Angara's Escape - a tale from Lake Baikal

A retold tale from the people of Siberia

As the night draws her cloak around the shore of Lake Baikal, spirits and shadows wake up. Not everything is as it seems in this place, for Siberia is a land filled with magic. Sit down at the water’s edge and, as darkness falls, listen to the stories it has to tell.

Baikal was once a God. He was strong, fierce and proud. He had 337 children, but of all of these he loved Angara the best. She shone like a sky full of stars, her soul was deeper than the water of the lake and her mind as sharp as the ice shards of winter.

Many princes came to ask for Angara’s hand in marriage. They would travel from afar and stay at her Father’s house, singing great ballads of their love, reciting reams of poetic metaphor and showing Baikal how brilliant they were in conversation and competition.

But Angara was not interested in any of these visitors.

One day, as she was wandering the shore of the lake, a traveller sat by the water's edge gazing over the still waters. Around him was a deep quiet, the quiet that comes with the first snow fall of winter when all noise is cushioned and all becomes still. He was tall and his eyes were as wide as the ocean itself. His name was Yenisei and he was journeying from the frozen north to his mountain homeland far to the south.

"Sit with me if you wish," he said. 

They sat for a while in silence and then they began to talk.

Yenisei was full of stories. He told her of proud antlered reindeer, of huge white bears that rise up on their hind legs and bellow at the moon; of the dancing of silver fish in crystal clear waters and mountains that touch the frozen fingers of the moon. They sat together and talked in this way until the sun hid her face behind the hills and sat together quietly, watching side-by-side as the world grew dark around them.

That night, Yenisei asked Angara to marry him. She smiled a smile that made the moon shine brighter and said “YES!”

“I must leave now. I will be back soon to speak to your father about our wedding,” said Yenisei, “but here, I have a gift for you.”

Yenisei gave Angara a tall white bird - a Siberian crane. “If you need me, this bird will always find me and I will come for you, even if I am a thousand miles away.”

And Yenisei was gone.

The next day, Baikal came to find his daughter

“My dear girl, my beautiful Angara, I have found you a husband at last!”

Irkut was an older man with cold eyes. He had no stories and it seemed to Angara that her heart would freeze if she spent too long sat beside him. But she was too afraid to tell her father about the man she had promised herself to or challenge his choice.

Do not forget, Baikal was a God. 

Angara whispered her woes into the ear of the white bird. The crane collected every word and every tear and flew off and away into the sky.

Days passed, but no message from Yenisei came. Meanwhile, Baikal was busy preparing for her wedding to Irkut. Each night there were great feasts and Angara had to sit beside her father's intended son-in-law and suffer his cold breath on her cheek, his bony hand on her arm. Angara’s heart felt heavy and her stomach thick with fear.

The night before the wedding, Angara could not bear it any longer. She no longer cared that her father was a God - she would rather die in the wilds of Siberia than marry that man.

She crept out of her room, down the stairs and out of the door. She took a proud white stallion from the stables and whispered “Run my friend. I beg you - take me far from here.”

When Baikal awoke with the first rays of the sun and found his daughter had gone, he raged and roared. He scanned the land and found the path his daughter was riding, out of the valley and away from the lake. Terror caught Angara's breath as she felt his eyes upon her. 

“YOU WILL DO AS I SAY ANGARA!” Baikal screamed. He ran to the shore of the lake, picked up an enormous rock and with all his strength, he threw the rock at his daughter. 

The rock flew through the air. It would have crushed her but the horse was fast and swift and she escaped!

Angara rode and rode and rode. How long she rode, I do not know, but I do know that although her body escaped unscathed, that rock had crushed her heart and made it hard to breath. 

River. Mountains. Rock. Ice. Wind. Snow. Rain. Snow. Ice. Rock. Mountains. River. 

Finally, she reached the Sayan Mountains and there, galloping towards her on a strong black horse, was Yenisei! He took her in his arms and she wept. Yenisei led her up high into the mountains and sat silently beside her, holding her hand softly in his. They sat in this way as the sun hid her face and the moon man turned the grey rocks silver.

