The ancient Greeks and the old-time Romans were great at inventing tepid mythical beings: think half-horse-half-man or, quiveringly, three-headed puppy dogs, but this lack of imagination is probably the product of bad wine or, respectively, a demonstration of the deleterious effects of having gotten rabies from one of Hercules’ pets (which are not necessarily from the animal kingdom, but that’s another subject) .
And yet what I am about to advance is no more imaginative, probably less so. But still, you are a captive audience and have little choice but to hear of how floriferous trees sometimes shred their ambassadors of color, making a rainbowy carpet for the downtrodden to rest upon. But what if these flowers did not come from a tree? What if they weren’t even dropped out of a florist’s van (oh those hairpin turns)? What if they grew straight out of the terra firma? That would be mythical, don’t you think?
So consider Kaempferia rotunda, a lovely ginger that flowers directly from the ground. Who needs the jaundiced mythology of the Greeks and the Romans? Incidentally, the species is native to China–just like the Papillon.
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Prospero's Island 
What could be more the stuff of fables than to bloom so nymph-like and crocus-y beautiful, popping right out of the dirt like that…no umbilical cord, no legs…a flower mything its stem. indeed, mythical.
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We have such stuff as fables are made on; and our little life is rounded with a myth.
I still doesn’t sound quite right yet. If only I could remember what I wrote back then. But that was hundreds of years ago (in the middle of a tempest) and the patina of time clouds memory.
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Dreams, Prospero, “such stuff as dreams are made on”…is what you once wrote, and “rounded with a sleep.” (Something must be rounded in this myth, given the nomenclature “rotunda”). But that first writing was probably only a draft—people do a lot of those nowadays, being unwilling to commit themselves—so you’re entitled to change it now. But please don’t change that other lyric you wrote about dreams that goes “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” It’s one of my favorites, especially sung as a round.
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Thank you. Now I remember! I’m such a fathead.
But the skinny on ‘Row, row, row your boat’ is that I honestly don’t remember writing it; nevertheless, I like it and wouldn’t change a blessed thing, except perhaps to enroll it in an aerobics class. Nothing like trimming the fat off those old nursery rhymes.
Funny too that the whole Shakespeare canon is not a canon at all.
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Well, I won’t continue the train of thought from your above comments Prospero – although ‘Row, Row, Row your Boat’ is undoubtedly a great song. But I did enjoy reading your text about tepid mythical beings and rainbowy carpets. However, I’m partial to jaundiced Greek and Roman mythology myself.
Kaempferia rotunda looks like a splendid little plant.
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Though Greek and Roman mythology are considered flaccid by some, there is no question about the vigor of Spanish mythology, such as the merry tale of the Lovers of Teruel.
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Then it seem I must look into some Spanish mythology! Perhaps I’ll start with the Lovers of Teruel. Thank you for the tip.
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I am bereft because I am not receiving your magical posts to prove you are not a myth. I hope WP will take this time.
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A wordpress hiccup? Please tell me it isn’t so.
I am given to understand that Poseidon used another blogging platform and never had this sort of problem; unfortunately, his brother Hades chose some fly-by-night/underground platform and was plagued by visions of vinaceous pomegranates.
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Alas, I believe WP ate some of those pomegranate seeds. I gave it a blow on the back and trust it will spit them out and connect me to the land of the living myths.
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