#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
#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
#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
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
#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
@rorystarr they are fairies and the best thing to do is stay the fuck away from them.
they do not work the same way we do.
get out of there. don't touch anything. don't EAT anything.
#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