Tag Archives: fairytale festival

Asian Antiquities

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The Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival is underway. Our weekly Around The World workshops are a place to learn more about a culture and to build your creative digital muscles.  Participate in a workshop anytime or dip your digital toes into all nine!

Week 7: Asian Antiquities & Fanfic Fantasy

RESOURCES:

Chinese Fairy Tales

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29939/29939-h/29939-h.htm
or: http://www.worldoftales.com/Chinese_fairy_book.html

The fairy tales and legends of olden China have in common with the “Thousand and One Nights” an oriental glow and glitter of precious stones and gold and multicolored silks, an oriental wealth of fantastic and supernatural action. And yet they strike an exotic note distinct in itself. The seventy-three stories here presented after original sources, embracing “Nursery Fairy Tales,” “Legends of the Gods,” “Tales of Saints and Magicians,” “Nature and Animal Tales,” “Ghost Stories,” “Historic Fairy Tales,” and “Literary Fairy Tales,” probably represent the most comprehensive and varied collection of oriental fairy tales ever made available for American readers. There is no child who will not enjoy their novel color, their fantastic beauty, their infinite variety of subject.

Yet, like the “Arabian Nights,” they will amply repay the attention of the older reader as well. Some are exquisitely poetic, such as “The Flower-Elves,” “The Lady of the Moon” or “The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden”; others like “How Three Heroes Came By Their Deaths Because Of Two Peaches,” carry us back dramatically and powerfully to the Chinese age of Chivalry. The summits of fantasy are scaled in the quasi-religious dramas of “The Ape Sun Wu Kung” and “Notscha,” or the weird sorceries unfolded in “The Kindly Magician.” Delightful ghost stories, with happy endings, such as “A Night on the Battlefield” and “The Ghost Who Was Foiled,” are paralleled with such idyllic love-tales as that of “Rose of Evening,” or such Lilliputian fancies as “The King of the Ants” and “The Little Hunting Dog.” It is quite safe to say that these Chinese fairy tales will give equal pleasure to the old as well as the young. They have been retold simply, with no changes in style or expression beyond such details of presentation which differences between oriental and occidental viewpoints at times compel. It is the writer’s hope that others may take as much pleasure in reading them as he did in their translation.

Fredrick H. Martens – 1921

http://bs.dayabook.com/home/chinese-fairy-tales-chinese-fairy-tales

This little volume of Chinese fairy tales has been written by Dr. Herbert A. Giles, Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge, formerly British Consul at Ningpo China, and for twenty-six years resident in that country. It is intended as a companion to the Japanese fairy tales published in the same series.
It is very interesting to compare the tales in the two volumes. They are equally quaint and delightful, but the national spirit of the Chinese is very different from that of the Japanese, both being reflected in the stories in a thoroughly characteristic manner.
A. L. G.
Japanese Fairy Tales
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/72/japanese-fairy-tales/ NOTE: Audio recordings included for each tale:

This week’s digital skills workshop: What is Art?

To assist festival-goers in further developing their digital literacy skills and establishing a personal digital identity, each week we highlight a different topic being sponsored by the Bank of DS106 Assignment with volunteer support from the Open DS106 community.  This week we offer “What is Art?”.

Rather than specifying “assignments” everyone is encouraged to learn more about the topic, What is Art?,  by visiting the Open DS106 Syllabus and choosing something to create from an array of Fanfic based digital projects. Each project links to examples of work completed by others.  They also include links to tutorials that can help you learn how to complete the work. By tagging your web related posts (either on the Burgeron Family blog or a personal blog) with both FanficAssignments and FanficAssignments#### your work will be added to the list of examples.  I found these tips for writing up ds106 Assignments in a blog post most helpful.

NOTE ==>: As of this posting there are only10 Fanfic Assignments listed. I know the #burgeron106  family and #prisoner106  village residents would provide a great service to future #DS106 ers by creating a few new assignments.

