[Aik Haw]

Betrayal

There was once a woman named Gold Rabbit who lived on the shores of a river with yellow river running through it. This river will in millenias from now be known as the Yellow River and the land around it will be called the Middle Kingdom. Gold Rabbit comes from a family of fisher people who rode small rafts that could float and fly over the river and summon the fishes in their presence. Every morning, Gold Rabbit will ride one of these raft and span the distance of thousand of lis downstream then up, bringing in tonnes of fishes that the family will sell to the now extinct People of the Mountains, who rode the sky into the stars.

One day, while on her routine fishing run, the sky turned red and black. Terrified, Gold Rabbit veered her raft under a stand of rocks. As she watched, a ball of fire crashed through the clouds and slammed a distant hill, which was instantly obliterated.

Curiosity struck Gold Rabbit as she rode her raft through the smoking ashes to where the fireball had landed. Lo, to her surprise, there lay a man, handsome, tall, muscular, dressed in the strangest of clothings, eagle spread and unconscious.

The heavens parted as a dark smear crossed it. Gold Rabbit realised that the young man before her must be in great danger, as the dark smear only happened when the Celestial Lords, BodyGuards to the Emperor of Heaven opened the mystical door to the space between the worlds( apparently, some kind of mystical shortcut that magicians use to travel to the moon or some very distant magical world).

Fretfully, she moved the young man into her raft and spirited him back to her village, which was a thousand li away. There, she thought, he would be save from the wrath of the Celestial Lords.

Alas, even her family turned against her when the elders at one sight of the man proclaimed him to be a dissident who rebelled against the Emperor of Heaven. Her family begged her to bring the man back to where she found him and hand him over to the Celestial Lords who were scouting him from the Void Beyond.

With a heavy heart, she rode the raft back to the site, floating over waterfalls and riding the mist. It was then when the man woke up, and Gold Rabbit was struck with his true handsomeness, and the utter goodness that radiated from him.

Convinced that the Celestial Lords were wrong in this, Gold Rabbit ordered the baffled stranger to strip away his clothings. Gold Rabbit than gave him the clothings of the People of the Plains while she sailed the heavens to come alongside one of the smaller boats of the Celestial Lords hovering in the sky. She passed to him the clothing, saying that it was all she found. So delighted were the Celestial Lords they gave her a box which is a weapon of great power which she should use in defense of herself but keep a great distance from it.

Gold Rabbit met the young man again long after the Celestial Lords returned to the sky. The young man introduced himself as Black Tiger. Thanking her, the young man left, leaving her alone once again.

Life resumed back to normal for Gold Rabbit. That was until one day, she and her family watched in horror as again, the smear crossed the heavens but this time, a dark ray rose from Earth to implode the heavens. Her family as usual cowered under their magical devices of protection and hiding but Gold Rabbit, being extremely curious of what's going on, took out her raft and floated over desert and wasteland to the source of the problem, which was 2000 li to the North.

There, she found Black Tiger wielding a device of great power, dragging in the boats of the Celestial Lords through the doorway of the space between the worlds, sending the great boats crashing down from the sky.

Aggrieved that a man so persecuted would seek not the path of peace, Gold Rabbit confronted him. Her outrage was great when he attacked her with a spear of power and the only reason she remained alive was because of a minor device of protection she carried all the time with her.

"What blasphemy is this, to strike a person who have once saved you Black Tiger? Do you know no gratefulness?"

The scoundrel then replied, "When the Great Celestial Cities collapse and the demon army rides through the Heavenly Palace, only then will I show you gratefulness."

It was only then when Gold Rabbit realised what a fool she was for saving this young man, and how she should have listened to her parents. Black Tiger was none other than the follower of the Sky Demons whose desire to overthrow the Imperial Path had led to the destruction of many worlds like the one she dwelt in.

As more sky boats fell from the sky, Gold Rabbit did the only thing she could to. She rode her raft towards Black Tiger and flung the box the Celestial Lords gave to her. In one deft move, she spun her raft around and covered many great lis.

Alas, even that was not enough to save her from the destructive power of the box that wiped out only things that are alive in it's wake. Gold Rabbit fell from her raft onto withering grass as like that of the grass, withered away under it's intense magical rays.

The Celestial Lords were saved from their disastrous fate by her quick actions and with their sky boats, descended to the fields of destruction with the aim of thanking her. Alas, only bones were left by the time they arrived. The People of the Mountain, riding their carts of great wings and spurting fire spun overhead, weeping at the loss of one so dutiful. With tears in their eyes, both races ascended the sky path, carrying her bones with them to the presence of the Heavenly Emperor.

