StorySpotting: Moon Landing Special

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Today's post is a little bit different from the usual, but it had too great a topic to miss.

Where was the story spotted?

Today is the 50th anniversary of a human being first setting foot on the Moon.

What happens?

A human being walks on the moon.
Also, a pop culture connection: I am a big fan of the Changeling: The Dreaming role-playing game, where July 20th, 1969 marks the Resurgence, the moment when so many people experienced wonder at the same time that the gates of the Dreaming opened again, and magic and belief returned to our world.

What's the story?

Since the whole Moon Landing is the culmination of millennia of dreams and stories, I decided to celebrate today by spotting some of my favorite tales about people (or, occasionally, animals) visiting the Moon.

The Prince of the Dolomites: A prince, raised by his widow mother, dreams about going to the Moon from an early age. One night he sees a princess in the moonlight and falls in love with her; after that, he becomes Prince Moonstruck, and admires the Moon every night, wishing to travel there to meet the princess. Luckily, he befriends a group of Dwarfs who help him ascend to the Moon - but they warn him that if he stays too long, he will go blind. Prince and princess fall in love, but when the prince starts to lose his sight, they decide to move back to Earth. To ease the princess' homesickness, the Dwarfs paint the Dolomites with the shining colors of the Moon, and they have been like that ever since.

Shooting the Moon: A Yao folktale about how long ago there was a fiery, burning moon in the sky. The archer Ya La and his wife Ni Wo worked together to assemble a magic bow and arrow to shoot it down. When chipping stars off the fiery moon was not enough, they shot up Ni Wo's embroidery that covered the Moon's surface, and cooled it down - but it also sucked the wife herself up to the sky. Not wanting to live apart from his wife, Ya La called to Ni Wo, who let her long braid down so that her husband could climb up to her. Ever since then, they have been living on the Moon in a little hut with a cassia tree and a flock of sheep - all of which you can see in the dark shapes on the surface.

Matanako and the Moon: A folktale from Tuvalu about a boy who has a special connection to the Moon. As a baby, he only sleeps in moonlight, and when he learns to talk, he says he wishes to go to the Moon. He convinces his father to take him, and they board a ship together, sailing for the place in the East where the Moon rises from the sea. On the way they pass various spirit islands, and lose some of their crew to spirit diseases. When they reach the horizon, the father throws Matanako at the Moon, and he has been living up there ever since. The dark shapes on the surface are the shape of his body.

Why the Skunk Lives Underground: A Quechua folktale about a skunk and a fox who are unlikely best friends. Fox's biggest dream is to go to the Moon, while Skunk would like to feast on the worms that live underground. When the Moon lets down two ropes for them, they decide to climb up together. Skunk doesn't really want to go, but he agrees to accompany his friend. In some versions, a guinea pig chews Skunk's rope through and he falls back down; in others, he decides that going to the Moon is not for him after all, and comes back down to live comfortably underground. Fox makes it happily to the Moon, and thus both friends fulfill their own dreams.

The Fox who was in Love with the Moon: Another Quechua story, and a very cute one. A fox falls in love with the Moon, and wants to reach her, but no matter how many mountaintops he climbs, he can't get any closer. Eventually he climbs the highest, most daunting mountain, and from the top, he jumps into Moon's arms. He's been cradled there ever since.

True History: Lucian of Samosata wrote this piece in the 2nd century AD as a parody of the "true stories" of ancient travelers. He claims to have sailed to the Moon on a ship picked up by a whirlwind. The Moon, he says, is inhabited by Vulture Riders, people riding giant vultures into battle, ruled by Endymion, the Moon Goddess' mortal lover. They are waging a war against the Ant Riders of the Sun over who gets to colonize the Morning Star. The Armies of the Moon have 80,000 Vulture Riders, 20,000 Cauliflower Riders, Garlic Warriors and Millet Slingers. They are joined by 30,000 Flea Archers (archers riding giant fleas) and 50,000 Wind Runners. Lucian describes the whole war in great and elaborate detail. He also shares wild tales about the Moon society, including how they harvest babies from trees that grow from men's testicles planted in the ground, how their rich people dress in glass clothes, and how they have honey instead of snot.

Orlando Furioso: In one of my favorite epic moments, the knight Astolfo borrows a hippogriff (and then Elijah's chariot) to fly to the Moon, where all lost things can be found, to search for the wits/sanity of his friend Orlando, who lost them due to his love for a woman. Among the great collection of lost things on the Moon there are such curiosities as lost fame, lost desires, lost tears, lost kingdoms, wasted efforts, lost favors, unhappy marriages, lost charms... and lost time, which is the only thing one cannot claim back. Astolfo is shocked to find a bottle with his own name on it: it contains a portion of his own lost wits, which he never even realized was missing.

