Category Archives: Mythology

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-NINE: NOVEMBER 1915

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.

PART 79 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are some of the Fool Killer’s targets in November 1915.

*** Christians who called for America to enter the World War on the side of the Allied Powers, depicting them as pious hypocrites who wanted to go to war for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful.

*** President Woodrow Wilson, depicting him as neglecting all national problems while paying far more attention to his romance with Edith Bolling Galt, like himself widowed. The two would marry in December 1915.

*** Tycoon – or plutocrat as Pearson and his Fool Killer called the wealthy – John D. Rockefeller II, who assumed the reins of his father’s corporate empire. “Johndee the 2nd” was depicted using phony charm in contrast to the open contempt that his father had shown to the working class. They especially targeted John II’s P.R. stunt of visiting miners for some photo opportunities.

*** Imperial Japan for intimidating and browbeating China.

*** People who opposed voting rights for women.

*** The Anglo-French Committee, who came to America wanting a Half-Billion-Dollar loan to keep fighting the war. Continue reading →

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FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-EIGHT: OCTOBER 1915

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.

PART 78 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are some of the Fool Killer’s targets in October 1915:

*** Dr. Stephen Herbert Langdon, for his claim that his translations of ancient Sumerian clay tablets convinced him that instead of the Biblical First Man it was really the Bible’s version of the Survivor of the Great Flood who ate of the Forbidden Fruit. And the Forbidden Fruit was really a legume from a cassia tree, not an apple.

        NOTE: I found news articles about Langdon’s claims as far back as August of 1914, but they were apparently just getting big in the U.S. in 1915. Oddly, in 1920 the New York Times, Antique Religion and others started covering Langdon’s claims as if he had just made them. At any rate, Langdon’s claims eventually influenced comparative mythology theories about the Adam and Noah stories being based on Utnapishtim and other figures from Sumerian myths.

*** Eastman Kodak Company. The Fool Killer was being very cynical about the recent decision by the Federal District Court at Buffalo, New York which ordered the company to be dissolved on anti-trust grounds. They even joked that Kodak stock would probably go up and that the company would survive intact given how so many big money corporations had circumvented anti-trust rulings from courts. 

*** King George V & Czar Nicholas of the Allied Powers, and Kaiser Wilhelm of the Central Powers, all of whom said that God was on THEIR side in the raging World War.  Continue reading →

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OZIDI EPIC OF NIGERIA: PART ELEVEN

FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE. PART TWO HERE. PART THREE HERE. PART FOUR HERE. PART FIVE HERE. PART SIX HERE. PART SEVEN HERE. PART EIGHT HERE. PART NINE HERE. PART TEN HERE.

PART ELEVEN – Back at the home of his unfit uncle King Temugedege, Ozidi took Odogu’s Wife to bed with him that night. Though she seemed to willingly leave Odogu’s home, and in fact had led Ozidi by the hand as they fled, it became clear that the woman was playing a game of her own.

She and the eager Ozidi would kiss and cuddle and a bit more, but when our main character tried to enter her, Odogu’s Wife would go all coy again and try to get Ozidi to tell her the secret of his strength and his supernatural weapons. Our hero stubbornly refused.

So it went the next night, too, with Odogu’s Wife also inquiring about the magic powers of Ozidi’s sorceress grandmother Oreame. Over the next few nights, Ozidi, much shrewder than he had been before, pretended to go and get an object which would reveal all his and Oreame’s secrets to Odogu’s Wife. Continue reading →

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FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-SEVEN: SEPTEMBER 1915

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.

PART 77 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are the Fool Killer’s targets in September 1915. There was no August issue that year.

*** Former President Theodore Roosevelt for his repeated calls to current President Woodrow Wilson that America should enter the ongoing World War.

*** Uber-wealthy J.P. Morgan for pompously proclaiming that the war would be over within a year. (As we all know, it actually lasted until November 11th, 1918.)

*** The Chicago Evening Post for supporting U.S. entry to the war.

*** Thomas Edison, but only with a good-natured joke about his recent remark “I owe everything to my wife.” He said she should take Thomas for everything he was worth. Continue reading →

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THE OZIDI EPIC OF NIGERIA: PART TEN

FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE. PART TWO HERE. PART THREE HERE. PART FOUR HERE. PART FIVE HERE. PART SIX HERE. PART SEVEN HERE. PART EIGHT HERE. PART NINE HERE.

PART TEN – We begin this installment with a much more mature and sober-minded Ozidi. We’ve seen him go from his wild and unavoidable embrace of violence during his revenge quest against the murderers of his father to destructively maintaining that reflexive violence after his vengeance had been achieved.

From there we saw him learn humility from facing disastrous setbacks – albeit temporary ones – in combat and last time around we saw Ozidi grow disillusioned with violence due to the tragic circumstances it brought on.

Our now more serious hero has resumed his walks around his unfit uncle King Temugedege’s land Orua. Word reached him about the abuses being inflicted on the people by the brutish Ogodu, a muscular hulk of a man who had a malformed face with the eyes on top of his head.

Now moved by a sense of obligation toward the well-being of the people and no longer just revenge or proving his mettle against any powerful rival he encountered, Ozidi nobly went in search of Ogodu. Continue reading →

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FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-SIX: JULY 1915

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.

PART 76 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are the Fool Killer’s targets in July, 1915:

*** Frank Holt – real name Erich Muenter – an Imperial German spy who was active in the U.S. despite America not having entered the World War yet. (We would not enter the war until April 1917.) In addition to teaching anti-American sentiments at Ivy League universities Harvard and Cornell, he set off a bomb in the U.S. Capitol building, sabotaged U.S. war aid being sent to the Allied Powers against the Central Powers in Europe and elsewhere and tried assassinating J.P. Morgan’s son Jack in his own home.   

