Like the mythological Achilles, many of our favorite literary
heroes, characters and creatures were born of legend and myth. Some, such as our
American founding fathers and early frontiersman, were created through a
combination of history and regional folklore. Mythological icon, behemoth folk
monster, or national hero, literature has devoted many pages to the telling of
these stories, but which of them are fact and which are fancy?
While doing some research on the subject, I was surprised to
discover that many of our favorite American heroes such as Paul Bunyan, Casey
Jones, John Henry, and Johnny Appleseed, existed only in the imagination of story
tellers and poetic writers like Walt Whitman.
Nineteenth century writer Mark Twain created characters so vivid
in the minds and imaginations of his readers as to become almost real. Tom
Sawyer and Huck Finn seemed as alive to us as they were picturesque.
A good many characters, monsters and heroes set down on paper came to us
through the literary pen and imagination of Homer, (Odyssey) medieval
Arthurian romances (Knights of The Round Table) and from old-world folklore and
superstitions. From the Norse Gods came the ancient legend of the werewolf and
lycanthropy - the ability to change forms from human to wolf. These stories were
widely believed during the 13th to 16th centuries, contributing greatly to
European and Salem witch hunts.
Count Dracula has haunted the imagination of the world for the past 100
years. Ever since writer Bram Stoker created him in 1887 the name Dracula has
inspired fear. The deadly creatures of which Dracula is the chieftain, have
lurked in European folklore since ancient times. However, Bram Stoker's novel
was based on a real-life diabolical Romanian tyrant known as Vlad V. He was
nicknamed the impaler and known as Draculaea. Draculaea was the Romanian word
for "Son of the Devil".
As with many stories that have been absorbed into historic folklore,
the Vampire legend has some medically factual foundation. During the middle
ages interbreeding among Eastern nobles led to genetic disorders including a
rare disease known as erythropoietic protoporphyria. Many so-called vampires were
in fact victims of this disease.
The disorder makes the body produce too much porphyrin the results -
redness of the skin, eyes and teeth, receding upper lip and
skin that bleeds when exposed to sunlight. Doctors of the time treated their
patients by encouraging them to live in the dark and drink blood to replace
what they had lost.
And what of our own American folk lore, was legendary frontiersmen
Davy Crockett for real, or, like Miami Vice hero Sonny Crockett, was he just a
figment of a TV writer's fancy? Unlike some other figures of historic
folklore, Davy Crockett was a real-life, bona-fide hero. The colorful American
frontiersmen was born in Tennessee in 1786 and gained fame through his heroic
exploits as an Indian fighter, US. congressman and soldier. His valiant death,
defending the Alamo in 1837, elevated him to legendary status. During the mid
1800s embellishments were added to the great Indian fighter's image. By the
1950s, Walt Disney Productions and actor Fess Parker created a figure in a coonskin
cap and buckskin that has become affixed forever in the hearts and minds of
America.
The renowned English detective Sherlock Holmes was only a charcter
created in the mind of writer Arthur Conon Doyle- or was he? Everyone's favorite sleuth was,
in reality, patterned after Conon Doyle's
college professor, Dr. Joseph Bell, whose classroom wizardry, in the laws of
deduction amazed and influenced five decades of Edenburgh University students,
including Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conon Doyle.
Dr. Bell was the archetype for the cerebral detective, whose rules for
deduction echoed the real-life gospel taught by Professor Bell.
As for the origin of the super sleuth's name? His creator called him
Sherlock after a cricket acquaintance and Holmes, after American jurist Oliver Wendle
Holmes.
In the latter part of the 20th century frenzied newspaper writers and
story tellers wrote insatiably on the reported sightings of a strange hairy
monster, part man, part beast, spotted by hikers in the northern California
woodlands. The beast came to be known among the locals as" Big Foot". During the
1960s, Eurika California was put on the map by these reported sightings,
thereafter a new legend was born.
In every mountain range in the world live people who tell stories of
strange, manlike creatures who roam the mountain sides. In the Himalayas he is
called the Yeti; to people living in the Canadian Rockies he is known as
Sasquatch. Modern scientist believe these creatures could actually exist and may be
the descendants of Gigantopithecus, which includes the giant ape.
Millions of reputable citizens all over the world believe the stories
they read in books and tabloid press; tales that tell of reported sightings of
such things as, flying saucers, Elvis, The Lock Ness Monster, and on Christmas
Eve , someone , somewhere swears to have seen Santa Claus and his eight tiny
reindeer.
Should we beleive in the sightings of these things with out actual proof of their existence? Are they
genuine, mythical or the product of an active imagination? The answer is most
likely all three.
Many years ago, my, then, five-year old nephew was afraid of the dark.
It wasn't so much the dark he was afraid of, as he often told me, but the
monster behind the closet door. I'd reassured him many times that there were no
monsters in our house , but it was little consolation to his unreasonable
imagination. "I know there's no monster on the other side of the door, he'd tell me
bravely, but sometimes I think there is."
There are times when the most real things in the world are those we
can't see. Like the five-year old in all of us, it's a matter of what we want to
believe.
For over 14 years, Cookie Curci wrote a popular nostalgia column for The Willow Glen
Resident. (The Silicon Valley Metro Newspapers...San Jose califonia)
www.metroactive.com. She's currently writing a column called "Looking Back" that
appears monthly in FRA NOI - a Chicago based newspaper. In additon she writes for
"Mature Living" in Toledo, Ohio, "Senior News" in West Virginia and THE WILLOW GLEN TIMES in San Jose. More about Cookie is at On Writing a Nostalgia Column.... If you would like to comment on an article, Cookie can be reached at Cookiecurci@aol.com.
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