Love Folklore: Triumphs & Sorrows

 The Mix & Match of Love

Folklore is layered with folk wisdom about the many facets of love: how to love, whom to love, when to love, what to love. Think about it. LOVE in one way or another is at the heart of our relationships to ourselves, one another, our environments, our spiritual beliefs, and our societies.

A quick look at the landscape of folklore reveals the countless ways folk lessons foretell, advise, predict, and soothe the rollercoaster of love, tamed or untamed. Such knowledge is embedded in an array of forms, such as ballads,  limericks, food lore and folk art. 

Here are a few specific examples:

• Celtic legend about love lost: Tristan and Isolde
• Egyptian herbal remedy to attract lovers: Cinnamon
• French fairytale about transformative love: Beauty and the Beast
• Greek fable about deceit: Mercury and the Tradesman  
• Swedish proverb about love’s danger: Love has produced some heroes but even more idiots.

Poems about love can be found in the newly released Untamed Love, a Whiskey Tree Wave 1 edition published by Broken Spine, an artist collective based in the United Kingdom.

But more about that a bit later in this blog. Let's get back to the folklore of love.

A look at the word

 
Britannica.com registers LOVE  as having been  “derived from the hypothetical term leubh, a root in Proto-Indo-European (reconstructed parent of Indo-European languages) meaning care or desire. Leubh eventually developed into Latin libet and Old English lufu, which was both a noun and a verb describing deep affection or being very fond of something.   

 
While the word “love” has retained its fundamental meaning of affection and deep attachment, as described in Neuralworld.com’s Etymological Origins of Love, it has evolved over time. For example, in ancient Greek, the word was classified into various categories, including eros (romantic love), philia (friendship), and agape (unconditional love).
 
Per the Oxford English Dictionary (one of my most favorite books, next to Roget’s Thesaurus). the first known English uses of the word love as noun and verb date back to Middle English:
“… from Old English lufu; akin to Old High German luba love, Old English lēof dear, Latin lubēre, libēre to please …”
 
It’s Time to Guess
 
With all of this in mind, have some fun; test your love wits. See if you can determine what type of love is written about in the following select lines from Untamed Love, the second of three Whiskey Tree Wave 1 anthologies, each composed of 14 poems by the same 14 poets.
 

Clue: As the title suggests, untamed love is wild, raw, and unpredictable. If you want to check your guesses, visit The Whiskey Shot mini conversations with the poets about their work.

Ready, Set, Go!
 
When you lay your head
 on my heart I dare not die.
            Love Poem, Alan Parry
 
& you a molten roar
for the joy of it

Embers, Cait O’Neill McCullagh

 
i’m a slave to you
 used and abused
            I am a Gun, Paul Brookes
 
Your heart can hold all of this, she said.
            Holding the Humming of Bees, Sue Finch
 
drowned pulling his dog from the water.
              Love! His affections do not that way tend… , David Butler
 
I swoon at the furious beauty concealed
in the wasteland of this wildflower wound.
             Falling for Bone, Morag Anderson
 
This pillow is a poor
stand in for your form
            Insomniac Research, Jay Rafferty
 
Heated by the rub of our bodies,
you shed skin on my pillow, wet silk threads
            Feathered Serpent: Quetzalcoatl, Karen Pierce Gonzalez
 
Sand cascades over your brow,
we're so tired now,
            Untitled (Aqua Aprilis Symphony)  James Jackson
 
I wash my hair in a slow current as if none are watching.
Nor preying. It is safe, it seems. Language is soft-mouthed
            Enduring The Artist's Mirror, Vikki C
 
And so I lost my honeymoon. The sandy beach. The fifty guests. My black pearl watered silk.
            Lost and Found, Mary Earnshaw
 
it’s hot
you say, rousing me
tea & biscuits after sex   Paul Robert Mullen
 
untether me
let me pound the earth like Bison
            Unboundaried  Anne Walsh Donnell
 
as faint images
shrivel about you.
            The Darkroom, Matthew M. C. Smith
 
More
The curious among you can also check out what Broken Spine Editor-in-Chief Alan Parry has to say about the entire Whiskey Tree Wave I edition.  
 
