Fuck You, I&#39;m a Robot

Thanks! I'll look for it in the library.

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beetle-breath.livejournal.com

My friend thought I was nuts because I told her stories about Baba Yaga. What's crazy about a witch who lives in a house on chicken legs??

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I love Baba Yaga. I found out that the house on chicken legs is actually based on old Scandinavian tribes who would put their huts on huge stilts in order to avoid floods. Not that outlandish!

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sir-dave.livejournal.com

The variety of Orkney folklore, given the tiny size of the area, is quite incredible.

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British folklore in general overwhelms me. It's like the Amazon, where there's 50,000 new superstitions in every square inch of ground.

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But it's so much fun . . . you can listen to any Zeppelin tune at random and say, "yup, Percy was dipping into X, Y, or Z when he wrote this (along with quite a bit of whiskey and some good dope)."

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Nonono, Zep got everything from Tolkien and Crowley, who in turn stole a bunch of stuff from actual folklore. It's all secondhand.

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Well, okay, but it played well in the sticks. My sister is going through all the packed-up stuff in our garage because she's moving to Traverse City next weekend and wants to yoink some supplies, and she found an old copy of Richard Cole's autobiography. He was Zep's road manager, and he was there for everything. The shark incident. The Great Dane incident. The strip clubs, the food fights, the numerous other orgies. Great reading.

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And actually, there's very little Tolkien. Ramble On off the second album, maybe a bit hiding in one or two other songs, and that's it. (Crowley, on the other hand, is present in every last note Jimmy Page ever committed to tape. There is some weeeeird shit going on in between the headphones.

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Oh, come on. Misty Mountain Hop? Battle of Evermore? Stairway for goshsakes? Even Immigrant Song--Tolkien ganked from Norse mythology too.

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Oh, okay, well, MMH, yes, but the rest is Tolkienish, not directly derived from Tolkien. Certainly in the whole vibe of fantasy lit, but you have to remember that Percy was exceedingly well versed in authentic Celtic folklore, and he worked quite hard to make things real.

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Show me a paper on pre-Tolkien Celtic influences in Led Zep's discography and I'll give 'em all another listen.

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I may very well have to write that. (I've already planned my grad-school masterworks on Elvis at Sun and the Velvet Underground's role in ending the Cold War.)

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In the meantime I recommend Hammer of the Gods for a good lazy summer read. The band hates it and it's got a lot of hearsay, but it's so goddamned decadent and entertaining.

Would that Zep decides to do one of those oral histories like the Beatles and the Stones did . . . that'd be a good tie-in with the tour this autumn (cross your fingers, knock wood, do a little fake Crowleyan magick), dontcha think?

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Anyway, Stairway is beyond any parameters or explanations we can put on it. It is, as a reviewer wrote not long after it was released, the closest musical approximation of an orgasm we're ever likely to see. (Moreso even than the middle section of Whole Lotta Love with Percy moaning and writhing all over the place.)

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Wait! Hold on. I just went back and listened to it. MMH has almost nothing to do with Tolkien. It's all hippie festival dope-smoke jive. So *thhhhhbbbbft* ;-)

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sir-dave.livejournal.com

Have been researching the folklore and stuff. When one gets back to the Wild Hunt and all, and anything prior to the Roman invasion, it is not too far until the archaeology reveals that the 'superstitions' of the time required human sacrifice.

Recent excavations of so-called 'hill forts' (truly defended settlements) show that people were killed so as to be buried in symbolically important locations. So much for the back to nature brigade; folklore is fascinating stuff, but when we look for a rationale behind its early manifestations, it is not at all pleasant. It's homicidal.

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Oooooooooooooh. I'm not surprised at the human sacrifice stuff. Any books or papers you can point me to?

but when we look for a rationale behind its early manifestations, it is not at all pleasant. It's homicidal.
Terry Pratchett taught me this! It irks me sometimes how fairy tales and folklore and superstitions get whitewashed or handwaved away as silliness--our society places such an emphasis on rationality that it's sometimes hard to remember that "superstitions" were things that people lived and died by.

