Essential Classics: The Kalevala

Following up on Friday's comments dialog: the Kalevala is the national epic of Finland.  It looks at first glance like it might be a single unified poem, a la Homer, but is in fact a family of sung poems about the same mythological / heroic characters (who rejoice in such improbable names as Kullervo son of Kalervo, Vainamoinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkainen... and I'm not even putting in the umlauts), first collected in the nineteenth century by Elias Lonnrot, a physician.  This makes it a little like the Eddas and a little like the work of Bascom Lamar Lunsford.

The Kalevala is mythic-funky, shamanic and wild.  Like the Mabinogion, it is probably the post-Christianization disguised telling of old pagan mythologies, and it has a surprising connection to Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Highly recommended.

Essential Classics: the Eddas

They are the basic sources of our knowledge about Viking mythology, and there are two of them, readily available in English translations.

The Poetic (Elder) Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems, mythological, apocalyptic and heroic.  It's the older of the two, and the poets are anonymous and unknown.  Read it closely, and find the names of Tolkien's dwarves!

The Prose (Younger) Edda is the work of the medieval Icelandic poet (and historian and politician) Snorri Sturluson. It is a how-to manual for skalds and includes in one of its sections, the "Tricking of Gylfi", our best prose source for Norse myth.

Stop reading bad summaries written for kids -- go to the source today!

Essential Classics: The Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is the mythological book of the Quiche Mayan people of Guatemala.  It was recorded by the 18th century Dominican friar Francisco Ximenez and is one of few accounts of the mythology of Central America to have survived the excesses of the Conquistadors.  It includes a creation story and the exploits of various heroes, and it's wild.  Ball games, severed heads that are planted and grow into trees, heroes that become constellations and skulls that impregnate women by spitting into their hands.  Read it because it's trippy and fun, and read it to break out of your Greco-Romano-Germanic shell.

Essential Classics: The Hero with a Thousand Faces

You should only read this book if you either write stories or read them.

Joseph Campbell explains why all stories and all heroes are really the same hero in the same story.  Gilgamesh is Frodo Baggins is Odysseus is Luke Skywalker.  Essential reading for people.

Essential Classics: The Uncle Remus Tales

Joel Chandler Harris was a printer's devil for four years on the Turnwold Plantation in Georgia during the Civil War.

Later, as a writer for the Atlanta Constitution, he published in serial form a collection of stories he claimed to have heard in the slave quarters on the Turnwold Plantation, which were collected and published in 1880 as Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings.

Some people have found these stories controversial, and I don't really want to get into the controversy.  I will say this: I have read them, and I don't believe that Joel Chandler Harris made these stories up.  And if the stories are the genuine folk tales of nineteenth century black Americans, then quashing them because you dislike their presentation or because you find them disagreeable for political reasons silences the voices of those black Americans.

Besides, the stories are really, really funny.  The Tar Baby is the single most repeated bedtime story request my kids make.

I own two editions, and like them both.  This one is a straight reprint.  This one had been updated in its grammar and some of its references, making the collection more accessible to modern kids, without, I think, bowdlerizing it.

Essential Classics: The Child Ballads

If you read many liner notes or recollections of sixties folkies, you will inevitably come across references to the Child Ballads, expressed either exactly like that or else as follows: "this song is a variant of Child #86."

"Child Ballads" does not mean songs for children.  It refers to the printed texts of songs called The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, collected by Francis James Child.  Words only, no music.  These are ballads, a structure we have discussed before: they are narrative songs, often recounting real historical events, characterized structurally by a series of identically-organized verses.

The Child Ballads were a wellspring for the folk revival, and continue to inspire musicians and writers today.  Unless you're a folkie, you're not going to recognize most of these songs on first sight -- and that makes them worth reading.  And some of them, you just might know... "Matty Groves" or "Barbara Allen"or some of the songs about Robin Hood, for instance.  Enjoy.

Essential Classics: Enuma Elish

Enuma Elish (named for its first two words, meaning "when on high") is the Babylonian creation epic.  It is related to the Genesis creation account (some would say "lies behind it") and is gripping reading.  It's old (probably dates to around 2000 B.C.E.) and introduces world-shaking protagonists like Marduk, grotesque human progenitors like Kingu (whose blood, drop by drop, turned into mankind), weird magical-cult items (the Tablets of Destiny, worn on the chest and possible predecessor of the Hebrew Urim & Thummim), the Assembly of the Gods and that perennial favorite of dungeon-crawlers the world over, Tiamat.

You can find it in various editions and collections, including this convenient classic anthology.

Essential Classics: The Mabinogion

The Mabinogion is a collection of eleven old Welsh stories.  In the form in which these stories survive, they are medieval, and some of them are probably in fact medieval stories (two of them are very old King Arthur tales).  Some of the stories, the Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi (the "Four Branches of the Mabinogi"),  are likely older, and contain old Celtic myths in medieval cross-dress.

The Mabinogion is great in its own right, and is also a well to which many fantasy writers over the years have had recourse for inspiration and/or outright theft (see, in particular, Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain).  If you're stuck, you might do the same.