The Burgeron family blog is always available for posting. (If you need editor access or help let us know.) Or you can post to your own personal blog. Let us know there’s something new with a tweet tagged with #burgeron106 and posting a quick note at our DS106 Google+ Community.

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT….

We invite you to visit any or all of the  Around the World workshops being held this year at the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival.

FairyPuffin_FestivalPoster

Tibetan Tales

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The Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival is underway. Our weekly Around The World workshops are a place to learn more about a culture and to build your creative digital muscles.  Participate in a workshop anytime or dip your digital toes into all nine!

CHECK OUT THIS NEW RESOURCE: Open source video and other digital media for fair-goers to use in creating their art. http://pararchive.com/

Week 6: Tibetan Tales & YouTube Tribulations

RESOURCES:

Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook: http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/03/myth-folklore-unit-tibetan-folk-tales.html

tibetanfolktales“Overview. These Tibetan Folk Tales were collected by Albert Shelton, a doctor and explorer who lived in Tibet for two decades in the early 20th century; he died there in 1922, and his wife published this book in 1925 based on his notes. You will find Buddhist legends here, along with traditional stories of Tibetan gods and goddesses, as well as magicians and wonder-workers. There are stories of ghosts and demons, plus many animal stories, including animal tricksters like the frog who is able to trick a tiger, or the rabbit who is able to trick a lion. There are fairy-tale stories, too, along with stories of human drama, both comical and tragic. Each of the stories is prefaced by a Tibetan proverb, and there are lovely illustrations for many of the stories, as you can see here in the first story when the frog confronts the tiger.”

This week’s digital skills workshop: Making Movies

To assist festival-goers in further developing their digital literacy skills and establishing a personal digital identity, each week we highlight a different topic being sponsored by the Bank of DS106 Assignment with volunteer support from the Open DS106 community.  This week we suggest Making Movies.

NEW RESOURCE: Open source video and other digital media resource for fair-goers to use in creating their art. http://pararchive.com/

Rather than specifying “assignments” everyone is encouraged to learn more about the topic of, making movies,  by visiting the Open DS106 Syllabus and choosing something to create from an array of video based digital projects. Each project links to examples of work completed by others.  They also include links to tutorials that can help you learn how to complete the work. By tagging your posts (either on the Burgeron Family blog or a personal blog) with both VideoAssignments and VideoAssignments#### your work will be added to the list of examples.  I found these tips for writing up ds106 Assignments in a blog post most helpful.

The Burgeron family blog is always available for posting. (If you need editor access or help let us know.) Or you can post to your own personal blog. Let us know there’s something new with a tweet tagged with #burgeron106 and posting a quick note at our DS106 Google+ Community.

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT….

What Do Fairy Tales Teach Our Children?

http://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/what-do-fairy-tales-teach-our-children-30487/

Today’s “fairy tales” are usually referring to the cleansed, safe versions found in Disney-trademarked stories that are filled with enchanted forests, singing birds, and happy endings. Many have no idea that traditional fairy tales, particularly the Grimm variety, fully intended to both frighten and instruct children in the harsh realities of life.

Some believe they should be banished. While others say that we should return to telling the stories as the Grimms and old lore told them — as warnings and morality tales. [Above excerpt adapted from the linked post.]

What do you think?

We invite you to visit any or all of the  Around the World workshops being held this year at the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival.

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I-AM-NOT-A-ROBOT Reads “Legend of the Wooden Shoe”

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Cousin Froid tried visiting Dr M’s Tree house to read a Dutch fairy tale to the kiddies a couple of weeks ago.  For various reasons he failed to get all the way inside so his voice sounded as hollow and disembodied as a robot’s when he told the legend of the first Klompen (or wooden shoes) from outside.  Cousin Ron said it was hard to understand all the words that way.

