In The Most of the Tree sat A Kindly Old Woman, illustration to Elder Mother Tree, by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), from Fairy Tales, written by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75).
“To have Conference with a Fairy- Stroll underneath an Elder tree when the Sun is at the (highest) hottest… And stand under the Tree and say, Magram Magrano Three times and you shall see a flower spring like yellow Gold or Gold yellow And when you have it you shall want nothing. There will also appear a fair woman- Demand of her what thou wilt have And thou shalt have it.” (Grimoire, ed. D. Rankine, page 289)
Cicely Mary Barker, from Flower Fairies of the Trees, 1961 In one of my earliest postings, I discussed the curious link between fairies and
Hello! So I am curious, how have you venerated Rusalkas? Are there any intuitions you’ve experienced by doing so? If you are comfortable sharing.
I grew up with Rusalkas, now that I think about it.
It is well known these days that we take a lot of information for Slavic Paganism from folklore - but in a living culture "folklore" is not just old ethnographic monographies. So the belief in Rusalkas happens to be something I was actively raised with.
The Green Holidays and Rusaliyi were big in our home every year. Now that I am writing this, this is actually the period that begins right about now, so what a good timing with the question!
So, in the modern calendar this is a week celebrated after Pentecost (31st of May this year), or a few days before and after, usually Thursday to Thursday. This way it normally lands on late May or early June. There is a theory that the origins of this holiday can potentially be linked to the Roman holiday of Rosalia, which could have spread with their imperial reach.
Whether it is true or not, but there are a few key features of this celebration now. One is the belief that during this time Rusalkas venture into the land, play and joke -sometimes lethally, - with people, and are essentially celebrating the awakening of the earth and their own coming into full power.
Very simply, it's believed that the earth during this time is rightfully theirs, so they roam freely, and can take a young man of woman they likes with them, and tickle them to death. People take precautions, for example avoiding bodies of water or sometimes even bathing, because these maidens are absolutely in their right to take you under at this time. Lovage and wormwood are thought to be protective. When weaving in the home was more prevalent, women would also leave offerings of cloth hung from the trees for them.
Homes are generally decorated with tree branches and herbs. This custom is alive and well even in apartment buildings, where you will see herbs hung up even in hallways and staircases. The herbs chosen are often fragrant or medicinal.
People also remember their own dead, and youths gather for games.
The Thursday of this week is believed to be a so-called Rusalkas' Easter, or Easter of the Dead. This is their main celebration for the ancestors and Rusalkas, who essentially are also the dead. For example, we have stories of congregations of the dead holding a special celebratory service at local churches, lead by an equally dead priest. In any case, in rural areas it all usually culminated in saying farewell to all these visitors: the community held a festive procession out of the village, after which the domain over the earth returned to the living.
Now, what it seems to show to me - and stay with me here, please - is that in the Slavic worldview existing in the category of "spirit" and "matter" was mutually permeable. Now we tend to think as the physical matter or physical earth as the source of life, then you pass on, and you move on into spiritual existence. But what this interaction I described above demonstrates, really, is that the vital presence of what we see as "no longer with us" is continuous. Spirit circulates like water does. If it is no longer looking like a liquid, it does not mean it is not participating in life.
I will share one belief about water spirits I have held since very small that was not given to me by anyone, and which was definitely not encouraged. So, I grew up in this fairly small town surrounded on three sides by a bend of a river. Lots of water, you know. And I did spend my childhood on the banks of that river with a friend of mine. Even then, starting in elementary school, I had an intimate feeling that the Ruler of this river, the spirits that take care of it, do not have tolerance for being unappreciated. If humans take too much from their home, they see it as their right to take us with them, too. Which should have concerned me as someone who could not even swim, but I had figured water was everywhere anyway, and if they pick someone as their share, they can choke on a spoonful of water as well as drown in a lake.
So on that cheery note I am going to leave this answer, hah.
[The British Isles are full of monster dogs and monster cattle. This might be what happens when you spend more than a millennium systematically destroying any trace of unmanaged natural environment from your island. Or simply because dogs and cows are the animals most likely to be encountered in the day to day, and so stories about them spread, especially when they don't behave "right". This entry started under the name Hedley Kow, which isn't particularly cow-like and is more akin to any other British road bogie. The Glas Gaibhenn of Irish mythology, stolen by Balor as a quest Macguffin, did what I wanted my fairy cow to do: act as a Watsonian explanation for fey feasts having dairy products when tabletop RPG fey don't include "stealing milk" as one of their major pastimes. So I ended up mashing the two ideas together, a rare bit of lumping for me as far as my monster philosophy goes. But really, how many different fairy cow monsters could I write and make mechanically distinct?]
Glasgavlen
CR 3 CN Fey
If not for the intelligent and puckish gleam in its eye, this could be mistaken for an ordinary cow. That is, it could be if its fur wasn’t a mossy green.
The glasgavlen goes by many names: fairy cow, goblin cow, dun cow, hedley kow, bull-beggar. This panoply suits these fey cattle just fine, as they thrive on chaos. Glasgavlens often have wildly divergent activities and personalities, alternating between benevolently providing food by day and maliciously pranking and scaring people by night. Although their natural form is that of a cow with a slightly shaggy and very colorful pelt, they can change colors at will to blend in with ordinary cattle. When in trickster mode, they often disguise themselves with illusions to appear as humanoids, fey or even inanimate objects.
