Myths, Fairytales and Legends
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Myths, Fairytales and Legends’
A dozy rabbit gets an idea into his head and soon all the animals of India are running for their lives.
The following tale from the fourth-century BC Jataka Tales was told to illustrate how Hindu ascetics blindly copied one another’s eye-catching but useless mortifications; but it might just as well be applied to stock-market rumours or ‘project fear’ politics.
The mayor and corporation of Hamelin outsource a rodent problem to a professional rat-catcher.
The tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin in Lower Saxony goes back to the 13th century, and has been retold by the Brothers Grimm, Goethe and our own Robert Browning. Scholars have surmised that its origins lie in the migration of Hamelin’s population to work in lands from modern-day Poland to Romania.
A warlike king sets out to bag another small kingdom for his realms, but a monkey gets him thinking.
The Jataka Tales are a collection of roughly fourth-century BC stories supposedly from the many previous lives of Gautama Buddha. Several tell, Aesop-like, how one may learn wisdom by observing the ways of the natural world around us. In this case, a belligerent monarch draws a timely lesson from the antics of a monkey.
Prince Agib hears the tale of a boy confined to an underground chamber for forty days, and dismisses it as superstition.
Prince Agib has toppled a vast brass statue of a horseman upon the Black Mountain, a labour for which he has been rewarded with the ship he needs to find his way home. Stopping off on a remote island, he sees a boy being led into an underground chamber, and when the coast is clear, Agib follows him in, eager to hear his story.
William Sleeman passes on an anecdote from one of the Persian classics, to show that truth should not be used for evil ends.
In a lengthy chapter entitled ‘Veracity’, William Sleeman discussed attitudes to truth and lies among the people of India. As an illustration, he retold this story from the ‘Gulistan’ or ‘Rose Garden’ of the Persian poet Saadi Shirazi (?1210-?1292).
A weary King Odysseus dozes off on his voyage home to Ithaca, but his crew are wide awake, wondering what is in his bag.
Odysseus, King of the island of Ithaca in the Ionian Sea, is on his way home after many years away fighting in the Siege of Troy. He has had a little trouble with one-eyed Polyphemus, the Cyclops, and a few weeks rest with the odd but hospitable family of Aeolus is just what he needs.