Conclusion

There are countless other folktales and legends about traveling to the Moon; most cultures seem to have at least one. This is what made the actual Moon Landing so fascinating in the eyes of the storyteller: Humanity achieved something that it has collectively been dreaming of for millennia.
So, which dream should we tackle next?

Talking mountains, hidden treasures (Following folktales around the world 21. - Peru)

Today I continue new blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts under the Following Folktales label, or you can follow the series on Facebook! Tíz évvel ezelőtt perui mesékkel kedztem hivatásos mesemondói pályafutásomat. Nosztalgikus volt ismét elmerülni bennük.

Ten years ago I began my professional career with Peruvian tales. It was very nostalgic to return to them.

Mitos, leyendas, y cuentos peruanos
José María Arguedas, Francisco Izquierdo Ríos
Siruela, 2009.

This classic collection has gone through various editions since its first in 1947. It contains 65 tales, organized by genre and geography: Myths, legends, and folktales from the Coastal, Mountain, and Rainforest regions of Peru. It is the result of a national folklore collection campaign in the early 1900s when they mailed questionnaires out to all town and village teachers, who in turn had their students collect and record local stories, and submit them. The volume therefore is diverse, intriguing, and exciting; it has pretty much everything from indigenous myths to Catholic saints, from international folktale types to monster lore. The book comes with extensive notes on the local words, flora and fauna, and symbols embedded in the stories. It is a classic in its own field, and very much worth reading.

Highlights

One of my favorite stories was that of The three bulls, in which the fertile pastures of a mountain were protected by three terrible bulls - one orange-red, one black, one white. People decided to hunt them down, and chased them separately until they disappeared; later they found gold mines where the red one had gone, silver where the white, and coal where the black.
Talking about mines, I loved the legends featuring the Mother of Salt, an old hag who protects rock salt mines (places, lakes, mountains, etc. in Peruvian lore have "mothers", guardian spirits - who are not always female, by the way, and not always human). In the stories she either begs for food, or cooks for a traveler - and then seasons it by sneezing generous amounts of snot on it. If people are disgusted, she gets offended, and moves the salt mines far away.
I also found the legend of two neighboring mountains, Huatuscalla és Ccaser, very intriguing. People were building a road across the former, carving and torturing it; the locals claim to have overheard the two peaks talking at night, Huatuscalla complaining about the damage. Eventually they agreed that it would transfer all its riches to its neighbor for safekeeping before the humans found them. Two doors appeared in the mountainsides, then a giant bridge; warriors in red carried all treasures over to Ccaser, and disappeared. Huatuscalla has been angry and volatile ever since.

Huatuscalla (picture from here)

There was a charming story about the birth of dragonflies (or as locally called, Little Horses of the Devil), where a mysterious trickster kept spreading fake news and rumors until a village got a sorcerer to turn him into an insect. As a punishment, he now has to appear as the harbinger of good news. I was also entertained by the legend where two neighboring towns swapped guardian saints (Saint Anne and Saint Isidorus), but they kept returning home, because Isidorus was always colt and Anne thought her new home was unhealthy.
My archaeologist heart especially liked the legend of Narihuala, which claimed that when the locals got news about the arrival of Pizarro, they got so scared they buried themselves alive with all their treasures - this is how legend explains rich ancient burials full of gold and silver.

Connections

There were several familiar mythical creatures in these tales. I found sirens, fairies, dwarves, and even a Basilisk that killed off an entire village. I was partial to the Amazonian water-people called yacuruna, whose riverbed houses had roofs made of sand, vipers for beams, and turtles for chairs. Also of local flavor was the pishtaco, who, similar to Bolivian stories, kills people for their grease and blood at night. Those of you who watch Supernatural probably remember this one (interpreted by Dean Winchester as "fish taco").
There were multiple legends about my favorite Peruvian "dragon", the llama-headed Amarú. In one story there were two of them, one white and one black, and their fights over a river caused floods and earthquakes (reminiscent of the two dragons of Merlin).

Find more funny potoos here

The Legend of the Aymaman was the Peruvian version of Hansel and Gretel, where an evil stepmother made her husband take the two children, a boy and a girl, to the jungle and abandon them. Instead of a witch, however, they encountered a fairy, who turned them into birds so that they could live in the enchanted forest forever. Their call (aymaman) is to their deceased mother. It had to be a beginner fairy, too, because the bird, also known as the potoo, is one of the funniest-looking creatures in existence.
And of course there is no book without tricksters! This time it was carachupa, the armadillo (of course), who tricked Tiger by making him believe that the end of the world was near. I have seen this reading-from-a-leaf trick from the Mouse Deer in Indonesia before...

Where to next?
Ecuador.