Paul Bunyan

About Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan is a mythological lumberjack who appears in tall tales of American folklore. He is usually believed to be a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill. The character was first documented in the work of American journalist James MacGillivray. Historically, the character has been popular in oral histories of the 19th-century northern logging region of the United States, around Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Bunyan's birth was strange, as are the births of many mythic heroes, as it took three storks to carry the infant (ordinarily, one stork could carry several babies and drop them off at their parents' homes). When he was old enough to clap and laugh, the vibration broke every window in the house. When he was seven months old, he sawed the legs off his parent's bed in the middle of the night. Paul and Babe the Blue Ox, his companion, dug the Grand Canyon when he dragged his axe behind him. He created Mount Hood by piling rocks on top of his campfire to put it out.

He is a classic American "big man" who was popular in the 19th century United States. The Bunyan myths sprang from lumber camp tales, sometimes bawdy ones. In one such tale, extreme cold forced bears to look for food; one wandered into a lumber camp. It chased the lumberjacks up a tree on which they had a ladder. To keep the bear from climbing after them (despite the fact that bears do not need ladders to climb trees), the men kicked down the ladder. This saved them from the bear, but trapped them in the tree. To escape, the lumberjacks urinated in unison and created a frozen pole, which they slid down. Such tall tales, though later watered down, were attributed to a single character, Bunyan, and became the stories known today.