Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Reading Notes: Tibetan Folk Tales, Part B

 Tibetan Folk Tales by A.L. Shelton with illustrations by Mildred Bryant (1925)


"You little split-nosed rascal," I'll need to remember that.


Poor king of beasts, drowning himself on account of his own reflection.

Some of these tricksters are unsure if their antics will go the way they want them to. This is an example of that.

Let's kill the two "big wives" and share the third in partnership. The object of jealously wasn't even that much. It shows the ridiculousness of human beings. 

I have an idea... what happened in-between when animals had speech and when they didn't? That could be an interesting setting.

Wow. "How the Raven Saved the Hunter" is a really great story. That makes me sad. I would like to remember some of these stories, so I can tell them to my kids. 

The Golden Squah was interesting. A surprise ending even though it was expected the bad man would get his due. 

The Violinist was a longer story. I liked how the violinist's misfortune with his father didn't mean he was a bad character through and through. I liked how he and his wife worked together and stayed true to each other. 

The frog was very clever. I'm glad there was no trouble sharing the reward between the duck and the frog. Why couldn't the frog and the rabbit have done that from the beginning? 

I have a lot of hair on my head, and I had even more when I was younger (longer, I'm not balding...). My sixth grade English teacher called me the hare, and she called this guy Quinn tortoise. I'm not really sure how he got his name. Slow?

Yak butter tea sounds disgusting right now, but I think it's because I feel sick in my stomach. Just too much food, I think. I'm sure the tea is all right. I started drinking green tea recently, and it did me well until I ran out. 

What the heck... What are you eating? My eyeball? That's pretty funny. I guess this rabbit has some complex against apex predators now. This rabbit is a psychopath! The mother bear was never mentioned again either... 

Maybe the man who fell in the lake didn't feel very well because the monkey trying to rescue him spent *days* getting stronger. I like all the weird little story beats in these stories. It's the exact thing I, and other children, find funny. 

My idea is to have a big meeting with all the characters from these stories devising a new story. Maybe they're in a troupe of actors putting on plays. There can be some kind of argument about the direction of the story, but one character, the trickster, will get what he wants by making everyone think they're getting what they want. 

Once upon a time, when animals were beginning to lose their speech, a group of animals who still had their speech thought of an idea. This group of animals was devoted to maintaining their legends in the minds of man, so they came up with the idea of putting on a play for the humans nearby. 

Something like that...


The Duck Got All the Gold (Source)

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