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Maybe I can help you, I am russian student, phylologist.

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Oh, that would be so cool! I mostly want to know about fairy tales and superstitions and things like that--America has a lot of things like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and not breaking mirrors, and they're little things that are important parts of the national consciousness--people refer to them in conversation, in advertisements, in stories, and we have all these sayings about them--but it's so hard to get the right context for idioms or little superstitions from other countries.
What kinds of superstitions do you believe in or refer to? What kinds of stories would you tell your kids (if you had any)? That sort of thing...

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There are so many tales... like this...
WEE LITTLE HAVROSHECHKA
There are good people in the world and some who are not so good. There are also people who are shameless in their wickedness.
Wee Little Havroshechka had the bad luck to fall in with such as these. She was an orphan and these people took her in and brought her up, only to make her work till she couldn't stand. She wove and spun and did the housework and had to answer for everyth ing.
Now the mistress of the house had three daughters. The eldest was called One-Eye, the second Two-Eyes, and the youngest Three-Eyes. The three sisters did nothing all day but sit by the gate and watch what went on in the street, while Wee Little Havroshe chka sewed, spun and wove for them and never heard a kind word in return.
Sometimes Wee Little Havroshechka would go out into the field, put her arms round the neck of her brindled cow and pour out all her sorrows to her.
"Brindled, my dear," she would say, "they beat me and scold me, they don't give me enough to eat, and yet they forbid me to cry. I am to have five pounds of flax spun, woven, bleached and rolled by tomorrow."
And the cow would say in reply, "My bonny lass, you have only to climb into one of my ears and come out through the other and your work will be done for you." And just as Brindled said, so it was. Wee Little Havroshechka would climb into one of the cow's ears and come out through the other, and behold! there lay the cloth, all woven and bleached and rolled. Little Havroshechka would then take the rolls of cloth to her mistress, who would look at them and grunt, and put them away in a chest and give Wee Little Havroshechka even more work to do.
And Wee Little Havroshechka would go to Brindled, put her arms round her and stroke her, climb into one of her ears and come out through the other, pick up the ready cloth and take it to her mistress again.
One day the old woman called her daughter One-Eye to her and said, "My good child, my bonny child, go and see who helps the orphan with her work. Find out who spins the thread, weaves the cloth and rolls it."
One-Eye went with Wee Little Havroshechka into the woods and she went with her into the fields, but she forgot her mother's command and she basked in the sun and lay down on the grass. And Havroshechka murmured, "Sleep, little eye, sleep!"
One-Eye shut her eye and fell asleep. While she slept, Brindled wove, bleached and rolled the cloth. The mistress learned nothing, so she sent for her second daughter, Two-Eyes.
"My good child, my bonny child, go and see who helps the orphan with her work."
Two-Eyes went with Wee Little Havroshechka, but she forgot her mother's commend and she basked in the sun and lay down on the grass. And Wee Little Havroshechka murmured, "Sleep, little eye! Sleep, the other little eye!" Two-Eyes shut her eyes a nd she dozed off. While she slept, Brindled wove, bleached and rolled the cloth.
The old woman was very angry and on the third day she told her third daughter, Three-Eyes, to go with Wee Little Havroshechka, to whom she gave more work than ever. Three-Eyes played and skipped about in the sun until she was so tired that she lay down o n the grass. And Wee Little Havroshechka sang out, "Sleep, little eye! Sleep, the other little eye!"
But she forgot all about the third little eye.