           “Holt” also murdered his own pregnant wife with arsenic before taking his own life on July 6th, 1915.

*** An unidentified ripoff artist in Iowa who was selling a device which he claimed cured blindness. 

*** Cigarette smokers. For newbies to Pearson’s Fool Killer, he was a very early critic of the health dangers of smoking.

*** The rotating series of “official” Mexican governments, which made it hard for other countries to know which one to recognize. Continue reading →

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THE OZIDI EPIC OF NIGERIA: PART NINE

FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE. PART TWO HERE. PART THREE HERE. PART FOUR HERE. PART FIVE HERE. PART SIX HERE. PART SEVEN HERE. PART EIGHT HERE.

PART NINE – Ozidi’s character development will continue in this installment. It starts out like the previous part, with our main character being sought by another who has heard of the many powerful opponents that Ozidi has slain and wanting to see for himself how well the young man can fight.

This time the challenger to Ozidi is Tebesonoma of the Seven Crowns. Tebesenoma is a giant man with seven heads and on each head sits a crown made of writhing demons. The giant’s long arms reach all the way down to the ground, letting him more easily reach and kill his opponents.

Tebesonoma roams the jungles near the Niger River until he comes face to face with Ozidi, who as usual stalks the land looking for adventure. The seven-headed giant speaks to Ozidi about how much he has heard about him and goes down a list of all the figures who have fallen in combat with him. He then challenges our hero to battle.

(This exchange reminds me of Old West gunfighters with one of them wanting to blow away a gunslinger with a big reputation.)

Ozidi draws his lightning-sword from his mouth and, since his retinue of musicians, singers, a lizard and a monkey were already at his side, he fights Tebesonoma.    Continue reading →

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JOE MAGARAC: NEGLECTED AMERICAN FOLKTALE

Joe MagaracLabor Day is the appropriate time to post this look at neglected working-class folk hero Joe Magarac. This figure was the Steel Mill equivalent of Paul Bunyan and John Henry.

Though mostly associated with Polish-American steel workers in Pittsburgh, PA the general figure of a literal “man of steel” helping and protecting his coworkers can be found from the East Coast through the American Midwest. Sometimes the figure is Croation or some other ethnicity instead of Polish. 

Written versions of Joe Magarac and/or similar steel worker tall tales seem to have started around 1930 or 1931. Oral legends about such figures – but not specifically Joe Magarac – have been dated as early as the 1890s.

Vintage advertisements from tattered old newspapers indicate that such Man of Steel imagery may have been used for the steel industry prior to World War One. This “Which came first, the chicken or the egg” dilemma for Joe Magarac and other Steel Men puts one in mind of the quandary surrounding Billiken lore.        

Joe Magarac statueAs a lame play on words since this is Labor Day season I’ll present Joe Magarac’s origin and then depict his tales as “Labors” like in The Labors of Hercules.

BIRTH – Joe Magarac supposedly sprang into existence from a mound of iron ore and – depending on the version – that mound was either in Pittsburgh or the Old Country. Magarac emerged from the melting mound fully grown and spoke broken English like so many of the other Polish steel workers. He was called into being by the urgent need to catch up on production since the current shift had fallen dangerously behind.

Joe was 7 or 8 feet tall, his flesh was like solid steel, his torso was as wide as a smoke-stack and his arms were as thick as railroad ties. His surname Magarac meant “mule” in the workhorse sense, referring to his stamina. Joe’s appetite was such that he carried his lunch in a washtub instead of a standard lunch box.

Magarac’s favorite leisure time activity was polka-dancing and halushkis were his favorite food.

THE LABORS OF JOE MAGARAC:   Continue reading →

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FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-FIVE: JUNE 1915

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.

PART 75 – Regular readers may notice that picking up in June of 1915 is quite a jump from last week’s Fool Killer installment, which left off in Fall 1914. That’s because I can honestly say that James Pearson’s version of The Fool-Killer hit a decided creative dry patch for several months.

I am genuinely surprised because Pearson’s Fool Killer had been so interesting. I’ve covered several 1920s installments and then slipped back to begin with his 1910 beginnings of this publication and nearly every installment kept me fascinated with every page. Not so with autumn of 1914 through May 1915.

Pearson seemed at odds with how to react to a world at war and was feeling his way toward how best to approach a satirical take. For months his output was so repetitious, unfocused and lacking in bite that I had to force myself to keep reading. I’m reviewing the June 1915 edition because it features his reaction to American deaths in the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, a major development which nearly resulted in the United States entering the World War right then and there. Continue reading →

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OZIDI EPIC OF NIGERIA: PART EIGHT

FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE. PART TWO HERE. PART THREE HERE. PART FOUR HERE. PART FIVE HERE. PART SIX HERE. PART SEVEN HERE.

PART EIGHT – In the months since Ozidi had slain all of his father’s killers he had grown more and more cocksure. He still hungered for combat and took offense at every perceived slight as a reason to battle and defeat whoever he pleased.

The people of Orua and Ado began deserting the area, preferring wild living in the jungle to living in fear of arousing the former hero Ozidi’s wrath in some unpredictable way. Even Ozidi’s sorceress grandmother Oreame was growing disillusioned with him.

Oreame was weary of having to restrain Ozidi from attacking his unfit Uncle King Temugedege’s subjects. She had returned to regularly reading oracles for anyone requesting it.

One day Engbesibeoru, the Scrotum God (Divine embodiment of scrotal elephantiasis. I’m not joking.) noticed that Ado had become all but deserted. Asking the jungle dwellers about this, he learned about Ozidi’s hubris following the success of his revenge quest.  Continue reading →

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