Reading Diary B: Saints and Animals

As I started reading the second half of the unit, I liked it better than the first half.  One story that I really liked was that of The Wolf-Mother and Saint Ailbe.  The story caught my attention in the first paragraph as it read, "This is the story of a poor little Irish baby whose cruel father and mother did not care anything about him.  But because they could not sell him nor give him away they tried to lose him.  They wrapped him in a piece of cloth and took him upon the mountain side, and there they left him lying all alone on a bush of heather."  For some reason the beginning of the story reminded me of the plot to a movie or the opening scene of a movie when someone finds a baby and raises them as their own, something similar to the beginning of Benjamin Button.  I particularly liked that it was a wolf that found the baby because a wolf seems like an unlikely hero due to their dangerous nature.  

Another story I liked was that of The Ballad of Saint Athracta's Stags.  Though the story was sometimes difficult to read, I liked that it was a ballad instead of a traditional story.  I enjoyed the presentation of the ballad and liked that its structure was different from the stories I had just been reading.  I liked the second half of the unit because there were so many ballads and the layout of the stories were different so it kept me interested.  

Saint Ailbe