The Ethiopian King's Bow

I am reading Herodotus of Halicarnassos again, as I try to do every few years. Herodotus is a cunning storyteller, and his Histories was the Book of Gold for me as a teen. I have just found this story: when Cambyses of the Persians, after conquering Egypt, sent spies into Ethiopia to discover its weaknesses, the king of that land confronted the spies in this way:

Your king is not a just man--for were he so, he had not coveted a land which is not his own, nor brought slavery on a people who never did him any wrong. Bear him this bow, and say, -- 'The king of the Ethiops thus advises the king of the Persians -- when the Persians can pull a bow of this strength thus easily, then let him come with an army of superior strength against the long-lived Ethiopians -- till then, let him thank the gods that they have not put it into the heart of the sons of the Ethiops to covet countries which do not belong to them.'

How proud, that speech! That people were of course a foot taller than the Persians of that time, and the king must have seemed very imposing.

The test of the bow is a motif in many ancient legends. I am reminded especially of Rama in Hindu myth, who passes the test of stringing the bow of Shiva (see the portrait) - in fact passes the test so well that the bow breaks when he strings it!

What other myths or stories use this test?

The Pumpkin Cinderella's Carriage Turned Into

This is an unusual obituary, to say the least, but his death cannot be passed over without a word. A few weeks ago, Howard Dill died at the age of 73. Dill was a Canadian farmer who dedicated great effort to producing pumpkins of fairy tale size. The photograph to the left is no hoax. After decades, Dill bred a strain of pumpkins (his Atlantic Giants) whose seeds produced, year after year, pumpkins weighing hundreds of pounds. In 1979, he grew a 438lb pumpkin that he drove to a U.S. competition in the back of his pickup truck. His later agricultural victories exceeded 1,000 lbs. Those he inspired are now breeding pumpkins in search of an eventual one-ton pumpkin. You can read more about it here in The Wall Street Journal.

Also, you can order giant pumpkin seeds here. Just make certain your garden is big enough.

It is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the quiet wonders that gardeners have given us. Our fast-paced, urban world is often tempted to overlook both crop-growers and gardeners. But many of us remember reading The Secret Garden as children, and longing for a little bit of earth, and some of us were blessed enough to grow up tending our mother's or our father's garden, enjoying the warmth of dark, tilled earth in our hands and reveling in things that grow.

Imagine going to a pumpkin regatta or walking, Charlie-Brown-like, through a patch, and seeing such a pumpkin as the one to the left...one that a carriage might have turned into, at midnight!

Dante and Beatrice

I had to share this, as it is a picture of...Dante's heart!

This beautiful portrait is part of a Tarot deck and a unique novel, The Lover's Path, by Kris Waldherr, and the image depicts Dante's transfigurative love, alluding obliquely to the dream in which Dante's heart is taken out of his chest in The New Life. (In Waldherr's Tarot, this is the card for "Grace.")

I was startled to find the image, of course, because of its confluence with our journal. I am set to become a Kris Waldherr fan. Definitely take a look at her book, The Lover's Path, a novel of love (romantic, erotic, and otherwise) set in Renaissance Venice, and illuminated with breathtaking art, handwritten letters, and various artifacts. It is both book and art object: a museum in unto itself.

In fact, Kris Waldherr's website, the Museo di Palazzo Filomela, is set up, like the book, as a museum, for the exploration of Venice, Waldherr's artwork, Tarot, and the lover's path: well worth exploring for art-lovers, Italianists, and pagans.

Not all of the images in The Lover's Path are Italian in origin, however (though many are): Kris Waldherr explores a range of love-tales, primarily from Europe, but with a few from other cultures of the world. Here to the right is Isis and Osiris. You can also find Siegfried and Brunnhilde, Zeus and Danae, Merlin and Vivianne, Tristan and Isolde.

