Reading Diary Week 12: Welsh Fairy Tales

Welsh Fairy Tales, collected by Peter Emerson (1891-92)

Fairies of Caragonan: I like the way this story is arranged, with the middle excitement (the man gets sick, the fairies heal him), the back story, and then the resolution. It makes it more exciting to read, and more concise, rather than reading the whole thing straight through. And this way, it allows the author to explain everything about the witch in one section, with just a short mention to the man's sickness.

These stories talk about fairy rings, and it's another of those little mysteries that's never quite been explained (as far as I know)... which of course means, there's room for a story! It'd be neat to write a different explanation for what a fairy ring is, or who a set of them came to be...

(Fairy Rings)

It also might be fun to write this first story of the wicked witch and the fairies' plan to exact revenge in the modern world. I would write it from the perspective of a little boy who is being bullied, and then keep the fairies the same... they help the little boy see in a mirror where the bully is hiding everyone's lunch money or something, and then he vanquishes the bully with the aid of the fairies...and maybe a charmed bike or something that goes rogue when the bully steals it.

The Origin of the Welsh: This story tells of a strange breed of giant bird that lives in the wild lands outside Persia. They eat people, they're huge, and they run faster than a horse. Reading this, the birds (called Rohs in this story) reminded me a lot of a giant breed of bird I created for my novel last semester. I called my birds Rakachans, picturing them to be about as large as a horse, and vicious, but trainable. It might be fun to merge the two stories; describe part of the plot line from the Welsh tale, and then have my character appear (she is taken to a magical world by an evil sorcerer disguised as a Rakachan).

Side note, this story seemed like a very roundabout way to describe where the Welsh people came from.

Storytelling, Week 11: Ceiling Wax

Ceiling Wax

 (Tweedle Twins)

“Where IS that blasted time keeper?!” The Red Queen yanked on the ends of her nasty black hair as she yelled at the fat twins. “He was supposed to bring in my shipment of sealing wax TWO HOURS AGO!”

“Perhaps he got stuck in a ditch!” Tweedle Dee said, jumping and down up in excitement.

“Or struck by a witch!” Tweedle Dum offered, also jumping, reaching up to steady his bright orange and green propeller hat.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM!” The queen yelled. “I don’t care if he’s got measles or weasels nipping at his heels! I want to mail my letters NOW! And I WON’T do it without my SEALING WAX!”

“We could get you some, your Redness,” Tweedle Dee said.

“Oooh, yes, we know the perfect place to get your wax!” Tweedle Dum said.

The queen stopped shouting. “Are you SURE?” she asked, for she was never too confident in anyone’s abilities but her own, though they were none too grand.

The twins nodded eagerly, looking much like bobble-heads with painted-on grins stretching across their wide faces.

“Well then, GO!” the queen said, and she smacked them each across the face, sending the spinners on their hats twirling.

*

An hour later, the queen stood in her throne room, angrily stomping on fist-sized flopping fish with her stumpy feet. This is what she did when she was angry, and had no one to yell at or slap.

She had just raised her foot to smash a particularly fat fish, when a loud, hoarse squeal echoed through the giant room (not a horse squeal, like a pony would make, but a scratchy-sounding screech, like a small pig makes—because it was, in fact, a pig that made the noise).

The queen looked up just in time to see the piglet (about as big as her head, as she had a large head) fly—for it had large, bird-like grey wings—through the door, into her throne room, and up to the ceiling that was covered in gold hearts. 

(Do pigs have wings?)

“AAARRRHHHHHGGG!!!” the queen yelled and toppled to the floor, squishing several fish beneath her fat bottom, although she missed the plump fish she was aiming for before she saw the pig. That fish was very relieved.

A second later, a dozen more piglets flew the door, each with a furiously-flapping set of grey wings. Half of them carried fist-sized pots in their mouth, and the other half carried paintbrushes.

They dashed toward the ceiling and divided into pairs, making teams of paintbrush-pigs and pot-pigs. The ones with brushes dipped into the pots and swiped the brushes across the ceiling, leaving trails of dripping purple goo across the shiny golden hearts.

