So this week I read a few of the Celtic Fairy Tales from the Celtic unit. They were pretty easy to read language wise and actually really enjoyable. I want to focus most of my attention on the story of Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree in these notes. I found this story to be the most captivating and most intriguing.
Just a quick summary:
There is a mother and daughter. One day the mother went to a well and a trout was swimming in it. She asked the trout if she was the most beautiful and the trout said no, her daughter was. The mother got angry and faked being deathly ill. She said the only cure was to eat her daughter's heart and liver. Her husband instead sent his daughter away with a prince and got his wife a goat heart and liver. The mother thought her daughter was dead until a year later when the trout informed her she was still not the most beautiful. She demanded to see her daughter and she traveled by boat to see her. The daughter locked herself in her prince's castle, but the mother demanded her to stick out her finger. The daughter did this and the mother poisoned her with a dart. The prince put the body of the daughter in a room locked away and got remarried. The new wife found the key to the room, unlocked it, and pulled the dart out of the daughter. The daughter woke up and everyone was happy. The mother was told by the trout a year later she was still not the most beautiful. This time the daughter poisoned her mother with the help of her prince's new wife. They all were happy after that.
Lets start with the main characters.....it is a mother and daughter who are named Silver-Tree(mother) and Gold-Tree(daughter). Why are they named this? Yeah I do not really know haha. I wish I did. I spend a bit of time researching and couldn't find anything about it. I can assume the silver represents less worth than the gold (which plays into the story later), but I have no idea about the tree part.
I did find out that trees are REALLY significant in Celtic mythology and lore. There are over twenty types of trees that all represent something. Overall, trees are spiritual beings that withhold magic. If I retold this story I would want to be more specific about the kind of tree. Here are some cool trees!
- Willow Tree: Seeing and prophecy (to replace gold-tree because she always knows when her mother is coming to see her or hurt her???)
- Ash Tree: Timeless and beautiful
- Heather Tree: Secretive
- Apple Tree: Young love, good wishes, and desire
- Elder Tree: Moon magic and feminine powers
Last thing I want to talk about is why the trout? If I retell this story, I will make it a salmon. This is because in Celtic mythology the salmon is actually the fish of knowledge. Read more here! I have no idea what a trout is haha.
That is all for these notes, but I am excited to retell this story!
(Addiction to Cheezburger cont. created with Cheezburger)
Bibliography:
Celtic Fairy Tales, Part A, Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree by Joseph Jacobs. Retrieved from Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbooks
No comments:
Post a Comment