Grateful for the help she has rendered, the Emperor granted her life. With objects and talismans of tremendous magic, Gold Rabbit was brought back to life, except this time, she was given the body of a dragon, where she will roam between the stars forever.

[Cadfael]

Originally posted by Hobbit
Erm....from 'The Storyteller' TV series. :)

Hobbit

Oh thankyou Hobbit!!! :D

I have been racking my brains... I remember it now!!! Oh boy that was long time ago!!!

[kater]

I guess Dragons are important in both our cultures Aik :)

[Hereford Eye]

In the early days of the world, the Coyote wandered his homeland making friends with other families. On a day of coolness in the spring, Coyote met his friend Woodpecker at a creek and the two conversed as old friends do. “We have known each other long,” Coyote said, “but never shared dinner together. Why do you not come to our house this evening and bring your family. Our families shall enjoy each other’s company”
“We shall be delighted,” Woodpecker replied and flew off to his home to prepare his family.

That evening, the Woodpeckers arrived at the Coyote dwelling. Upon landing before the doorway, Woodpecker and his and three children stretched their wings, as birds will do after flying, exposing the red and yellow marks on the wings’ underside. During the course of the dinner, the woodpeckers took many opportunities to stretch their wings, each time flashing the red and yellow undersides. It is a way with woodpeckers to do this. At length, the meal completed, the time arrived for departure.

“We appreciate the courtesy of you home and the excellent dinner Mother Coyote prepared. We are in your debt and wish to repay you by inviting you to our home for dinner.” Coyote quickly accepted this invitation.

After the woodpeckers were gone, he gathered his family. “Do you see the airs these Woodpeckers assume? Always showing off their bright feathers. I want them to know that Coyotes are equal to woodpeckers. I’ll show them!”

The afternoon of the day they were to appear at the woodpecker’s home, Coyote again gathered his family. They built a great fire before their home. When it was time to depart for the woodpeckers’ home, Coyote called his family to the fire. He lashed a burning stick under each of their arms with the burning end pointing forward. Then he attired himself in the same way.

“Now,” he said, “we will show them. When we get to their home, you must lift up your arms now and then to show them we are as good as the woodpeckers.”

As they sat down to dinner, one of Coyote’s daughters complained that the flame was burning her. “Be patient, daughter, and do not complain of little things,” Coyote answered. A while later, second daughter reported her fire had gone out. This stretched Coyote’s tolerance and he reproved his daughter angrily.

“How is it, friend,” Woodpecker asked Coyote, “your colors are so very bright at first but become black as time goes by?

“Oh, that is the beauty of our colors,” Coyote answered in barely smother rage. “They are always changing – not constant as with some people – but turn all shades.”

But the Coyote family was very uncomfortable and soon made excuses to be on their way. When they arrived home, Coyote whipped his family for exposing him to be laughed at but Woodpecker gathered his family and told them: “See now what the Coyotes have done and never in your life do as they did. Be just who you really are and put on no false colors.”

When the Pueblo people tell this story to their children, the children ask if this is true. Pueblo elders say this is true and just as true for people as it is for birds.

[Aik Haw]

Legend has it that during the Reign of the Yellow Emperor, there was a marvellous city built on the mountains over present day Yunnan and Tibet. It is said that every morning, the city would be shrouded in clouds which would pour down it's high walls and tall parapets. The gardens and waterfall swirls with the mist. Then, as the sun rises, a blue circle will expand from the middle spire, banishing the clouds till the far walls. Under the rays of the rising sun, the city will glimmer as the marble and metal walls magnifies the glory of the sun itself. For thousands and thousands of li, people from all over can watch as the pure white rays sweep through the blue vaults of Heaven. It is even said that if one were to climb Han Du Hill in the Hainan island at that time and watch the sun set, one can, if he were to strain his eyes, behold a diamond that set the rays of the sun into rainbow arches.

As night falls and the stars cover the night sky, the City would still shine. It is almost as though every single stars in the heaven converged their light over top of the long mountain range, with the full moon topping off the Great Pearl glowing over the Central Palace. The Immortal People of the City who never grows old, it is said, would turn to the Heavens then as every night, one of their Great Boat rises as their people depart and join their compatriots in their serenade with the stars.

This city was called the City of Immortal Life, or the City of the Garden of Peaches, or what Europeans call Shangri-la, or what the Indians and Tibetans call Shambala, or what the Yunnanites call Sharambala.

