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Aibell
(Also Aoibheall or Aeval.) The Irish fairy queen of north Munster, County Clare, part of the Tuatha de Danann, and guardian spirit of the O’Brien clan. Her name probably derives from the Gaelic aoibh, meaning “beauty,” or the proto-Celtic Oibel-a, literally meaning “burning fire.” She lived at Craig Liath (Gray Rock), where she held a midnight court to determine if husbands were satisfying their wives’ sexual needs. If found to be lacking, the man in question would be ordered to overcome his prudishness. The lover of Dubhlainn Ua Artigan, a young warrior from Munster, Aibell played a magic harp and it was said that whoever heard its music would not live long afterward. She appears in many works of Irish literature, including the eighteenth-century comic poem Cúirt an Mheáin Oíche, or “Midnight Court,” by Brian Merriman.
Aigamuxa
Demons in the Saan mythology of Namibia and South Africa. Cannibalistic and with eyes on the soles of their feet, they inhabit sand dunes and chase the unwary.
Aiken Drum
A name best known in the Scottish nursery rhyme:
There cam’ a man to oor tounTo oor toun, to oor toun,There cam’ a man to oor tounAn’ his name was Aiken Drum.
In more recent versions, the words have changed to “There was a man lived in the moon …” and Aiken Drum wears edible clothes: a cream cheese hat, a roast beef coat, and penny loaf buttons.
Aiken Drum is also the name given to the “Brounie [Brownie] of Blednoch” in the ballad by William Nicholson (1878). This fairy is naked except for a kilt made out of green rushes.
Aitahqa-a-nukumaitore
(Or Nuku-mai-kore.) Tree fairies of Maori mythology, whose name means “Not inclined this way.” Described variously as having large chests and waists and small heads, having no head at all and very short arms and legs, or as all hands, elbows, and shoulders, they dwell in trees and parasitical plants such as wharawhara and kiekie and are said to subsist on uncooked food, namely kumara, a type of sweet potato, and whale meat.
Aitvaras
A fiery household spirit in the folklore of Lithuania. The aitvaras is a shapeshifter who manifests in different forms according to his environment. He appears as a cockerel when inside the house and as a dragon when outside. Sometimes only his fiery, comet-like tail is visible. He brings prosperity to his owner, often at the expense of the neighbors, from whom he steals gold, milk, and food. In exchange for his endeavors, he requires only to be fed on a diet of omelets. However, employing the services of an aitvaras comes at a price: it is said that an aitvaras is obtained from the Devil, hatched from the egg of a seven-year-old cockerel, in exchange for one’s soul.
Here is one tale of an aitvaras:
A newly wed bride was given the task of grinding corn for her mother-in-law. No matter how much she ground, the corn basket remained full and her work was never done.
By the light of a consecrated candle from the church, she saw an aitvaras in the form of a cockerel spewing forth a constant stream of grain into the basket.
However, the aitvaras perished in the holy light of the candle, much to mother-in-law’s horror, for she not only lost her source of wealth but her soul went to the Devil in exchange for the loss of the “luck-bringer.”
Aka
(Or Akari.) According to Carib folklore in Guyana, Akari resides in the head and is one of many spirits inhabiting the body. Dreams and nightmares are considered to occur when the hairy bush spirit Yurokon captures Akari from the head of a sleeping person and takes him for a walk into the forest. As long as he remembers to return Akari to his rightful place, the person will experience it as a dream; if he forgets and leaves Akari in the forest, the person will die.
Akari
SeeAka (#ulink_d7031ccd-0dc2-5a2b-89ad-0a41782f3e54).
Akakasoh
Tree spirits, or nats, in Burmese folk beliefs. Similar to the hamadryads of Greek mythology, the akakasoh dwell in trees. They inhabit the uppermost branches and their presence can be detected by the rustling of a tree’s leaves.
Other types of tree-dwelling nat, such as the shekkasoh and the boomasoh, make their homes in other parts of the tree.
Alan
Part-bird, part-human spirits in the folklore of the Tinguian people of the Philippine Islands. Described as a human–bird hybrid with backward-facing fingers and toes, the alan dwell in the jungle, where they hang, batlike, from the trees to rest. When not suspended from the trees, they reside in houses made of gold.
According to Mabel Cook Cole in Philippine Folk Tales (1916), the Tinguian people often slighted or mistreated lesser spirits such as the alan.
