Middle Eastern Tales -

"The Enchanted Storks: - a retelling by Aaron Shepard, from an earlier written tale that then became told frequently. Do a search for his name. It is seldom that a full tale is online, and this is a delight for us who are overused to European tales.

Tales of Iraqi Jews - collected in Israel, representing a long tradition. See http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/afs/pdf/a794.pdf. Go to pages 184 ff,

Kurdish folktales -see http://www.scribd.com/doc/2490840/Kurdish-folktales/ Scroll down and enjoy. We have started....

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Ma Liang and His Magic Brush; and The Red Shoes. Western Darkness.

A Chinese story child, and his magic writing implement. that will not stop doing what it does, when it is taken by the wrong person. What happens next?  The uses of involuntary repetitive motion, once highly desired. It takes over. What occurs when the repetitive motion becomes uncontrollable. It becomes a as a punishment, a morality idea, but thereafter -- East is bright, and West is dark.
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Ideas cross cultural boundaries to reach a human condition. But how the cultures treat the theme?  Night and Day.

 

I.  Ma Liang and His Magic Brush

Ma Liang and his friends; from Jon's trip to China

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Here is a little boy named Ma Liang who is artistic and observant, though he finds little time for his pastime because of all the work he must do to help support the family.  One day, he falls asleep and has a wonderful dream. He was drawing with a real brush, and paint.

And, more wonderful, when he woke, he found a marvelous brush in his own hand.  Ah, he says.  I will try.  And he draws this, and it comes to life.  And he draws that, and it also moves on its own.

A cormorant

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Then, a cormorant of pen and sketch spreads its wings and flies out to sea. Such a wonder!

I will do good with this gift, thinks the boy, and he does.  He draws nets for fishermen whose nets are in tatters, and words of his good deeds spreads.

Unfortunately, the emperor hears, and wants the pen for himself.  So he imprisons the boy and takes the brush in his own hand..

Guan Di, as an example of traditional costume, finery. This is a good emperor, venerated as a god of war since the 7th Century, we understand

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But the bad emperor wants only to benefit himself, and soon --- and then --- and still he kept going, and then the brush would not leave his hand, and it would not stop, it went on and it drew and it drew and the things came to life, and the jewels he coudl not stop drawing amassed around him higher and higher and on and....

Meanwhile....

Find parts of it, a google book at ://books.google.com/books?id=95qSZFs3pWUC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=Chinese+folktale+cormorant&source=bl&ots=WB2Y17U3xI&sig=d_wa7Pegj_lQUDGSTLuQikPZqfA&hl=en&ei=h6VDSpeGOpLmM6DzqZ8B&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4/.

A child can understand.  Live it. See it. Feel it. Learn from it.  Do good, and good comes back to you, that sort of thing.  Want all the good for yourself, and watch out.

II.  The Red Shoes.

The tale.  Now, reread The Red Shoes, by Hans Christian Andersen, and see the dark side pushed so far that the tale itself becomes scary.  Find a girl who is given a pair of red shoes, but when she is adopted, they are burned.  She cannot resist another pair when they appear, and must have them, the temptation is go great.  And, having the red shoes, while the other little girls in their black and gray file into the church; for a time the shoes are so wonderful.  All good things!  More and more, they open up the world to her.  But -- then the more she enjoys it, the more she cannot stop. Chop off my feet! So I can repent! And on the story goes....

The ballet:  Moira Shearer in 1948, at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slo5FZyPtfw&feature=related/ for Part I.  Click on Part II in the left hand vertical menu, and go seamlessly to Part II.  See it all happen.  Across the stage after her flights into the joys and cinders of the world, the people who turn to paper before her eyes, come the The Christian overlay of sin, repentance, vanity, all the things that keep a story from being a tale of common sense, help-others morality that all can understand; and it becomes instead a frightening, threatening ideology. Watch out, little girl.  See what happened to little Karen here....See The Red Shoes, at ://www.online-literature.com/hans_christian_andersen/984/

Listen for the Dies Irae as a booming undercurrent just barely recognizable in the ballet, and hear it as chant at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0/; and a simpler version at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fMHms5Cvsw/

Again, the clergy, cold, pale, and the people, worse. No warmth, just in lock-step.  Ah,the girl, who indulged her talent, went on her own, shone until she dropped. And she did.  And the shoes?

Coming to a mall near you....

Now:  Back

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Tale: Who Will Bell The Cat? Piers Plowman; and 14th Century Social and Economic Theory

Who Will Bell The Cat

Where a later elaboration
improves the original.

Free Markets, Intervention Issues.