Dr M invited him back to tell the story again.  This time, on only the third incantation he tried, the tree house materialized and opened its door for Froid.  Once inside he found Dr M, Nana Lou, Cousin Ron, and the children waiting to hear how the first wooden shoes happened to be crafted.  Yes, of course it was fairies who did it, but the story starts long before that.  Here’s Cousin Froid, AKA Jim Stauffer, reading from The World of Tales:

 

Note: There has been some confusion about Cousin Froid’s name since he introduced himself to the Bergeron family last year. Although the spelling is French, Froid is an immigrant Anglo-Canadian who learned French from bilingual cereal boxes as a teen. While he suspects that all letters after the first consonant may be silent in Québécois French, Cousin Froid and his Anglo family persist in pronouncing his name “Freud” because that’s just how they see it.
Froid is inordinately proud of his distant German ancestry and privately entertains politically incorrect views about other languages (i.e. the French are Germans trying to speak Latin, and the Dutch Language is a corrupted form of die Deutsche Sprache) – hence his inability to form the Dutch words in the story properly.

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears The Movie

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The Burgeron Family had come together and created a movie of the classic fairytale – Goldilocks and the 3 Bears after reviews of the audio version were over the top positive.

As virtual attendance to the festival is growing and becoming the option of choice, NanaLou, Great grandson DJ, Mama Boo, Cousin Ron, Cousin Bernie and some help from Dr. M and the famous Headless Inskspots (Viv and David) pooled their best and unique talents and come together with a short film.

After MamaBoo had taken the lead and pulled the audio together, Bernie followed with the video edition.

Cousin Ron was busy prompting with all sorts of new ideas – adding additional sound effects (like snoring and spoons!) and Dr. M suggested including more artists by asking if the Headless Inkspots were contacted.

Along with the final movie outcome, intro and ending clips for future Family Story Time creations are available for anyone to use. If you would like to use them – just contact Bernie or the PR team.

Here is a Dreamy Intro:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4cSdSvv2y02QUU0VmY5TU1kUTg/preview

Music by the Headless Inkspots

The other options created are in this folder.

As a virtual attendance participant be sure to check out the video stories all the artists in residence – Sapphos and Cousin Ron have posted quite a few wonderful stories and audios for enjoyment.  And watch for the debut of stories and music for the adults on “The Porch”.

The festival is heading into week 3 and looks like more and more is coming available each day for festival goers!

 

Recorder version of Isle in the Mist

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The eyes of the long lost lassy stare at you at dawn when the mist from the see comes on shore.

The eyes of the long lost lassy stare at you at dawn when the mist from the see comes on shore.

The Celtic festival poster got Ron Burgeron’s attention for sure!
By using his timecycle Ron Burgeron travelled back in time to bonny old Scotland and managed to record a lone recorder player playing the old song The Ilse Of Myst.

Ron got enchanted by the old Celtic music and took out his mouth harp to accompany the recorder player.

 

The Burgeron Bard Arrives

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The children at the Bovine County Fairy Tale festival have been wonderfully entertained with Nanalou and other #Burgeron106 community sharing stories over at Dr. M’s treehouse.  For those at the festival looking for more adult fare I’ve been in charge of programming and advertising the talent line-up over at “The Porch”. This week, in support of our Celtic Fairy Tale theme from the summer long Around The World Workshops, the world renowned bard of Celtic literature and history, JJ MacGif is joining us.

“In ancient times the Bards were the keepers of tradition, of the memory of the tribe – they were the custodians of the sacredness of the Word.”  Learn more…

He had plans to visit the family last summer for our family reunion, but was unable to make it due to finishing his intense training as a master storyteller. We especially appreciate him taking time away this year from his newly appointed government position as the Minister for Education & Culture and his post as Poet Laureate.

Bard_JJMacGif_Poster2_QRCode

Want to hear a preview of this great olam’s work? Click on the PR poster above or use your mobile device to scan and read the QR code. (QRCode App available for download at: https://scan.me/download) There you’ll find his rendition of “The Fairy Oak of Corriewater” from the Scottish folktale “Elphin Irving”.