Up in the cold air of the mountains, Angara found she could breath again.

Angara never returned to her Father’s lake. Of over 300 rivers that flow into Lake Baikal, only the Angara River flows out. The rock that Baikal threw is also still there in the waters of the great lake. The shamans - the holy magicians - of Siberia say that the rock holds secrets and stories for those who know how to listen.

And that is the story of Angara’s escape from her angry father to the mountains of Sayan where she runs free forever.

Copyright Abigail Simmonds 11/11/17

Morning Star and Long Leg the Frog

A folktale from Peru, retold for www.ecokidsplanet.com 

When she was born, her mother looked into her eyes and saw that they sparkled.

“She is called Collyur – morning star,” said her mother. Collyur grew happy and strong in her village home, high in the mountains of Peru.

But that was a long time ago. Now her Mother was crying; Collyur had disappeared and no one had seen her for days.

***

In a cold mountain stream, lived a little frog. As she grew from an inky black tadpole, she noticed she was different – one of her legs was longer than the other. Her brothers and sisters teased and laughed at her so Frog would swim upstream to hide her tears from them.

Frog sat in shady waters near the gaping mouth of a cave. It was Condor’s cave and he swooped in and out on his great black wings each and every day. But Condor did not live alone. As night turned to day and the morning star appeared over the mountains, a young girl left the cave, carrying vicuna skins which she would begin to beat into blankets. There was a long sinew of rope around her ankle that kept her tied close to Condor’s cave. Frog could see tears glistening in the girl’s eyes and saw that whenever Condor flew over, the girl would wipe the tears away so he would not see her cry.

“She is like me; we are sisters,” thought Frog.

One day, Frog heard the girl and Condor talking.

“I must wash my clothes. Let me down to the stream.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Condor croaked “You will run away and I will have no one to serve me.”

“You will be able to hear me beat my clothes against the rocks. I could not escape.”

“Ok, but if I cannot hear the beat of your washing for even a second, I will swoop down and you will be punished!” he rasped.

And so the rope was loosened and the girl ran down to the stream.  

“Hey! Hey! Girl! Over here!” Frog shouted.

Collyur turned and saw a little frog with one long leg.

“Let me help you. I will beat your clothes so he will not realised you have escaped.”

“Why would you help me little frog?” she asked in amazement.

“Why wouldn’t I help someone in pain?”

So Frog climbed out of the stream and took Collyur’s clothes in the toes of her long leg and with all of her strength, the tiny frog began to beat the clothes against the rock.

 “Run sister! Run!” Frog cried.

Collyur paused, smiled and kissed the little frog on the forehead and then she turned and ran as far and as fast as she could down the mountains and back to her village.

***

Condor could no longer hear the sound of his prisoner cleaning her clothes. Furious, he flapped his wings and soared down to the stream. His keen eyes looked here and there, but all he could see was the shadow of a long-legged frog swimming through the water.

Frog returned to her home. When she arrived her brother and sisters stared in wonder, for where Collyur had kissed her there was now a shining jewel. Frog felt a swelling of pride and joy in her heart. Her brothers and sisters never teased her again.

Back in the village, Collyur’s mother sat weeping. Just before sunrise as the night drew back her cloak, Collyur appeared at the door. Her face was stained with tears, but her eyes glistened with joy.

“My morning star!”cried her mother. They embraced and sobbed and laughed and Collyur told them the whole story.  

And from that day to this, the people of that village leave tiny frog statues by the streams and on the mountain tops to thank the long-legged Frog and ask for her help in all that they do.

The ecology of language - an open notebook entry

This is an open notebook - a sharing of recent thoughts. It is something of an experimental essay or a collection of thoughts at the edge of becoming eloquent. 

Language shapes our reality.

This is not a new idea. The Buddha taught about the importance of right speech, the root of Abracadabra lies in the ancient Hebrew phrase "אברא כדברא" or "I create as I speak" and the Gospel of John begins with those immortal words "In the beginning there was the word and the word was God." To have language is to have the power to express, name, label, categorise and define things, people, experiences and feelings. 

And these words have power. 