In one tale, two hunters enlist the help of an alan to provide them with a fire over which to cook a swine. When the alan asks one of them to take the swine’s liver to feed her baby, he eats it on the way and throws the alan’s baby into a cauldron of boiling water.
The two hunters hide up a tree. When the furious alan comes looking for them, she tries to climb up a vine, but they slash it and she falls to her death.
The hunters then go to the alan’s house, where they find a jar of beads and jar of gold and return to the village with their bounty.
Alven
Also known as Otteermaaner, Alven are water sprites who dwell in the river Elbe. Light and wingless, they wrap themselves in bubbles in the water to move around. As the name Otteermaaner suggests, they are sometimes said to show themselves as otters. They are believed to be the protectors of night-blooming water flowers.
Alp Luachra
(Also Alp-luachra or Alpluachra.) Also known as Joint-eater or Just-halver, an Alp luachra is a greedy fairy from Irish mythology. When a person falls asleep beside a stream or a spring, the Alp luachra appears in the form of a newt and crawls into their mouth, feeding on the food that they have eaten.
In Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1691), the Joint-eater is described as a kind fairy that sits invisibly next to its victim, sharing their food, thus accounting for how someone with a large appetite—a Great-eater—can remain skinny:
They avouch that a Heluo, or Great-eater, hath a voracious Elve to be his attender, called a Joint-eater or Just-halver, feeding on the Pith or Quintessence of what the Man eats; and therefore he continues Lean like a Hawke or Heron, notwithstanding his devouring appetite.
Douglas Hyde’s Beside the Fire (1890) tells of how one poor soul was infested by a pregnant Alp luachra and her children. To get rid of the mother and her brood, he ate a large quantity of salted meat without drinking anything, then lay down by a stream with his mouth open. After a while the Alp luachra were forced to leap out into the water to quench their salt-induced thirst.
Amesha Spentas
The “Bounteous Immortals” in the Zoroastrian belief of Iran. They are the attendants of the Creator, Ahuru Mazda. Similar to the Muses of Greece, each of the six amesha spentas spirits ruled over a specific earthly quality: achievement, inspiration, wisdom, intellect, sensitivity, and love.
The six spirits are: Ameretat, “Long Life,” guardian of the Earth’s plants and trees, spirit of immortality; Aramaiti, “Holy Harmony,” guardian of the Earth’s fruitfulness; Asha, “Righteousness,” “Truth,” guardian of earthly fire and the sun; Vohumanah, “Good Thought,” guardian of the Earth’s benign creatures, especially the cow; Kshathra, “Rulership,” “Dominion,” symbol of the triumph of good over evil, guardian of the Earth’s metals; and Haurvatat, “Wellbeing,” “Wholeness,” guardian of the Earth’s water and the afterlife.
Ana
Queen of the Fairies in Romany gypsy folklore.
Ana lived in a mountain castle with her entourage, the keshalyi, the benevolent Romany fairies, until the king of the loçolico, evil earth-dwelling spirits, fell in love with her. When she spurned his advances, he sent his horde of minions to devour the keshalyi.
In order to save them, Ana agreed to marry him. She suffered many years of degradation and gave birth to a succession of monstrous offspring.
Eventually, she succeeded in negotiating her freedom. The loçolico king set her free on the condition that whenever a keshalyi reached a certain age, she must be given to his minions.
It is said that Ana retreated to her castle in shame, only occasionally venturing out in the form of a golden toad.
Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–1875)
Best remembered for his fairy tales, the Danish author Andersen was also a prolific writer of novels, plays, poems, and accounts of his many travels.
He was born in Odense to a family of meager means. He was to remain an only child. His father was keen to give him an education that nurtured the imagination and read many books to him, including The Arabian Nights. When his father died in 1816, Andersen’s formal education, albeit basic, was disrupted due to the need to find work to support himself and his mother. Ever since his first visit to the theater, aged seven, he had been hooked on the world of the stage, and at the age of 14 he traveled, alone, to Copenhagen, looking for employment as an actor. He was successful in the Royal Theatre as a soprano singer until his voice broke, and the theater’s director, Jonas Collins, took him under his wing and funded his university education.
Andersen wrote a few plays and novels, without much success to begin with, but soon his writing career took off. His first book of tales, Fairy Tales, Told for Children, was published in 1835. It was a compilation of tales from his boyhood memories and stories of his own invention. Further books followed and, as their popularity gradually grew, they were translated into numerous languages.
