Frog and Fish

Andrew Mason · 23 May 2011, 17:42 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 18:42:01 +0100
Subject: (urth) Frog and Fish
Message-ID: <BANLkTimi4LOYZm_3it=UGzRXxTfwQdk52g at mail.gmail.com>

Gerry Quinn wrote: >
".
>
> I'm not familiar with details of the Jungle Book - are their parts of it in
> the story?.

Elements from the Jungle Book include:

The name 'Frog' (that's what 'Mowgli' means)
The tiger (smilodon) as the threat to the child.
The figures of the Black Killer (Bagheera, the Panther) and the Naked
One (Baloo, the Bear - the resemblance is less exact in his case, but
the role he plays is very similar)
The Red Flower as a name for fire
A woodcutter as Frog's father before his adoption by the wolves (in
the original his biological father: in this version, since it has to
be fused with the Romulus/Remus legend, his first adoptive father).

All the Romulus and Remus references you mentioned are clearly there
as well. It's an amalgam of two stories about [a] child[ren] brought
up by wolves. It's entirely plausible that such a story would develop
- much less weird than the combination of the Monitor and the
Minotaur. There is also a bit derived from American history (Squanto),
a glancing reference to Moses, and quite likely other things as well.

So, why Fish? Well, if they are trying to combine one version of the
story in which the hero has a twin, and another in which he is called
Frog, they need to find a name for his twin which fits 'Frog'. 'Fish'
looks suitable.. That may be all there is to it, though for all I know
it is also a reference to another legend we haven't spotted yet. That,
at least, is all we need to say to explain how the story developed;
it's very probably meant to have resonances with other references to
fish in various parts of the cycle.
.

> Note 1: Mars or Hercules was supposedly their father - some people have
> found Mars somewhere I think, but I prefer the idea of Hercules as Spring
> Wind, because of his parentage, Zeus appearing as a flower which is the sort
> of thing he did. ?Frog later claimed his heritage in the name of the Red
> Flower.)

If I remember rightly, the Red Flower story is actually a historic
legend about the birth of Mars. (Virtually everything that is said
about Spring Wind fits Mars. Once he has dropped out of the story
things become more complex.)

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