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FIVE SENSES Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Legends, Myths, History, Nursery Rhymes, Fantasy & Facts Scroll down or click on your choice below • SOS: Searching Out Stories/Info - Five Senses Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians |
SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION - FIVE SENSES
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them to get more stories and information.
Story titles are in quotation marks.
To retell any stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) Don't know the name of it but the first one that comes to mind is the story about the blind men describing the elephant - each feels a different part of its body and says it looks like.....maybe it's called The Blind Men and the Elephant.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Courtyard/1652/Elephant.html (with music!)
http://www.wordfocus.com/word-act-blindmen.html (poem)
http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html (John Godfrey Saxe's (1816-1887) version)
Continue the search on Google and you'll get over 100,000 hits!
2) The Blind Elephants and the Three Men.
The first blind elephant asks, "What is man?"
He feels the first man, "Flat."
Second man, "Flat."
Third man, "Flat."
Here's the version Owen sent. Just used this other night and had great fun stomping, looking down, and saying "Flat, flat, flat!"
Blind Elephants
One day six wise, blind elephants were discussing what humans were like. Failing to agree, they decided to determine what humans were like by direct experience.
The first wise, blind elephant felt the human, and declared, "Humans are flat."
The other wise, blind elephants, after similarly feeling thehuman, agreed.
3) The one here is the towns people help the friends but letting them feel things like green leaves/fall leaves, cats/lions, etc. They can't use any stories with elephants since they can't describe an elephant in any way that their friends can "picture" them.
A circus comes into the area and they make arrangements to take the friends.
1st friend finds the trunk = a snake
2nd friend finds the ear = a bird
3rd friend finds the side = a wall
4th friend finds the tail = a stick and also a funny sense of direction.
The 5th friend listens to them arguing and does his own search....following the elephant from the trunk to the ear to the side and the tail. He tells his friends to join him and they see all of the elephant...
Moral is a story like life....there is always more.
4) You can tell just about any story using descriptions which evoke the senses, describing the taste and the smell of food, the sound of the forest or the ghosts, the feel of cool water or soft cloth against the skin,
the shapes or the colors of things. However, here are some specific ideas:
Smell and hearing - The Smell of Bread and the Sound of Money or Theft of a Smell - Pleasant Despain and Margaret Read Macdonald both have versions of this story.
Smell - King Soloman and the Bee (book by Dalia Renberg) or in collections of Jewish folktales.
Touch - King Midas and the Golden Touch - an old Greek Myth
Feel - Chicken Little (The sky is falling!); The Princess and the Pea (The bed was so hard I couldn't sleep.)
Sight - The Blind Men and the Elephant - mentioned by others who have posted.
Taste - Stone Soup, The Three Bears (the porridge is too hot! The chair is too hard! The bed is too soft!).
5) Pick up a copy of THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SENSES by Diane Ackerman. Ackerman explores the scientific history of the five senses, in layperson terms. Then, she summarizes the great works of literature which demonstrate changing cultural perspectives about the senses.
6) Perusing tomes in search of poems, came across this old chestnut. Thought some of you might like to have it in verse form.
"The Blind Men And The Elephant" (by John Godfrey Saxe)
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant
(though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the elephant,
And, happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the elephant
Is nothing but a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk.
Cried: "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an elephant
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see, quoth he, "The elephant
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
" 'Tis clear enough the elephant
Is very like a tree."
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "The elephant
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Created 2003; last update 12/11/09
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