Looking for a lost book of giants

Dear readers,

I'm afraid the details I'll be able to give are so vague as to be of very little help, but I long to find again an illustrated storybook that my speech pathologist read to me when I was a child (this would have been the mid 80s, though the book may be older than that). The book included lavishly colored illustrations of giants, and I have vague memories of one giant either walking over a hill or walking over a house set in a hill. The illustrations were very colorful. I think I had better do some memory meditations. One of the giants at least looked like Paul Bunyan - a great lumberjack fellow with a black beard.

If any of this sounds familiar, please let me know. Forgive the paucity of detail offered. I remember loving the book as a child and would love to find it again. Ever since that book I have had a fascination with giants....

Article on Urban Fantasy

Dear readers, by accident I stumbled across an article summarizing the folkloric roots and recent growth of that strand of mythic fiction that publishers are dubbing "urban fantasy": take a look. The article is (well) titled "The City Fantastic," and it appeared in Library Journal a few days ago.

For those studying, reading, or hoping to write urban fantasy, the article also includes an impressive bibliography of recent work, from Charles de Lint's short stories to the Anita Blake vampire novels to the recent hit Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The list is definitely worth a look.

This already-thriving genre is quite vigorous. My own first encounter with it was a Charles de Lint story in which a street youth was picked up by the police for freeing the captive urban bicycles with a pair of chain-cutters, so that the bicycles could return to the wilds of the inner city streets. The narrator hears, or imagines she hears, the sound of bicycle bells in the rain, as the freed bicycles wheel away into the dark....

Dante's Heart: Seeking Guest Columnists

Dear readers,

In case any of you would like the chance to join our crazy parliament of owls here at Dante's Heart, we are looking for a few guest columnists to join us here on the blog.


(This charming portrait, which might be a glamour shot of our editors, is the work of Puddle, a dollmaker and poet in West Virginia.)

Here's a quick advert with some of the details:

DANTE’S HEART COLUMNIST

Dante’s Heart: A Journal of Myth, Fairytale, Folklore, and Fantasy is an online venue dedicated to connecting readers, writers, and artists doing creative work in those areas. Dante’s Heart includes an online literary arts journal (www.dantesheart.com), a blog, and a biweekly e-newsletter.

We are looking for excellent freelance writers who are interested in joining a small team of volunteer columnists for the Dante’s Heart blog. You are welcome to join a current column (such as “Wonder in Today’s News”) or to suggest a new one. We hope to find great writers who find the prospect of connecting our readers with what is current and intriguing and beautiful in myth, fairy tales, folklore, and fantasy...irresistable. This is not a for-pay position, as Dante’s Heart is not a company nor do we make any revenue. But this would look hot on your CV or resume, and we hope you will join us as we continue to develop a beautiful venue.

Columnists will be expected to blog 1-2 times per week, and blog posts will be brief but substantive: such as reviews, news, or quick, reflective essays. Topics can be controversial but the tone should never be contentious. The goal of the blog is to inform readers about what is happening in the field, introducing them to the work of new artists and writers or to new ideas...or simply featuring and sharing something beautiful.

Please review our website and our current offerings before applying, and acquaint yourself with what our venue is all about.

To apply, send a sample blog post with a CV or resume and a brief statement of why you would like to work with Dante’s Heart to:

editors@dantesheart.com

If we are interested, our senior editor will contact you to learn more about you and go from there. We hope you’ll join us!

Wishing you the best,

Daniel Fusch
Editor, Dante’s Heart

...And there it is! We hope to connect with more of you this way, and to expand our blog to be more varied, colorful, frequent, and desperately addictive. Drop us a note if you're interested! And we hope you enjoy our blog.

Burials at Stonehenge

A while ago we posted an article about the excavations under way at Stonehenge. Now it's time to post some of the excavation results that have been in the news. This article has a lot of the conclusions our intrepid archaeologists have reached, focusing especially on the tombs uncovered at the site. Notably:

The pattern and relatively small number of the graves suggest all were members of a single family. The findings provide the first substantive evidence that a line of kings ruled at least the lower portion of the British island in this early period, exerting enough power to mobilise the manpower necessary to move the stones from as far as 240 kilometres away.

Very British, yes?

For a photo gallery showing the bones (above) and other parts of the excavation, go here.