ARA AND SEMIRAMIS - An Armenian Legend E-Book

Anon E. Mouse

• Herausgeber: Abela Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

In issue 20 of the Baba Indaba Children's Stories, Baba Indaba narrates the Armenian tale of how Queen Semiramis desired King Ara for her consort. King Ara rebuffed all her advances. Filled with rage she attacked King Ara’s kingdom, with disastrous results. How disastrous you ask? Well, lets say things did not work out the way Queen Semiramis planned. Download and read this Armenian story for yourself. Baba Indaba is a fictitious Zulu storyteller who narrates children's stories from around the world. Baba Indaba translates as "Father of Stories". Each issue also has a "WHERE IN THE WORLD - LOOK IT UP" section, where young readers are challenged to look up a place on a map somewhere in the world. The place, town or city is relevant to the story. HINT - all places can be found using Google maps. In looking up these place names, using Google Maps, it is our hope that young people will click on the images and do further investigations about the people who live in these towns in order to gain an understanding of the many and varied cultures there are around the world. Through such an exercise, it is also our hope that young people will not only increase their knowledge of world geography but also increase their appreciation and tolerance of other peoples and cultures. 10% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities. INCLUDES LINKS TO DOWNLOAD 8 FREE STORIES

Leseprobe

ARA AND SEMIRAMIS

An Armenian Folk Tale

Baba Indaba Children’s Stories

Published by

Abela Publishing, London

[2015]

ARA AND SEMIRAMIS

Typographical arrangement of this edition

©Abela Publishing 2015

This book may not be reproduced in its current format

in any manner in any media, or transmitted

by any means whatsoever, electronic,

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(including photocopy, file or video recording,

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except as permitted by law

without the prior written permission

of the publisher.

Abela Publishing,

London, United Kingdom

2015

ISSN 2397-9607

Issue 20

Email

[email protected]

Website

www.AbelaPublishing.com

Introduction

Baba Indaba (pronounced Baaba Indaaba) lived in Africa a long-long time ago. Indeed, this story was first told by Baba Indaba to the British settlers over 250 years ago in a place on the South East Coast of Africa called Zululand, which is now in a country now called South Africa.

In turn the British settlers wrote these stories down and they were brought back to England on sailing ships. From England they were in turn spread to all corners of the old British Empire, and then to the world.

In olden times the Zulu’s did not have computers, or iPhones, or paper, or even pens and pencils. So, someone was assigned to be the Wenxoxi Indaba (Wensosi Indaaba) – the Storyteller. It was his, or her, job to memorise all the tribe’s history, stories and folklore, which had been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. So, from the time he was a young boy, Baba Indaba had been apprenticed to the tribe’s Wenxoxi Indaba to learn the stories. Every day the Wenxoxi Indaba would narrate the stories and Baba Indaba would have to recite the story back to the Wenxoxi Indaba, word for word. In this manner he learned the stories of the Zulu nation.

In time the Wenxoxi Indaba grew old and when he could no longer see or hear, Baba Indaba became the next in a long line of Wenxoxi Indabas. So fond were the children of him that they continued to call him Baba Indaba – the Father of Stories.

When the British arrived in South Africa, he made it his job to also learn their stories. He did this by by going to work at the docks at the Point in Port Natal at a place the Zulu people call Ethekwene (Eh-tek-weh-nee). Here he spoke to many sailors and ships captains. Captains of ships that sailed to the far reaches of the British Empire – Canada, Australia, India, Mauritius, the Caribbean and beyond. He became so well known that the ship’s crew would bring him a story every time they visited Port Natal. If they couldn’t, they would arrange to have someone bring it to him. This way his library of stories grew and grew until he was known far and wide as the keeper of stories – a true Wenxoxi Indaba of the world.

Baba Indaba believes the tale he is about to tell in this little book, and all the others he has learned, are the common property of Umntwana (Children) of every nation in the world - and so they are and have been ever since men and women began telling stories, thousands and thousands of years ago.

Where in the World? Look it Up!

This story was told to Baba Indaba by a sailor who had sailed from the Black Sea through the Bosporus (ref. The Pixie of the Well) into the Mediterranean Sea. From there he sailed into the Atlantic Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean.

It was at one of the ports on the Eastern Seaboard of the Black sea that he heard and wrote down this story for Baba Indaba.

See if you can plot the sailor’s sea journey from Poti to Port Natal (now called Durban) on a map of the world.

Ara And Semiramis

A story from Armenia.

A story, a story

Let it come, let it go

A story, a story

From long, long ago

UMNTWANA IZWE! CHILDREN LISTEN for this is a story of life! This story took place a long, long time ago in a land far, far away.

Before the reign and death of King Ninus of Nineveh, King Ara reigned over the land of Armenia. He too found the same favour in his people’s eyes as his father Aram had done before him. But a wanton and lustful woman Semiramis, having heard speak for many years of the beauty of Ara, wished to possess him; only she did not do anything openly. But after the death of Ninus, as I have been told, she openly displayed her passion, and sent messengers to Ara the Beautiful, with gifts and offerings, with many prayers and promises of riches; begging him to come to her to Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, or fulfil her wanton desires and return in peace to Armenia, with many gifts.

All the messengers returned saying despite their imploring, Ara had not agreed. At this Semiramis became very wroth;

“Baba, what is wroth?” asked Thandile.

“Wroth, my child, is angry, like the anger of a big, dark thunderstorm in the summer.”

“Yebo. Ngiyabonga Baba (Yes. Thankyou Baba).”

At this news Semiramis arose and took all the multitude of her armies and hastened to the land of Armenia, to stand against Ara. But, beforehand she declared, it was not so much to kill him and persecute him that she went, but to subdue him and bring him by force to fulfil the desires of her passion. For having been consumed with desire by what she had heard of him, on seeing, she was so enraptured with his beauty, that she became as one beside herself. She arrived in this turmoil at the plains of Ara, called after him Aïrarat (near the mountain on which Noah’s Ark came to rest). And when the battle was about to take place she commanded her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara. But in the fighting, the army of Ara was beaten, and Ara died, being slain by the warriors of Semiramis. And after the battle the Queen sent out to the battlefield to search for the body of her beloved amongst those who had died.

His body was placed in an upper chamber.

And they found the body of Ara amongst the brave ones that had fallen, and she commanded them to place it in an upper chamber in her castle.