James Macgrigor encountered a Kelpie disguised as a stallion. Recognizing it, he stroke its nose with his claymore, severing its magical bridle bit. The Kelpie pleaded for its return, revealing its transformational powers and ability to reveal hidden beings: “If you look through the holes in the bit, you will see all manners of fairies and witches and devils.” Macgrigor lifted the bit to his eyes and peered through, and sure enough, the world he saw was bright with colour and full of beings invisible to the human eye. He was so enamoured by the contraption that he wanted to study it in more detail. He was also not deaf to the Kelpie’s claim that without the bit, he would die, and Macgrigor saw an opportunity to free the people of the surrounding area from the Kelpie’s reign of terror.
Macgrigor, captivated by the bit’s power, decided to study it further, leaving the Kelpie in a vulnerable state. Despite the Kelpie’s pleas and threats, Macgrigor cleverly kept the bit, learning about the #Otherworld. #Celtic
„Rarely is a Kelpie the victim of a trick, but after that day, no one went missing on the banks of Loch Ness ever again, all thanks to the cunning of James Macgrigor.“
Source: The Kelpie of Loch Ness - Folklore Scotland https://twitter.com/gonzalokenny/status/1790707801330688016?s=19
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: Three soldiers deserted their army and each took a different path. The sergeant and corporal were tricked and imprisoned by a lady at her palace. The private, however, won her heart and they planed to marry. Repeatedly put to sleep by a tailor’s tricks, the soldier received gifts from his fiancée: a golden ring, a penknife and a golden pin. Despite the tailor’s efforts, the soldier set out to find his beloved in the Kingdom of the Green Mountains. An eagle from the kingdom agreed to carry him, but grew weak from hunger. The „eagle agreed to continue on her journey; but only if the soldier would let her have a bite from his thigh.
After eating from both of his thighs, soldier and eagle finally arrived at the kingdom of the Green Mountains.“ After his wounds had healed, the private reunited with his beloved after showing her the tokens of their past. They married, and he freed his old friends imprisoned in the lady’s castle. Each found their own happily ever after.
Source: The Kingdom of the Green Mountains - Folklore Scotland
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: "The Swans Swim Sae Bonnie" tells of two sisters, one dark and one fair, who were inseparable in their childhood. Over time, however, the dark sister developed jealousy of her fair sister, who was favoured by others. This jealousy grew into hatred as both sisters competed for the love of the same man. In an act of desperation, the dark sister drowned her fair sister in the river. Later, three fiddlers used parts of the fair sister's body to improve their musical instruments, leading to a ghostly revelation that exposed the dark sister:
“It’s yonder he sits ma aul-man the king,
It’s yonder she sits ma mither the queen.
It’s yonder she sits ma fause sester Jean
An sae lightly she pushed me inta the stream.”
The dark sister was burnt as punishment. John fell into madness. The king, however, now had no children at all.
Source: https://folklorescotland.com/the-swans-swim-sae-bonnie/
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: One night, a group of merfolk shed their seal skins to play on the shore. A Shetlander found a skin and a beautiful mermaid lamenting its loss. He refused to return it, offering marriage instead. They lived together for years and had children. One day, a child found the hidden skin. The mermaid bid her children goodbye, returned to the sea, and left the human world forever. She confessed to her second husband, who stood miserably on the shore: “I always loved my first husband best.”
Source: The Mermaid Wife - Folklore Scotland
#Fergus Mac Roich was obliged to fight to the death against his own foster son #CúChulainn so that Queen #Medb's army could invade #Ulster. To save face and the life of a hero, they agreed that this time the younger CúChulainn would give way, but next time Fergus would. And so it came to pass. #nonviolence
#FairyTaleTuesday: The sons of Conall, son of Eochaid, were turned into badgers by the goddess Grian after they attacked her fort on the mountain of Knockgraney.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
Japanese folklore speaks of the senbiki ōkami,a pack of wolves that travelers climb trees to avoid: except these are no ordinary wolves. They climb onto each other's backs, almost reaching the top, always missing by just one wolf. #FairyTaleTuesday
#FairyTaleTuesday: Like the seal, the badger was sometimes seen as a shape-shifting person; the #Irish hero #Tadg found their meat revolting, unconsciously aware that they were really his cousins.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: #Tara was once reigned by a Wolf King. According to legend, #Cormac mac Art was the High King of Ireland at the same time as #Fionn mac Cumhaill was the leader of the #Fianna, c. the third century AD. He ruled from Tara for forty years, and during his reign, all of #Ireland flourished.
Source: Ali Isaac https://twitter.com/lethemain/status/593090313603915776
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: When the amorous advances of the Morrigan were spurned by #Cuchulainn, she shifted into a red-eared heifer and tried to knock him over whilst he was engaged in combat with another warrior; then she turned into an eel, wrapping herself around his legs, before finally becoming a grey wolf which lunged for his sword arm. Unperturbed, Cuchulainn managed to keep his enemy at bay whilst, of course, he defeated her every attack; he broke the cow’s leg, trampled the eel underfoot, and poked out the wolf’s eye, and went on to kill his opponent shortly after.
Source: Ali Isaac
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The Goddess of Winter, Beira (also known as The Cailleach), could be seen riding through the sky on the back of a great wolf in the winter (corresponding to the old Gaelic name for the month of January leading into February, meaning ‘wolf month’).
Source: Angus and Bride - Folklore Scotland
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: „Poor Bridget Cleary is often cited as the last witch burned in Ireland, but this is not true. She was murdered by her deranged husband in 1895, who claimed that when she became ill, she had been abducted by fairies, and a changeling left in her place. So he set her alight and burned her to death.“
Source: Ali Isaac | Substack
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: Denounced as a witch, Dame Alice Kyteler fled the country. Her maid, Petronella de Meath, was tortured until she confessed and implicated her absent mistress, Dame Alice. She was then publicly flogged and carted around the city streets as an example to the city folk. Finally, on the 3rd of November 1324, poor Petronella was burned at the stake, sadly she wasn’t the last.
Source: Ali Isaac | Substack
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: In European folklore, a need-fire (Scottish Gaelic: tein'-éigin) is a fire kindled by friction, which is lit in a ritual and used as protective magic against murrain (infectious diseases affecting cattle), plague and witchcraft. It was a tradition in parts of northern, western and eastern Europe until the 19th century, among Germanic, Gaelic and Slavic peoples. A need-fire would usually be lit when there was an epidemic such as an outbreak of plague or cattle disease. In some regions, a need-fire was lit yearly to prevent such disasters. In the Scottish Highlands they were lit each year at #Beltane.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-fire
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The first woman in Ireland to be officially denounced as a witch was Dame Alice Kyteler in the thirteenth century. All her four husbands died one after the other relatively shortly after the wedding. Alice was by then an extremely wealthy woman in her own right and ran a very popular inn. By all accounts, she was quite a character, and did not at all fit into the social norms for women at that time. With hindsight, it’s perhaps not surprising that she was singled out for retribution. Alice’s inn is still going strong to this very day… it’s now known by the name of Kyteler’s Inn, and is reputed to be frequented by Alice’s ghost. To get the full Alice Kyteler story, you can download a FREE copy of A contemporary narrative of the proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler : prosecuted for sorcery in 1324, by Richard de Ledrede, bishop of Ossory.
Source: Ali Isaac | Substack
There are no shortage of eerie tales about Virginia’s Old House Woods. Some claim to have seen ghostly pirates searching for their buried treasure there while others have encountered a group of skeleton knights wearing suits of armor roaming the forest. #FairyTaleTuesday