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
My second audio post for patrons this month is a recording from my own song archives. The song is a strathspey port-à-beul titled "A Cur Nan Gobhar," which is all about goats...and kilts.
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: Have you ever thought about how you recognise the beginning of Spring? Is it the plant life? The weather? How does a plant know when it is time to grow? The #Spring #Equinox falls on the 19th, 20th, or 21st of March each year. But a plant cannot tell the time or see a calendar. Yet it knows. If it has senses, then it has consciousness, if it has consciousness then it is more than an inanimate life form. So it is the return of life to the Earth that is celebrated at Alban Eilir, the time of balance.
Source: https://druidry.org/druid-way/teaching-and-practice/druid-festivals/spring-equinox-alban-eilir
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The Goddess of Spring is merely sleeping through the darkness of Winter, and while she stirs at Imbolc, she is truly awake by the time of the #Spring #Equinox. The forces of light are equally balanced with the forces of darkness at this time, but light is on the increase – and will reach its apogee at the Summer Solstice three months later. The symbolic plant of the Equinox in #Druidry is the trefoil or shamrock, which is probably the national emblem of Ireland because of its Pre-Christian Druidic associations.
Source: https://druidry.org/druid-way/teaching-and-practice/druid-festivals/spring-equinox-alban-eilir
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The clover was supposedly a sacred plant of the #Irish Druids, due to the triad formation of its leaves. Three was a sacred number in Irish mythology. It is a pattern seen repeated over and over again in all things considered important and powerful to the ancient Irish, such as the maiden-mother-crone aspect of certain female Irish deities, birth-life-death, mind-body-spirit, and so on.
Source: https://substack.com/@aliisaac
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
#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: Cousins to the leprechauns are the #cluricauns, who live in cellars and attics. Not being of an industrious nature they tend to borrow or steal whatever they need, and if they can't find it they cause mayhem in the place they're living. They have been known to harness sheep, chickens and dogs and take them on wild rides throughout the countryside.
Source: The Leprechaun | Emerald Isle Irish and #Celtic myths, fairy tales and legends
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: „Should you hear a tapping hammer and a wee voice singing, keep a sharp eye out, for there may be a #leprechaun about!
"Lay your ear close to the hill.
Do you not catch the tiny clamour,
Busy click of an elfin hammer,
Voice of the Leprechaun singing shrill
As he merrily plies his trade“?"
Source: The Leprechaun | Emerald Isle Irish and Celtic myths, fairy tales and legends
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: As a #fairy being, the Leprachaun is said to be associated with the Tuatha de Danann. I have read a lot of Irish mythology, and have found no reference to such a character amongst stories of the Danann or the Sidhe. It is more likely that he has arisen out of local folklore and superstition. Despite his enormous popularity, there has been much debate about his origins.
Source: https://substack.com/@aliisaac
In Irish myth, the Fomorians were a supernatural race said to come from under the sea or the earth who battled Ireland's early settlers, especially the equally supernatural Tuatha Dé Danann. Many Fomorians were hideous, though some were beautiful.
🎨 John Duncan
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
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The famous #Scottish wizard Casan Buidhe preyed upon travelers as they attempted to cross rivers. He shape-shifted into a large stag and terrified those in the middle of the ford so that they dropped their treasures to run for safety, or drowned in fright, whereupon he helped himself to their wealth. Finally, a smith (always a magical being) confronted the wizard and destroyed him.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: `Out of jealousy Uchtdealb The Fair from the Sidhe struck Tuirean, because of whom her husband Illan had rejected her, with a little carved yew stick she carried in her hand and cried: "Hound you shall be, and hound you shall remain." Instantly Fionn mac Cumhaill’s aunt was transformed into a beautiful white hound, with black markings on her sides and back, and soft brown eyes that looked up piteously in Uchtdealb's face. But the enchantress, slipping a golden collar on her neck, held her in leash, and in that manner led her to the house of a man named Fergus Fionnlia. There she gave birth to two puppies, little white and black things.
At the request of Illan, the enchantress transformed Tuirean back into her human form. But over her children Uchtdealb had no power, and they always remained hounds who were staying with Fionn.
Source: Heroes of the Dawn by Violet Russel
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
Though the Romans supposedly wiped out the druid class among the Gauls, in the Empire's waning years there were reports of dryades, female druids who often held more than one job in their community but were known to give divine prophecy in a druidic fashion. Britonic druids lasted much longer, while Irish druids, male and female, lasted well into the last thousand years, though their social role had been diminished greatly by Christianity. #FairytaleTuesday
In many stories, Domdaniel is a cavern at the bottom of the ocean where sorcerers and spirits meet. In T. H. White's "The Sword in the Stone," Merlin says his duel with Madam Mim will test if a magic degree from Domdaniel (Mim's alma mater) is superior to tutoring from Merlin's mentor Blaise. #FairyTaleTuesday
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: At two-year intervals, the wizardly pig-herders Rucht and Runce of the #Otherworld became stags, warriors, ghosts, dragons throwing snow on each others land, and finally 2 worms. As such, they impregnated 2 cows, causing them to be reborn as the magical bulls #Finnbennach of Cruachan and #Donn of Cuailgne. Source: Sylvia Botheroyd #Irland`
In Welsh legends, King Arthur had three shapeshifting wizard-warriors in his service: his chief counselor Menw, Eiddilig the Dwarf, and Tristan of Lyonesse. Only Tristan appears in the later Arthurian Romances, though as simply a knight with no magical powers.
🎨 Alan Lee #FairyTaleTuesday
In my second audio post this month, I'm talking about antifascist black metal as part of my update for patrons on the upcoming book and podcast series, The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore. You can check out a preview of the post at the link below or join me on Patreon for access to the full post.
Though Little Red Riding Hood illustrations usually depict the Big Bad Wolf as a regular wolf, he has various human-like features, including hands able to turn a doorknob, the ability to walk bipedally, and startling disguise skills, giving him some werewolf overtones.
🎨 Trina Schart Hyman #FairyTaleTuesday
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: The scenes of the portrayals on the Gundestrup cauldron correlate image-by-image with the beginning and end of the Táin and with the major episodes outlined in the seventh-century poetic narrations of the Táin. Plate E of the Gundestrup cauldron, in particular, displays the major events of the Aided Fraich episode. The dead Fraech is carried off into the #Otherworld and returns alive.
Source: G. Olmsted "The Gundestrup and Chiemsee Cauldrons: Witnesses to the Art..."
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: Cú Chulainn and his friend, the powerful sorcerer Cú Roí mac Dáire, raided the strange magical island of Inis Fir Fálgae, which some have considered to be the Isle of Man. „For they had heard of the many strange magical artifacts which Mend kept in his court, wonders of ancient science and wizardry such as the Dagda’s cauldron of plenty, which could feed the whole world.“
„They returned to Eriú with the three treasures of the Fálgae – namely, three red-eared milk-abounding cows who each produced the milk of ten cows every day, with three cranes called the three men of Ochain upon their backs, the great cauldron rich in gold and silver from which a hundred men could come away satisfied, and Bláthíne daughter of Mend.“
Source: Blathine, Lady of the Sidhe | The Ulaid Cycle (emeraldisle.ie)