|
ARTICLES – MYTH & LEGEND
|
|
CONTENTS
|
|
|
| Provided here is content from previoiusly published issues of AERIE, our email-distributed netzine. If you would like to be added to our list of subscribers and receive our free netzine when it is published, just email Peregrine at AERIE@peregrine-net.com — in the SUBJECT of the email type: SUBSCRIBE AERIE. |
|
1.
Profiles - Myth & Legend: APPARITIONS, GHOSTS & PHANTOMS
APPARITION, GHOST, PHANTOM (Britain) A disembodied spirit, often unpleasant or unnerving to see or interact with. The presence of a Ghost will occasionally result in a change in the air, a sense of cold, static electricity, or other manifestation.
- ADARO (Melanesian: San Christoval; ULAWA, Southern Mala Island): The ghosts of human dead.
- AKALO, SA'A, ULAWA (Solomon Islands): The soul of a living man and a friendly ghost of the dead. Every person becomes an Akalo when he dies and is invoked by his own people.
- DUNNIE (HAZELRIGG on Belford Moor, Northumbria, England): The ghost of a Border reiver who was caught and killed while robbing a granary. He had a considerable amount of plunder hidden in one of the caves in a crag called Bowden Doors and died without disclosing it. He haunts the area to this day. He can shape-shift into a horse or donkey, and likes to play practical jokes.
- DUNTERS, POWRIES (Northern Border Counties): The spirits of animals or Picts which were killed as foundation sacrifices for buildings originally built by Picts. Though now rebuilt as peel-towers or Border keeps, the spirits still haunt the structures, making a noise like the beating of flax or the grinding of barley in a hollow stone quern.
- FIGONA (Melanesian: San Christoval): Spirits which were never human.
- LI'OA (Solomon Islands): The Ghosts of chiefs, valiant fighters, and men with spiritual power.
- SILKY (Northumbrian): A female Phantom who is similar to a protective Brownie dressed in rustling silk who does domestic chores and is a terror to idle servants. One such Silky haunted Heddon Hall and it was believed she was the ghost of someone who had hidden treasure in the house without disclosing its whereabouts before her death. She also serves as a guard of the house, permitting friends through but killing those who mean ill.
- SPECTRE (Britain): An optical illusion or vision.
DOOINNEE-OIE, HOWLAA (Manx): A kind old man who appears in a misty form before storms and gives warning by blowing a horn or howling (the sound he makes is 'howlaa').
FAUTH, VOUGH ('The Fuathan', Scottish): A type of malicious and dangerous water-spirit with a close connection with water, lochs, rivers or the sea. Typically a portent of the death of the person experiencing the encounter or an acquaintance or family member. The following can all be considered to be types of Fauth:
- BANSHEE ('fairy woman'): When one sees or hears a banshee it is supposed to foreshadow the violent death of someone in the clan — often an important or holy person of old families, even if they are far from home. Typically she has long streaming red hair, with a pale complexion, dressed in a gray cloak over a green dress. She looks more like a thick cloud rather than substance. Some stories suggest that she can take the form of a crow.
- BEAN-SI (Irish): A death spirit. The ghost of a woman who died in childbirth who unless all the clothes left by them were washed immediately, they should have to wash them themselves until the natural period of their death. The Irish Bean-Si it typically beautiful.
- BEAN-NIGHE (Scottish Highlands, 'little-washer-by-the-ford'): Similar to the Bean-Si, and a variant of Banshee, she is more hideous and deformed, with only one nostril, a large protruding front tooth, and long hanging breasts. A mortal bold enough to creep up to her as she is washing and lamenting and suck her long breasts can claim to be her foster child and gain a wish.
- BIASD BHEULACH (Isle of Skye, Odail Pass): A revening ghost of a murdered man, hungry for revenge which haunts the highlands; it appears at night as a greyhound or other beast, or occasionally takes the form of a man with one leg. It is only appeased by the taking of blood via vicious bites.
- CAOINEAG (Scottish Highlands, 'Weeper') a type of Banshee which is not seen, and cannot grant wishes. She is heard wailing in the darkness at a waterfall before any catastrophe overtakes a clan.
- CAOINTEACH (Argyllshire, Skye, 'Wailer'): A type of Banshee with a loud, lamentable cry, rising at times to a scream. Sometimes she beats clothes on a stone like a Bean-Nighe. She has been described as a child or small woman in a short green gown and petticoat with a high crowned white cap. If someone shows compassion for her, by leaving her a gift, she will trouble the family no more.