Glasgavlens are supernaturally skilled at converting food into milk, and a single glasgavlen can produce around fifty gallons a day. Many glasgavlens come around to offer their milk to various households in the area in the guise of a mundane cow, sometimes with a confederate to speak on their behalf, but often just as a seemingly random bit of good luck. While being milked and grazing near people, they listen to conversations in order to suss out bits of local gossip, personal insecurities, or other information to tailor their pranks for maximum impact. They often harass the same people they help, giving them the necessities of life but making said lives full of exciting and bewildering incident. Glasgavlens are especially fond of punishing greed, and people who try to take more than their fair share of milk are likely to get the most savage pranking, up to and including violence.
Glasgavlens provide their services to the fey free of such strings attached, and often sweeten the deal by magically transforming some of their milk into more shelf-stable products like cheeses, butter and yogurt. They are often on good terms with house fey like brownies and domovoi, who might know the bull-beggar’s secret identity as a local nuisance (whether or not they share that information is based on the house fey’s personality and relationship with their mortal clientele). Some fey even ride glasgavlens into battle as steeds, but the hedley kows make sure that such arrangements are viewed as even partnerships, and turn on riders who don’t respect them.
A glasgavlen can change its biological sex as readily as it does its fur color, allowing all individuals to father offspring, bear offspring or give milk as they see fit.
Glasgavlen CR 3
XP 800
CN Large fey
Init +2; Senses low-light vision, Perception +7, scent
Defenses
AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (-1 size, +2 Dex, +4 natural)
hp 32 (5d6+15)
Fort +6, Ref +6, Will +4
DR 5/cold iron; SR 14
Offenses
Speed 40 ft., fey step
Melee gore +5 (1d6+3), 2 hooves +3 (1d4+1)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Spell-like Abilities CL 5th, concentration +7
At will—dancing lights, ghost sound (DC 12), mage hand
3/day—animate rope, scare (DC 14), warp wood (DC 14)
1/day—golden guise (DC 15), mind maze (DC 15), veil (self only, DC 18)
Statistics
Str 19, Dex 14, Con 17, Int 12, Wis 11, Cha 14
Base Atk +2; CMB +6; CMD 18 (22 vs. trip)
Feats Deceitful, Great Fortitude, Multiattack
Skills Acrobatics +8 (+12 jumping), Bluff +11, Diplomacy +9, Disguise +11 (+19 as cow), Intimidate +9, Knowledge (local) +8, Perception +7, Sense Motive +7, Stealth +13; Racial Modifiers +8 Disguise as cow, +8 Stealth
Languages Common, Goblin, Sylvan
SQ adjustable veil, color change, mimicry (animal sounds, voices), transmute dairy
Ecology
Environment temperate hills and plains
Organization solitary
Treasure special (see text)
Special Abilities
Adjustable Veil (Sp) When a glasgavlen uses its veil spell-like ability, it may adjust what its appearance is as a standard action. Creatures that have successfully saved once against the illusion do not need to save again, and creatures that witness this adjustment are granted a Will save to recognize the effect as an illusion.
Color Change (Ex) A glasgavlen can change the color of its fur at will. This grants it a +8 racial bonus on Disguise checks to resemble a mundane cow, and a +8 racial bonus on Stealth checks. In addition, a glasgavlen can make Stealth checks without cover or concealment.
Fey Step (Su) A glasgavlen can teleport up to 50 feet a day as a move action. It may split this teleportation up as it sees fit in 10 foot increments.
Transmute Dairy (Su) Three times a day as a standard action, a glasgavlen can transform up to 5 gallons of milk within 150 feet into the appropriate volume of yogurt, cheese, butter or equivalent dairy products.
The 1993 Monstrous Manual for AD&D 2e included all new illustrations by five artists. Tony DiTerlizzi was credited for "pencils, inks, and colors on insects, crustaceans, faerie-folk, and miscellaneous creepy things." Above are his brownie, dryad, tinker gnome (minoi), nymph, sprite, and grig (a sprite variant with the wings, antennae, and legs of a cricket).
"If you accept any food from the fae, they shall never let you go" is a human belief. The fair folk stand by the principle that if you feed 'em, you gotta keep 'em. If wildlife learns to rely on you for food, you have already fucked up, and you can't just stop feeding them cold turkey. That human is your responsibility now. Because you left your peach cobbler unsupervised.
I'm still ill and thinking about language, as you do.
We begin with the will o' the wisp. In Swedish folklore there are several legends where they are said to be the ghosts of surveyors that made an error (deliberate or not) in their work. There have been several Swedish land reforms since the 18th century and it seems very probable that the legends are connected with those. When the land was perceived to have been divided unfairly, it would have been natural to blame the surveyor, and what better punishment than to be perpetually wandering the land where the error had been made?
But words: There are two common names for the will o' the wisp in Swedish: lyktgubbe - meaning lantern man - and irrbloss, which means something like wandering torch.
The verb irra is a fun one: it means to wander, but specifically to do so while being lost, or doing it in a particularly erratic way. One can irra bort sig (wander oneself away, aka get lost), irra omkring (wander aimlessly while being lost or searching for something) or go on an irrfärd (an erratic journey). The English word that comes closest is to meander but, at least to me, the connotations are slightly different.
I made a deliberate word choice when talking about the surveyors: they made an error. Irra and error are cognates, but you have to go far up the family tree to find their common ancestor. Irra comes into Swedish from German, while error seems to be coming into English from the Latin errare via the Old French errer. Both those words also carry connotations of wandering. It seems the definition of the word narrowed and took another direction when it entered English - it meandered.
The aimless wander still remains in the word erratic, but I had better quit here before I förirrar myself completely and the errors from my hasty research start piling up.
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk
