#folklore

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Summary of Iya the Camp-Eater, retold by Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Dakota) in Old Indian Legends (1901):

Hunters found a baby in the woods and brought him back to their chieftain. He gave the baby to his daughter to raise despite voices of caution that the baby might be an evil spirit: The chieftain found it cowardly to leave a child to die in the wilds out of excessive caution. He ordered a feast and dance to name his new grandson Chaske.

In the night the chief's daughter, sitting with her sleeping child, heard the sound of a camp from his open mouth. The chieftain realized the baby was Iya the Camp-Eater, only powerful in the night, and had the village flee with their teepees so quietly that Iya never woke.

In the morning Iya, enraged at finding the village gone, threw off his …

In Arabian folklore, Sinbad the Sailor found his way to the City of Apes. The city's inhabitants must sleep in boats on the water since at night savage apes come down from the mountains and enter the city to steal its fruit and attack any humans they find.

Photo of snarling chimpanzees

Not all the Knights of the Round Table were British or even European. The Middle Eastern knight Sir Palamedes was a rival of Sir Tristan for Iseult in the Arthurian romances, and he was featured in "Le Morte d'Arthur" as one of King Arthur's noblest champions.
🎨 Christopher Cant

Portrait of the noble Sir Palamedes by Christopher Cant

Day 5: What's a no-longer popular trend in writing you'd like to see make a comeback?

books collecting new tales from current oral storytellers.

The oral folk storytelling tradition in Germany is pretty dead, and has been for several generations - and we were lucky that there so many folklorists collecting them while they were still circulating.

But there are many countries and cultures that _still_ have a living storytelling tradition, and I hope that there are people collecting these tales before they are gone!

1/ @rorystarr asked me about some ideas for folklore-themed dungeons - specifically, dungeons that are connected to the "Feywild". So I took a look at my repository of translations of German folk tales, and here is what I found.

But first, a word about definitions. German folklore almost never uses the German equivalent of "fairie" ("Fee"). Instead, a more common term is "Geist", which is a direct translation of "spirit" - and can describe almost any supernatural entity.

Thus, in my exploration of this theme I have limited myself to places linked to entities which are (a) not clearly ghosts, and (b) not clearly demons. This is as close as we will get to "fairies", I am afraid...

The painting "Dark thoughts" by Arthur Hughes. A scared-looking man sits on a spiral staircase, while some black bat/cat hybrids are fluttering around near the ceiling.

1/ Since @JohannaMakesGames was curious, here is a thread on assorted "Underworlds" from German folklore. This will be a slow-moving thread since I need to go through my backlog of translated folk tales and put them on my wiki.

One iconic type of "Underworld" is one inhabited by a "Sleeping Ruler" - a former emperor, king, or other leader who is neither dead nor alive, but sleeps beneath the mountain until he is needed once more.


https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Category:Sleeping_Ruler

I've noticed that there are a bunch of other weekly -themed hashtags such as and .

Do these also have "weekly themes" like ? Or do people just post whatever they feel is appropriate?

I have a new game out! Build your map, play on it, and then destroy it as you explore the myths surrounding the surreal landscape of Ireland's Giant's Causeway.

Find out more about Welcome to: The Giant's Causeway via my itchio page or today's TTRPGkids post (see linktree), and happy gaming!

a mock up of Welcome to The Giant's Causeway showing a brochure cover and the interior of the brochure with a hex tile map and game instructions