STORIES THAT WERE TOLD BY PEOPLE SPEAKING LANGUAGES WE NO LONGER KNOW
STORIES TOLD BY PEOPLE LOST TO THE VOID OF TIME
STORIES
GUYS LOOK AT THIS
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS
GUYYYYYSSSS
“Here’s how it worked: Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might), for example, chances are the story can be traced back to the “last common ancestor.” That would be the Proto-Western-Indo-Europeans from whom both lineages split at least 6800 years ago. The approach mirrors how an evolutionary biologist might conclude that two species came from a common ancestor if their genes both contain the same mutation not found in other modern animals.”
Hey I quickly wanted to contribute something to this day in reylo week as well; even though it might be a little late? It’s a bit more rough with its color but yeah. (heh I’m reading a court of mist and fury right now and I feel like that’s exactly what directly influenced this?)
Víðarr – God of the forest, revenge, and silence. Víðarr is described as the son of Odin and the jötunn Gríðr, and is foretold to avenge his father’s death by killing the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarök, a conflict which he is described as surviving
What mortal could rescue Tam Lin from that shadow life but Janet who loved him? She told him she would save him isf she could, and Tam Li described how the mortal must challenge the power of the Fairy Queen. Then he faded into the sun-speckled forest.
From Time-Life Books’s Fairies and Elves, part of The Enchanted World Series, 1984. Illustration by Jill Karla Schwarz
Confession: This is the first place I encountered the story of Tam Lin, and where I fell in love with it. I will freely admit it was largely because of the beautiful illustrations, particularly the last one.
The bare-chested, disheveled Tam Lin resting under Janet’s mantle just caught my attention. I was ten, maybe eleven years old at the time. Thirty years later, seventeen years of running a website, forty four versions of the ballad, more than a dozen related stories, a couple of citations in articles and theses, pages of analysis, maps, well over a hundred books, plays, articles… and here’s the images that kicked that off for me. Enjoy.
Idea: Lesbian Hades and Persephone where Hades is a really awkward Nerdy Goth who falls in love with Butch Outdoorswoman Persephone, but she can’t work up the nerve to actually ask Persephone out, so instead she just kind of summons a portal to the Underworld and pretends like it was an accident for several months while she and Persephone flirt like mad but also keep assuming that it’s totally one-sided.
Until Demeter shows up and accuses Hades of stealing her daughter, at which point Hades tearfully confesses her crime and Persephone is just like ‘wait you like me?! Like romantically? This was a romantic kidnapping?!’ and when Hades manages a nod she just starts scarfing pomegranate seeds in front of her horrified mother so that she won’t have to leave.
Monsters and Villains 