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Can you identify this myth?

delphi_ote

Philosopher
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Jan 18, 2005
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In my early college years, I was digging through a book of myths for various cultures. At one point, I stumbled across a fantastic myth. The story is supposed to explain why women menstruate. It's my favorite by far. It's just insane.

Problem is, I can't remember any details about it aside from the fantastic story itself. The book I got it from is somewhere in Ohio, and people (rightly) look at me like I'm crazy when I bring it up. My Google searches have all come back empty. I'm hoping some erudite individual around here might be able to identify the culture of origin and the names of the characters, because I just have no idea.

Before I go on, I should warn you that this myth is not for the faint of heart. If it were a movie, the MPAA would have to come up with a new rating. Even fowlsound and I would be challenged to invent a story like this. Consider yourself warned...
In a nut shell, there were are these two brothers (not sure if they're gods or heros or what.) One had an insanely long wang. He was apparently quite the ladies' man, as his hobby was to swing through the trees and have long range intercourse with all of them while he flew by. The less endowed brother apparently got jealous or embarassed about all this, so one day he just Lorena Bobbits it down to a bloody stub. All the ladies missed the wild times, so they took turns stopping by to pay their injured stud conjugal visits. Apparently his wound rubbed off on them (ouch!)

And now you know why women menstruate.

(Yes, the Google searches were very weird.)
 
delphi_ote said:
In my early college years, I was digging through a book of myths for various cultures. At one point, I stumbled across a fantastic myth. The story is supposed to explain why women menstruate. It's my favorite by far. It's just insane.

Problem is, I can't remember any details about it aside from the fantastic story itself. The book I got it from is somewhere in Ohio, and people (rightly) look at me like I'm crazy when I bring it up. My Google searches have all come back empty. I'm hoping some erudite individual around here might be able to identify the culture of origin and the names of the characters, because I just have no idea.

Before I go on, I should warn you that this myth is not for the faint of heart. If it were a movie, the MPAA would have to come up with a new rating. Even fowlsound and I would be challenged to invent a story like this. Consider yourself warned...
In a nut shell, there were are these two brothers (not sure if they're gods or heros or what.) One had an insanely long wang. He was apparently quite the ladies' man, as his hobby was to swing through the trees and have long range intercourse with all of them while he flew by. The less endowed brother apparently got jealous or embarassed about all this, so one day he just Lorena Bobbits it down to a bloody stub. All the ladies missed the wild times, so they took turns stopping by to pay their injured stud conjugal visits. Apparently his wound rubbed off on them (ouch!)

And now you know why women menstruate.

(Yes, the Google searches were very weird.)
Click to expand...

It sounds like one of the those native American just-so stories involving the trickster god (he of the enormous shrinking penis) to me.
 
Great stuff, most of these are so much more entertaining than the bible.

Maori mythology has a lot of genital involvement - one of its gods, Maui [pretty sure it was Maui], gets cut in half crawling out the "nether opening" of a giantess when she claps her legs together.

Your one doesn't sound Maori, but more like some of the bogus myths which got made up around the country over generations as Poms mixed with Maori. The Maori language is blessed by the very common sound "whak". This sound is present in many Maori place names.

The perfect pronunciation of "whak" is the old Anglo-Saxon favourite, "f##k".

I used to live in a very small village as a child, Rerewhakaaitu, pronounced:

Reary, ◊◊◊◊ I too.
 
i'd love to know what search words you put into google.....




......and what results came up :boxedin:
 
That reminded me of a strange set of tales from the Ainu people of northern Japan. I scrounged around online a bit and found it again, but no mention of a similar menstruation tale.
No links for me yet, so you'll have to finagle this a bit.
sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/index.htm

The ones this most reminded me of are the Panaumbe and Penaumbe stories. Some odd giant penis things going on in those.

My favorite story of the Ainu from this site is the one about why humans have no set time to reproduce. Apparently, God gathered up all the creatures soon after creation, and appointed each a season to breed. After telling the horse when he should breed, he became very excited, and in his prancing kicked God in the head. The first human asked God when he should breed. God, being in pain from the ancient horse's kick, angrily replied "Just do it whenever you want!"
 