You might find this summary and analysis interesting as background on the poem.
http://tam-lin.org/stories/The_Faerie_Oak_of_Corriewater.html

On a dark night the sound of pipes heralds the coming of the faeries, who emerge shining from the green hills. They have come to dance and celebrate beneath a thousand year old oak that the Queen of Faeries had planted. The Queen is also celebrating her capture of a handsome human named Elph Irving, and intends to seal his service for seven years with a kiss. Before the kiss takes place though, the faeries rush to their steeds as a christian soul interupts. The sister of Elph Irving approaches, and takes hold of her brother, calling on God. He is transformed into a variety of beasts, and she continues to hold him. When he is turned into fire, however, she releases him with a scream and faints. The faeries laugh at her failure, and she is consumed in the blaze.

THE FAIRY OAK OF CORRIEWATER

The small bird’s head is under its wing,
The deer sleeps on the grass;
The moon comes out, and the stars shine down,
The dew gleams like the glass:
There is no sound in the world so wide,
Save the sound of the smitten brass,
With the merry cittern and the pipe
Of the fairies as they pass.
But oh! the fire maun burn and burn,
And the hour is gone, and will never return.

The green hill cleaves, and forth, with a bound,
Comes elf and elfin steed;
The moon dives down in a golden cloud,
The stars grow dim with dread;
But a light is running along the earth,
So of heaven’s they have no need:
O’er moor and moss with a shout they pass,
And the word is spur and speed—
But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake,
And the hour is gone that will never come back.

And when they came to Craigyburnwood,
The Queen of the Fairies spoke:
“Come, bind your steeds to the rushes so green,
And dance by the haunted oak:
I found the acorn on Heshbon Hill,
In the nook of a palmer’s poke,
A thousand years since; here it grows!”
And they danced till the greenwood shook:
But oh! the fire, the burning fire,
The longer it burns, it but blazes the higher.

“I have won me a youth,” the Elf Queen said,
“The fairest that earth may see;
This night I have won young Elph Irving
My cupbearer to be.
His service lasts but seven sweet years,
And his wage is a kiss of me.”
And merrily, merrily, laughed the wild elves
Round Corris’s greenwood tree.
But oh! the fire it glows in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

The Queen she has whispered a secret word,
“Come hither my Elphin sweet,
And bring that cup of the charméd wine,
Thy lips and mine to weet.”
But a brown elf shouted a loud, loud shout,
“Come, leap on your coursers fleet,
For here comes the smell of some baptised flesh,
And the sounding of baptised feet.”
But oh! the fire that burns, and maun burn;
For the time that is gone will never return.

On a steed as white as the new-milked milk,
The Elf Queen leaped with a bound,
And young Elphin a steed like December snow
’Neath him at the word he found.
But a maiden came, and her christened arms
She linked her brother around,
And called on God, and the steed with a snort
Sank into the gaping ground.
But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake,
And the time that is gone will no more come back.

And she held her brother, and lo! he grew
A wild bull waked in ire;
And she held her brother, and lo! he changed
To a river roaring higher;
And she held her brother, and he became
A flood of the raging fire;
She shrieked and sank, and the wild elves laughed
Till the mountain rang and mire.
But oh! the fire yet burns in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

“O maiden, why waxed thy faith so faint,
Thy spirit so slack and slaw?
Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud,
Then thy might begun to thaw;
Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip,
Ye had wan him frae ’mang us a’.
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
That made thee faint and fa’;
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
The longer it burns it blazes the higher.”

THE MAKING OF…

[NOTE:  I tried to get fancy and use the collapsible “read more” feature to make the post more scanable from here down. To my horror, upon a later preview, all of the supposedly collapsed text had disappeared – leaving only the <!–more–> code. YIKES! Luckily I save often and was able to return to an earlier draft and copy the text I’d lost into the current version. Yet one more reason I want to move our site to a new and fully functional wordpress theme.]

