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 us—extraordinary.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“Therefore our legends always come around to seeming legendary,
A path decorated with our comings and goings. Or so I’ve been told.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)