Monday, October 16, 2006

Ok, so far the frontrunners to my six word story challenge are all from the same household in BC. Does no one want to compete with them? I can't send a postcard to a guy who called my example "bullshit!"

So, on that basis alone, Tasha's in the lead. Other competitors are welcome. You have until Friday midnight, Left Coast time (North America's Left Coast, not Europe's, Africa's or Asia's respective Left Coasts).

By way of encouragement, a little bit of Alsatian folklore (which I'm gathering at a prodigious rate, considering how little of it I understand). This also an opportunity to experiment with putting my photos online. I'd post my 1600 word account of yesterdays quest for the Trumpet of Death but I don't feel like any of you deserve it yet.

Last weekend, Amynah and I took a bike ride to Le
Chapel de Loup
– the wolf’s chapel. According to my guide book, the chapel (which is literally in the middle of a corn field) got its name in the 1700s, when a goat wandered a little to far afield in search of green-tasties. Suddenly, a wolf appeared, menacingly, as is their wont. The goat ran away, hiding in the chapel. Yet, when the wolf gave chase, the goat somehow slipped out, kicked the door shut, and trapped the wolf inside.
The goat (which, at this point in the story is starting to remind me of Lassie or The Littlest Hobo) ran to the nearest town (Innensheim) and, through some means of goat/human communication that has been lost to history (mime? charades?) summoned whatever the eighteenth century equivalent of the police was, who came back to the chapel and presumably made short work of the wolf.

Why, after all of that, the chapel became known as Wolf’s Chapel and not Church of the Super Goat is beyond me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fine! Another wolf-hating apocryphal story from euro-centric-lobophobic semi-central Europe.
This is not for the six word competition, but should you want haikus on west gallic folklore:

And Supergoat died too.
The wolf was inedibly lean.
Goat, on the other hand...

Anonymous said...

On that count alone?? Ouch. I'll have you know that I think my stories are worth more regard than just being loved because they are not Travis'. Sigh, genius is never appreciated.