“ARRRGGGGHHH! STOP! STOP IT, I SAY!” The queen jumped up and down, futilely trying to swat the pigs away from her precious heart-studded ceiling, smashing several unlucky fish in the process.

“TA—” Tweedle Dum ran into the room, closely followed by his brother.

“—DAAAAA!” The twins spread out their hands, smiling wildly at the bouncing queen.

“YOU IMBECILES!” she shouted, her face as red as a ripe cherry. “DO SOMETHING! STOP THEM!”

“Stop them?” They said together.

“YES! THEY’RE DESTROYING MY PRECIOUS GOLDEN HEARTS!”

“No they’re not,” said Dee.

“They’re putting on your ceiling wax!” said Dum.

And then, because the queen could not possibly turn any redder, she turned a dark shade of purple, like a plum, and shook like a fat rabbit.

“I DON’T NEED MY CEILING WAXED! I NEED MY SEALING WAX!”

“Certainly!” said Dum.

“And we’ve got it for you!” said Dee.

“AARRGGGHHH!”

And then the queen would have ripped off the twins’ spinning hats, and possibly demanded someone decapitate them as well, but a white rabbit in a red waistcoat burst through the door, catching her very angry attention. He toted with him a large tin bucket, which he dragged behind him because it was so heavy.

“YOU!” the queen shouted. “THIS IS YOUR FAULT!” For the white rabbit was the queen’s timekeeper and miscellaneous errand-runner, and he was the one she had ordered to pick up her fresh sealing wax.

“I am terribly sorry, your majesty," the rabbit sputtered. "I had your sealing wax right at noon as you had ordered but I ran into that girl along the way and she bumped into me and the bucket tip—toppled, and some of it spat—spilled, and I had to relieve—retrieve—” His words toppled from his mouth like an over-filled fountain drink.

“STOP IT!” The queen stamped her foot, and another hopeless fish went cross-eyed. “I DON’T CARE! YOU’RE TOO LATE! AND YOU ARE A TIMEKEEPER, AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE LATE! I WON’T HAVE IT!”

While the queen shouted at her trembling watch-man, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum skipped around the throne room trying to catch drops of purple wax on their noses.

“Look it, Dee! My nose!” For one of the pigs had dropped an entire paintbrush covered with purple wax, and it landed straight on Dum’s nose.

Dee didn’t look at his brother, as he was still attempting to catch his own glob of wax. “I knows you got a nose! Hush it!”

“BOTH OF YOU, HUSH IT!” the queen yelled.

“Your majesty, I am so terribly sorry, I promise I’ll never—” The rabbit sputtered on, ignoring the twins. “I’ll get your ceiling fixed, and I’ll buy a whole new bucket of wax, and—”

“NO!” the queen said. “YOU’RE FIRED! FIRE-IRE-FIRED!” and she picked up the fat purple fish she hadn’t stomped before and threw it at the white rabbit, where it smacked him on the cheek.

Without another blubbering word, the rabbit turned to leave.

“AND LEAVE MY CLOCK!” the queen shouted.

The rabbit clutched the stopwatch tenderly for a moment and set in on the floor. Then he left.

(The Timekeeper) 

And there you have Ceiling Wax: How the Queen Lost her Timekeeper, and The White Rabbit Lost His Job. Onto Cabbages and Kings. 

Bibliography:  Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Author's Note: Really, I based my story on several tales from Alice and Wonderland. The flying pigs, "ceiling" wax," and the note about cabbages and kings at the end are a nod to The Walrus and the Carpenter poem from Through the Looking Glass, particularly this stanza: "'The time has come,' the Walrus said/"To talk of many things:/Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —/Of cabbages — and kings —/And why the sea is boiling hot —/And whether pigs have wings." Through most of my childhood, I honestly thought the poem said "ceiling wax," not sealing wax. I think this is because my brother had the poem memorized, so I heard it a lot before I ever read it. Of course, I had no idea what ceiling wax would be, but Wonderland was all pretty nonsensical, so I didn't think that mattered. 