Alas, like a crysanthemum without a core, so is this beauty without a heart. For all their wonders and power, the dwellers of the City were cruel. The natives of the mountain regions were forced to mine for ore, dredge up the mystical Earth oil that burns, break their bones in search for rare plants and herbs to suit the desire of the City dwellers. For years, the people of the Yellow River watched in awe, leaving the mountain people to their plight as they slowly began the foundation of their own civilisation.

That was until one day the people of the Immortal City flew under the protection their fiery chariots to the people of the Yellow River, demanding scarce resources and manpower. When a minor governor denied them aid, they attacked, devastating a city before they were pushed back by the now lost minor weapons of power brought long ago from the space between the worlds by the earthly offsprings of the Celestial Lords.

Great was the wrath of the Emperor, the Governors, the Generals and the Sages as they watched through the Magic Eye the horror wrought on the city. Together, they called the greatest artisans and engineers of the time to reforge the lost Sky Wheels and Spears and Arrows of Power. 10 years it took them to rediscover the lost arts, 10 years the City dwellers assailed. At the end of 10 years, Arrows of Power were released from the Yellow River, flying nearly 5000li to burn the City. Great was the magic of the city as though the arrows of power rain down through day and night, cracking the mountains and shattering the nearby towns. A blue bubble held the city intact. One weapon from the time of the Celestial Lords proved useless.

With spears of power and sky wheels, the army circled the city, barricading it for 50 years till the people within starved. Their Great Boats could not ascend the sky without being brought down by the spears of power while descending Great Boats were destroyed by more powerful arrows of power swinging into the Heavens. Eventually, the City citizens opened the door, leaving the protection of the city.

Alas, without the protective magic of the chariots and the bubble of the city, the Citizens were helpless and instantly aged and crumbled as the Army stormed the city and detonated it building by building to the ground. The incoming Great Boats from the heavens fled at the sight of this, never again to be seen.

Some members of the Army however chose to ascend the Heavenly path using the Great Boats, seeking once again the path to the Celestial Lords and that of the First Ancestors. Gifted with most of the remaining devices of power as a gesture of thanks, they embark on their Great Journey to the Heavens, to guard the Middle Kingdom forever from the people of the City.

[kater]

One for Ogg

An Adventure in the Big Bog
A young harper of Bala was asked to play at a wedding in a farmhouse near Yspytty Ifan. When the joyous company broke up late at night he set off for home like the rest but he had a much longer way to go than anyone else. When he was crossing the mountain a dense fog came on, and he lost his way. He was wandering about trying to find the path again, when he suddenly stepped into the Gors Fawr, "the big bog." The treacherous crust swayed for an instant under his tread, and then it broke. The soft mud oozed round his ankles, and he felt himself going further and further down. He tried to raise himself on his harp, but the only result of this was to plunge the beloved instrument deep into the bog, and he himself sank lower and lower. At last, with a desperate effort, he hurled himself full length upon the surface. The yielding crust caved under his body, and he clutched at the surface grass, but he only plucked the tufts from their roots. They gave him no hold. With every fresh effort to save himself he sank deeper. The gurgling slime sucked him down, down, down, and in the anguish of his soul he threw his head back in one last wild scream.

His cry was just dying away when the fog suddenly cleared, and a little man appeared on the brink of the bog. He threw a rope to the harper, who, after a great struggle, fastened it round his body under the arms. The little man pulled and pulled and gradually drew the harper out of the mire. He took him to a house blazing with light hard by, where there was singing and dancing and much revelry. The harper was given fine clean clothes, and after drinking a flagon of delicious mead he recovered sufficiently from the fright which the fall into the bog had given him to join in the festivity which was going on. There was a little lady there whom the company addressed as Olwen. She was the most beautiful little lady that the harper had ever seen and the best dancer. With her he danced hour after hour, and the only bitter in his cup of sweet was the thought that his beloved harp was in the slimy blackness of the Gors. When the whole company retired to rest he was put in a bed as soft as the softest down, and he thought he had reached a very heaven of delight.

But next morning he was awakened, not by a kiss from Olwen, but by the Plas Drain shepherd's dog licking his lips: he found himself lying by the wall of a sheepfold, and there was no trace of the house in which he had spent such a happy night. His clothes were all caked with bog mud, and his harp, which was in a clump of rushes at his feet, was black with the same defilement.

[Aik Haw]

I am actually liking these Coyote Stories a lot Hereford Eye. Exactly which culture do these intelligent tales come from?