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Two of Three-Eyes' eyes fell asleep, but the third looked on and saw everything. It saw Wee Little Havroshechka climb into one of the cow's ears and come out through the other and pick up the ready cloth.
Three-Eyes came home and told her mother what she had seen. The old woman was overjoyed, and on the very next day she went to her husband and said, "Go and kill the brindled cow."
The old man was astonished and tried to reason with her. "Have you lost your wits, old woman?", he said. "The cow is a good one and still young."
"Kill it and say no more," the wife insisted.
There was no help for it, and the old man began to sharpen his knife. Wee Little Havroshechka found out all about it and she ran to the field and threw her arms around Brindled.
"Brindled, dearie," she said, "they want to kill you!"
And the cow replied, "Do not grieve, my bonny lass, but do what I tell you. Take my bones, tie them up in a kerchief, bury them in the garden and water them every day. Do not eat of my flesh and never forget me."
The old man killed the cow, and Wee Little Havroshechka did as Brindled had told her. She went hungry, but she would not touch the meat, and she buried the bones in the garden and watered them every day.
After a while an apple tree grew out of them, and a wonderful tree it was! Its apples were round and juicy, its swaying boughs were of silver, and its rustling leaves were of gold. Whoever drove by would stop to look, and whoever came near marveled.
A long time passed by and a little time. One day One-Eye, Two-Eyes and Three-Eyes were out walking in the garden. And who should chance to be riding by at the time but a young man, handsome and strong and rich and curly-haired. When he saw the juicy apples he stopped and said to the girls teasingly, "Fair maidens! Her I will marry amongst you three who brings me an apple off yonder tree."
And off rushed the sisters to the apple tree, each trying to get ahead of the others. But the apples which had been hanging very low and seemed within easy reach now swung up high in the air above the sisters' heads. The sisters tried to knock them down, but the leaves came down in a shower and blinded them. They tried to pluck the apples off, but the boughs caught in their braids and unplaited them. Struggle and stretch as they might, they could not reach the apples and only scratched their hands.
Then Wee Little Havroshechka walked up to the tree, and at once the boughs bent down and the apples came into her hands. She gave an apple to the handsome young stranger and he married her. From that day on she knew no sorrow, and she and her husband lived happily ever after.

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http://www.nota.triwe.net/children/tales/tales.htm
some russian tales on english.

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http://www.oldrussia.net/vas.html
"Vasilisa the Perfect"
http://www.oldrussia.net/baba.html
About Yaga
http://www.oldrussia.net/koshchey.html
About Koshchey the Deathless

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That is amazing. Thank you for typing all of that out for me, and for the links...

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Ahaha, just looked at your userpick =) I'm from Siberia, Omsk. +20 C is a bit too cold for may, I agree =))))

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LOL, it's actually from a cartoon...+20 C is about 68 Fahrenheit, that's pretty warm (if I'm reading that right). It's about 74 Fahrenheit here, but annoyingly chilly because it's so windy. Drives me crazy.

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Why on earth Lenin ever thought communism and official atheism could be implemented in a country so backward and superstitious, I'll never know.

I took a semester of Russian in college, and I had the same problem with it I had with Hebrew: my brain absolutely refuses to process any other alphabets than the one I grew up with. Languages I can understand just fine, but having to start off with a whole new set of letters before I got to grammar and vocab just destroyed me. I was two weeks behind everyone else because no matter what I tried -- flashcards, A/V, osmosis -- I could never get the goddamn alphabet to sink in.

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I have the Hebrew alphabet burned into my brain, but I learned it early on...I think the window for learning new alphabets easily has passed. If you'd learned Russian as a little kid, you'd still be able to remember the alphabet.

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To some degree, yes. But I think I'm a bit worse than most. I assume you got your Hebrew indoctrination started about the same age I did (seven or eight). Even then I couldn't manage it. I can pick out a few letters if I really wrack my brain, but it takes me a long time. I tried learning it again a few years ago, and it was a no-go.

Yiddish, of course, I dip into as much as does every other semi-Semite in America. For effect, anyway, or when I want to sound especially Jewy. (I've noticed that when I'm around Jews, I try to sound goyish, and when I'm around goyim, I want to sound Jewy. Strange.)

