This might go in either Story Development or General Discussion as well. I know nothing about the proper location for threads.
(smiles are working again.)

Spin off of somebody's elf thread. Sir Emeth mentioned how nothing is really new, everything is based off of something real. Often biblical. I've been entranced with finding the biblical basis for fairy tales for some time. My favorite example is Beauty and the Beast.
Do you know how many versions of Beauty and the Beast there are? And once you've read them all, do you know how many versions of versions of Beauty and the Beast there are? Once you've read enough you can take two unrelated stories and realize they're really the same thing, a version of Beauty and the Beast. Except, that's not the original. That's only a hundred or so year old French version of a much, much older tale. The original tale is from the the book of Judges. Japheth, who went to war, and made a vow that if he won the battle he would give the first thing that came out of his door to greet him as an offering to the lord. He won, and when he came home his daughter came out to greet him and he had to offer her as a sacrifice to God. As far as we know, he fulfilled his vow. And from that tale has sprung hundreds of variations.

So, this thread is to talk about the historical origins of seemingly legendary or mythological tales.

Wow...I've never thought of that. At all. Wow. That's really neat. I don't have any actual stories that I know are from history, etc, but I'd like to see what other people post. Really everything an author ever writes is based off of their experiences or memories, whatever. Nothing is original...

eruheran

Well, obviously there are flood myths from pretty much every culture in the world.

And most mythologies of how the world began start off with one man and one woman living in a wonderful place!

I forget what it's called, but there is also an ancient Sumerian legend about a great warrior who goes on a quest for life, and has it stolen by a serpent or some such thing.

The Sumerians also has a legend about a man with an unpronounceable name living in a floating boat with a bunch of animals.



As a little side note though, I have to say. I don't think Jephthah killed his daughter as a sacrifice. I think he offered her to the Lord as kind of like...well, a nun. She probably never married, and spent her life serving the Lord. But that's just my speculation. We don't really know one way or the other.

Ah, I remembered another one.

Cap O Rushes, Cymbeline, and variants. The girl who's father asks his three daughters which one loves him best and the youngest, who is the only one who loves him, gets banished? Remember that story?

Okay, are you aware of the older version? The king's wife dies, and he swears/she makes him promise he will only marry a woman as beautiful as his dead wife. Half mad with grief, and unable to find his wife's equal, he sees his teenage daughter and decides he will marry her. To avoid committing this sin she demands impossible wedding gifts, which her father procures for her. So at last she runs away, and the stories merge from there.

Well, if "Lives of the Saints" is a trustable resource, the latter is a true story, or very close. Set in Ireland in the seventh century, a fourteen year old girl named Dymphna was martyred for refusing to marry her father. Her father was a pagan chieften, her mother was a Christian. Dymphna had been raised a Christian and refused her father's demands that she marry him after the death of her mother. She fled with her priest and two friends to a nearby chapel, and her father in his grief induced madness followed her there and kill her companions. Demanding one last time that she marry him, she refused and he struck off her head. She has a chapel... somewhere, and is the patron saint of the mentally ill. Her companions were canonized also.

One of the reasons I am willing to believe that this story is, at least in part, true, is that it has persevered for so long. It was talked of and talked of and talked of until it became a well known fairy tale.

And it is on my list of novels to write one day...

That story you just gave sounds like the tale of Sapsorrow. Only I think it was the ring would only fit his future wife... Either way that story is what eventually turning into Cinderella.

Sapsorrow, yep. Forgot about that one. And I didn't realize it was Cinderella... but you're right, it is. Coolness.

I would have never made that connection about Beauty and the Beast; that's very interesting. I have heard of the one where the daughter runs away. In the version I read, her father was insane and thought the daughter was her mother; in an attempt to knock sense into him, the daughter asked for the skin of his beloved donkey. I think it ended happily; she somehow managed to marry a prince.

Very interesting thread.

I didn't see this before...

LOL. That's someone else's opinion too. I think it might be a traditional Catholic view, but that's speculation. In Handel's Oratorio 'Japheth' that's what he did, but there's no biblical reference or precedence for that. All it says was she came back down out of the mountains and Japheth "did as he had said."

AHEM. I am not Catholic. Just thought I'd make that very clear.

I'm not sure we can know one way or the other. Only, that I believe God hates child sacrifice more than broken promises.