The Celtic Fairy Tales Unit was a very cool unit. I enjoyed the fresh perspective in all these different tales. It’s interesting to go back to the fantasy setting that I’m more used to after reading tales from everywhere else in the world. This unit was also just a lot of fun. I mean come on, leprechauns and witches and giants (oh my)! What’s more fun than that? It was a very light reading too, which was especially nice since I’ve been so bogged down recently.
The thing that stuck out the most to me was probably how similar Connla and the Fairy Maiden was to the Arthurian legend Lanval that I read in a previous class. In that legend, a knight is traveling and stumbles upon a court in the middle of the woods, with a sorceress queen who declares him her husband if he will never tell anyone about her. He agrees, and they live happily till he has to go back to court. There, Queen Guinevere tries to seduce him but he refuses. She won’t believe him when he says it’s because he has a lady, so he has to reveal his mystery wife. Then Guinevere accuses him of assault, Lanval is sad because his lady doesn’t visit him anymore, and Arthur wants his head. The unnamed lady does come to save him and spirit him away, but not till the very end.
Okay, it’s actually very different. I’ll grant you that. But the mystery maiden of great magical powers swooping in and finding herself a husband despite the whole court being opposed to it? That’s in both of the stories (basically). I was also remembering it slightly wrong when I read the Celtic tales unit. Oh well, it’s been a long week and we can’t all get it right all the time now can we?
(apology gif from Tumblr bowels because I know this is a crap essay but I'm honestly on so little sleep this is the best I could do - literally, you should have seen what it was pre-revision.)
Since we have commented on each others post multiple times this year, I figured I would read how your review of the unit was. I thought about reading this unit but decided on a different one. So based off of your comments I think I missed out a little bit. I enjoyed my unit a lot though. I have noticed that some of the stories that we have read seem to overlap other stories from outside this class. I think that is pretty crazy or maybe they all originate from the same event.
ReplyDeleteHaha, I love how honest you are about your sleep deprivation. I always love going and reading people's essays because I feel like, depending on how they liked or disliked the story (or how much sleep they did or did not get), the essay can be very vibrant and give all sorts of other views of the stories. Since some stories, especially the older units, were stories that could be taken many different ways. So, reading the essays, could show another side of the story that wasn't thought of before! So this was really off topic... but I do love your gif!
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