Week 10: British North America Reading Diary

For this unit I read the British North America Folklore unit.

For part A, I had two favorite stories, Creation of the Earth, and The Burning of the World.

The Creation of the Earth story, was unlike any creation myth I had heard before. Like most myths, the story says that in the beginning there was nothing, only blankness. However, there were also living things (people or personification?). I'm not quite sure how all of the characters Earth, Sun, Moon, and Stars change from the beginning to the end. In the end, the everything is placed by an the Old Man, who seems to have a god like role in the creation and placement of the universe. But at first, the characters seem to be much more human like where they live in a house together, although I'm not sure why there's a house in all of the blankness the story describes. I'm also not sure where the Old Man came from, because he wasn't mentioned as one of the exceptions to the nothingness in the beginning as the other characters were.

(Thompson River, photo by A. Bowden)

The Other Story I liked was the Burning World. It reminded me a lot of Noah's ark, except fire instead of water. Similarly to the Noah story, very few people (besides the man's mother and sister) believed him that the world would burn. I thought it was very interesting how in the story, the animals seem to want to switch roles with each other and the man has to straighten out their role in the ecosystem. This part of the story reminded me of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Only this story was much more entertaining. I loved how the animals tried to convince him that they should be something else. My favorite was how the rabbit jumped into the water to try and be like the beaver.

"Fire" Source: Wikimedia