A favorite headliner and em-cee at the annual Jonesborough Festival, Willy Claflin plies humor that is characterized as \u201cunhinged\u201d and filled with \u201cmusical surprises.\u201d (East Brunswick, NJ, Public Library site<\/a>) Claflin\u2019s own website characterizes the storyteller \u201ca one-man festival\u201d because of his wide-ranging repertoire in narrative and folk-music. To judge by the live laughter heard abundantly in the \u201cPegamoose\u201d tale, audiences enjoy buying into Claflin\u2019s endearing style.<\/p>\n Claflin bases his narrative persona on the premise that his partner, Maynard the stuffed moose, actually tells the stories and that Claflin translates from Moose-speak into English. This fictitious arrangement plays throughout Claflin’s several books and all the performances shared on his album Maynard Moose: live at the National Storytelling Festival <\/em>(2011), on which “Pegamoose” is on disc B, track 4. In \u201cPegamoose\u201d, Claflin first invokes the \u201cnine mooses of song\u201d (get it?! “mooses”), sets off into the first Homeric glimmering of rosy-fingered dawn, and then bends the myth of Perseus from epic familiarity toward intended parodic hilarity. I was expecting from the title \u201cPegamoose\u201d that Maynard might have assumed the attributes of mythology\u2019s most famous winged quadruped within the tale; Perseus, however, not Pegasus, is clearly the dominant rolemodel for Pegamoose. The title also suggests that Medusa is a pungent character, and she is; but the homophonic joke proves not to have the legs to last the whole story..<\/p>\n To my ear, Claflin\u2019s resultant adaptation of the Perseus saga resembles much more a father\u2019s bedtime story \u2014 a benign narrator I might want to recall while chatting with my grandchildren and diving incessantly onto details for yucks \u2014 than an insightful adaptation of a powerful saga. I by no means intend by such critique to cheapen Claflin\u2019s storytelling. Whereas the best mythological adaptations inject new meaning into their forebears, the narrative of Pegamoose will stand, I believe, as its own terminal expression, unlikely to be further adapted or closely emulated.<\/p>\n Further classical mythological narratives included by Ivie and Payne in the Appleseed<\/em> broadcast will encourage readers of OGCMAonline.byu.edu to pursue the recording all the way to its end. These include, first, Fran Stallings reciting the myth of \u201cKing Midas\u201d. Stallings\u2019 account is very orthodox. By this I mean to recommend Stallings\u2019 adherence to \u201cthe\u201d Midas myth as explicated in classical sources such as Diodorus Siculus (Bibl<\/em>. 3.59), Ovid (Met<\/em>. 9.146-93 and 11.85-146), or Hyginus (Fab<\/em>. 191, 274). Such classical myths are recognized from ancient sources and stated authoritatively in The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts<\/em> (1993, Oxford University Press; ogcma.byu.edu\/Midas1.0000_Reid<\/a>) and elsewhere.<\/p>\n The second of the other classical myths shared in the Appleseed<\/em> broadcast is Milbre Burch\u2019s more remarkable telling of the uncommon myth of Rhodopis. Hardly the house-hold-name figure that a Midas or a Perseus have achieved among modern receptions, Rhodopis arrives via Burch\u2019s telling as a Cinderella forebear, a mythological figure worth knowing. Burch therefore credentials Rhodopis as the mythological creation of Strabo and other storytellers from antiquity to Shirley Climo. Rhodopis\u2019s story is well told, of course, by Burch in a recording contextualized in the Appleseed; but, further contextualization is to be had in her publication If the Shoe Fits: Cinderella stories from around the world.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Lacy Ivie and Sam Payne, in creating the variegated trifecta of classical-mythological adaptations for their radio program cut a fascinating cross-section through contemporary uses of Greek mythology. Each included artist \u2014 Claflin, Stallings, and Burch \u2014 retells a myth stated in ancient Greek sources; but each engages the modernization of the narrative in a different adaptive mode, ranging from receptive analysis (Burch) to authoritative awareness (Stallings) to willfull appropriation (Claflin). Each warrants further study.<\/p>\n PerseusMedusa2.0110_ClaflinMaynardMoose Terminus ante quem 1 July 2012, as cited on Jared Hartman\u2019s Lorem Ipsum website (kith.org), Midas2.0010_Stallings<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.franstallings.com\/web\/Publications\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Rhodopis2.0010_Burch<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/WillyClaflinMaynardMoose.jpg\")
\nWillyClaflin.com: http:\/\/www.willyclaflin.com\/<\/a>
\nClaflin’s publisher\u2019s page: https:\/\/www.augusthouse.com\/willy-claflin<\/a><\/p>\n
\nwho files it under \u201ccommonplace book, humor\u201d. [accessed 16 June 2021]<\/p>\n