Among the most famous of Andersen’s tales are “The Little Mermaid” (possibly inspired by the sad love story of the water sprite Undine), “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Wild Swans,” and “The Red Shoes.”
Angus Mac Og
A Celtic god of youth, love, and poetic inspiration. One of the sons of Dagda of the Tuatha de Danann.
Anguta
The father of Sedna, Inuit sea goddess ruling the undersea Otherworld, Anguta is responsible for conveying souls from the land of the living to his daughter’s underworld realm of Adlivun, where he metes out punishment for their previous sins until they are purged.
Ankou
A personification of death in Breton mythology, the Ankou also appears in Cornish, Welsh, and Irish folklore. Also known as the grave watcher, he is a fairy version of the Grim Reaper and often appears as a skeleton wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe. In Ireland he is known to ride a black coach pulled by four black horses to collect the souls of those recently passed over.
According to Breton folklore collector Anatole le Braz (1859–1926), “the Bard of Brittany,” “The last dead of the year, in each parish, becomes the Ankou of his parish for all of the following year. When there has been, in a year, more deaths than usual, one says about the Ankou: ‘War ma fé, heman zo eun Anko drouk.’ (On my faith, this one is a nasty Ankou.)”
In a short story by Wyndham Lewis, The Death of the Ankou (1927), a tourist in Brittany perceives a beggar to be the embodiment of the Ankou. In fact, it is the tourist who acts as Ankou to the beggar, who subsequently dies.
Anthropophagi
From the Greek for ‘people-eater’, an anthropophage (plural anthropophagi) belonged to a mythological race of cannibals first described by Herodotus (c.440 B.C.). The word first appeared in English around 1552.
William Shakespeare brought these cannibalistic fairies into British public awareness in his plays The Wives of Winsdor and Othello. In Othello (Act I, scene iii), he famously described them as follows:
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
In popular culture, anthropophagi are often described as headless, with their mouths in the center of their chests. This is likely due to a misinterpretation of the line about men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders, which in fact refers to a separate mythical race called Blemmyes. However, the popular picture of the anthropophagi as headless cannibals with faces on their torsos has endured. According to Naturalis Historia, one of the world’s earliest encyclopedias, the anthropophagi were in the habit of drinking out of human skulls, and placing the scalps, with the hair attached, upon their breasts, “like so many napkins.”
Aoibheall
SeeAibell (#ulink_dafebe5f-13c1-58fa-baab-bc1fccc7c8b4).
Appletree Man
A guardian of the orchard, Appletree Man dwells in the oldest apple tree, where the fertility of the orchard is supposed to reside. He chases away fruit raiders, but may also take umbrage with genuine harvesters. In the traditional English cider counties such as Somerset, apple-pickers could harvest the fruit only at certain times of day. Customs such as wassailing, involving singing to the apple tree and pouring cider at its roots, are still performed in parts of Somerset to placate the Appletree Man in the hope of bringing about a good harvest.
See alsoOld Roger (#litres_trial_promo).
Apsaras
(Also apsarasa.) From Buddhist and Hindu mythology, a female spirit of the waters and clouds. English translations of the Sanskrit name include “nymph.” Aspsaras are described as beautiful, supernatural female beings. Known for their ability as dancers, they are often the youthful wives of the gandharvas, the court musicians of Indra, leader of the Devas and lord of Svargaloka, or heaven, in the Hindu religion. They dance in the palaces of the gods to the gandharvas’ music, entertaining, and sometimes seducing, gods and men. Sometimes compared to the muses of ancient Greece, each of the 26 apsaras at Indra’s court represents a specific area of the performing arts.
Like the Valkyries of Norse mythology, apsaras are the carers of fallen heroes. They are also associated with fertility rites. Sky-dwelling ethereal beings, they are often depicted taking flight and can be compared to angels, as well as to the nymphs, dryads, and naiads of ancient Greece, due to their association with water. Said to be able to shapeshift at will, they also rule over gambling and gaming. The best known are Rambha, Urvasi, Tilottama, and Menaka.
Apuku
A forest spirit in the folk beliefs of Suriname. Described as a short, dark figure with backward-facing feet, he dwells in shrubs deep within the forest. He falls in love with human females and is prone to jealous outbursts if a woman he has developed an attachment to is pursued by other men.
In local tradition, if a man is unsuccessful in wooing a woman, he prepares a special herbal bath to “tame the apuku” of the woman he desires.