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(I've noticed that when I'm around Jews, I try to sound goyish, and when I'm around goyim, I want to sound Jewy. Strange.)
Same here. I dropped out of B'Nai Brith because I felt half-goy and half-pagan and totally out of place among the Zionist, kosher-eating bottle blondes with blue contacts and nose jobs (lol irony, says the girl with the big nose and untameable fro), but now that I'm up in Mt. Pleasant, I'm everyone's token Jew.

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Oh god, I never did BB, but my sister did, and she fucking hated it. She doesn't look Jewish at all, and the fact that she was only a halfie and from Southfield turned everyone against her. I always felt totally out of place in Hebrew school. It was so obvious the teachers couldn't stand me because I refused to deny that my Jewishness was just an ethnic thing, and a half ethnic thing at that.

When I was up in Ann Arbor this weekend with my friends David and Josh we spent three or four hours just bitching about how screwed up most of the Jews in metro Detroit are. David went to high school with me, but Josh's parents moved up to West Bloomfield before he started middle school, and he says it was the worst place on the face of the earth. Everyone up there is a fucking fraud.

I got the token Jew vibe in college, too. We had slightly under two thousand students and of those maybe 25 were Jewish (or at least that's the number of Jewish-ish names I counted in the directory). The faculty had a bit more. But it was quite a culture shock. "Everyone here is white! And from farm country! What the fuck?"

Oh, your nose isn't big. You have kind of off-kilter geeky good looks. (Here's something interesting you could try this summer, though, just for fun: get your hair straightened and see just how long it would be. I'm guessing it'd be down to your waist.)

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Man, the B'Nai Brith girls I was in the group with looked goyish, acted goyish, had way more money than we did, and just happened to be on the Conservative side of the Reform line. They tried to straighten my hair (which I've cut recently anyway) and asked me when I was getting a rhinoplasty. I'm damn proud of my 'fro and my nose (wish it was bigger), not to mention the Philip Roth-esque lower-middle-class vibe of my upper-middle-class family, and took major offense. I think the last straw was when we went to a Denny's during the big BBYO convention and I got cheesy hashbrowns and a big side of bacon and a six-girl lecture about eating treyfe. It's a family tradition to buck tradition, dammit, and I'm not breaking that tradition just so I can fit in with a bunch of holier-than-thou nouveau riche teenyboppers.

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Pffft. Yeah, like the way they live their lives is in any way in line with authentic Jewish tradition (biblical or cultural). Gimme Oak Park Jews any day of the week. Well, not the Hasidim, but the good solid almost working-class salt of the earth types.

I wish my hair were a bit more like yours. I know it's probably a bitch to deal with in the morning, but at least it's all-out curly, and therefore somewhat manageable because it's compact and fairly uniform. Mine is somewhat frizzy but it puffs up in ungodly ways, and I have never been able to get it cut in a way that makes it work. It should either be frizzier or else already starting to thin, and it ain't gonna do either anytime soon.

I've probably told you this before, but my grandparents were nominally Orthodox, went to shul regularly and all that, but they lived in Georgia, and there was no way on earth they were gonna keep kosher. I recall holiday meals where the main courses were matzoh-ball soup, brisket, and a big platter of ham.

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I always admired my great-grandfather Waldman (the first Joe Waldman). From what I'm told he could speak five or six languages fluently (the result, no doubt, of growing up in Vienna). English, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and maybe some other local Slavic tongue.

What was your high-school language? I took Latin and while it's come in useful when picking apart the English language, I really wish I'd taken Spanish. It probably should be a requirement now, same as math and science. Every kid should take a few years of it.

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Spanish; I took four years of it and promptly forgot everything. Took it instead of French because I wanted to live in California when I grew up.

drworm took Latin too, and I really, really wish I had.

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Well, to live in America in our lifespans, it's practically essential. Even if you never master it, it's good to be able to fake it.

