Frog and Fish

James Wynn · 23 May 2011, 19:00 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:00:23 -0500
Subject: (urth) Frog and Fish
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTimi4LOYZm_3it=UGzRXxTfwQdk52g at mail.gmail.com>
References: <BANLkTimi4LOYZm_3it=UGzRXxTfwQdk52g at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4DDAAEC7.5010503 at gmail.com>

> Andrew Mason:
> 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.)

The flower used by Juno to conceive Mars is unidentified. Robert Graves 
posited that it was the "whitethorn" -- a type of European hawthorn with 
medicinal uses that Graves asserted was associated with miraculous births.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crataegus_monogyna

The Red Flower is a direct lifting from one of the most famous stories 
from The Jungle Books -- one referenced in the Disney version: The story 
where the monkeys want Mowgli to teach them to make "man's red flower" 
(then Kaa shows up and eats them all).  Of course, the compilers of the 
Story of Frog might well have seen it as a confirmation that Romulus and 
Mowgli were "actually" the same person. Certainly, a clue like that 
would have attracted Robert Graves.

J

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