Paul Bunyan, giant lumberjack, mythical hero of the lumber camps in the United States, a symbol of bigness, strength, and vitality. The tales describe how Paul, who fashions lakes and rivers at will, created Puget Sound, the Grand Canyon, and the Black Hills. They celebrate the lumbermen’s prodigious appetites.

​Today we tell a traditional American story called a “tall tale.” A tall tale is a story about a person who is larger than life. Paul Bunyan was a hero of North America’s lumberjacks, the workers who cut down trees. He was known for his strength, speed and skill.

It wasn’t long before Paul knew he wanted to spend his life in the logging camps. When Paul was 14 years old and six feet tall, he spent his first winter in a logging camp as an axman. He was so strong that he could cut a tree down in one chop. He worked quickly, and would have a day’s worth of lumber cut by lunchtime.

Babe the Blue Ox and the giant Paul Bunyan conquer many challenges and help the settlers who are following them. Moral reasoning in the story focuses on concern for relationships and concern for law and order. The theme of the story is You can make great things happen!

Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during that Winter of the Blue Snow. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out, but he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox.

Historians believe Bunyan was based in large part on an actual lumberjack: Fabian Fournier, a French-Canadian timberman who moved south and got a job as foreman of a logging crew in Michigan after the Civil War. …

Kelliher

seven feet tall

He died in 1875 after being struck in the back of the head with a mallet during a brawl. As what usually happens with tall tales, this story grew bigger and bigger as it was told and retold over the years.

Lucette Diana Kensack

Now I hear tell that Paul Bunyan was born in Bangor, Maine. It took five giant storks to deliver Paul to his parents. His first bed was a lumber wagon pulled by a team of horses. His father had to drive the wagon up to the top of Maine and back whenever he wanted to rock the baby to sleep.

Known for his size and strength, many revered Smith as a real-life Black Paul Bunyan. In 1798, he described his life in slavery and freedom to a local schoolteacher who published the narrative.

A North American Legend Paul is said to have dug the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to speed up delivery of maple syrup for pancakes at his logging camp. He also supposedly created the Grand Canyon when he dragged his axe along the ground after a long and tiring journey.

These narratives were invented as short stories in a book by Edward S. O’Reilly in the early 20th century and are considered to be an early example of fakelore. Pecos Bill was a late addition to the “big man” idea of characters, such as Paul Bunyan or John Henry.

In Western culture there are a number of literary or narrative genres that scholars have related in different ways to myths. Examples are fables, fairy tales, folktales, sagas, epics, legends, and etiologic tales (which refer to causes or explain why a thing is the way it is).

Are mermaids good or bad for humans? Though sometimes kindly, mermaids were usually dangerous to humans. Their gifts brought misfortune and could cause disasters. They sometimes lured mortals to death by drowning or enticed young people to live with them underwater.

Mermaids usually are considered lucky, but not universally. In Trinidad and Tobago, sea-dwelling mer-men “were known to grant a wish, transform mediocrity into genius and confer wealth and power.” Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it.

A study into the drowning risks for children wearing mermaid tails and fins showed they can reduce a child’s ability to swim by up to 70 per cent, dramatically increasing the chances of drowning.

Christopher Columbus

merman

Merfolk (人魚, Ningyo) appear in the series too. These are more peaceful of nature than the Fishmen and, like the mermaids and mermen of folklore, their upper half is that of a human while the lower half is that of a fish, though male Merfolk are somewhat uncommon.

Mermaids – those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea — are legendary sea creatures chronicled in maritime cultures since time immemorial. Half-human creatures, called chimeras, also abound in mythology — in addition to mermaids, there were wise centaurs, wild satyrs, and frightful minotaurs, to name but a few.

Kymopoleia, daughter of Poseidon and goddess of violent sea storms. Leucothea, a sea goddess who aided sailors in distress. Nerites, watery consort of Ayodite and/or beloved of Poseidon. Nereus, the old man of the sea, and the god of the sea’s rich bounty of fish.