We can be caught forever in the thrall of a psychiatric diagnosis or teacher's remark, moving from being 'lively' to being a 'naughty' child in a single breath. Every word comes with its own baggage and its own history. Some words cannot be spoken because they hold so much weight, whilst others are moving into common speech as the passage of time wears away old meanings and clothes them in new. 

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

Buddha

To use an old English phrase, we each have our own word-hoard - a store of words collected from our parents, carers, siblings, teachers, peers, the books we read, the programmes we watch. We can then draw from this stock to communicate and express. 

In times of extreme or unusual emotional states - the pain of loss or the ecstasy of birth - we often find our word hoards insufficient. When our lover leaves us, when we are struck with that strange yearning to be something or somewhere we are not, when we meet the inevitable end of life, we turn to the poets to offer us the magic combination of words that provide the image or the rhythm that expresses where we are - that resonates at our level of feeling. 

Language is more than functional; it is an essential tool in the gardening shed of the soul. 

But maybe it isn't a word-hoard at all. Word hoard conjures to mind some sort of pantry or chest - quite possibly very old and wooden and filled with bio dynamic, organic apples, but cut off and not-living none-the-less. And language is living; it is a constantly evolving ecosystem - a word-wood. 

Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating.

Gilbert Highet

As we grow, our word-wood grows. If we are lucky, the earth beneath our word-wood is made fertile by those around us. If we are unlucky, the earth is grey and cold; in that scrubland, bramble words grow, filling our mouths with dry, spiky, withered attempts to express the fire within. We swear, scream and hit because we have nothing else. These are the children who lash out in frustration because they don't have the words to help us understand how they are feeling - the force of the absent word rises like a tsunami of the soul.

Word-wood soil can be enlivened with the right treatment - the right authors, speakers, words and phrases being introduced in the right way - but just as easily a fertile landscape can be destroyed by carelessness and commercial consumption. Monoculture language creeps in promising better communication through over simplification, manipulation through vile advertising, or utter confusion through 'specialised' jargon. Invasive species spring up - the word 'like' is the ground elder of speech - and GM word crops slowly change the natural landscape of our language and in doing so, redefine our internal and external experience of the world. 

Especially prized was the capacity to name, abundantly and gracefully, dozens or even hundreds of secret names for beings you had spent your whole life strutting past, and muttering; “willow” “holly” “bat” “dog-rose”. They are not their names. Not really. 

Dr Martin Shaw - School of Myth

Robert Macfarlane recently reminded us of how many words we are losing in the UK on a daily basis and the danger that poses to the future of our countryside: "[We are in] an age when a junior dictionary finds room for ‘broadband’ but has no place for ‘bluebell’". What will happen when children can no longer name Oak or Beech, Sparrow or Robin? Will they wish to protect an area of nameless land inhabited by nameless creatures? 

To take away a person's name is to 'de-humanise', making it easier to avoid any sort of messy emotional attachment and opening the 'thing' up to exploitation, abuse or extermination. If we are losing the lexicon of the natural world, is it any wonder that rainforests full of trees, insects and animals are being destroyed by CEOs of foreign companies who have reduced the entire, living ecosystem of the Amazon to a "commodity"? 

Mythologist Martin Shaw encourages his students to develop a practice of giving twelve secret names to the plants, animals or 'things' they encounter in nature and to speak those names out loud. He comments that "inventive speech appears to be a kind of catnip to the living world" - an enlivening force. And surely it must be seen that those that love and know the land they live upon have a hundred names for snow or twenty different names mud or, at the very least, three different names for the garden robin. In giving something a name, we deepen our relationship with it and in finding many names we find ourselves watching, listening, thinking more deeply about that bird, plant, flower or bug - by engaging through language, we come to know it better. 

Green Curve

Udder of the Silver Waters

The Hundred Glittering Teeth 

Small Sister, Dawning Foam

On the Old Lime Bank.

5 names for the River - Dr Martin Shaw - School of Myth 

So get out there and find the folkloric name of the hill behind your house, or watch the little plant 

determinedly pushing its head between the pavement cracks and realise that the word 'daisy' just isn't enough to encapsulate that being. In opening ourselves to language as a dynamic force, rather than just a communication tool, we can begin to experience the world in a new and deeper way.  

"Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

Wade Davis - Anthropologist and Explorer

Our world is dying.

The world was dying.

 

 

Birds,
beasts,
trees,
flowers.

 

The air grew still without the beat of insect wings.

The world grew silent without bird's song, cricket hum, wolf howl.

 

 

At last there were only two creatures left on earth:

an old man and an old woman.

 

When they had nothing left to eat and no words left to speak, they climbed up the mountain, to a high ledge, ready to throw themselves over.

They wanted to die.

 

As the old woman’s feet touched the edge of the earth, a deep, forgotten grief quaked inside her and a cry shook itself free.

 

“Why did this happen? What is this punishment for? What did we do? Why did all our children die?”

 

 

Silence.

They were ready to jump.

 

At that moment they froze - a baby’s cry! They followed the sound and there in a cradle of dirt was a baby boy. Their grief forgot, they took him to their small hut and cared for him as best they could.

 

But the child wouldn’t stop crying. No matter what they did, the child would not stop crying. Cradled or free, the child grizzled and groaned and sobbed and screamed. And dark thoughts came into the minds of the old people.

 

Suddenly, the door was thrown open by an invisible presence and the old man found himself pressed against the wall.

 

The Mountain Spirit spoke:

“Do you not remember? How do you not remember? You must feed the fire. You must worship the fire of this child. Strengthen its soul or it will die.”

 

With that, the spirit was gone and in the quiet that followed, the old woman felt loss; she didn’t remember rituals, ways or customs anymore.

 

Compelled by the Mountain spirit, the old people sat with the child by the burning fire and fed it. And then they spoke over it and found that the fire whispered the words that needed saying and they fed the children’s fire.

 

The boy grew into a strong young man.

One day, he found his feet leading him up the mountain. A cool, fresh wind caught his heart and loosed a song from his lips. He sang to the mountain, the wind, the rocks, the dust, the river and the Daughter of the Mountain Spirit heard him. When he turned and their eyes met, something passed between them - ancient and new.

 

“I wish to marry her - the daughter of the Mountain Spirit!”

 

The boy's parents were shocked and appalled. They refused  to allow their son to marry that strange, wild creature. Love between man and mountain? Not possible. Desperate eyes looked back at them.

 

“If I don’t marry her, I will die.”

 

And he did. Moment by moment, day by day, he began to die.
When he had grown too weak to speak or sing, his parents full of fear and confusion turned to the Mountain for guidance.

This time, no door was blown open, no invisible spirit passed through the land. The Master Spirit of the mountain spoke for the very last time and the whole world listened.

 

“You forgot. You forgot me. You stopped believing. You stopped knowing.

 You burned my heart, the forests; you dirtied my eyes, the great lakes.

 You thought yourself stronger than nature - does a leg or an arm think itself

 stronger than the body? Does an limb think itself more than the whole?

 You are part of me as I am part of you. But you are distant now. You are 

 other. Your ears can no longer hear the whisper of the grass, the language of

 the birds,  the stories sung by tree and rock. You became foreign and you

 began to die and the sickness spread and the world began to die with you.”

 

The old man and the old woman found their faces wet with tears. Above them stretched a dark expanse of sky - the vast emptiness of all they had lost and all they had forgotten. They fell to their knees and sobbed.

 

* * *

 

The young man and the daughter of the mountain spirit did marry and they had children born of man and nature. The Spirit of the Mountain never spoke again, but his Daughter sang songs to her children - songs in a language from long ago and a tune from far away.

 

With each note, with each song, with each story, a flower grew.

 

 

***

 

Our world is dying

 

 

Today we must remember again the mountain spirits and a new tribe will be born.

 

 

 

 

Copyright - Abigail Palache 02/02/2015

 

Thanks to Kira Van Deusen for recording this traditional Siberian tale.

Thank you to the Tuvan tellers who still speak these tales in their native land.  
For more info on this brilliant culture: http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/VANSIN.html