Puck Fair In Ireland, they have a parade to celebrate a goat. Yes, you read that right. A goat. There are many different legends about how the fair came to be but the one I will be focusing on is the first story on the Puck Fair’s history tab on their website. The legend says that an English army lead by Oliver Cromwell were pillaging the areas surrounding the town of Killorglin. They planned to attack Killorglin. However, on their way to the town they scared a herd of grazing sheep. The male goat, or “Puck,” split off from the rest of the herd and ran through the banks of Laune to the town of Killorglin. “Puck” arrived in semi-exhaustion, therefore alerting the townspeople of impending trouble. They immediately started to protect themselves, their crops, and their livestock. In recognition of the goat’s service to Killorglin, the townspeople instituted a special fair to honor the goat. The festival has been held ever since. Every year a wild goat from the mountains is caught by a goat catcher. The goat is brought into the town and a “Queen of Puck,” who is usually a schoolgirl from one of the local elementary schools, crowns him “King Puck.” The welfare of the goat is very important to the fair directors and they have strict protocols to keep the goat healthy and happy. The goats are overseen and checked often by a veterinary surgeon. For three days, a number of musicals, plays, and comedic theatrical street performances take place throughout the town. This provides entertainment for young and old alike. Several mini-workshops also take place. Even after the sun goes down, the party continues with a variety of open air concerts. On the last day of the celebrations, a giant firework display is set off at midnight. It is set off on a hillside near Laune, the banks of which provided passage for the “Puck” goat. These fireworks can be seen throughout the town. Aine In Celtic mythology, Aine (pronounced “Awnya”) is the goddess of summer, sovereignty, wealth, love and cattle. She is a faerie queen and is known by the names Lady of the Lake, the Goddess of the Earth and Nature, and the Goddess of Luck and Magic. She was said to be one of the most powerful, beautiful and lovely goddesses. She is often associated with summer and summer love. The feast of Midsummer Night was celebrated in her honor and farmers would burn flowers and straw in hope that she would grant them freedom from illness and evil throughout the new year. Abigail Harrington, 13, Hawaii
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Good Time Just Wait for You
When it was a rainy day and I had nothing much to do, I was thinking about my dreams and this is what I created to sing. Listen in the SoundCloud library here: https://soundcloud.com/user-28081890/good-time-just-wait-for-you
Writing Activity: inspiration from science-based common expressions
There are a lot of science-based ideas expressed in everyday speech. This activity challenges you to identify some of those expressions, think about what they mean, research them to find out the science behind them, and then write about some characters experiencing those phenomena or expressing the emotions they describe. You might literally put a character in a situation governed by a scientific effect, or you might use the science as a metaphor for the person’s behavior. We often speak of people “having chemistry.” When you get to the stage in life where you start falling in love you may tell your best friend about this new love in your life that “I felt this chemistry!” They mean, they felt a strong reaction to the person, like bubbling chemicals in a test tube. People say of some couples that they are “so different,” but “opposites attract.” This is a reference to magnets. The plus and minus sides of the magnet are tightly drawn together, whereas you cannot get either plus/plus or minus/minus combinations to attach however hard you try. They “repell” one another. People will say of someone who shows big emotions that they “erupted like a volcano.” When an audience is sitting waiting for a speaker who they really want to hear they might say, “there was electricity in the room,” or “the atmosphere was electric”. This is the idea that the room feels full of pent up electrical energy—like everyone’s hair is standing up on end, or the pressure is high, as if there is about to be an electrical storm with all the drama of thunder and lightning. I want you to think of other expressions, like, “they don’t mix, they are like oil and water” and then do some research into the science behind the expression. Why don’t oil and water mix? What is really happening in a volcano? How do storms work, and what stages do they go through? Choose your science-based expression, gain a clearer idea about what the science is through some research, and then use these details to inform how you set your scene and portray the motivations behind your characters’ actions. As an example, under a volcano (which might look like a big silent hunk of rock most of the time) there is a molten pool of magma. You might think of this as a pool of tumultuous emotions. You will learn that before an eruption there is usually an increase in earthquakes in the surrounding area as the ground starts to shift. We usually can’t feel these shifts, but they are important to the science of volcanos, and helpful to a writer using volcanic activity as a metaphor. What is the role of the these earthquakes, what do they mean, and how might you show characters or a situation that is about to erupt like a volcano experiencing or displaying these more or less silent signs? To see an example of writing informed by well-researched knowledge of woodland animals and weather, read “Autumn Thunder”; or another, “The Highest Football,” that uses the idea “opposites attract” as a springboard for the rest of the story.
