Week 5: Famous Last Words

Week five over already! It still seems like the semester just started, but here we are over a month in. I think I must say this in every Famous Last Words post, but it has been a very busy week! My lab classes have certainly been filling most of my time, but physiology has been creeping up on me too. Thankfully, I have Mythology to have at least one fun class.

In Physics lab this week, we continued our study of electric current through circuits. While I've already taken both Physics 1 and 2, and the concepts are not new to me, it is interesting to see the things we learned about first hand in the lab. In Organic Chem lab we learned about partition coefficients between organic and aqueous solutions. What a headache!

In Mythology and Folklore this week, I read the story of Twenty-Two Goblins. I really enjoyed this tale. In it, a king named "King Victory" attempts to remove a goblin from a graveyard as a favor to monk who has been bringing the king a very generous tribute. However, each time the king attempts to remove the goblin, the goblin tells the king a riddle. When the king guesses the riddle right, the goblin runs off back to a tree. This happens many, many times!

I took the Twenty Two Goblins tale The Four Brothers and used it as the basis for my storytelling post this week. In the original, there are four brothers who each know a different type of "science." One brother can add flesh to bones, the second can add skin and hair to flesh, the third can add eyes and organs and the final brother can bring the organs to life. The four brothers bring a lion to life, which kills them all! In my tale, The Two Thieves, it is instead two thieves who bring a dead man to life in hopes of learning the location of secret treasure.

(Thief: Free Vector Graphics, Pixabay)

Essay for Week 5: Magic and the Supernatural in Twenty-Two Goblins

Magic and the supernatural appear frequently throughout mythological and folkloric tales, and the story Twenty-Two Goblins is no exception. In almost every riddle told by the goblin, there is some element of magic or supernatural beings. Of course, even the goblin himself is a supernatural being! The "goblin" is actually a creature that is possessing a corpse in the graveyard.

In The Three Lovers, a beautiful farmer's daughter has three suitors of whom she cannot choose to marry. Unfortunately, the farmer's daughter becomes ill and passes away. One of her suitors, however, travels far and learns of magic to bring the dead back to life. He gathers her remains and brings her back to the world of the living.

We see both supernatural beings and magic in the tale Brave, Wise, Clever. When Moonlight, the daughter of a king's counsellor, is kidnapped, three men who seek her hand in marriage attempt to rescue her. The clever man builds a magic flying carriage to get the men to where Moonlight was being kept, while the brave man then slays the giant that had taken her.

In the tale The Four Brothers, we hear a story of, as the title suggests, four brothers, each of whom has a different magic skill. Although the brothers in the story refer to their skills as "sciences" that they have learned, these powers are clearly supernatural.The first brother can add flesh to the skeleton of any animal. The second possesses the skill to add skin and hair to any flesh. The third brother says that he can add eyes and other organs to any creature with flesh, skin and hair. The final brother has the most impressive ability; he can bring the creature to life. Unfortunately for these four brothers, they bring a lion to life who promptly kills them all.

Storytelling for Week 5: The Two Thieves

Once upon a time, in an ancient kingdom, there lived two thieves. These thieves mostly spent their days pickpocketing in the market square, or stealing candlesticks and jewelry from the houses of the wealthy while they were away. However, the two thieves were not picky about how they made their living; if they saw an opportunity, they would almost certainly seize it.

One day, the thieves saw a wealthy looking man from a foreign kingdom enter the marketplace. The thieves were certain they had spotted an easy target, and they closed in on the man to steal his belongings. While one thief distracted the man by pretending to be a beggar, the other swooped in from behind and surreptitiously lifted the man's coin purse. When the thieves opened the coin purse, they found not gold, but instead a map. Examining the map, the two thieves saw that it outlined the surrounding area. Looking closer, they noticed an "X" scrawled onto the map as well as a single word: "treasure."

Never missing an opportunity for monetary gain, the thieves set out to the location marked on the map. When they arrived, they found a small crypt containing a single stone casket and a series of levers on the back wall.

