style king, becomes an ordinary woman (i.e. skilled at everything, child-minding, bone-setting, herb-lore, potions etc.) and attracts the attention of a wandering prince, who is running away from his responsibilities. Impressed by her skills and competence (as well as her inevitable beauty) he takes her back to meet his ailing father, and she, although she can’t save the king’s life, eases his passing. The couple marry, as the king had urged them to, and rule wisely and well, with great care and regard for their subjects.

Mike thought it was time for misery, so he told The Green Mist (one of his signature spring stories), though he did point out at the end that, though the young girl could only live until the first cowslip died, cowslips do still bloom again every year. You can read the original version here  and also find the other tales from the Lincolnshire Cars that all have a haunting quality (e.g. The Dead Moon), even though strict folklorists suspect Mrs Balfour may have made them up herself! (And why not? Somebody must have made up folktales in the very beginning… )

Dan’s Japanese story to do with springs (rather than Spring, as the theme had been presented) told us about the non-reading Hiro, on his way to a shrine in the west, to ask for a good harvest, who is asked by what he thinks is the kami (deity/spirit) of a spring he drinks from to take a written message to her sister, who lives in a spring near the shrine he is intending to visit. At the other end, an old man warns him against going to the spring, which is haunted by a yokai (demon) who eats travellers. The old man shows Hiro the characters on the written message which mean ‘eat’ and ‘food’, and then rewrites it, so that the yokai gives Hiro an earthenware pot to take back to her sister – which turns out to be full of gold! Hiro doesn’t take the gold back to the yokai in his home-spring, but does use some of it to build shrines at both springs, so that the yokai will be worshipped, which, we are assured, turns them into kami, and stops them being malevolent!

Paul told us (in the first person) the story of Eilmer, the Flying Monk of Malmesbury, whose aviation was inspired by the sight of Halley’s comet in his youth – though his failure to attach a tail to himself, in full imitation of the comet, led to the failure of his flight. He also lived to see the comet again in 1066 (so his broken legs definitely healed). Here is a link 

Ian gave us a Hungarian tale, in which a young, handsome, unmarried king is pursued by every woman in the kingdom, all of them cooking for him and giving him presents. The king’s valet recycles the food to the poor and the value of the presents to the kingdom’s finances, but is sacked by his mast er for showing too much initiative. The king then consults the Magic Well, in which he will see either who will marry, or how he will die (he gets someone else to actually take a look). The crucial features (hair-colour and beauty-spot) are hunted for – but only among the rich, whereas his cook’s daughter has them, but nobody notices her. A neighbouring duchess dyes her daughter’s hair and implants a black bean in her cheek, the king is fooled and marries her, but the daughter (whose hair-dye gradually grows out) is permanently uneasy at the deception, and when the bean SPROUTS, and has to be cut out, the game is up. Nonetheless, he remains loyal to her, but she dies of guilt, so the king starts looking again, and it is the valet who produces the cook’s daughter and the happy end.

Gary gave us a splendidly modern version of Kore/Persephone and Hades, with bikers’ leathers for the bloke and a Goth-look for the girl, who was swamped by her mother, and shouldn’t have eaten the addictive pomegranate-seed snacks…

And Jane brought us to our conclusion with My Lord Bag-of-Rice, which you can read here

and remember, if you want to kill a giant centipede, you have to spit on your arrow, otherwise it won’t work! (Human saliva has, of course, many other uses, though it’s not quite as good an anti-bacterial as dog-slobber.)