DESIGNING A PR POSTER: DesignAssignments1521 DesignTutorials1521

imageThis week’s trip to the Bank of DS106 Assignments had me researching the design world.  Designing A Promotional Flyer,DesignAssignments1521, caught my attention. I don’t think of myself as a designer, so this was a learning challenge I wanted to take.  The image, fonts, colors, placement of text and other stuff are all important in getting your message across in a clear and inviting way.

Using Photoshop CC 2014 I uploaded my image and began placing the text.I found a couple of celtic related fonts for free and after experimentation decided on UnZialish Regular with the addition of a drop shadow effect. My first attempt at copying and pasting the William Blake quote was awful.  The line spacing was coming over as maybe 4 times more space than I wanted. I tried removing the formatting, but that didn’t help.  Frustrated I went to the web and found out how to fix my line spacing issue. There’s an option called “Leading” that is not readily available in the Options Bar, but hidden in the Character Panel.  Once I found the Character Panel,

which was not easy I can tell you, I was able to play around with both the font size and line spacing until I came up with a look I liked.  I choose the line spacing to be two font sizes larger than font itself.

The placement of the text was simply by feel.  I moved them around until it looked “right” to me.  There were several iterations. Finally, I used the eyedropper tool to pick colors from the poster itself to maintain integrity with the image. Again, I played around, clicking different shades from different locations until I found one that worked.

ADDING A QR CODE:

QRCode_FairyOakSoundCloudThe addition of a QR Code was a flash of brilliance that sort of works by allowing the viewer to use their cell phone camera to access the web for more information. I input the URL that I want the user to follow into the generator.  It generates the QR code image which I then downloaded to my computer. Adding the image to my Photoshop file didn’t work correctly, so I opened it in preview and took a snapshot of the image, which then pasted into a new layer just fine.

This concept works great for a real physical poster that you’d post on a wall- but not so great in the purely digital world unless you are opening the poster on a laptop/desktop computer and have additional access to a mobile device to scan and read the code.  (A work around would be to add a clickable link with the use of an image mapper software like this one from CoffeCup.)

A FINAL GLITCH:

There was one more little glitch. I wasn’t sure on the proper spelling of MacGif. My tweet to @johnjohnston confirmed that I had spelled it incorrectly as “Mac Gif”. It was an easy fix in the Photoshop file. While I was in there I also took the opportunity to adjust the white colored font at the top. The “8pm” text wasn’t as visible as I would like against the white clouds.  I darkened it a bit by using the eyedropper to pick up a hue from his white shirt.

But this tiny change in the original file proved not so easy when I tried to update my announcement of the event/poster in our Google+ community. I thought I’d simply delete the link to the poster image and re-add the new one. Guess what I learned this morning? You can’t do that.

Attributions:

Campfire Goldilocks

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As Nana Lou mentioned awhile back, the Burgeron children have been enjoying evening readings of fairy tales, often by the campfire. Most evenings after dinner, when the weather is fine (as it often is here in Bovine County), we all gather ’round a fire, singing songs and telling stories–sometimes even a ghost story or two. The Burgeron children aren’t scared of ghost stories, of course, what with I and Little Boo being the family ghosts and so friendly and all.

Well, this being the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival and all, the other night Nana Lou decided to tell a fairy tale, the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And as often happens when we’re all gathered together, it turned into a collaborative story, with lots of us participating:

You might be wondering how we got those sound effects in there, what with this story being told around the evening campfire. Well, as you may know, we ghosts have a way with being able to make all kinds of strange sounds, and Little Boo was working in the background, adding the sound effects.

You might also be wondering why Mama Boo’s voice is accompanied by those strange “ooooh” sounds. Well, I’m a ghost after all! It comes with the territory.

Here is the story …

Credits

Sitting in chair sound, by Richard Frohlich, on freesound.org, licensed CC BY 3.0

Footsteps up stairs sound, by sinatra314, on freesound.org, licensed CC BY 3.0

Birds: singing birds in Bovine TX

Spoon: played by Ron Burgeron

Snoring: snored by Ron Burgeron

All other sounds are licensed CC0, also from freesound.org