Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales, Part B

Hi there guys!

Okay so the story I will be doing my notes over today is kinda a creepy one.... not like super creepy, but the picture they use really freaks me out. So I will insert it below ha ha.

(Creepy Dwarfs illustrated by John D. Batten)

So what on earth is this story about? Well it is about a woman who had twins that she cared for a nursed. Some strange things occurred in the town, but he mother always checked on her twins and they were always okay. Everyone in the town became suspicious though because the twins never grew. They stayed the same size for a very long time. So, the woman went to seek advice and was told to boil a hens egg, clean it out, fill it with porridge, take it outside, and listen to see if the twins were truly babies or not. When she did this she heard them talk as if the were adults. The wise man had told her if they did this to run inside and snack them and thrown them in the lake. She did this and goblins came and saved the dwarfs and returned the mother her real children. 

Yeah like super creepy....

Why would the dwarfs even want to be with the mother?

Where were the real twins at this time?

Why is this story so creepy?

Moving on from that, the language was actually pretty easy to follow and understand. The story was fairly short too. Overall, it was written very well. I like how there was actual factual history in the text. This included the location of the story. That is a great idea to include that and a hyperlink so the reader can do more exploring. 

To end these notes I just want to emphasis I will NOT be retelling this story. In the case that I were to retell it, I would answer some of my questions (see above) and make it less creepy. Maybe not have goblins haha.

Bibliography: 

Celtic Fairy Tales, Part B, Brewery of Eggshells by Joseph Jacobs. Retrieved from Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbooks

Learning Challenge: A Jar of Smiles :)

Feel Free To Smile

This is my ongoing post of things that make me smile. I hope it brings some joy to whoever comes across this! If you do look through it, please comment with some links or ideas of things that make you smile! This has been so fun to work on, so I highly suggest making one of your own!

10 minutes of cute puppies playing (link):

(Pups Playing from youtube)

A baby deer and a link to 30 cute baby animals (link):

(Baby deer from Bored Panda)

Just some pictures:)

(Baby Fox by Creative Commons)

(Sunset by Creative Commons)

(Golden in Snow from Wiki Commons)

(Westie Pups from Wiki Commons)

(Happy Pup made with Cheezburger)

Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales, Part A

Hey guys!

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