Paul Bunyan (Disney, 1958)
I must admit that my knowledge regarding North American folklore is far from vast, as you would expect for someone born in Brazil. Although I grew up with the Disney cartoons of Pecos Bill and Johnny Appleseed, only now I began to wonder about other important American heroes of legend. And one of them is Paul Bunyan!
According to the lore, Paul was a gigantic lumberjack born in Maine that, among other great deeds, dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox Babe (also gigantic), tamed the Whistling River and put out a fire in the whole northern Michigan only stamping it with his boots.
Of course there are many stories about this iconic character, and I don't intend to discuss every one here. But the one that I liked the most was how Paul found Babe. Here's a tiny portion of that story:
" Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid before they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.
Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during that Winter of the Blue Snow. He was knee-deep in blue snow when he heard a funny sound between a bleat and a snort. Looking down, he saw a teeny-tiny baby blue ox jest a hopping about in the snow and snorting with rage on account of he was too short to see over the drifts.
Paul Bunyan laughed when he saw the spunky little critter and took the little blue mite home with him. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out, but he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox.
Well, any creature raised in Paul Bunyan's camp tended to grow to massive proportions, and Babe was no exception. Folks that stared at him for five minutes could see him growing right before their eyes. He grew so big that 42 axe handles plus a plug of tobacco could fit between his eyes and it took a murder of crows a whole day to fly from one horn to the other. The laundryman used his horns to hang up all the camp laundry, which would dry lickety-split because of all the wind blowing around at that height."
According to the lore, Paul was a gigantic lumberjack born in Maine that, among other great deeds, dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox Babe (also gigantic), tamed the Whistling River and put out a fire in the whole northern Michigan only stamping it with his boots.
Of course there are many stories about this iconic character, and I don't intend to discuss every one here. But the one that I liked the most was how Paul found Babe. Here's a tiny portion of that story:
" Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid before they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.
Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during that Winter of the Blue Snow. He was knee-deep in blue snow when he heard a funny sound between a bleat and a snort. Looking down, he saw a teeny-tiny baby blue ox jest a hopping about in the snow and snorting with rage on account of he was too short to see over the drifts.
Paul Bunyan laughed when he saw the spunky little critter and took the little blue mite home with him. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out, but he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox.
Well, any creature raised in Paul Bunyan's camp tended to grow to massive proportions, and Babe was no exception. Folks that stared at him for five minutes could see him growing right before their eyes. He grew so big that 42 axe handles plus a plug of tobacco could fit between his eyes and it took a murder of crows a whole day to fly from one horn to the other. The laundryman used his horns to hang up all the camp laundry, which would dry lickety-split because of all the wind blowing around at that height."
~Ally
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