Now as a tribute to the commonality between Welsh and Chinese culture which involves the Dragon, I will tell you one of the many tales from the Third Epoch of Tales and Myth. ( There are 9 Epochs as classified recently by Nanjing University in Chinese folklore and myth).

We now go the time of the late Western Chou dynasty. During this time, there lived a young scholar who had an absolute obsession with dragons. Being also an artist, he took it as a duty upon himself to decorate his entire house and later the entire city with carvings and pictures of WHAT he conceptualised to be dragons.

As no one has seen a dragon for nearly half a century at that point in time, no one could really criticise his work of art. Deciding that it was time to extend his artistic creativity, he started making designs that were obviously not dragon in nature to the statues and paintings of the dragons. When doubts were raised about the validity of the paintings and statues which he were selling at an outrageous high price, he proclaimed to the citizens that he had seen a dragon and in fact, a dragon comes to him whenever he goes into the nearby mountain on his solitary journey, so how dare they criticise his work.

People remained silent and most chose to believe him. Soon, his dragon carving became more and more wierd, ending up with some dragons looking like scorpions or millipedes. However, as no one has seen a dragon, and he claimed he had seen one, most just take the truth at face value. After all, what harm can a statue do?

This however did not please the Dragon Princess during her visit to the mortal realms under the guise as a young peasent girl. Shocked at first by the depiction of her kind, than slowly getting bemused as she traversed the city till she saw a depiction of herself as a pig-like creature with fire spurting from her seemingly numerous ears, an utterly wrong depiction of who she is, she turned around to search for the artist.

The Dragon Princess nearly fainted when she heard the tall tales broadcasted live by the artist as he stepped on the dais of the city centre and started telling tall tales about his newest dragon visitations.

The Dragon Princess, still under the guise of a peasent pushed through the crowd and asked the man:- "Tell me, would you like to see a real dragon?"

The young man turned to her and said, "Lady, I've seen many. In fact, the entire host of dragons have bowed at my feet seeking to provide me inspiration."

Angrily, the Dragon Princess replied, "Then they must be bowing 1000 li away from you to give you such poor depiction of what we really are. Behold, you will now see a dragon RIGHT beside you to ensure you carve the correct shape and form next round!!"

Saying thus, in the place of a peasent women rose a dragon extending 2 li into the sky.

The young man, terrified and jeered by the incoming cried demanding their money back, fled from the city.

The Dragon Princess then turned to the crowd, her dragon face compassionate as she breath mist of comfort over the people. "Remember mortals, until you've evidence that what a person say is true, do not throw your lifelihood and money on the line."

[kater]

The Coyote has a strong place in Native American story-telling and tribal history, he is known most commonly as the trickster, a creature that can be anything or anyone and who can be both dangerous and fun. I did a lot of Native American history last year and its very interesting, there's a great story by (I think) Gerald Vizenor called Almost Browne which may interest you, there's so much stuff on Coyote and all of it is well worth the read.

[Aik Haw]

I certainly will kater. This Coyote character is most lovable, much like Loki in Norse Myth, that is until he committed the murder of Baldur.

And your story from Wales are beautiful. I never knew that your people kater retained so many of your stories after invasion by the English and colonisation for well over a few hundred years.

As for your story about the big bog kater, the Chinese has similar stories, though not much, about the "small people". Most tales of the "small people" are no longer part of popular folklore, not even among the semi written peasent folklore, but part of the dilated compiled series of folklores, songs and literary works written then stored in one library after the other. I think the only "small person" still partly existing in popular folklore and not requiring you to wade through books after books of 1000 year old stories is a being called "Small Swamp Man" who lives alone in a house who comes to the aid of people stuck in swamp though the people who have been saved will never be able to find the house again, or the man.

[kater]

Coyote isn't supposed to be loveable - at times he is exceptionally dangerous, there are stories of him eating children etc , the coyote/trickster figure is incredibly hard to pin down, which is the whole point, he is as ambiguous a character as there is any form of literature.

You have to understand Aik that the welsh culture existed through the romans, vikings and the saxons before we were conquered in the C15th, our history is similar to the Native Americans in that it is as much verbally passed on as it is written down and with the Welsh language being almost incomprehensible to the anglo-saxons for a few hundred years(they felt it was inconsequential to learn) it was almost impossible for our stories and culture to be killed, especially when they didn't ban the welsh language until almost a hundred years after conquering us :D We are much like the Afghans alongside Russia, they just couldn't fully destroy us and we keep coming back until the issue became old and tired and everyone decided to just get along though we have yet to be given our nation back :( We retain the dubious 'principality' title.