Week 2 Essay: Analysis of the Supernatural in the Saints and Animals Unit

Occurrences of magic and the supernatural were prevalent in the Saints and Animals reading unit. As a Christian, I really liked seeing God's presence in the stories of these saints. Whether people believe these stories really happened or not, the tales can act as a conversation starter about religion, beliefs, and values. These are all topics that our society is uncomfortable discussing, and I believe they need more light shone on them. Because I come from a religious background, the evidence of God that was apparent in these stories made them much more believable to me. I think that I was able to accept the miracles as an actuality from the beginning and focus more on other story elements. In this way, God's presence and miracles became a wonderfully underlying tone of the stories.

Typically, it was the saint characters who performed miracles by the grace of God. For example, Saint Kentigern healed the robin and brought it back to life with God's help. This event happened in order to prove Kentigern's innocence in the cruel ordeal. Saint Berach used his God-given authority to change the nature of the wolf who killed the young calf and bind the lives of the murdering wolf and the grieving mother cow together.God helped Saint Comgall to whisper to the mice and command them to eat horrible Croadh's grain. These events were usually critical to the story's plot and often were the solution to the biggest source of conflict in the story. I definitely noticed that all of the saints used their supernatural abilities for good. There weren't any evil saints. I appreciated this because it paints religion in a more positive light than it is typically seen in the media.

(Image information: "Four Male Saints" by Fra Diamante, c. 1470.)

As a happy and willing participant of the Harry Potter generation, magic and the supernatural will always hold a special place in my heart. The Harry Potter stories inspired me to believe that anything is possible, and I truly believe that's where my affinity for fantasy was born. I'm excited to see that magic and the supernatural are storytelling traditions in mythology in folklore, and I look forward to reading more in the future.

Storytelling for Week 2: Abigail and the China Doll

At a modern French boarding school, there lived a little girl named Abigail. She had curly blonde hair held back in two plaits, and her plain blue dress accented her light eyes. She loved her teachers and her lessons. She was only required to take six classes, but she skillfully balanced nine.

"Now girls, who can tell me the colors of the French flag in order?" Ms. Martine asked the class one day.

Abigail's hand shot up into the musty air of the damp classroom before any of the others.

After she politely waited for Ms. Martine to call on her, Abigail said, "Blue, white, and red, mademoiselle."

"Correct," Ms. Martine said.

Abigail had already answered the question before the other girls had had a chance to consider it. Eleven little pairs of beady eyes glared at her as she beamed with the warmth of Ms. Martine's approval.

This was a regular occurrence for Abigail, and over time, her classmates grew to disgust her. They were jealous of her motivation, exceptional grades, and the relationship she had with Ms. Martine.

The other girls made fun of her and pulled her hair.

"Abigail's a teacher's pet," Fleur jeered.

"She doesn't have any friends," Selina called, yanking on Abigail's braid as Selina marched by.

The jealous girls tried to get Abigail in trouble by messing up her bed right before inspections, hiding her homework, and undoing her chores. At first, House Mistress Karlotta was livid with Abigail for breaking the rules. But then, House Mistress Karlotta began to catch the other girls in the act.

No matter what the students did to sway Abigail's popularity with the teachers, Abigail's reputation always prevailed.

Then one day, the school girls contrived a brilliant plan. They would take Ms. Martine's treasured glass doll, and smash her on the stairs just as Abigail was coming up.

So Fleur pushed a chair up to the forbidden shelf in Ms. Martine's office and took the pretty china doll with the rosy cheeks and perfectly curled blonde hair. She carefully smoothed her flowery dress.

(Image information: Shirley Temple Doll by C.E. Price.)

Then, the girls all in a tizzy, they ran down the hallway to wait for Abigail by the stairs. When they heard her cheery voice singing a nursery rhyme, they knew she was drawing close. Just before she rounded the landing of the stairs, Fleur threw the doll down with a shattering crash. The girls ran away, tittering over Abigail's misfortune.

"Oh, no!" Abigail cried as she took stock of the doll's broken pieces. She carefully picked each one up and tried to reassemble the doll, but the pieces merely fell once more.

Meanwhile, the other girls had fetched Ms. Martine to show her what Abigail had done to the poor doll.

But when Ms. Martine and the girls arrived on the scene, they found Abigail seated cross-legged in the landing, carefully gluing all of the doll's pieces back into place.

Ms. Martine knew from the concerned look on Abigail's face that there was no way she could have harmed the doll.

In the end, the other girls learned their lesson and were encouraged to make friends with Abigail. The china doll was repaired and looked almost as good as new. And Abigail and Ms. Martine remained fast friends.

Author's Note: This story was inspired by Saint Kentigern and the Robin by Abbie Farwell Brown (1900). In that story, Saint Kentigern is bullied by his schoolmates, and they try to get him in trouble for killing their teacher's pet robin. But through the grace of God, Saint Kentigern brings the robin back to life, and all is well.

I chose to tell this story from the point of view of the little girl to contrast the mean bullying with Abigail's innocence. So I changed the characters and the teacher's item that gets destroyed, but I kept the schoolhouse setting and the themes of jealousy and bullying. My main goals for this story were to make it entertaining and easy for the reader to identify with.

Week 2 Reading Diary: Saints and Animals

For this week, I chose to read the Saints and Animals unit.

In the story of Saint Kentigern and the Robin, I could identify with how the other school boys made fun of Kentigern for doing well in school. But I thought it was funny that when the boys couldn't make him fail his lessons or get him into trouble, they didn't simply give up and leave Kentigern alone. Instead, they thought they would get creative by blaming him for the fire going out.

I really liked how in the second part of the story, the bird came back to life and his song not only convicted the cruel boys who had killed him, but also told Saint Servan the true story. It was cool to see a miracle, which is usually a joyous occasion, get the other school boys in trouble. And I was glad to see that that conviction changed their mischievous ways at last.

The theme of jealousy was again present in the story of Saint Blaise and His Beasts. It seems the common folk were often envious of the spiritual gifts that God entrusted to the saints during this time.

I like how in the stories about Saint Comgall and Saint Berach, the author gives the year it took place in relation to Christ's birth. It makes the stories seem that much more real.

The way Saint Berach binds the mother cow and the wolf together after the murder of the calf is really thought-provoking. On the one hand, I would never accept the murderer of my child into my home and call him a replacement. But on the other hand, it can sometimes be hard to see exactly where the line between victim and criminal is drawn. If the murderer were abused as a child, it might change my outlook ever so slightly on the situation.

The Wolf-Mother of Saint Ailbe reminds me of The Jungle Book in that a mother wolf discovered an abandoned baby and brings him into her home.

I wasn't really a fan of the ballads because they were written in poetry style. The sentence structure makes it harder for me to comprehend the story.

However, I really enjoyed one stanza of the Ballad of Saint Giles and the Deer.

"Swift as a thought his arrow flew,
Saint Giles threw out his arm,
Alack! the aim was all to true,
Saint Giles must bear the harm."
I really liked that he was willing to take an arrow for a wild animal. Furthermore, I loved how Saint Giles ended up using that experience as an opportunity to minister to the pagan king.

This quote from Saint Francis of Assisi struck a chord with me. "It does not become a servant of God to have an air of melancholy and a face full of trouble." It would be tough to tell people about the Good News with a grouchy face.

The way that Saint Francis wanted to live his life being poor in order to follow his Master is really commendable. Many Christians agreed when Jesus said "Take up your cross, and follow me." But very few did so.