Tag: mythology

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Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus was the son of a god. He was handsome and strong, and a musician of great renown. Only his father, Apollo, could play the lyre better. When he plucked the strings everyone stopped to listen.

Eurydice was the daughter of a god. She was beautiful and gentle and everybody loved her. When the two met, they fell head over heels in love.

Their wedding day was a joyous occasion with good food, good company and plenty of music and dancing. They felt truly blessed… But just a few short weeks later, disaster struck.

As Eurydice was out one day, she caught the eye of a shepherd called Aristaeus. He didn’t care that she was already married to Orpheus – he wanted he wanted her as his own wife. He chased her and she fled. In her haste to get away she didn’t watch her step, and she disturbed a deadly snake. It reared up and bit her, injecting it’s fatal venom into her blood. She died almost instantaneously.

Orpheus was distraught. He played such sorrowful songs on his lyre that even the rocks and rivers wept for him. He travelled all the way to Mount Olympus and begged an audience with the gods. He played for them and they were so moved by his desolate tunes that they agreed to let him travel to the Underworld to plead with Hades for the return of his wife.

Gaining entry to the Underworld was not an easy task. First Charon, the ferryman, had to agree to a safe passage across the River Styx, and on the other shore, the gates were guarded by Cerberus, a fierce, three-headed dog. Neither would usually allow a living person to enter the kingdom of the dead, but Orpheus played his lyre so beautifully they both allowed him to pass.

Even the frozen heart of Hades himself was melted by Orpheus’s mournful melodies, and he agreed that Eurydice could return to the land of the living.

However, he did not give up his souls so easily, and so of course there was a condition attached… He instructed Orpheus to leave the kingdom and to play his lyre on the way. When Eurydice heard it, she would be allowed to follow him, but Orpheus was not to look behind him.

Orpheus headed to the living world, and as he played all the lost souls stopped to listen, but Eurydice never seemed to be amongst them. Eventually he heard footsteps behind him. Yes! That was her! He would recognise her light, quick footsteps anywhere. On he walked, never daring to pause in his playing, and on the footsteps walked behind him. But the closer Orpheus got to the exit from the Underworld, the greater his doubts grew. Was that really his beautiful wife behind him? Would Hades really give up one of his souls so easily? Could he have sent a phantom in her place? What if he reached the living world and discovered that it was not his beloved behind him? It would be too late, and he wouldn’t be allowed to visit the Underworld a second time. She would be trapped down there without him, and he would be trapped up here without her…

At last he could bear it no longer. With only a few more steps to go until he reached the living world, he turned to make sure it really was his wife behind him. Eurydice stretched out her arms to him, pleading with him to save her. Too late! Hades’ laughter echoed all around. Unseen hands carried Eurydice back to the depths of the Underworld and Orpheus was left to return to his own world…alone.

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Of Valkyries and Slaves

As you probably all know by now, I love learning new things. I love reading, I love adult education classes and I love online courses. What I especially enjoy is the fact that sometimes on these courses or in these books, links are made for me that I should have made myself but just somehow never did. A couple of such moments happened during a course about Vikings that I had downloaded from the Great Courses.

I know quite a bit about Greek and Roman mythology. Somewhat less about Egyptian mythology and embarrassingly little about Norse mythology. However one thing I do know is that the myths all “explain” natural phenomena in some way – for a civilisation that didn’t understand the orbit of the earth around the sun, a sun god makes perfect sense, for example. So when I learnt on this course that the Valkyries of Norse mythology were meant as a way of explain the northern lights, I thought, “Oh yes, of course!” I should have realised that, and yet it had never occurred to me before that the reason there is no equivalent to the Valkyries in the other mythologies I’ve learnt about is that the they are too far south to have needed to explain the aurora borealis,

In the same course I learnt about the “slav” in words such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and slavic. I had noticed in passing that the words all contained “slav” which sounds very much like the English word “slave” and yet I hadn’t made the next link. In fact it seems the Vikings weren’t averse to trading in slaves, and the countries we now describe as “Slavic” are the ones that they captured their slaves from.

I’m sure there are many more lightbulb moments to be had as I progress through the course, and I’m looking forward to coming across them.

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Echo and Narcissus

Echo was a chatterbox. She was a beautiful nymph, lively, and generally good-spirited, but she could talk and talk.

Zeus, always one with an eye for the ladies, enjoyed spending time with the nymphs. Hera, his wife, didn’t enjoy him spending so much time with them. She felt he should be spending more time with her and doing little jobs around Olympus.

“You’ve got to help me!” he groaned to Echo one day. “Hera is driving me mad – on at me to fix a leaky tap and redecorate the kitchen. I’m a god – and the king of the gods at that. I shouldn’t be expected to do the decorating!”

From then on, whenever Hera passed by, Echo kept her talking, giving Zeus chance to slip away. “Hera! I love what you’ve done with your hair… What divine earrings! Where did you get them from?… You simply must give me the recipe for your nectar cookies – the other nymphs and I were all talking about how delicious they were were…”

Hera, enjoying the attention and flattery, would stop to chat twirling her hair and whispering about her secret ingredients. Eventually, however, she realised what Echo was up to, and cursed her. She took away a Echo’s gift of endless chatter, and condemned her to a life where she would only ever be able to repeat the last word she had heard.

