ripping off folklore
Jan. 12th, 2015 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliWas contemplating what I ripped from where on the stories. . .
"Over the Sea, To Me" is the most blatant. It's retelling "Young Beichan." Or rather Child Ballad 53. I mixed and matched a number of variants. Indeed, I ripped off Scandavian variants to put in an enchantment that might have been lost from the English variants. (Francis Child comments on how the plot seems like there's an enchantment that got omitted.)
"The Dragon's Cottage" rips off a number of Slavonic fairy tales, starting with making the dragon the same size as humans.
"Witch-Prince Ways" uses fairy folklore of being took.
" Mermaids' Song" I will blame on Robert Louis Stevenson. "We sail in leaky bottoms and on great and perilous waters; and to take a cue from the dolorous old naval ballad, we have heard the mer-maidens singing, and know that we shall never see dry land any more. "
"Fever and Snow" rips off a piece of Japanese folklore for a creature and transports it to another setting entirely.
Other than that -- a gryphon, a unicorn, dragons -- nothing too fancy. Or specific. And some stories just play with fantasy tropes.
"Over the Sea, To Me" is the most blatant. It's retelling "Young Beichan." Or rather Child Ballad 53. I mixed and matched a number of variants. Indeed, I ripped off Scandavian variants to put in an enchantment that might have been lost from the English variants. (Francis Child comments on how the plot seems like there's an enchantment that got omitted.)
"The Dragon's Cottage" rips off a number of Slavonic fairy tales, starting with making the dragon the same size as humans.
"Witch-Prince Ways" uses fairy folklore of being took.
" Mermaids' Song" I will blame on Robert Louis Stevenson. "We sail in leaky bottoms and on great and perilous waters; and to take a cue from the dolorous old naval ballad, we have heard the mer-maidens singing, and know that we shall never see dry land any more. "
"Fever and Snow" rips off a piece of Japanese folklore for a creature and transports it to another setting entirely.
Other than that -- a gryphon, a unicorn, dragons -- nothing too fancy. Or specific. And some stories just play with fantasy tropes.
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Date: 2015-01-14 05:48 am (UTC)*perks up* There's precedent? Where would I go to look for such tales? Something like this?
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/books/slavonic/wratislaw.html
It would be a nice change from the snake theme I'm playing with that doesn't quite fit. (They're cobra-like. But don't "fit" anywhere with cobras.)
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Date: 2015-01-14 01:43 pm (UTC)There's one right there in your link: "The Golden Apples and the Nine Peahens" features a dragon who rides a horse.
Here's another two: How the Dragon Was Tricked, where the dragon can be convinced that he and the hero are the same size exactly, and The Flower Queen's Daughter, where the dragons ride horses and have balls that humans can attend and dance at. (And an illustration for the later:
)
I've also read "Nikita the Tanner" in Russian Fairy Tales by Alexander Afanasyev -- the Pantheon edition. (Not all are complete.)
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Date: 2015-01-14 07:52 pm (UTC)I know that you put a lot of time and effort into your research, and I appreciate any sort of a lead on where to look for interesting things. :D
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Date: 2015-01-14 08:14 pm (UTC)(Good thing I like researching them. 0:)