Essay Week 3: Animal Motif

Recurring Motifs: Saints Connection to Nature

In the Saints and Animals reading unit, the hero (saint) always had a supernatural command over or connection to wild animals. In almost all the stories, the saint has a deep connection to God and spurring from that, a deep connection to His creation. They clearly show the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These characteristics applied not only to humans but overflowed to all living creatures.

In these stories, the love for God’s creatures always led to some advantage over them, befriending them or using them for their bidding. In Christianity, it is believed that creation itself is proof that there is a great and powerful God. In the story of Job, when Job has lost all his family, his wealth, his friends, and his health, he cries out to God. The way that God shows him that He is in control is by reminding him about His awesome creation. In this description, God talks about wild animals that everyone fears and no one could try to kill with any real hope, but they are still under the control of their creator.

Carl Weidemeyer-Worpswede - Die Blümlein des heiligen Franziskus von Assisi.  Wolf

The theme of saints also being in control of animals is no different than control of any other part of God’s creation, including forces of nature. However the one thing that no saint ever has control over is another human. These stories may seem as if they elevate the importance of animals’ lives, and to some point, they do. But, the reason that humans cannot be controlled is because they have a soul and free will while all these animals, no matter how wild or strong they seem, still remain under control of the hero. In the end, though the animals may have been wild or killed people, they can always be tamed, and it is the humans in the story who always have the choice and ability to remain wild and are the real danger.

The story unit can be found here.

Storytelling for Week 3: Ailbe in the Yukon

Once, in the deep wilderness of the Yukon during the gold rush, there was a baby named Ailbe whose parents were retched, horrible people. They left him out in the wild to die when he was only a couple months old in nothing but a small lamb's wool.

It would have been a miracle to find a baby wrapped up in white wool in the snow even if you were looking for it. But, as we see later, Ailbe's life is never short on miracles. It just so happened that there was a white wolf with her cubs that smelled something unfamiliar and came to investigate. When she found the poor baby, she could not but feel compassion and pity toward the child and so picked him up in her soft mouth and took him to the warm (at least livable) cave. After one night of caring for the baby, she had made the decision to raise him as one of her cubs.

"Canis lupus arctos PO" by Cephas via Wikimedia Commons - White Wolf

Ailbe was treated with the same respect and harshness as the wolf cubs and grew up just as fierce and just as tough. When he was a toddler, his only clothes he had ever known, his lambskin, began to fall apart. The wolf mother worried about her hairless son but had no way of protecting him. On the day it finally fell off and Ailbe was exposed to the snow and bitter cold, he ran slower than the rest of the pack and could no longer howl. Running in the woods, he was spotted by a hunter, who chased after him so that he might save the little boy's life. He caught the boy, and took him as quickly as he could back to the warmth of his home. The pack tried to follow the hunter, but they lost him in the woods. Ailbe's mother and brother's mourned the loss of a family member.

The hunter and his wife took in Ailbe as their own son. And fortunately for him, they happened to own the Yukon's largest gold mine. He grew up getting a fine education and learning lessons of honest business and lasting, loving relationships.

Ailbe grew up to be a wise man and businessman, inheriting the mine when his father passed. Eventually, he was voted mayor of their hometown and he stayed in that position for many years. Being a rowdy society, every year the town set up a hunting competition and a prize was given for the fiercest animal trapped and caught alive. One particular year, a young hunter trapped an entire pack of the biggest, meanest, brightest, white wolves anyone in the town had seen. In order to officially win the prize, the mayor must decree you a winner and you must bring the beast into the town square. So, the young hunter brought the wolves, tied in ropes and muzzled, to Ailbe in front of the whole town. As soon as Ailbe saw the wolves, he knew it was his old family and the wolves knew it was him. He ran to them and quickly untied them all.

The crowd screamed in horror as their mayor jumped towards the wolves and tackled them. Every citizen thought he had surely gone mad to try to fight these wolves by hand. But he had not been fighting them, but hugging them, and they did not bite him but give him slobbery kisses. The mayor announced to his town that these wolves were family to him and that no one was permitted to hurt them. The townspeople were confused and still feared the wolves. They wanted proof that the frightening creatures could be tamed.

