Folklore & Fiction
Hello, and welcome to the October 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 113B "The Cat as Sham Holy Man." Let's begin with a Syrian fable about the king of mice, the king of cats, and a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in September 2021.
Hello, and welcome to the September 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 2014 "Chains Involving Contradictions or Extremes." Let's begin with a Palestinian story that tells us right in the title where it fits among folklore genres and contains a treasure chest of narrative jewels to admire.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in August 2021.
Hello, and welcome to the August 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 1284 "Person Does Not Know Himself" by way of an Irish story entitled "Seán na Scuab" and ATU 1326 "Moving the Church" by way of a German story by the same name. Both tale types feature short, humorous anecdotes about fools, and they form the foundation of this month's broader folkloristic discussion of comedic narrative.
"Seán na Scuab"
Long ago there was a poor man living in Buffickle, west in Béara. He was married. He made his living by making brushes and selling them in Cork a few times a year.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in July 2021.
Myths, legends, fairy tales, and fables are distinct folk narrative types with specific characteristics, but the terms are often conflated in common usage, and the genres themselves are sometimes muddied in contemporary storytelling. Many writers and readers also believe they are inflexible categories of established tales, when in reality they are dynamic tools we can use to weave familiar narrative patterns into new tales.
Hello, and welcome to the July 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 1096 "Sewing Contest." Let's begin with a British poem of the tale type that pits a humble tailor against the Devil himself.
"The Devil and the Tailor"
There was a tailor in our town,
Who was a worthy wight;
All through the day
He worked away,
And halfway through the night.
He had a wife whom he did love,
And he had children bright;
To find the meat
For them to eat,
Did puzzle the tailor quite.
Hello, and welcome to the Folklore & Fiction dispatch. At the summer and winter solstices, I mimic the sun and pause to reflect on my own creative work. In this edition, I'm discussing fables in fiction with a passage from my short story "Metal Crow and Ghost Crow," forthcoming in the G Is for Ghost anthology.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in May 2021.
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