Long ago there was a father who had
two sons with his wife. On a rainy dark night while the father was out hunting
to bring forth food to the dinner table. A woman who practiced black magic came
into his home killed the wife and threw one of the boy in a river near and the
other boy on the side of the house. The father came back to his home and saw
his wife dead and his sons gone. He then looked for his sons and only found the
one on the side of the house. The boy was then taken into care by the father and
grew up to be strong. Then one day the father told the boy, “we are going to
look for your brother.” The son responded with “I need body armor for his teeth
are sharp.” The father then made armor out of rawhide for the son and put it on
him. The father gave instructions to find his brother by the river and
specifically told him to tell his brother that they are to play a game at the
house. The son then went to his brother and brought him to the house. The
brother tried biting the son but seeing as he couldn’t pierce the rawhide he
stopped. There after he became human again. The two brothers then continued
growing together.
One day the
father told the boys do not go into the house upon the hill for there are
snakes there. The two brothers then went to the house and brought rocks with
them. They sat in the house on their rocks. The snakes soon began appearing and
trying to enter their anal cavity but failed because of the stones in the way.
The boy then smashed up all the snakes and took one with them as a souvenir. As
they wlked out of the house the brother with the snake took the snake and
dragged its head on the ground every few steps. This is why snakes have flat
heads now. The father found out of their actions and punished them for their
wrong doings. Yet again the father told
the boys not to go across the river because there was a wolf that was killing
people of the village. So the boys again set fourth to cross the river and
found themselves face to face with the wolf. The boy had brought sharp sticks with
them and with those they were able to kill the big bad wolf of the woods.
The story of these two boy is not known by many but they
were known as Thrown--by-wall and Thrown-in-river.
Authors Note: The story I original read was Lodge-boy and
Thrown-Away found in Tales of the North
American Indians by
Stith Thompson (1929). The story tells that that the two boys were
separated at birth but once they were together they would kill of bad people
and things. In my story I decided to go along the same lines and tell a
different story. The enemy I kept was the house of snakes and an enemy I changed
was the big bad wolf that would kill villagers.
Crow Brothers and Father
Nice retelling! I have not read the original but it seems like you did a good job of maintaining the original message. I am curious what the being was in the original story that you changed to a wolf. My only suggestion is that maybe a mention should have been made within the story about the brother’s pact to kill all bad things. Without mention of this it just seems like the boys are disobedient and do the complete opposite of what their father says.
ReplyDeleteGood job on the story. I saw one typo in the story where you spelled walked without an a. Other than that I enjoyed the story and liked how you retold the story. I agree with Kristin. You should tell of the brother's pact so the readers don't think they are doing these things out of disobedience. Maybe tell what exactly was different form the original and the retelling.
ReplyDeleteHello! I thought the way you retold this story was creative. I would have to agree with Tylor and Kristen on mentioning the pact in your retelling. There are some typos throughout that you might want to read back through and fix. For instance, I think you meant the second and third sentences to be one sentence separated by a comma instead of a period. There also aren’t any of the necessary commas in the third sentence.
ReplyDelete