Ailbe quickly came up with an idea. He got ahold of a sled and roped up his pack to the sled. The wolves had never pulled a sled before, but they understood every command their brother gave them. He rode quickly around town and back to the town square. The mayor promised that every night, he would take a ride with his wild family through the town to assure everyone of their discipline and loyalty. And so, every night for the rest of the wolves lives, Ailbe once again was part of the pack and moved as a unit through his part of the wood, his town, and what had finally become his true home.


Author's Note: This story is very similar to the original but in a different setting and instead of a bishop who is the son of a prince, I made Ailbe a mayor who is son a wealthy miner. Originally, the story is Irish, but I liked the setting of the Yukon for white wolves and a rough, wild kind of saint.

Bibliography: Brown, Abbey Farwell. The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts. "The Wolf-Mother of Saint Ailbe." 1900. http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/05/saints-wolf-mother-of-saint-ailbe.html

Week 3: Saints and Animals Reading Diary

• Kentigern:
• -       Teacher’s pet, outcast, all the kids make fun of him. Having heard some of these stories before, I think that this may be a common theme.
• -       He easily relights a fire with a small breath, a symbol that though he is just a boy, he is favored supernaturally and may grow to use it for greater things.
• -       The other boys do get more and more jealous, but this just leads to hard times for Kentigern and then his first real show of connection with God by healing a beheaded robin.
• Blaise:
• -       Saint when it was popular to be a heathen. This one everyone liked though because he was like the village doctor, veterinarian, and wildlife ranger that could command animals.
• -       His abilities and doings were not for God to make the animals do something but rather he was confident in the authority over the animals that God had given him.
• -       Heathens decide they no longer like him. Not a great idea to go against a master of wild animals.
• -       The heathens had him arrested and his last patient was a choking little girl (like on Field of Dreams but I really don’t think that’s an important connection).
• -       They try to drown him but fail and the guards die. Though these are saints, someone besides them always seems to die.
• Comgall:
• -       Friend of all animals so the animals seemed to know and liked to come up to him. He has not commanded any yet though
• -       The mice is scary and kind of dumb because the mice just ate it instead of bringing it to the people. It’s like Willard but without the mice eating anyone.
• Berach:
• -       This story actually contains things that the saint said to the animals that are clearly to teach other lessons (like the wolf becoming the adopted son of the cow).
• -       Besides animals, this one coerced nature and plants in the middle of winter.
• -       Also froze and unfroze snow and even people.
• Gudwall:
• -       Lived in an awesome pirate hideout cave but almost drowned. So far probably the coolest of the saints
• -       The fish felt bad for the saint and his pupil so they slowly moved sand until a sandbar was formed in front of the cave, barricading the saint’s home in safety.
• Ailbe:
• -       He was abandoned in the woods by his no good parents but then a mother wolf decided to raise him herself, like Princess Mononoke or wolf Tarzan.
• -       When he was found as a toddler by a nice hunter, he was stolen away from the wolves and brought to a real family. And of course the hunter was a prince and then Ailbe grew up to do cool stuff and become a bishop
• -       He returns the love of his adoptive wolf mother by protecting her from hunters. So in the end not really like Princess Mononoke which is good news for the wolf.
• Athracta:
• -       She lived with two old warhorses and two awesome stags with her maid in the wilderness.
• -       She is like a lumberjack and deer whisperer and a survival expert all in one.
• -       Also Rapunzel
• Felix:
• -       Escaped becoming a martyr when a spider spun a web over the small alley where he was hiding.
• -       He hid inside of a well for months to survive. This is more what you think of when talking about saints.
• Giles:
• -       Takes an arrow for a deer and is brought back to health by the king.
• -       BUT the king then becomes a Christian and promises to leave his pagan ways, which is good for the whole kingdom.
• Francis of Assisi:
• -       Clearly a big deal.
• -       Trusted by princes, beggars, beasts, and small animals.
• -       My favorite is when he tames a wolf that had terrorized a town and even eaten men and it became a town pet.
•    He’s the best.

Read the Stories