Week 13 Story: The Sky is Falling!

Swiper the Fox

Once upon a time, there was a small hen named Pat who was resting peacefully in her nest out in her home field when all of the sudden something shook her awake as it felt like something had fallen from above on her head.

"Oh my!" Pat squawked
"The sky is falling!"

And just like that Pat shot up and began to go throughout the forest looking for her friends as she had to find someone important to tell this life-altering news. Pat first went to her brother John who was a mighty rooster and he was perplexed by just how the sky could be falling, but tagged along as he was worried about his little sister. Next, the group found their friend Don the duck, who was out near the pond looking at lily pads, and hurried up to him to tell them about their predicament. Don agreed to help as he felt someone had to know about such serious news. Lastly, the group went out onto the pond to find the biggest of their friend Gina the goose who offered to ferry the birds back across the pond and take them on the fastest route to get to the king.

The party was moving along on the trail that Gina had showed them and were nearing the king's mighty castle, when they noticed a shadow shifting in the nearby brush. Gina ran up to the brush flapping her wings out wide and out popped the local forest trickster Swiper. He was a devious fox who would pick on all of the other animals of the woods, but the group was taken aback when he offered to help them out as he knew an even faster way to get to the king's castle. After agreeing they followed Swiper to a tunnel that he claimed led right into the castle, but everyone was skeptical.

"Swiper that's no tunnel!" Pat called out as she noticed what looked like multiple sets of fox eyes.

She knew that this was yet another one of his plots so they all went back forgetting all about the sky.

"Ah man!" Swiper cried out knowing that he had been caught.


Bibliography:
(http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/03/english-fairy-tales-henny-penny.html from the UN-Textbook)

Author's Notes:
Kept all of the original animals and introduction, but changed the names as they were all rather long and silly as they rhymed (ex: Henny-Penny). Also changed the ending as instead of having the fox successfully attack/trick the party besides the main character I had a familiar childhood ending where the devious fox was found out.

Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales, Part B

English Fairy Tales Unit from the UN-Textbook
(http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/03/myth-folklore-unit-english-fairy-tales.html)

Depiction of Henny-penny having the "sky fall down"

Before getting into the actual telling and plot of this story it is interesting to note that each of the characters have a sort of second name after their own that rhymed with their first name. For example. one of the main characters of this story is know as "Henny-penny," or "Cocky-locky," and I will omit the second name for ease of reading / referencing. To begin, Henny was going around in her local cornyard when suddenly she was hit on the head by something from above. This led Henny to call out that the sky was falling and that she needed to go to tell the king, so she set out to and on her way first met Cocky who was a rooster and after Henny had told him what she was going to do, he gladly joined along. Next, Henny and Cocky kept going along the path to the king when they encountered Ducky who followed Cocky's suit for after he heard about Henny's mission he too wanted to tag along. Then, the three continued along the path to the king when they encountered Goosey who did the same as the two prior and joined the party to tell the king that the sky was falling. The last animal the party encountered was Foxy who after being asked by the group the same line of questions, told them that they were all headed the wrong way to get to the king and offered to show the group the right way there. Foxy lead the group to a nearby cave and offered them to come through one by one and killed them each as they came down. This happened in the reverse order the animals joined the party until Cocky was bitten twice and Henny knew something was wrong so she ran home and never got to tell the king that the sky is falling.

Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales, Part A

English Fairy Tales Unit from the UN-Textbook
(http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/03/myth-folklore-unit-english-fairy-tales.html)

Visual of a skein

This unit begins with a woman making five pies in her kitchen with her daughter and when the mother took the all of the pies out of the oven she noticed that they all had been overcooked. Because of this, the pies all had too hard of crusts to eat, so the mother told her daughter to go and set the pies up on the nearby shelf so that they could go soft over time. The daughter instead decides that since the pies were going to eventually soften up then surely she could eat them now despite their hard crusts. After only a moment the daughter ate up all five pies with their hard crusts and it was not until dinner that the girl's mother called her to bring a pie as they likely had softened up by now. When the daughter went to go check the shelf that her mother told her to set each of the pies on, she looked and saw only the five plates that they were supposed to be on top of. She turned to her mother and lied to her saying that none of the pies had softened up yet to save herself. The mother decided she was going to have one of the pies regardless of the softness of the crust, and the daughter finally cracked telling the mother that she had in fact eaten all of the pies. The mother began to spin around and sing that her daughter had eaten the five pies. The king was heading down the street and overheard the singing only to ask her if he could marry her daughter. His only caveat was that she had to spin five skeins everyday or he would have her killed. The daughter did get to enjoy the high life until it came time to make the five skeins until an imp came to try and help, but was eventually banished with a simple rhyme.