Round the Herne

 This was meant to be uploaded for National Dog Day two days earlier, but life got in the way with other stuff. A shisa is an ornamental dog found in Japan and China that acts as a guardian - they stand either side of a door or gateway, one with its mouth open and the other closed. There is some variation as to what the mouth means, but one chases off malevolent forces whilst the other keeps the good forces within the home. The shisa does not seem to be associated with a specific breed of canine, and (as per the one in this story) is more magical than zoological. Given that the power of the bark is often in inverse proportion to the size of the dog, it would not surprise me if the shisa is some kind of terrier. I could not identify which Japanese emperor this story is supposed to happen to, but it may be more apocryphal than historical anyway. Looking at photos of Gana-mui Woods, I think I may have somewhat exaggerate the size of the boulder. Though i anyone asks, I shall simply sa...

  Finally got round to recording the next part of my reading of the second part of the first tale (The Minotaur) in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales" (1853). This completes the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. I made a mistake at the end when showing the illustration from the book - the women in the image is Ariadne and not Aethra.