Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan is a legendary lumberjack of a so-called Tall Tale, a story that tries to embed natural phenomena in a fairytale story; in the case of Bunyan created by an American journalist.

Origin

The Lumberjack Legends

It is said that Paul Bunyan was a lumberjack of gigantic size and titanic force. In stories about him are told that he and his blue ox Babe were so large that their footprints created Minnesota's ten thousand lakes ( including Lake Bemidji, which looks like a giant footprint ). Babe measured 47 Axtgriffe and was found by Paul during the winter of the blue snow. Once he helped Paul to straighten a road by simply pulled it.

As with many myths physical phenomena is to explain in a story here attempted. Bunyan's birth was as the birth of many mythic heroes, weird: so had to carry the infant the same five storks. When he was old enough to clap their hands and laugh, caused the vibration that made every window in the house to go to break. Paul left the Grand Canyon arise, as it pulled his ax behind him and created Mount Hood, as he put stones on his campfire to delete it.

He is a classic American "big man " as he was popular in the 19th century. In addition, sprang the Bunyan myths from stories that were told in the logging camps and were often quite rude. In such a history of extreme cold forced bears to look for food; one of them wandered into a wooden stock. The bear chased the lumberjacks on a tree on which there was a ladder. To keep the bears away nachzuklettern them ( apart from the fact that bears even without such conductors can climb a tree), they kicked off the ladder. This saved them from the animal, but held them captive on the tree. To get down from there, the loggers urinated down at the same time, thus creating a bar made ​​of ice, where they were able to slide down. Such Tall Tales, though it diluted over time, a single person were attributed to Bunyan, and so were the stories that we know today.

The myth in the newspapers

The earliest published versions of the myth of Paul Bunyan can be traced back to James MacGillivray, an itinerant newspaper reporter who wrote the first article on Bunyan for Oscoda Press in 1906, as well as an expanded version of the same article for the Detroit News. He allegedly collected stories of loggers to later combine them with their own embellishments. He began on July 24, 1910 in order to spread the legend that was printed as The Round River Drive, which contained a story that relates to Dutch Jake (another mythical lumberjack of enormous strength ), a funded Bunyan competition, in which it was to cut down the largest tree of the forest, and which was attended by the narrator.

The popularization of the myth began with William B. Laugheads "Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood, California", a series of advertising with Bunyan brochures for the Red River Lumber Company. Some of these pamphlet narratives based on Laugheads memories of stories he had heard ten years earlier in a timber camp in Minnesota. Others were exaggerated stories which were his own experiences as a basis. Laughead created by the advertising brochures much of Bunyan " canon", including the blue ox Babe and Johnny Inkslinger.

• The English composer Benjamin Britten wrote an operetta, which focuses on Bunyan.
• Walt Disney filmed the saga as an animated film released under the title of Paul Bunyan in 1958. Also in the Disney feature film Pecos Bill - An incredible adventure in the Wild West ( Tall Tale ) appeared Bunyan, there played by Oliver Platt, on.
• In the Oscar-winning movie Fargo - Bloody Snow 1996 repeatedly appeared on a larger than life statue of Paul Bunyan and his name is also mentioned.
• Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods In Paul Bunyan is mocked as fake myth.
• As a result, three incredible stories ( Simpsons Tall Tales ) from the 12th season of the television series The Simpsons Homer takes over the role of Paul Bunyan.
• In the Stephen King horror novel It the huge Paul Bunyan statue comes to life in Derry / Maine and chasing one of the main players from the club of losers ( Richie Tozier ) with the intention to kill him.
• The former wrestler Max Palmer joined because of his height of 231 centimeters, very often under the ring name Paul Bunyan
• In the U.S. version, which appeared in Europe, from Breath of Fire III, an RPG developed by Capcom for the PlayStation, breaking the three main characters in the house of a woodcutter called " Bunyan " one.
• Paul and Babe also appear in the MMORPG Asheron 's Call and stayed there for a long time a kind of tourist attraction.
• American football teams from the universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin meet annually to one another in the " Battle for Paul Bunyan 's Axe ". Paul Bunyan 's Axe
• In the original version of the movie " Hoodwinked " ( German: " Hoodwinked " ) plays a commercial for " Paul's Bunion Cream" a role: " ... with the soothing formula - makes the bunions head for the hills" ( bunion = bunion ).
• In American Horror Bunyan, produced in 2011, Paul Bunyan is a typical horror monster that was banished 100 years ago by the people of his village and now revenge on any hiker looking that crosses his path.