- CYHYRAETH (Wales, 'The Weeper'): A Banshee, seldom seen, but heard crying in the night before a death, particularly before a multiple death disaster. Three cries are heard: the first heard at a distance is a wail, the second is lower and doleful, the third is lower and soft, like the groaning of a sick person on the verge of death. The Cyhyraeth wails for the death of natives who die away from home and passes along the sea before a wreck accompanied by a kind of corpse-light which foretells the path of the corpse on its way to the churchyard.
- GWRACH Y RHIBYN (Cardiganshire, Wales): A Banshee who travels invisibly beside the person they wish to warn; if she came to a crossroads or a stream she would burst out into a ghastly shriek beating the ground or water and crying out "My husband! My husband!" If she was warning a married woman, or "My Wife!" or "My little child!" as appropriate. Inarticulate screams typically meant the coming death of the listener. She is hideous, with tangled hair, long black teeth, and withered arms long and out of proportion with her body.
LEMURE (Ancient Rome, Lemures, plural = 'who moan') All the spirits of the dead. Appeased annually with a yearly festival, Lemuria or Lemuralia in Rome on the 9th, 11th, and 15th of May. The participants walked barefoot, cleansed their hands three times, and cast black beans behind them nine times. On the third day, the Ides of May, a merchants' festival was held and 30 images made of rushes were thrown into the Tiber River. A May marriage would not prosper.
- LARVAE (Ancient Roman) An evil Lemure, a ghost without surviving family. Malignant ghost. Evil ancestral spirits of the dead who wander about as nocturnal bogeymen.
- LARES (Celtic, Ancient Roman) A good Lemure. The ghosts of ancesters who were buried under the hearth.
LICH (a corpse).
PHANTASM, SHADOW, DOPPLEGANGER (German), FETCH (England), CO-WALKER, WAFF (North Country, Yorkshire), REFLEX-MAN, ECHO, DOUBLEMAN, TWIN-BROTHER, COMPANION (Celtic): The ghostly double of a deceased (or not yet deceased) which appears at night to foretell of someone's death or who is seen by men with 'second sight' to eat at funeral banquets and to assist in carrying the casket to the grave. Sometimes a companion is seen before the person is dead, or within a few days after the death of a person. If one encounters one's own WAFF and can suitably give it a tongue-lashing to the point of embarrassment, it will slink off and a fated death will be avoided.
SLUAGH (Scottish Highlands, 'The Host'), The Host of the Unforgiven Dead. The Faerie Host of the evil dead. The most formidable of the spirits who have died. They fly about after sunset in great clouds and traverse the world returning to the scenes of their earthly transgressions. None can make Heaven and rest until the sins committed on Earth are resolved. On bad nights they take shelter behind little resset docken stems and little yellow ragwort stalks. They fight battles in the air as men do on earth; they may be heard and seen on clear and frosty nights; after a battle, their blood may be seen staining the rocks. 'Fuil nan sluagh', the 'blood of the hosts' is a beautiful red 'crotal' of the rocks melted by the frost. Occasionally these spirits kill animals and men with venomous darts (Faerie Strokes). They command men to follow and to kill on their behalf -- few have the will to resist; the spell is broken once a killing is done.
- SUBTERRANEANS (Highland) Trooping Fairy spirits who live under the Fairy Hills or 'Brochs'; they move their lodgings with each quater of the year. They resemble Roman 'Lemures' in being the spirits of ancestral inhabitants. They are equated with the Slaugh.
THRUMPIN (Northern Counties, Scottish Border); The Thrumpin attends every man like a guardian angel and possesses the power to take away his life.
WILL O' THE WISP, WILL-WITH-THE WISP, WILLY WISP, WILL O' THE WYKES (Norfolk), JACK-A-LANTERN, JACK O' LANTERN, JACKY LANTERN, SPUNKIE, ELLYLLDAN (Welsh) A ghostly light (Ignis Fatuus, 'the foolish fire') which misleads night travellers into fens and bogs.
- GYL BURNT-TAYL (England) is a flirtatious, female Ellylldan.
- HINKY-PUNK (Somerset-Devon borders); A type of Will O' the Wisp, possessing one leg and a light which leads travellers into bogs.
WRAITH, SWARTH (Cumberland); A ghostly form which appears at a distance to warn that a person's death is imminent.
Peregrine’s