"Surely if we put these levers in the correct position, the treasure will reveal itself to us." said one thief to the other. "If only this man was alive to tell us what he knows."

"I may have an idea." replied the other thief. "Grab the skeleton from the casket and let us return to the kingdom."

The two thieves took the skeleton to a wise scientist in the kingdom.

"We need to speak to the man to whom this skeleton belonged." said one of the thieves to the scientist. "Is there anything you can do for us?"

"I can add flesh to this skeleton, but I cannot add skin or hair." replied the scientist. "For that you will have seek a colleague of mine."

The scientist added flesh to the skeleton, and the thieves quickly left to seek out the scientist's colleague. The next scientist they found added skin and hair to the flesh covered skeleton, but he was unable to add organs. The thieves sought out a final scientist, who completed their corpse with all the organs needed for life, but the corpse still did not breathe.

The thieves lastly sought out a mystic who lived in a tall tower in the kingdom. The thieves brought the corpse to the mystic and asked him to return life to this long dead man.

"I can provide you a potion that does what you ask," said the mystic. "But beware, life is not so easily returned."

(Potion Bottles. Wikimedia Commons)

Eagerly, the two thieves poured the potion into the mouth of the corpse. Instantly, the corpse sprung to life. The newly resurrected man began yelling in a language that the thieves could not comprehend, and immediately grabbed the two of them. The thieves were not weak by any mans standards, but despite their struggling, they could not overcome the seemingly supernatural strength of this resurrected monster. The man lifted the two thieves off their feet and threw them out of the mystic's tower. As they plummeted to their demise, the thieves forsook their greed.


Author's Note: This story is based on The Four Brothers from Twenty-Two Goblins by Arthur Ryder. This story tells of four brothers who each know a different type of "science." One brother can add flesh to bones, the second can add skin and hair to flesh, the third can add eyes and organs and the final brother can bring the organs to life. The four brothers bring a lion to life, which kills them all!

Week 5 Reading Diary: Twenty-Two Goblins

Here are a few of my favorite stories from Twenty-Two Goblins

Introduction The beginning of the tale tells of a brave king, King Victory, who discovers that a monk who frequently brings him a gift of fruit has actually been hiding gems inside. In return for the monk's generosity, the king promises the monk to help him with a task. As asked, the king travels to the cemetery at midnight to meet the monk underneath the fig tree. The monk tasks the king with retrieving a corpse from a nearby tree, but when he does, it speaks to him! The "goblin" hiding in the corpse begins to tell the king a story.

Brave, Wise, Clever In this story told by the goblin, a princess named Moonlight says that she will only marry a brave man, a wise man, or a clever man. When it is her time to marry, her mother, her brother, and her father find three different brave, wise, and clever men and each promise her to one of them, not knowing that the other two had already promised her to someone else. When the princess is kidnapped, and the wise man finds where she is, the clever man gets them there, and the brave man kills her kidnapper. The king correctly decides that the princess should marry the brave man.

The Three Delicate Wives Once again, the goblin tells the King another story. This time, the goblin tells of a king named Virtue-banner who had three princesses as wives. One of his wives is wounded by a falling lotus-petal, while another is burned by  moonbeams! The final wife is hurt by a sound in the distance. The goblin puzzles King Victory which princess was the most delicate, and he correctly answers the wife hurt by sound.

The Girl and the Thief This story tells the tale of a grand merchant's daughter, Pearl, who falls in love with a thief right before he is executed. Pearl had before refused to marry any man, so her father pleaded with the king to release the thief, but it was of no use. The goblin asks King Victory if the thief laughed or wept before his death, and the king correctly answers both.

The Four Brothers This story from the goblin tells of four brothers who each know a different type of "science." One brother can add flesh to bones, the second can add skin and hair to flesh, the third can add eyes and organs and the final brother can bring the organs to life. The four brothers bring a lion to life, which kills them all!