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Author
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Comment
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Carrie
Unregistered User
(1/28/04 11:13 am)
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bulls
Good morning all. I happened across a party of matadors and bull fighting afficianados this last weekend in Mexico and since then I've been thinking about bulls and their place in fairy tales and folklore. Off the top of my head I came up with the Minatour but I know there must be others. Anyone?
Cheers.
Carrie
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inkgypsy
Unregistered User
(1/28/04 3:05 pm)
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bulls in fairy tales
The Black Bull of Norroway is a favorite (Scottish fairy tale).
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inkgypsy
Unregistered User
(1/28/04 3:39 pm)
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more bulls
<sum> How Jack Went Out to Seek His Fortune (English) – he puts the bull in the cellar to scare the robbers.
<sum> The Shepherd of Myddvai (Celtic) – a shepherd picks a fairy wife who summons a bull from the lake as part of her dowry
<sum> Simurg (Persian) – seven bulls provide the means for a journey
<sum> Billy Beg and His Bull (Irish) – Billy & his best friend the magical bull calf
Also found this cool tale from West Highland Stories:
Among other Highland fairy monsters are the water-horses (like the Scandinavian and Teutonic Kelpies) and the water-bulls, which inhabit lonely lochs. The water-bulls are described as being friendly to man; the water-horses are dangerous—when men get upon their backs they are carried off and drowned. Sometimes the water-horse takes the shape of a man. Here is a story of this kind from the island of Islay: There was a farmer who had a great many cattle. Once a strange-looking bull-calf was born amongst them, and an old woman who saw it knew it for a water-bull, and ordered it to be kept in a house by itself for seven years, and fed on the milk of three cows. When the time was up, a servant-maid went to watch the cattle graze on the side of a loch. In a little while a man came to her and asked her to dress or comb his hair. So he laid his head upon her knees, and she began to arrange his hair. Presently she got a great fright, for amongst the hair she found a great quantity of water-weed; and she knew that it was a transformed water-horse. Like a brave girl she did not cry out, but went on dressing the man's hair until he fell asleep. Then she slid her apron off her knees, and ran home as fast as she could, and when she got nearly home, the creature was pursuing her in the shape of a horse. Then the old woman cried out to them to open the door of the wild bull's house, and out sprang the bull and rushed at the horse, and they never stopped fighting until they drove each other out into the sea. "Next day," says the story, "the body of the bull was found on the shore all torn and spoilt, but the horse was never more seen at all."
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Jessica
Unregistered User
(1/29/04 2:02 pm)
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Bulls...
In "The Golden Bough" (James Frazer) there is tons of information about how bulls were often used in old rituals of regicide and the like. Very, very interesting.
--Jessica
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janeyolen
Registered User
(1/30/04 6:39 am)
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Re: Bulls...
And of course one of Poseidon's usual shapes was as a bull. (As in "The Bull from the Sea.") It was in his bull shape that he got the Minitour on Minos' wife. (She had fallen in love with him in his bull shape and had Daedelus construct a cow form for her. Not one of your prettier Greek myths!)
Jane
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(1/30/04 10:17 am)
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Re: Bulls...
And currently, there's a lot of "fairytales" going on here
in the Northwest of the U.S.A., about Mad Cows and
Angry Bulls"...
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jess63
Registered User
(1/30/04 10:19 am)
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Re: Bulls...
Speaking of Greek myths, what of the story about Zeus and Europa
(it was Zeus I believe). Zeus changing into a white bull and taking
Europa to Crete. Europa then bore Minos. So, perhaps it is not so
strange that Minos's wife would fall in love with a bull.
Jess
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InariFox
Registered User
(1/30/04 10:39 am)
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Re: Bulls...
On a Celtic "history" note, there's the whole Tahn Bo Cuaillnge, or the cattle raid of cooley.
Great White Finnbennach
Leader of the Herd.
Whoever shall possess her is
Richer by a third.
Big Brown Cuaillnge
Fury from a calf
Whoever shall possess him is
richer by a half.
This no man can ever do
To call himself owner of two.
It's a great story filled with adventure and wars and stuff, O.R. Melling wrote a young teen fiction novel about it, that's where the poem's from.
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isthmus
nekoi
Registered User
(2/6/04 3:25 pm)
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Re: Bulls...
I don't know about fairy tales but in myths:
- Isis/Hathor
- Dionysos
- Mithraism
- Neolithic art
You may also wish to consider the symbolism of the pinatta (sp?).
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