Myths and Legends
The myth of Seulmundae Halmang is well known in Jeju. According to this myth, Seulmundae Halmang (Grandmother Seulmundae) could reach from Sung San Ill Chul Bong to Guan Tal island at Aeweol in a single stride, and with both feet to Mount Halla. She was very strong, had 500 children, and built Mount Halla with seven scoops of earth.
One day, Seulmundae Halmang was making soup for her sons while her sons were out hunting. While they were gone, she fell into the pot and drowned. On their return, they hungrily ate the soup, without knowing that it contained their mother. However, the youngest son knew. He told the truth to the rest of the sons, and the whole family cried, and eventually turned into 500 stones.
Read more about this topic: Jeju Province
Famous quotes containing the words myths and, myths and/or legends:
“... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of usextraordinary.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about ones heroic ancestors. Its astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldnt stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.”
—James Baldwin (19241987)
“Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)