For those who want to own of Untamed Love or gift it to a loved one, please visit  https://amzn.to/3W0gMB1

 
 

The Poetry of Folktales

Oral Tales as Sonnets

Folktales, whether told or read, have long been stories treasured by people of all ages. Joyful, sad, scary, or funny, they often serve to teach or  explain values important to the society they occur in. 

Many of the more common examples include animals or creatures that exist in the geographic regions where the tales are being told. Most of us are already somewhat familiar with 'trickster' animals such as coyotes, ravens, foxes, and spiders who can outwit others in order to help them learn about the dangers of greed and pride and the virtues of honesty and kindness. Those who bring forth important items, like fire, sunlight, or moon are often the story of myths (a topic for a future blog). 

The true beauty of these tales of folk wisdom is the fact that they evolve over time to reflect the world of the tale teller. This can be seen in today’s webtoons and anime that rely upon modern technology to story tell adventures of animals and people confronted with contemporary challenges, such as computer hacking. 

They have also found their way into revisioning of the classical world of sonnets; 14-line poems, written in iambic pentameter. This form, derived from the Italian sonetto means “a little sound or song.” According to Poets.org, this “popular classical form has compelled poets for centuries." The most common—and simplest—type is known as the English or Shakespearean sonnet. The iambic pentameter rhythm of each line consists of five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (unstresssed) syllable followed by one long (stressed) syllable. A great example can be seen in Hamlet's  To  be, or not to be, that is the question: 

Curious to know more folktales and sonnets, I sought out the work of UK Poet Paul Brookes whose As FolkTaleTeller  is a retelling of folktales in the sonnet tradition. Published in 2022 by Impspired, it contains 33 poems that explore a wide variety of folktales. Here, in part, is our conversation: 

Q: What made you decide to write folktales in sonnet form? Why not free-verse or traditional rhyme?
A: I set myself two challenges, one, to write a folktale in 14 rhymed lines, two to write it from the “monsters” point of view. Also, the folktales would be as contemporary as possible.  I believe writers do not progress unless they challenge themselves. 

Q: How has this challenged you?
A: Boiling something down to its essentials I always find challenging. Also, giving ancient characters modern resonance, surprisingly, when you get into their character the situations described becomes easier. 

Q:  Did exploring various stories and characters expand your own understanding of folktales?
A: It did, immensely. It showed me how relevant they are to our own times. 
Recently, every Summer a young person drowns in our nearby Manvers Lake, so imagining Jennie Greenteeth tempting young folk into her waters becomes a warning as folktale. 

Q: Which poems are among your favorite in this book?
A:  They change daily, which is a good thing. 

I told him I did have favorites. Among them, the opening poem which sets the tone for what follows all of us. 'The Autumnal Green Man' is a wild spirit of the forest. Unafraid of the ever-changing seasons, his grace and acceptance are comforting.  The first four lines read

        Spiders thread my lips lightly together. 

        My leaves become their actual colours 

        and fall from my face, red, yellow, ochre. 

        My voice rustle of green leaves is no more

Here is Paul's recording:  

Q: Do you find yourself wanting to write more of these sonnets? If so, who or what would you like to add to this collection?
A:  Yes. Wyvern, our local Blue Mary, pit ghosts, local Cat and Man tale, and many others. 

Q: What is it you hope readers take away from As FolkTaleTeller?
A: Something memorable; some image, some story, some phrase that stays with them, and even more so lights a balefire of creativity in their own head. 

Q: What are you currently working on?
A: Just finished “Hidden River Or, River Dearne ” inspired by the #promptcombo #rivers by Ronnie Smith on Twitter. I had an idea today to complement this with seven sonnets on the River Dove that flows into the Dearne at Darfield, just across the valley from Wombwell. All my poetry is about place in the finish. 

Want to know more? 

To learn more about Paul, visit The Wombwell Rainbow

To purchase a copy of As FolkTaleTeller