SF/F, sociology, some recipes. Updates every other Friday.
Guan Yin, Bodhisattva of Mercy
I love my religion. My saints have indiscretions.
This week starts off Tales of China. There is a rich heritage of stories from the Five Glorious Millenia of Chinese history, some encapsulated in the Thirty-Six Strategems, some parables from the religions dharmic and daoic, and some simply enduring through the countless retellings.
And nobody in this country knows them. Say “Guan Yu,” they say “Guan who?” The Boston opera is putting on Madame White Snake this weekend, but these stories are not to be crystallized in art like a singer’s breath on a cold Suzhou morning. They’re meant to be told, for their players to enter and exit anew in each mind and each fervent telling, like the stories of Achilles and Hector, Ruth and Naomi, Sam and Frodo, MacBeth and Valjean and Don Quixote.
And, speaking of these classical, tragic heroes, your first Tale of China is almost Greek in its composition. It’s the tale of man against the Gods, and when the Gods trembled and knew fear. From a slim little volume called The Eight Immortals of Taoism, this is the story of Pai Shih.
This is one of those folktales I always mention in conversation, then always have to explain. It’s the most famous myth in Québec, even providing the labels on a certain brand of beer. It’s the story of French-Canadian lumberjacks one New Year’s night, driven to the devil to be back home in Montréal, and what it cost them…
This version comes to us from americanfolktales.net, but I’ve altered the ending slightly to the version that I’ve heard. Enjoy.
This week’s Red Penny story comes from an old and trusty friend, D. L. Ashliman’s massive collection of folktales. This is his rendition of the old legend of the golem, an old story that’s been worn a bit with age and retellings, but this version is as fresh and strange as the first telling…
This one’s a little different from the last ones. The Gallery of Henri Beauchamp is the name of one of my favorite creepypasta, the urban legends of the Internet age, where shadows wait in the datalinks as they waited in the streets of long ago. But, as Sister Miriam would tell us, it was never the streets that were evil. Without further ado…
Today’s Red Penny entry comes from the Kwaidan of Lafcadio Hearn, a wonderful collection of strange tales from a very strange man. It’s been one of my favorites ever since Adam Cuerdan sent me a copy when I was a young man:
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