Árák Sruk
Guardian or tutelary spirits in Cambodian folklore. Residing in the family home, or in a nearby tree, the árák sruk was regarded as an ancestor spirit whose advice could be sought in curing sickness. An annual festival honors the árák sruk spirits.
Arawotya
A spirit of the sky in the mythology of the Wonkamala people who inhabited the Lake Eyre region in South Australia. According to A. W. Howitt’s The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), the arawotya was originally a spirit of the earth who created deep springs and other sources of water in the otherwise arid regions of southern Australia and parts of western Queensland.
Arianhod
A magical female in Welsh mythology, daughter of the goddess Don. The fourth branch of the Mabinogion, the ancient epic stories of Wales, relates the story of Arianhod, her son, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, and Blodeuedd, the Flower Maiden.
Arianhod dwells in a palace named Caer Arianhod, which today is associated with a rock formation off the coast of Gwynedd, northwest Wales.
Math, King of Gwynedd, has to have his feet held by a virgin when he is not in battle. Arianhod’s brother, Gwydion, proposes her for the task, but when Math places his magic rod on the floor for Arianhod to step across in a test of her virginity, she fails the test and immediately gives birth to two sons.
The first is named Dylan, “Ocean Wave.” Arianhod refuses to name the second son, but Gwydion tricks her into naming him Lleu Llaw Gyffes, “Light or Fair One with the Sure and Steady Hand.” Arianhod proclaims that he shall have no bride of this Earth, so Gwydion and Math construct a bride for him out of oak, broom, and meadowsweet, and she is named Blodeuedd, or “Flower Face.”
Lleu and the beautiful flower maiden are married and live in wedded bliss for a short time, but Blodeuedd falls in love with another man, Gronw Pebyr. The lovers decide that they must murder Lleu before he discovers their affair. Blodeuedd knows Lleu to be almost invincible, but on the pretext of concern for his safety, she discovers that he can be killed with a spear made over the duration of a year, thrust into him when he is bathing with one of his feet touching a billy goat.
Despite the complicated conditions, the flower maiden and Gronw conspire to bring about Lleu’s demise. However, he transforms into an eagle and escapes.
Hearing of all that has happened, Math and Gwydion seek out Lleu in eagle form. Gwydion puts his wand to the bird and returns him to his human form. Gwydion turns Blodeuedd into an owl.
Her lover, Gronw, offers compensation to Lleu, but Lleu deems it fair that the blow that was meant for him should be returned. Gronw is permitted to hide behind a rock for protection, but Lleu throws his spear so hard that it passes through the rock and pierces the adulterer’s back.
Lleu Llaw Gyffes goes on to become Lord of Gwynedd.
Arianhod is remembered in the name of a constellation of stars. The Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, constellation is known in Wales as Caer Arianhod.
Arkan Sonney
Pronounced erkin sonna, Arkan Sonney, or “Lucky Piggy,” is the fairy pig of the Isle of Man. It is a beautiful little white pig believed to bring good luck to those who can catch it. Dora Broome’s Fairy Tales from the Isle of Man (1963) describes the Arkan Sonney as white, with red ears and eyes, like most fairy animals, and able to alter its size, but not its shape.
Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, and Moe, Jørgen Engebretsen (1812–1885), (1813–1882)
The Norwegian folktale collectors Asbjørnsen and Moe became friends as teenagers and shared an interest in folklore. As young adults, they collected various tales from different parts of Norway and embarked on a collaborative work. Their first collection of tales, Norske Folkeeventyr (Norwegian Folk Tales), was published in 1841 to great acclaim. A further edition, containing additional stories and published in 1852, proved to be equally successful.
One of the challenges Asbjørnsen and Moe faced was that of language and style. The Norwegian dialects used by oral storytellers were too localized to be understood by a wide audience, while the Norwegian literary style of the time was strongly influenced by Danish, making it unsuitable for a collection of national folklore. Adopting an approach similar to the Grimm brothers, Asbjørnsen and Moe opted to tell the tales using simple language in place of dialects, while retaining the national uniqueness of the tales. This helped form the basis for the Norwegian language as it is known today.
Between 1845 and 1848 Asbjørnsen published another collection of tales, Norwegian Fairy Tales and Folk Legends. George Webbe Dasent, a translator of folk tales and scholar of Norse studies, translated the first volume into English as East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
Asbjørnsen and Moe’s work is regarded as part of Norway’s national heritage and remains popular today.
Ashray
