The One of Two Things

I started reading about a concept I am somewhat fuzzy about. The magical theft of food.

Most interested here to see if i can draw a relationship with ideas surrounding chance or fate.

I don’t expect to find any neat clear definition of fate or chance but for some reason or another I was at first dissaponted that matching magical theft and fate was not yeilding a clear and consistent pattern.

I did find something interesting but it takes me off track into a related subject. It concerns the diabolical nature of hedgehogs and it has a rhythm  and reason to it I found particularly amusing.

A literal reading of the book of nature.

Hedgehogs in parts of Wales were known to steal milk and would suckle from the teats of cattle.

It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that local witches assume the form of hedgehogs to engage in the same form of theft.

Rigid form of pattern matching which gives this type of material an internal cohesion. The conclusion is relentless and inevitable and seeks to offer no room for  movement or escape.

Never thought about this aspect when looking at legends of feral children. Its a village level observation, to see a thief and potential threat rather than a starving child.

Fight or Flight

Outcome is not inevetable the identification is not set in stone, the emotions surrounding loss may be held on to or let go, but however firm or fleeting, they seem a ‘perfectly natural’ and understandable response to the circumstances.

In order to hold  emotion  consistently, negotation and repeated dramatic performance and re-enactment seem to play a role.

Such storytelling may be  relentless in attempting to present itself as a form of death defying logic from which their can be no end or escape from the inevatable outcome.

But these are not the rules of the game as the insistant, rigid repetition of this form of story- telling perhaps hints at.

Those telling the tale are keenly aware of this dynamic and the fluid nature of performance.

In such a space anything is possible.