Episode Details

Plant Lore — the shelf's finale, Mooney's survey of the vegetable kingdom, compressed for the ear. The naming poetry ('it is married,' 'they pull each other's heads off,' 'the mother of corn,' 'pot scrapings'); the sacred names — ginseng the Little Man, corn the Old Woman; the cedar, holiest of trees, and the Yuchi myth of its red heartwood; the linn the lightning never strikes; laurel never burned, and why; lightning-struck wood and the ballplayers' paint; the Green Corn dance, the seven ears, the four nights of song in the field, and the weeping at the corners; laughing beans, uncounted melons, tobacco the oath-keeper; rattlesnake's master; the bur that teaches a newborn memory; and the ginseng gatherer's prayer and bead of payment. The survey closes Mooney's book, and this shelf. Source: James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900), public domain; fresh in-house renderings faithful to Mooney's record, told in Mooney's order.

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.