Humor
The Stork Who Delivers Babies Wants To Give “The Talk”
Dr. Folklore’s Dating Advice for Mythical Folks (№88)
Origin Story: Storks and cranes have been mentioned in Western European and Egyptian mythology as a celebration for either the birth of a new life or the world, but they only became globally famous symbols after Danish author Hans Christian Andersen wrote a hit fairy tale in 1839 called “The Storks.”
In it, a group of human boys threaten to hurt four young storks, and when the four confronted their mother about it, she tells them she has a plan for revenge. After teaching them how to fly, her young storks are told to pluck up dreaming babies found in ponds and lakes, and then gift all the boys and girls who did not mock them with a new sibling. As for the one remaining boy who continually mocked them, she told one of the storks to give him a dead baby as punishment. This tale was made as a way to teach children how to behave, and was valuable for both religious and Victorian families to obscure the realities of sex and birth.
Dear Dr. Folklore,
My brothers and I started this one-time baby delivery service for all the good boys and girls in our town as a way to get revenge on a truly awful Danish boy. However, a lot of those kids’ parents have used that…