French is worthless as far as I can see unless your main goal is to take the class trip to France to get drunk and laid. (I went to Italy with Latin club one summer and most of the kids on the trip went for those two purposes, and stupid nerdy me, all I did was take photos and actually pay attention to the tour guides. Never so much as had a glass of wine because I was so paranoid and asocial.)

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I never got to go on a class trip to anywhere except for Canada. Which was nice, but no Sistine Chapel.

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Hee hee hee. I almost got kicked out of the Sistine Chapel. They told us "no flash photography", so naturally I ignored them and started popping away, and this huge security goon came up to me and started shoving me toward the door, growling something menacing in Italian. I panicked, but then did something brilliant: I played both stupid and American. "What? No flash? I didn't know. Honestly I didn't. Sorry. Hey, nice tie." And for some reason he let me go.

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I probably wouldn't have gone except that it was ungodly cheap. My Latin teacher had been doing these trips every four years since she'd started teaching there in 1968, and had an excellent fundraising program in place. Since this was her final trip before she retired, she got the school to chip in more than usual, so it was even cheaper, probably only about $900 for the tour (which included hotels) and then whatever it cost for airfare and spending money (which I fucked up on when we took a boat from Italy to Greece -- I changed all my money from lire to whatever the Greek currency was [this was pre-euro], not knowing that the ship was Italian, so I couldn't get anything to eat). Next time we meet up I'll show you the photos. Me looking like a long-haired teenage goon in all the great churches and classical sites of Italy.

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Anyway, the Sistine Chapel is overrated. Whenever I look at it the only thing I can think of is the pool scene from Rocky Horror.

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pphi.livejournal.com

I was always fascinated by the dichotomy between Baba-Jaga as the witch in Hansel und Gretel, and as a kind of Frau Holle.
I've been reading Vladimir Propp on this subject: the books "The Russian Fairytale" and "Historical Origins of Fairytales" were very interesting.
Unfortunately, I only have them in Italian translation (and in Russian, but that's not very helpful either).
If you wish I can look up some quotes.

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Frau Holle? Not familiar with the character, unfortunately...I definitely need to do more research! I'm familiar with Hansel and Gretel, but hadn't heard a version with Baba-Jaga specifically as the witch; she was always just "the witch." I suppose it's a regional variation.

I just found out that my library has an English translation of Propp's "The Morphology of Fairytales." I would definitely appreciate any English quotes you could dig up or translate, though; everything I can find online for him is in Russian, too.

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pphi.livejournal.com

On gutenberg.org: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11027/11027.txt

MOTHER HOLLE

There was once a widow who had two daughters--one of whom was pretty and
industrious, while the other was ugly and idle.
[...]
At last she came to a little house, out of which an old woman peeped;
but she had such large teeth that the girl was frightened, and was about
to run away.

But the old woman called out to her, "What are you afraid of, dear
child? Stay with me; if you will do all the work in the house properly,
you shall be the better for it. Only you must take care to make my bed
well, and to shake it thoroughly till the feathers fly--for then there
is snow on the earth. I am Mother Holle."
[etc.]

Mother Holle apparently is closely related with nature. The good girl is rewarded, the lazy girl punished.

In "Vassilisa Prekrasnaja", Baba-Jaga receives as visitors a number of knights, these are identified with the red sun, the black night and so on. She helps her visitor to defeat the evil stepmother.

But in "Baba-Jaga and the brave youth" she steals a child and tries to have it baked in the oven. It's not exactly Hansel und Gretel, but the similarities are striking.

Propp tries to reconcile these differences in the chapter "The little hut in the Forest" of "Historical Origins of Fairytales" by considering the hut as a place of initiation, Baba-Jaga as a priestess/shamaness and the children as the initiands who are submitted to severe trials before they are considered members of the tribe.

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Oh, I do remember that particular story. Thank you. And yeah, the Vassilisa story is really the one Baba-Jaga story I'm familiar with--the "good witch/evil witch" dichotomy and the idea of the hut as a place of initiation is a really interesting one, and something I definitely haven't seen as much in Western fairy tales.

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