   Obviously, the Queen of Hearts has her grumpy disposition from Alice and Wonderland, and the Tweedle Twins' personalities and descriptions are a mix of Disney's and Carroll's depictions. 

   I wrote the plot as a sort of prequel to the radio play my capstone group is doing, where Alice is knocked unconscious and the inhabitants of Wonderland hold a trial (Caterpillar presiding) to find out whodunit.

Reading Diary: Week 11: Part B, Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll, 1871

 In Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum part 2, I think it's interesting that the twins tell Alice that the Red King is dreaming about her, and that if he woke up, she would disappear...because that's sort of the basis for our radio play in Capstone. We said Wonderland exists inside Alice's head, and so when someone knocks her unconscious, their world starts falling apart. It might be interesting to turn our radio play into a story, though I'm not sure it would fit...

I love how Tweedle Dum and Dee always say, "Contrariwise." I think it'd be fun to give one of my characters a little catchphrase like that.

(Gotta love those twins)

"in a voice choking with passion." What a great description! Sometimes I have trouble conveying the way I want my characters to say something or show how they're feeling...and this is perfect.

"It's getting as dark as it can," ... "And darker." These are the kind of nonsensical sayings that I really want to make use of in our radio play, and they're great for creating a goofy character.

I really wish the whole book was included in the reading unit! I want to read it all, and I've had trouble finding it until now!

After Humpty Dumpty, I think it would be fun to have Alice run into another nursery rhyme or fairy tale character and interact with it... or she could go into another world of more modern-day strangeness, like Harry Potter! She falls into a world full of popular book characters...

In Of My Own Invention (and many of the other Alice tales), much of the story is written in quirky dialogue. Dialogue is usually pretty fun to write, and it's also fun to read. I might like to make my next story more dialogue-heavy.

The White Knight mentions making a pudding out of blotting paper and mixing in sealing wax (which I just realized I may have misread and then mis-written in the last post), along with gunpowder...and if I decided to do the story where I write about fish and chips and sealing wax, I could include this weird pudding made out of blotting paper and gunpowder to tie them together!

Reading Diary: Week 11: Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll (1871)

I had to read this unit! I read Alice and Wonderland about a year ago and have been wanting to read Through the Looking Glass ever since. Plus, my group in capstone is writing a radio play that takes place in Wonderland!

Looking Glass House: I think one of the things that makes this section so easy-to-read and fun is the fact that it's written in Alice's dialogue as she talks to her cat. It's a little different than a first-person narrator, but offers the same in-your-head perspective. Then we have the fun lines from Carroll to supplement and explain.

How clever and simple of Lewis to create an entire story about a world which we can never see--the one behind our mirrors. It's the same way we make pictures out of clouds but cant ever touch them...maybe I'll write a story about the pictures I see in the clouds.

"'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the King, rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a LITTLE annoyed with the Queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot." I really do love lines like this. They remind me of C.S. Lewis, the way the narrator seems to be leaning over and whispering some useful bit of information in the reader's ear.

I love poem of The Walrus and the Carpenter. It's so strange, but the verse and odd little plot line keep it moving along, and it's fun to read. Maybe I'll make my cloud story into a cloud poem instead...

(

(The Walrus and the Carpenter)

I have the stanza "The time has come..." memorized for some reason, and it might be fun to write a short story describing those odd things... a story about shoes and ships and ceiling wax and whether pigs have wings...and of course, why the sea is boiling hot (when it is not).

Storytelling, Week 10: The Slap-Fish Pregnancy

 

(siblings) 

Michael snuggled up next to his father on the leather sofa, his eyes glued to their television screen.

“Scoot over, Michael!” His little sister Olivia groaned. She had her head on their father’s lap as well, and Michael’s hand was now covering her view of the movie.

“You scoot over!” Michael flung his teddy bear toward his sister’s face before his father snatched it out of his hand. “Hey!”