Aesop's simplistic Fable becomes Philosophical: a Model for Economics;

In Piers Plowman,
Poem by William Langland
1332-1400

Learn what happened after the mice acknowledged that their plan would not work, to save themselves by belling the cat. The idea was to construct an alarm to sound whenever the cat approached. Then the mice in the vicinity could escape. But no-one was willing to risk himself to do the belling. No-one emerged to do the deed.

William Langland was an Englishman in about 1377. He wrote a long poem, "Piers Plowman," and in it is a creative addition to Aesop's "Who Will Bell The Cat?"

But that addition - a kind of a post script - has been largely forgotten and the only tale we remember is Aesop's. It ends when noone will step up to implement the plan.

The Langland addition focuses on philosophy -- the consolation, in a way. What might have happened if the mice actually had succeeded in belling the cat - was it worse than what they were already enduring. If the cat had been saddled with a bell, so it could not catch its mice, would the population of mice so increase that everyone in the community would suffer. Would not many cats then come to enjoy the feast. And those new cats would not be wearing bells. Is it more in the common interest to allow a degree of death and destruction to a few, so the many can survive. Is the solution to watch out for one's own, one's own family, see that they are as safe as can be, and let others do the same.

• tolerate limited damage or death to a few, so that the larger group may live.
  

The story:

A group of mice gets together to address a common problem of attacks on their numbers by the local feline, and decide that the solution is to bell the cat.

Most versions stop with the original from Aesop's fables, the mice unable to find anyone with the will or ability to take on the risk of belling the cat for the greater good, so the idea falls apart. See Aesop's Fables, Belling the Cat, at ://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Aesop/Aesops_Fables/Belling_the_Cat_p1.html/ Aesop had a way of being brief.

Piers Plowman's character's post script:

The story, however, goes on in the later version by William Langland, in about 1377 - but his creativity does not get reported. The reported part also refers to no mouse man enough to bell the cat. See ://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bell+the+cat,+who+will/.

The unreported part of William Langland's version is more important: William Langland, 1332-1400. This is from his "Prologue to the Vision of Piers Plowman, Version B,} at History Guide, ://www.historyguide.org/ancient/langland.html/

Piers Plowman? (really Quebec 2008)

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Langland offers us a look at life among the poor in the 14th Century England.

Read slowly, absorb. Do a "find" for "mouse" to get to this section on belling the cat, because the Prologue is long: Fair use bits here. In the story, there is a mouse who continues with wisdom after the group finds it is unable to get someone to bell the cat. The wise mouse gets them to consider what would have happened, had they prevailed against this particular cat:

* * * * *

`Though we killed the cat yet there would come another,

To scratch us and all our kind though we creep under benches.

Therefore I counsel all the commons to let the cat be,

And be we never so bold to show to him the bell;:

***

:For better is a little loss than a long sorrow;

He's the fear among us all whereby we miss worse things.

For many men's malt we mice would destroy,

And the riot of rats would rend men's clothes,

Were it not for that Court cat that can leap in among you;

For had ye rats your will ye could not rule yourselves.

As for me,' quoth the mouse 'I see so much to come

That cat nor kitten never shall by my counsel be harmed,

Nor carping of this collar that cost me nothing.

Though it had cost me full dear I would not own to it

But suffer him to live and do just as he liketh:

Coupled and uncoupled to catch what they can.

Therefore each wise wight I warn to watch well his own.'

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* * * * *

II. So, what is the moral?

To each his own interpretation of anything, but try this:

If the damage from a death-dealer is contained, and only the survival of some is at stake, a relatively small group, then apply the rule of tough. Leave the cat alone. A few will die, but the group will live.

If the damage extends too far, to the wellbeing of all, the demise of the entire community and repercussions thereafter, there may have to be a different result.

III. But What Do We Tell Our Children?

Then, see an absolutely ridiculous version of belling the cat: drippy, soft, foolishly surface, watered-down version for kids with no thoughts allowed to enter between their ears, at ://www.kidsfront.com/stories-for-kids/bell_the_cat.html

Note that in the real story, there is more than just the mice who came up with the great solution to the cat problem - a bell on a collar. And more than the fact that the idea failed because noone came forth to actually do it.

IV. What else does it say?

This little tale is also a (would you believe) hymn to the free market, to be wary of interventions that could lead to worse.

So is the mouse's idea to limit any intervention that could be implemented, so it is truly temporary, lest greater evils result? He says that evern if the mice could kill this cat, another arises, is the idea, so be realistic.
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So: Is this the moral for a modern age:

Regulate when needed, clearly needed for the really greater good,. not just to protect a few who were in the wrong place in the wrong time. Each to watch well his own in that case. Fair enough. Here: criteria met. Regulate, find the whatever means needed and available. Bonuses? May be unstoppable in retrospect, because of contract law. But recoup, Obama, recoup it.

Is that it? That works. Do it. A cat out there? Better is a little loss, than a long sorrow.

