"Lest the awe should dwell
And turn your frolic to fret,
You shall look on my power at the helping hour,
But then you shall forget!
Lest limbs be reddened and rent,
I spring the trap that is set.
As I loose the snare, you may glimpse me there,
For surely you shall forget!"
Kenneth Grahame, "Wind in the Willows"
🎨 Arthur Rackham
"Sing no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny, nonny."
"The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond.... All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere."
In the Middle Ages, many Christian Scandinavians believed that the Norse gods had actually been humans from Troy who had fled their burning city and immigrated to Scandinavia, where they had used magic to make the locals believe that they were gods.
To drink from the Well of Wisdom, the Norse god Odin had to give one of his eyes to Mimir, the Well's guardian. In some versions, this is simply a general sacrifice, but in others it's a trade - the eye gives Mimir Odin's knowledge just as the drink gives Odin Mimir's.
🎨 Emil Doepler
The Welsh hero Lleu was cursed by his mother to never have a human wife, so the wizard Gwydion used flowers from the oak, broom, and meadowsweet to create a wife for Lleu called Blodeuwedd ("Flower-Faced"). However, Blodeuwedd fell in love with another man....
🎨 Jenny Dolfen
Sometimes C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia feature walking trees and other times feature dryads. As the two never interact with each other, it's unclear what their relationship is or if they're actually the same species. However, the art depicts them as very different. Possibly Narnian walking trees are shapeshifted dryads.
🎨 Pauline Baynes
In Welsh folklore, the youth Culhwch requests that his uncle, King Arthur, help him find the maiden Olwen but first cut Culhwch's hair. A man's first adult haircut was an important rite of passage among the ancient Welsh, often performed by a respected male relative.
🎨 Alfred Frederick
"Scientific people," proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, "know very well that Time is only a kind of Space.... That line, therefore, we must conclude, was along the Time Dimension."
"We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label 'scientific' and 'supernatural.' ... But the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class as real, the distinction begins to get blurred."
Welsh folk saying: "Guinevere, daughter of Ogrfan the Giant / Bad when little, worse when great."
Was her father simply a tall man and Guinevere got worse-tempered as she got older, or did King Arthur's wife have giant blood and grew in size when angry?
When Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, chopped the head off the Green Knight at New Year's as part of a "game," the Green Knight picked up his head and told Gawain to meet him next New Year's to get his own head chopped off. Many scholars have debated this symbolism.
The Irish hero Cú Chulainn suffered from the ríastrad, a battle frenzy in which his body transformed, such as one eye getting sucked into his head while the other dangled down his cheek, his feet facing backwards, or the skin pulled back from his lips and cheeks.
🎨 Massimo Belardinelli
Though in Shakespeare, Cordelia dies before her father King Lear, in the original British legend she outlives him and becomes Britain's ruler. Cordelia is a warrior queen, leading armies. Sadly, she is overthrown by her two nephews, who resent being ruled by a woman.
The al-mi'raj from medieval Arabic literature resembles a yellow hare with a black horn. It's so fierce that most other animals flee from it. The inhabitants of an island in the Indian Ocean gave Alexander the Great an al-mi'raj to repay him for slaying a dragon.
"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him."
William Shakespeare, "Much Ado about Nothing" (Act 2, Scene 1)
"When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the parlour, and planted the Mole in an armchair in front of it, having fetched down a dressing gown and slippers for him, and told him river stories till suppertime."
Kenneth Grahame, "The Wind in the Willows"
🎨 E. H. Shepard
"I felt myself mysteriously drawn towards him.... I'll try a pagan friend since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.... [He asked] whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes, whereat I thought he looked pleased."
In Sinbad's fifth voyage in the "Arabian Nights," he discovers the City of the Apes, whose inhabitants spend each night in boats off-shore while their town is abandoned to man-eating apes. Sinbad convinces these apes to pluck fruit for him, which he then sells, recouping his fortune.
Ja'far ibn Yahya was historically vizier of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, famous as a patron of science. He's a cunning hero in several Arabian Nights tales, though modern media ironically often uses his name for evil sorcerers, such as the one in Disney's "Aladdin."
🎨 Abul Hasan Ghaffari
"My birthday began with the water birds
And the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses.
And I rose in rainy autumn,
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days."
"Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. It is not possible to hunt the boar Trwyth without Gwyn, the son of Nudd, whom God has placed over all the devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy the present race."
Many of the prophecies of the British mystic Myrddin Wyllt (the inspiration for Merlin) are monologs told to his only friend - a wild piglet he fed and befriended while living in the wilderness. Geoffrey of Monmouth changed the piglet to a wolf when he wrote Myrddin's biography. #FairyTaleTuesday