“Both of you, hush,” their father said. “Watch the movie.”

The children turned their heads reluctantly back to the screen, where a cartoon woman with yellow hair rubbed her round belly affectionately.

“I can’t wait to meet my little sister!” The cartoon boy squeaked. “I’m gonna teach her how to play baseball, and she can do my chores, and…”

The cartoon rambled on as Olivia squinted up at her father. “Is there really a baby in her belly?”

He ran a hand through his graying hair and chuckled. “Yep. You and Michael were once in Mommy’s tummy, too.”

“Really?” she asked. “I wish I remembered what it looked like in there…I would take all the spaghetti she ate and swirl it around—I could go swimming in Jell-O!”

Their father laughed. “That’s not quite now it works, Olivia. Plus, your mother’s never liked Jell-O.”

Olivia stuck out her bottom lip.

“I remember it!” Michael said.

“You do not!” Olivia reached out to hit her brother with her stuffed rabbit, but her father stopped her.

“Cut it out, you two. What’s with all the hitting lately?”

Michael sat up and glared at his sister. “I meant, I remember when you were in Mommy’s tummy. You made her fat.”

“I did not!” Olivia said.

“Michael, it’s not nice to call people fat. And your mother wasn’t fat, she had a baby in her belly. And if I remember correctly, you were very excited to meet your little sister.”

Michael pouted as he crossed his arms.

“How did I get in there?” Olivia asked. “How would I fit?”

Their father chuckled nervously. “Well, you weren’t as big as you are now. You started small, and you grew inside.”

“But how did I get there the first time, the little part?” Olivia asked, sitting up.

Their father coughed and scratched his head. “Well…”

“Yeah!” Michael turned to his father, gazing up at him with more curiosity than his father had ever seen. “How did we get in there?”

Their father froze, scrambling for words. Just then, a cartoon cat on the screen snatched the family goldfish from the bowl and slapped the pet beagle across the face, making an animated SLAP sound smack through the speakers.

His children’s petty arguments and hitting, their squabbles and now their overly-inquisitive questions suddenly hit him in a rush of panic. “Her brother smacked her with a fish!” he said.

Both children were silent for several seconds. Then Michael piped up.

“Really?”

The father looked at each of his children, who gazed intently up at him in awe. Had he expected them to believe him? He wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” he decided, nodding. “Yes, that’s how it happened.” He sighed, plastering mock ruefulness on his face. “Both times, unfortunately. That’s why you should never, ever hit your brother or sister. You never know what’ll come from it. Sometimes a red cheek—sometimes a baby.”

Michael and Olivia looked at each other with wide eyes, then nodded slowly. They each sat back against the couch and leaned their heads against their father’s shoulders, vowing silently to never ever slap each other with a fish.



Bibliography: Myths of the Cherokee: How the World Was Made, by James Mooney (1900)

Author’s Note: This story is ridiculous, I know. But I based it on one line of the Cherokee myth about the creation of the world, where man was created. After describing clever (though slightly more sensible) ways that plants and animals were created, the storyteller says, “Men came after the animals and plants. At first there were only a brother and sister until he struck her with a fish and told her to multiply, and so it was.” Then the woman has a baby a week later. When I first read this, I just thought… “What?” It’s so weird! And I really can’t help but laugh to myself when I picture it! I’m imagining these two young kids, almost like South Park cartoons, just sitting around, and suddenly the brother pulls a fish out of nowhere and smacks his sister with it—then, boom! She’s pregnant.

I thought maybe that’s what I could tell my kids when they ask where babies come from, so that’s basically what I wrote my story about. I also had to include a little explanation for why a father would say that to his children, so I had them squabbling and hitting each other in the beginning. This is also loosely based on an incident with my seven-year-old sister, who after watching a movie with a pregnant woman, kept asking us, “But how does the baby get in there?” She’s too smart for her own good. I think we explained as much as we could about the womb itself, but then told her she’d have to hear the rest when she was older.