I really liked the story of The Fish Who Helped Saint Gudwall from The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts by Abbie Farwell Brown (1900). I liked that the story was bogged down in details. We don't know exactly why Saint Gudwall wanted to live on this island with only his pupil. We don't even know what they eat or drink! All we need to know for the purposes of this story are that Saint Gudwall just wants to live with his pupil on this weird little island and that the fish eventually help him out so he can keep living just like he wants to.
My favorite thing about this whole story is the description of the island.
"The island was one of those high mountains poking up out of the sea, with green grass on top, like colored frosting to a cake; and gray rocks below, all hollowed out into deep caves and crannies, as if mice had been nibbling at the cake."
This description is something that I would definitely want to use in a storytelling post. I can perfectly imagine the island because of the rich and detailed description. Saint Gudwall and his pupil seem to just love to sit in their cave and watch the water, they don't really have a lot going on. Maybe life is just perfect to them living in their little frosted cake island.
It's great that the fish help out the saint and his friend, and I still really like that not a whole lot of context is given. The fish just hear the prayers and decide to help the guys out. I'm sure in the full story of Saint Gudwall there are tons of details that explain why he's a saint and why the fish decided to help him, but this little story seemed like it had all the details necessary.
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