The fact that it involves swinging from trees kind of eliminates plains and desert cultures, but you said a lot of people were surprised by the answer. I'm going out on a limb to guess something from the desert and unrelated to the Americas, where we don't hear much about penises in the mythology. So... Egyptian?

I'd definitely be shocked if it were from Egypt.
 
Interesting myth, I'd like to know the source of it too now as well.
 
I have the vaguest hint of a memory that the myth was from South America somewhere, but we all know how reliable that kind of memory is.

I'll do my best to track down the book next time I'm in Ohio.
 
This is from Judy Grahn "How menstruation created the world" - it's all available online....including a long section on myths and legends....no mention of the one you describe, but interesting nevertheless...

menstrual seclusion rites used a pit of some kind to bury the menstruant to her waist or neck: "Among the Uiyumkwi tribe in Red Island the girl lies at full length in a shallow trench dug in the foreshore, and sand is thrown lightly over her legs and body up to the breasts, which appear not to be covered. A rough shelter of boughs is then built over her, and thus she remains lying for a few hours." [1] Some tribes required her to stay in the pit only during the day; at night she was permitted to come out, though she had to remain in the shelter. The construction of a shelter of tree limbs or brush was typical and may have recalled the original retreat to the trees or an earlier rite that took place in a tree. [2] Menstruating women wrapped tree branches around their midsections to prevent men from seeing their blood, and some Asian and South American seclusion rites included hanging the menstruant off the ground in a hammock or suspending her in a cage several feet off the ground, perhaps in imitation of being in a tree. Folk tradition is full of fears of walking under certain trees or under ladders or under houses raised on stilts, all of which refer to men's need to be careful lest menstrual blood fall on them[4] I wonder if children's tree houses aren't remnants of what at one time were seclusion huts located in trees, high above wild dogs.
Click to expand...
http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/grahn/chapt04.htm

I particularly like the seclusion idea :D
 
New Guinea; just a guess but the various cultures there have some pretty crazy ones.
 
delphi_ote said:
I have the vaguest hint of a memory that the myth was from South America somewhere, but we all know how reliable that kind of memory is.
Click to expand...
Yes, quite reliable, it seems. :)

This article fits very well with your description of the myth. Twin brothers, rivals. Sadly, I do not have access to the entire article, but since it came up on a search for which included "menstruation", someone who has might be able to post more. However, I believe we are at least on the right track there.

By the way, what did you google for? My search on "mythology menstruation south america" didn't give many results out of the ordinary. Perhaps putting "giant penis" in there somewhere would change that, though. :D
 
It's clearly mythical. While I can accept a guy swinging from trees, with a shlong long enough to impregnate women as he swung by, I cannot accept that he'd cut it off to make other men not feel so bad.

That's too unbelievable!
 
Beerina said:
It's clearly mythical. While I can accept a guy swinging from trees, with a shlong long enough to impregnate women as he swung by, I cannot accept that he'd cut it off to make other men not feel so bad.

That's too unbelievable!
Click to expand...
I'm not sure, but the way I understood it, his brother did the cutting, probably entirely without his own approval. Which is far more believable than I'd like to think about.
 
Rufo said:
I'm not sure, but the way I understood it, his brother did the cutting, probably entirely without his own approval. Which is far more believable than I'd like to think about.
Click to expand...
The jealous brother did the cutting. If I remember correctly, his mentality was basically, "Ugh, my lazy brother does nothing but swing through the trees all day. I'll show him!"

So no. Our hero did not cut off his own wang. Sorry if that was unclear.

Thanks for the article, Rufo! I'm a student, so I downloaded the full version. The article itself is very interesting, but unfortunately this story is just not in there. Nor are the brothers mentioned (I'd recognize their names.) Lots of the rivalries remind me of Set and Osiris, though.
 
Delphi, you verbbed Lorena Bobbit. So all I can think is:

I Lorena Bobbit
You Lorena Bobbit
He, she or it Lorena Bobbits

Ah. . .conjugated bliss!
 
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