Reading Notes: Week 2 Anthology

Illustration of a book by user Kairisk. Source: DeviantArt.

Notes for Origins

• The Man in the Moon by Katherine Neville Fleeson
• The first main character is introduced as a blacksmith unhappy with his work
• The second main character is introduced as a "wise man" with "power over all things"
• The man seems to want to become whatever has power over him or is making him miserable
• At the end, the man decides he was happy with the original life he was living, but the wise man seems to be sick of it and makes him remain the moon to teach him a lesson about being grateful
• Since he was forced to remain being the moon, his face can now be seen
• The Hare that Was not Afraid to Die by Marie L. Shedlock
• Introduces the main character as the Buddha born into the world as a Hare and sets the scene in the woods surrounded by a mountain, a river, and a village
• Three secondary characters are a Monkey, Jackal, and Otter
• After hunting all day, the four characters meet up and the Hare (Buddha) teaches them about giving alms to the poor
• Author tells of the secondary characters' adventures finding (and mostly stealing) food, then Sakka (King of the Gods) coming to them disguised as a Brahmin asking for food to perform priestly duties, then saying he'll wait until the next day to consume it
• Author then tells of the Hare deciding, while on Kusha grass (material used for Buddha's meditation seat), that since he has nothing to offer, he will offer himself for any person who asks to eat
• Sakka comes to put his decision to the test, and the Hare follows through under the condition that the "Brahmin" does not kill on that day
• When the Hare lands on the fire, it does not burn him and Sakka reveals to him that his virtue will be known by all people
• Sakka paints the Hare's action onto the moon so that people will know his virtue for the rest of time

Notes for The Divine

• The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi by E.W. Champney and F. Champney
• Susa-no-wo is the first character introduced and he is described as venturing near a river towards some type of civilization
• Runs into an old man and women weeping over a younger woman's body, which is apparently rare
• The old man explains that his daughters have been killed and eaten by the Eight-Forked Serpent, and that their eighth, the one him and his wife are holding, is their last who is about to die
• Susa-no-wo offers to slay the serpent if the old man and woman give him their daughter to marry, so they agree
• To prepare, Susa-no-wo sets up a "fortress" of logs with eight doors and put a vat full of extremely powerful sake outside each and when the serpent arrived, it drank all of the liquor until it got wasted and fell asleep
• Susa-no-wo then slashes him into "a thousand pieces" and find a sword in his tail, then married the maiden

Notes for The Supernatural

• The Man Who Wrestled with a Ghost by Katharine Berry Judson 
• Main character is a young man venturing along a warpath and into a forest
• First encounter with the ghost is a noise that ends up being an owl, which is typically viewed as a bad omen in Native American culture
• Second encounter was when he was sleeping in the woods overnight and it sounded like a woman was wailing near him for her son
• When he heard footsteps near him, he looked and saw the woman approaching him, so he lay very still and she lifted and dropped his leg several times before pulling out a rusty knife and preparing to cut it off
• The man jumped up in shock and the woman ran screaming into the woods
• The next morning he saw a burial scaffolding next to where he was sleeping and figured that was the ghost he saw
• The third encounter was a similar setting to the second encounter, but it sounded like a man was singing very loudly
• Singer approached the man and asked for wasna and tobacco
• After they ate, the man noticed that the singer was a skeleton, nothing but bones
• Singer then said they have to wrestle and the man would "kill the enemy" and get some horses
• As they were wrestling, the man noticed that the ghost weakened near light and strengthened near darkness
• The man won the wrestling, killed his enemy, and got horses ("why people believe what ghosts say")

Notes for Metamorphosis

• Pygmalion by Tony Kline
• Pygmalion introduced as the main character, put off by women because of those that he knew who "lived in wickedness", so he was a bachelor
• To fill this void, he carves a sculpture of a woman and falls in love with it, treating it as an actual human
• On the day of Venus's festival, he made an offering and asked the gods to give him a woman like his sculpture
• Venus granted his wish out of the gods' fondness of him, and the sculpture became real, then Pygmalion married and had a child with her

Notes for Tricksters

• The Tiger, The Brahman, and the Jackal by Joseph Jacobs
• A tiger is trapped in a cage and asks a passing Brahman to let him out, but the Brahman says no out of fear that the tiger will eat him
• The tiger promises that he won't and that he'll serve the Brahman if he lets him out, then betrays him when released
• In an attempt to stay alive, the Brahman asks for the opinions of three others and if they believe that he did the right thing, the tiger cannot eat him
• Pipal-tree and buffalo tell him he was wrong in letting the tiger out, but the jackal then acts extremely confused and asks to see where the situation occurred
• When the tiger is explaining what happened, the jackal acts like he can't understand what is going on and asks the tiger to explain how he initially got in the cage, so the tiger reenters the cage to show him as he is fed up with explaining
• The jackal then closes the tiger back in the cage and the Brahman is safe

Notes for Fables

• The Lion's Share by Joseph Jacobs
• Lion went hunting with a fox, jackal, and wolf and killed a stag
• The four started discussing how to split their kill, but the lion has reasoning for why he deserves all of it and threatens the others if they try to take any
• Lesson: "you can work as hard as the "great", but you won't reap the same reward"
• Androcles and the Lion by Joseph Jacobs
• Androcles introduced as a fleeing slave who encounters a lion in the forest who is whimpering
• Instead of running, as he had originally planned, he approaches the lion and sees that a thorn was causing him pain in his paw
• Androcles removes the thorn and in return, the lion lets him live in his cave and brings him meat
• Both were captured, and Androcles's punishment for running away was to be fed to the lion after he has not eaten for a few days
• When the time came, the lion did not hurt Androcles since he was his friend, so the emperor freed him and let the lion go back into the forest
• Lesson: "Gratitude is the sign of noble souls"
• The Lion and the Statue by Joseph Jacobs
• Man and lion are discussing which of their species are stronger, so the man suggests that man is due to their intelligence
• To prove his point, he brings the lion to a statue depicting a man killing a lion with his hands
• The lion points out that of course the statue depicts man killing the lion, because it is man who created the statue
• Lesson: we can represent things however we want to
• The Lion in Love by Joseph Jacobs
• Lion falls in love with a maiden and asks her parents for permission to marry her
• The parents don't want them to marry, but they also don't want to anger the lion out of fear for their lives
• Parents propose that the lion get his claws and teeth removed so it's less likely that he injure their daughter, and they may consider the marriage
• The lion complies and when he goes to ask again, the parents just laugh and reject him since he can no longer hurt them
• Lesson: "love can tame the wildest"

Notes for Fairy Tales

• The Three Roses by Josef Baudis
• Begins by introducing a family with a mother and three daughters
• Mother goes to a market, asking each girl what she wants, and among all options, the third daughter asks for three roses
• On her way back from the market, the mother gets lost and finds possible refuge in a palace within the forest, then realizes that she forgot the three roses for her daughter when she sees a large garden of them
• She attempts to take some, but a basilisk approaches her and demands that she give her daughter to him in exchange for the roses or else he would kill her
• The mother returns home and gives the news to her daughter, so the daughter goes to the basilisk who tells her she must nurse him for three hours a day
• On the third day, he gives her a sword to cut his head off or else he would kill her, so she does
• Once his head is off, he turns into a man and tells her that he owns the castle and they must marry, so they do