#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: Airitech had three daughters who were werewolves. Every #Samhain, they emerged from the Cave of Cruachan, said to be a gateway to the #Otherworld, to kill sheep. They liked music, so the poet Cas Corach played his harp to distract them, and persuaded them to change back into their human form. Caoilte, a warrior of the #Fianna, then cast a spear that penetrated all three at once, and so they were killed. https://twitter.com/ChristineV8/status/1322054923232681984
Source: https://aliisaac.substack.com/
When Sir Lancelot rescued Queen Guinevere from the otherwordly land of Gorre (Land of No Return), he faced many trials of the body and soul. Lancelot had to cross a bridge that was a huge razor-sharp sword to prove his courage to go on no matter how much it cut him. #FairyTaleTuesday
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: On #Arthurs Seat in #Edinburgh there‘s a #hillfort of #IronAge date, which is connected with the legend of Arthur of Britain. Here young people still go on May Day morning in order to wash their faces in the dawn dew and make a wish. Source: Anne Ross #Celtic Britain`
The most powerful monster in Welsh legend was Trwyth, an evil man cursed by God to become a gigantic boar. King Arthur's greatest warriors attacked Trwyth to acquire the golden comb, scissors, and razor entwined in his fur, and the boar slaughtered many of them. #FairyTaleTuesday
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: Several works relate a battle between the chapalu (or an anonymous cat) with King #Arthur himself (rather than with Kay). Sometimes the beast wins, sometimes King Arthur wins.
Source: Cath Palug - Wikipedia
The first record of Merlin is Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain." Geoffrey based Merlin on the Welsh prophet Myrddin from 100 years after King Arthur, but had him perform magic previously attributed to Arthur's father Uther and uncle Ambrosius. #FairyTaleTuesday
In Welsh sources such as "Culhwch & Olwen," many of King Arthur's warriors have weird superpowers with no explanation. Some can grow in size, leap over trees, drink a river dry, talk to animals, or glow red-hot. They're less like knights and more like the Avengers.
🎨 Margaret Jones #FairyTaleTuesday
#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: In a tale from South Germany collected by Ignaz and Joseph Zingerle, titled Die Schlange ("The Snake"), a count's wife gives birth to a serpent son who lives in his own chamber. When the snake is twenty years old, it requests his mother to find him a wife. On her wedding night, the maiden wears seven layers of clothing, as she was instructed to do, and to dispose of each layer as her husband sheds his own layers of snakeskin.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lindworm#Germany
#FairyTaleTuesday: The legend "The Lindworm of Goggausee" tells that a seven-year-old rooster once laid a red egg in a dunghill, from which a #Lindworm hatched after three years. The worm grew quickly and ate the cattle of the farmers in the area, so they made plans to kill the creature.
A sorcerer who lived in the area had the saving idea. He hid a poisonous black lump in a hay cart, and harnessed two oxen to the device. However, since no one dared to steer the cart to the dragon, a mentally handicapped servant was sent off with the cart. When the servant led the wagon past the Goggausee, the dragon jumped out and swallowed it along with the servant and the oxen. A short time later he died of the poison.
Source: https://drachen.fandom.com/de/wiki/Lindwurm_vom_Goggausee
Trina Schart Hyman was the defining fantasy cover artist of my childhood. She imbued her characters with such personality and her scenes with such magic. Her soft yet vibrant colors created a dream-like ambiance. I had to explore every world she depicted. #FairyTaleTuesday#BookChatWeekly
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: A #lutin (in French [lytɛ̃]) is a type of hobgoblin. A French fairy tale, "Le Prince Lutin", written in 1697 by Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy has a description of the "air, water and terrestrial lutin": "You are invisible when you like it; you cross in one moment the vast space of the universe; you rise without having wings; you go through the ground without dying; you penetrate the abysses of the sea without drowning; you enter everywhere, though the windows and the doors are closed; and, when you decide to, you can let yourself be seen in your natural form." In this story a red hat with two feathers makes the lutin invisible.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutin
In Welsh folklore, the border between worlds is often vague. Arthurian knights don't realize they've ridden into the Otherworld until they encounter progressively stranger things, such as one-legged giants or sheep that change colour when leaping across a river. #FairyTaleTuesday
"The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither..., moaning as they went. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever."
Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"
🎨 Roberto Innocenti #FairyTaleTuesday
Highland folklore tells of an “Isle of Women,” located somewhere off the coast of #Scotland, on which a green well marked the edge of the world. This mysterious island represents a portal to the #Celtic#Otherworld. Sometimes the island is called Eilean nam Ban Móra, the Island of the Big Women, suggesting that the residents were giants. The name was sometimes applied to an actual island, the Isle of Eigg.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: Oweynagat, the cave at Cruachan in Co. Roscommon, is a potent place, a deep dark cleft in the earth associated with powerful women and female magic. According to legend, it exists as a conduit between the #Otherworld and our mortal realm through which the Goddess of war, known as the Mórrígan, frequently travelled. Medb, Queen of Connacht, was said to have been born here.
Source: Ali Isaac
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: „The various legends all claim Hy-Brasil to be an island paradise, populated either by the Gods, or #druids. In #Irish#mythology, the #Otherworld was divided into two realms, that of the Sidhe in their hollow hills, and the other being the island lands ruled by #Manannán, God of the Sea. Also known as the Blessed Isles, they lay ‘beyond the ninth wave', gentle places of peace, beauty, healing and eternal life.
Manannán’s lands were not seen as the land of the dead, as portrayed by Christian belief, but as the land of the ever living, of the ever young. Mortals were only allowed there if invited by either the King himself, or his daughters.“
Source: https://alibaliwalker.wixsite.com/aliisaacstoryteller/post/hy-brasil-mysterious-lost-island-of-irish-mythology
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: „Manannán was not of the Tuatha de Danann, yet when they were defeated by the invading Milesians and forced to retreat to their lands beneath the surface, he came to their aid, helping them to establish amongst themselves a High King. He then shrouded their Sidhe-mounds with fog, to keep them safe from prying eyes and unwanted attention.
The #otherworldly realm of the Sidhe was as full of strife as the mortal world, as any of the myths about them show us; their lives were subject to the same passions, love, hate, desire, joy, power, jealousy, battles and death as are our own. “
Source: https://alibaliwalker.wixsite.com/aliisaacstoryteller/post/hy-brasil-mysterious-lost-island-of-irish-mythology
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: Knockfeerina "is traditionally known as the 'Hill of Truth'. It is said to personify Donn Fírinne, the Celtic God of death and fertility. In folklore he is seen as a giant or the Fairy King. He is said to live at the bottom of a deep hole in the hillside called 'Poll na Bruinne' and anyone trying to investigate this entrance to the Otherworld will not come away unscathed and may even be drawn in, never to be seen again. There are many cautionary tales to deter the curious. However, good custodians are rewarded. One local farmer was granted temporary entrance to Donn's world under the hill where he met with a brother and sister, both of whom had died many years before.“
Source: https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/7901/knockfeerina.html taken from Sacred Ireland by Cary Meehan
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday#FairyTaleFlash: Though it seemed to Fionn and his comrades that they had been together with Donn mac Midir in the Otherworld only a few days, to their amazement the Fianna said their absence had lasted for nearly a year and a half.
Source: Heroes of the Dawn by Violet Russel
In the #Celtic#Fairytale a fisherman's son helped a large black dog, a hawk and an otter divide a carcass among the three. For settling their dispute, all three promised him their help in need.
Soon the black dog saved his life when he had to fight a #giant.
After a while, the son of a fisherman, who was now the king's shepherd, had to defeat a great beast with three heads that was dwelling in a loch to save the king's daughter.
And again the great black dog helped him.
#FairyTaleTuesday: According to legend, Lake Wörthersee in Carinthia, covers a city with magnificent houses that is said to have stood there many hundreds of years ago. How did this come about?
The inhabitants of this legendary city had become wanton and immoderate because of their wealth. On the eve of Easter, they danced at a carousal late at night. Twice a little ice-grey man admonished the revelers to repentance: "Otherwise death and destruction will come upon you!“ Each time the drunkards answered him only with raw laughter.
At midnight the warning man had disappeared. Only his barrel still lay there and endless floods flowed out of the open tap. This is how the Wörthersee came into being.