No longer so much fun to be around, the other nymphs didn’t spend so much time with her and she took to wandering alone through the woods.
One day she saw a handsome young man sitting by a pool, and she fell instantly in love with him…

Narcissus knew he was a handsome young man because everybody told him so. People stopped and stared as he walked past, and all the girls secretly hoped that he would notice them. He never did. No mere girl was good enough for him – not such a handsome man as he was. Only a goddess could ever make him a suitable wife.

One warm summer’s day, he sat at the side of the pool to rest and to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his face. As he glanced around, he saw the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Surely this must be the goddess he was destined to be with.

Echo stepped out of the woods and walked slowly towards Narcissus. Once upon a time she could have captivated him with her wonderful stories; now she could only hope he would be equally captivated by her face. She gazed at him longingly.

Narcissus felt her presence behind him and turned. “Who are you?” he demanded, irritated at being dragged away from the beautiful face in the pool behind him.

“You,” replied Echo, smiling hopefully.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he snarled.

“Ridiculous!” repeated Echo, smiling rather less hopefully. This wasn’t going well .

“Oh go away and leave me alone!”

“Alone!” cried the heartbroken Echo, heading back to the cover of trees to hide her tears.

Peace at last. Narcissus turned back to the face he had fallen in love with. “Will you be with me forever?” he asked.

Although he saw the lips moving he heard no reply from the beautiful face.  “Can’t you speak?” he asked, and he reached out to touch it. The water rippled and stirred, and the face disappeared. “Oh don’t go!” begged Narcissus. “I promise not to try to touch you again.”

As the water settled, the face returned, and Narcissus settled down to gaze at it. Unwilling to leave without his true love, Narcissus stayed by the pool, never eating, never sleeping, until he took his last breath and expired.

Soon there was nothing left of him, but on the land where he had lain, beautiful white and yellow flowers sprung up, and these flowers still bear the name of Narcissus as a reminder of that vain young man who fell in love with himself.

As for Echo? She has never been seen since that day, but she can still be heard, repeating the last words of passers-by. You may have heard her yourself… yourself… yourself…

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Summer Reading

It’s the summer holidays. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the time off, but if you or your young ones are getting bored, why not have a look at these books?

For KS1: Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat by Ursula Williams. This is an old book now – I remember reading it when I was a child myself – but it’s still just as appealing now as it was then. You can’t help but feel sorry for poor Gobbolino who really doesn’t want to be a witch’s cat. The story tells of his adventures as he searches for a home where he can be just a normal cat.

KS2: Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Poor Percy Jackson doesn’t realise that he’s a demi-god until one of his teachers tries to kill him. After that his life gets seriously turned upside-down when he discovers that his best friend is a satyr and that the god of war really has it in for him If, like me, you have an interest in Greek mythology these books are even more special, but even if you’ve never been a fan of classical history the Percy Jackson series is a great read that will appeal to boys and girls alike. Start with Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief and just keep going! I’ve finished this series, but on my summer reading list I have the second series: The Heroes of Olympus.

KS3: The Everlost Trilogy by Neal Shusterman. What happens when you die if you don’t end up where you are supposed to be? You end up in Everlost, and the only ways to avoid sinking into the centre of the earth are to keep moving or to find a ‘dead spot’ (a place where somebody else has died) to stand on. Everlost is divided into those who want to help the lost souls find their way to where they should be, and those who want to stop them. With a cast including pirates, ogres and people who can take over the bodies of the living, there is quite a battle. For younger readers it’s just a good read – for older readers it has quite an existential feel – Jean-Paul Sartre would have been proud!

KS4:Unwind (also by Neal Shusterman). This one covers some quite gritty issues. Imagine a world where it is illegal to terminate a pregnancy, but when your child reaches the age of 13 you can change your mind. If you decide that having your child was a mistake you can apply to have them ‘unwound’, which involves every single part of their body being used in transplants to save other people’s lives. How would you feel if you had grown up believing your family loved you until the day the authorities come to unwind you? How would you feel if you had grown up in a family that believe in donating 10% of their possessions to charity, and you are their 10th child? This book follows the lives of some children who are on the run to save their lives. To escape the ‘unwind order’, they must stay alive until they are 18.

Young Adults: There probably aren’t many people who haven’t already read Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy, but if you are one of them – what are you waiting for? It’s set in the future after there has been some sort of uprising, and the divide between the rich and the poor is very clearly defined. As a punishment for the uprising, the various districts are forced to enter two of their young people, one boy and one girl, into a contest where they have to fight to the death in the name of entertainment. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark may be teenagers, but the action is tense and fast-paced enough to keep adults turning the pages as well. I have heard a few critics say that this book is just a rehash of Stephen King’s The Running Man, but to me this seems a bit harsh. It is true that The Running Man was probably more visionary at the time, because reality TV wasn’t the bulk of entertainment in those days, but The Hunger Games is more than just reality TV taken to extremes – especially as the plot unfolds further in the second and final books.

These are my recommendations for summer reading. What are yours? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.