Fair use finis.

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Tale: The Peasant In Heaven. Grimm; and the Bible's Camel

How hard it is to get into heaven?
Grimm says, a rich man gets in very 100 years.

The Bible analogizes (0r does it?)
to camels getting through eyes of needles.

Not.

Read: The Peasant in Heaven.
Then explore the role of translations
in what specifically we are told to believe.

Find this Grimm Tale at://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/the_peasant_in_heaven/

Poor Fellow

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Why are there so few rich people in heaven. Glad you asked. A poor fellow arrived in heaven at the same time as a rich man. Such a celebration for the rich man! But no-one paid attention to the poor fellow.

Why, asked the poor man of St. Peter? Why? Why does no-one pay attention to me?

Because the poor often arrive here, says St. Peter, but a rich man only arrives once in a hundred years.

Fine: and now comes to mind a Bible story about how hard it is for a rich man to get into heaven. As hard as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. See Matthew 19:24. But go to the transliteration at ://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/mat19.pdf/ It has "needle" and "camel" but lots of words not transliterated at all. Also at Mark - ://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/mar10.pdf/. Still, could be the camel and the needle.

• The difficulty for the rich in getting into heaven - easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven. Some interpret it as meaning the shape of the gate itself, low so that a camel has to bow its head, and take a straight path. Thus, fine for the rich to get into heaven so long as they go through the gate on a straight path.
  

• Others debunk the strained interpretation in favor of the more literal - it is just harder, thank you, ://www.debunker.com/texts/needleye.html/
  

• Then see the translators' issues with the meaning of the word given to us as "camel" at ://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm/ That says that the translation of camel is wrong. From the Greek, the word we see as "camel" is a close but misspelling from the word that should have been translated as "rope". It is harder to thread a needle with rope, than for a rich man to enter heaven or whatever.
  

Translations. Get us in trouble all the time. Nobody wants to find out their precious image is just plain wrong. Is that so? Are we stubborn as camels? Are they stubborn? or sensible, knowing their limits and what they will tolerate.

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The Bawdy. The Lange Wapper, Flanders, at Antwerp's Steen

The Lange Wapper

Once upon a time, at the little town of Antwerp, there lived a giant so big that the people were dwarfed around him. And he had an Attribute that awed the whole country and there was a statue put up and that caused the women of the village and even beyond to come and hope and whatever and thereafter to have lots and lots of children. And so they did. And the town became famous.
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The Lange Wapper, Steen, Antwerp, Belgium
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Then, in the 17th Century, along came certain well-organized institutional religious persons.

And in the minds of these religious persons, the statue with the Attribute was unseemly. And they were jealous of the attention to it and the jocularity abounding about.

And they said, with gravitas, that such an Attribute on a statute was not to be used instead of doctrine.

Incensed, they declared that an Attribute was not to be used as an object of veneration. No longer could it be considered as having magical powers that superseded their institutional organized ways to ask for children.

So.
They.
Lopped.
It.
Off.

They censored it. And the people were disappointed, and thought it silly for the uniformed ones to lop while imagination easily put the Attribute back, and with even more fun, but nonetheless, there they were. FN 2

But the people prevailed.

Centuries later, they named a great modern bridge "The Lange Wapper" - see ://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/lange-wapper-bridge-plan-collapses-under-weight-protestors/

And they named a newspaper after it, see ://de.langewapper.be/

But the grinches keep trying to mold the story and leave out the Attribute, see ://www.pantheon.org/articles/l/lange_wapper.html, as though little children have no sense of humor or, worse, no common sense. Others just say he roamed the streets looking for the drunkards. ://www.hotels-belgium.com/albums/antwerp/antwerp-112-steen.htm/ Now, in a pose like that, is he out looking for WUI's? FN 1

We are looking to see what the original Lange Wapper looked like - was it actually this one? This one looks too modern. Back in a sec.

...................................................................

FN 1 Go see. Behind there, in the picture, is the Steen - a castle in Antwerp, Belgium, at the entry to the city center, on the River Scheldt. There is a maritime museum inside.

Steen means a castle-like fortification, and this one is special because it was made of stones, perhaps in the 13th Century. At the time, most buildings were still made of wood. You can see the line where the big reconstructions started. See://www.trabel.com/antwerp/antwerp-steen.htm/

FN 2 Now, people in many places will rub a statue for luck, or to get a wish granted, or for homage. People also kiss statues, icons. See ://www.saintignatiuschurch.org/icons.html - scroll down past the icon of Mary for the description, the theology.

Gregor of Nin, Croatia

Here, in Nin, Croatia, see the great toe of Bishop Gregory. He used the local language for mass. But along came.... and he was out.

The toe is worn and shiny. The toe knows.

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