Category Archives: Folklore

Telling the Legend

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Back when I was in high school, in some antediluvian age now best forgotten, in Mississippi history class, we were told of the legend of “The Singing River,” the Pascagoula. In much later life it occurs to me that we learned a lot of legends in that class, most of them not labelled as such. Sorting out the truth became our own responsibility. Most of us failed. Some of us are still working on it.

In that spirit I took a look at one of the few legends labelled as such, the story of the Singing River. The basic legend was simply this—there was once a peaceful tribe that lived on the river of the same name, though that wasn’t its name at the time. That the Pascagoula people actually existed is not in doubt. The name was probably derived from the Choctaw words meaning “bread people.” Early explorers like d’Iberville met them and wrote about them. They were indeed peaceful and not a very large tribe, perhaps 240 people spread among three villages when the first settlers came.

The story goes like this: The Pascagoula were allied with the Biloxi (Taneks) tribe, but had a falling out and the Biloxi planned to attack. Knowing they could not win, and rather than be killed or enslaved, the Pascagoula as a group joined hands and marched into the river singing their death song, so the Pascagoula  River was known thereafter as “Singing River.” Rather poetic and all, as legends should be. There’s also another account, by the historian Charles Gayarre, that a completely different tribe worshiped a river goddess in the form of a mermaid, singing and playing strange instruments in her honor. When they were approached by early missionaries their goddess appeared and summoned them all to join her in the river rather than be converted, so they did, where they still sing in her honor.

Sounds made up, doesn’t it? Especially that last one. In the case of the Pascagoula River, there’s another problem—the river was known to sing long before the Pascagoula tribe disappeared. Also according to Gayarré, the governor of Louisiana, accompanied by members of the Pascagoula tribe, heard the sound. Whether the river actually sings or not depends on who you ask, but there are people who claim to have heard it even today, and a report at the time described it as a low hum in the note of F.

So what did happen to the Pascagoula people? It’s not hard to sort out. Pressure from white settlers pushed them west. Some regrouped in Texas for a while, others assimilated into larger tribes (like the Biloxi) which in turn were pushed out, many following (not by choice) the trail of tears to Oklahoma. The Choctaw and Chickasaw were able to maintain their identity despite all this, but some smaller tribes like the Pascagoula could not, and passed from history. Most didn’t even get a legend. They’re just gone, surviving only as descendants in other tribes, or place names, or the names of rivers, or not at all.

Maybe that’s why our history books only told the legend.

 

Story Time: Doing Time in the Wild Hunt

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Today’s Story Time is “Doing Time in the Wild Hunt.”  It was originally sold to an anthology to be titled Splatterfaires from the first incarnation of Pulphouse Publishing, which went under before the book was published. From there it found its way into my first collection, The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups.

Here’s what I wrote about the story for the afterwards in the second (Kindle) Edition. I don’t think I have anything to add now.

 

“Happily Ever After” is the most difficult and dangerous part of the story, and yet it’s the part you almost never hear about. There’s a reason for that — marriage is complicated. Slaying a dragon by comparison is simple. Not easy, mind, but simple. Consider: A dragon is between you and your Fated One and you’re a hero/heroine in love. What do you do? Duh. Now cut to this scene after the fairytale wedding, because sooner or later it’s going to happen. Your love is pensive, unhappy. You ask what’s wrong and they say, “Nothing.” When pressed they will explain: “If you don’t know what you did, I’m not going to tell you!”

What’s the plan now, hero?

I was driving to work one morning in 1994 and saw a white doe in the woods near the Natchez Trace. Far from blending into the trees and brush nearby, the deer was about as hidden as a neon sign. It seemed odd to me how it had managed to survive so long against all the odds but here it was standing there, watching me drive by. A miracle. Or maybe the deer was just doing what it had to do and, with a little luck and care, getting along. Maybe that’s the miracle. I don’t know. I just wrote this story because, once upon a time at the beginning of my ordinary day, I saw a white doe. My wife told me that, of all the stories I’ve ever done, this was the only one that made her cry. Discarding the other possible explanations, I take that as a sign I got the story right.

Take that, dragon.

 

Usual Disclaimer: “Doing Time in the Wild Hunt” will stay up until next Wednesday, February 14. At which time I might be too preoccupied to take it down, but don’t count on it.

February Snow

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It’s a seasonal thing. I’m getting a later start on this blog because, well, it snowed last night. Not an unsual thing here in central NY state in February, but when it snows there’s snow, to state the obvious. Snow covering the path to the garage, snow covering the steps and sidewalk, snow covering the car and driveway. It has to be, as they say, “dealt with.” So I spent part of the morning shoveling and pushing snow from where it was to where it needed to be. Then a break for lunch and, now that the car and driveway were cleared, a trip to the store for supplies before the next round of snow hits. It’s sort of a recurring theme.

Another recurring theme this time of year is that it’s 1099 time, which means publishers that paid you for work last year send the proof. Not quite as good a reminder that you really are a writer as the original checks, but in the same vein. Considering that I only published two original stories last year* (not counting the originals that went up during Story Time) , it was a bit of surprise to discover that both “In Memory of Jianhong, Snake Devil” and “On the Road to the Hell of Hungry Ghosts,” published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies last year made the Locus Recommended Reading List in the short story category. That was a pleasant surprise. Not a huge deal but still a lot better than a poke in the eye.

More snow is predicted for tomorrow night. Best to make sure one knows where one’s shovel is.

* Edited to Add: Actually, there were three. The third was “The Cat of Five Virtues” in Tales of the Sunrise Lands. Amazing how much trouble I have keeping track.

Story Time: The White Bone Fan

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Today’s Story Time is “The White Bone Fan,” Originally published in Japanese Dreams: Fantasies, Fictions,& Fairytales, Lethe Press, 2009. The story is a stand-alone excerpt from what eventually became the novel  All the Gates of Hell published in 2013. This is the kind of thing I was working on when I was also working on the Yamada series. One sort of fed into the other, and vice versa.

As always, “The White Bone Fan” will remain online only until Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018. Next year.

Pentatonic Minor Thoughts

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It’s snowing as I write this. I almost wrote “snowing outside,” but then realized what a silly thing that was to say. Of course it’s snowing outside. If it was snowing inside, that would be either remarkable or a serious problem, possibly both. What is somewhat notable is that it wasn’t supposed to snow today. Or at least that was the prediction yesterday. But then friends and relations from down south have been posting snow pictures for the last few days, snow from Texas to Georgia. It was snowing in MS back when it wasn’t snowing here, only about eighty miles from the Canadian border. I was starting to feel left out, which is another silly notion. When they have enough snow that the local hardware stores start stocking snow shovels, then we’ll talk.

In addition to the guitar (no segue for you), I’ve added a couple more instruments to my “can’t play this worth a flip” category: pennywhistle and native style flute. By most accounts, the pennywhistle has only been around since the late 18th century. The native flute, by contrast, can be traced back for a few thousand years, and if you throw in the Neolithic bone flutes, a lot longer. Modern examples, whether of the five or six-hole variety, are tuned primarily to the pentatonic minor scale in different keys, though an advanced player can play other scales on the same flute; the older flutes (a few intact examples survive) were apparently tuned to the ear of whoever made it. Rather like how guitars can be relative tuned so that the notes and chords sound fine together until you try to jam with another guitar in standard tuning, where the differences suddenly become relevant. One gets the impression that the original native flute was a solitary instrument unless everyone in the group was playing an example made by or tuned to the same maker.

Yes, I know. But I’m just learning this stuff and now so will you. I’m mostly trying to be clear about my own understanding of a given subject, and I tend to do that by writing it down. As I’m doing here.

One interesting facet of learning the native flute is the order of learning. Once you have a handle on how to sound the notes and play the scale cleanly, the next order of business isn’t learning songs. No, the next order of business is: improvise. As long as you’re in the scale there’s no such thing as a wrong note. Try playing them in different orders, learn trills and (note) slurs and even bending notes. Odds are you’ll have made up your own songs even before you learn anyone else’s. And you’ll be ready to do that, if you want.

I do. I’ve even heard “Stairway to Heaven” on native flute, though it’ll probably be a while before I tackle that. Maybe “Silent Night.” After all, ‘tis the season.