#monster type

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Erostika -- featuring Rockin’ Jellybean’s inimitable artwork

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The Thunderbird

Virtually every Native American culture has stories of a giant, magical bird, which most call the Thunderbird. The name comes from the sound the birds’ wings make when in full flight, like thunderclaps. The Thunderbird’s wings, it was said, were larger than two canoes, and the feathers the size of canoe paddles. Their eyes glowed red, and lighting shot out of their claws. At least two Thunderbirds flew in Washington: one in the Cascade Mountains, and the other in the Olympic Mountains of the Puget Sound. 

The first bird lived part of the time inside Mount St Helens. It created earthquakes and volcanic eruptions when it rolled over in its sleep. The rest of the time, it lived at the bottom of Spirit Lake, at the foot of the mountain. The Native people saw the water bubble and froth when the Thunderbird was angry. According to one legend, this bird attacked many other creatures until the Raven killed it, after which the Thunderbird’s body fell into the Columbia River, where it formed several islands. Other people believe it is still alive, and is responsible for the recent eruptions at the mountain.

The local people were afraid of Spirit Lake because of the Thunderbird and the other spirit beings that inhabited the area, and kept a healthy distance away. When Mount St. Helens erupted in the 1840s, artist Paul Kane traveled to the mountain to sketch and paint it. Upon his return a few days later, the locals ran away from him. Their belief in the powers of the spirits there was so strong, they thought Kane was a ghost.

The second thunderbird was friendlier to humanity. Many generations ago, the Quillayute people of the Olympic Peninsula were starving, in part because a giant killer whale was eating all the fish. Their chieftain appealed the Great Spirit for help, and it summoned the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird appeared to the people with the body of the whale in its claws, which it gave to them to eat, then flew to Mount Olympus, where it made its home. And though it was helpful to humans, the bird valued its privacy. Hunters climbing the mountain were scared away by the ice and rock falls the bird created when it smelled them.

In addition to explaining natural phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Thunderbird legends have some basis in fact. Some think they were (and are) eagles, which are not common in the area but known to the native people there. And the largest living bird in North America is the California condor, which make their home in the Sierra Madre Mountains: a long way to travel to Washington State. Or is it?

Even the Lewis and Clark expedition had an experience with a possible Thunderbird. On November 18, 1805, Captain Clark led a party of 11 men from the area where modern day Megler, Washington is to Cape Disappointment, where they saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. On that trip, one of the men killed a bird they had never seen before, one with a wingspan over nine feet long. Based on their description, it was a California condor. There had probably been a small population of these birds surviving in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest until the arrival of Europeans, when they were hunted into extinction. Other giant birds might have survived up to the modern age. 

In 2005, a group from the Oregon Archaeological Society was excavating a site near Woodburn, Oregon. They found what they thought was an elk bone, but upon further analysis, it was discovered that the bone and several others on site belonged to an ancient bird known as the Teratorn. Teratorn bones have recently been found in Argentina and all across North America, in Oregon, California, Florida, and New York. The largest example found had a wingspan of over 24 feet, and weighed over 170 pounds. It was probably a carnivore, as it had a beak and jaw designed to pick up and swallow small prey whole. These birds probably thrived at the end of the last Ice Age, and paleontologists think they died out as the glaciers melted.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several people living in southeast Washington reported seeing a large bird, with a wingspan the size of a piper cub airplane. In 2002, several people in Alaska reported seeing another giant bird with a wingspan of fourteen feet or longer. And passengers on an airplane once sighted one of these birds flying next to them. A cryptozoologist noted that most of these sightings happened when people were at the edge of large storm fronts. He suggested that birds this size needed the high winds to generate enough lift for them to fly, which earned them the name of Thunderbirds.

Some wildlife biologists are discussing plans to introduce California condors to the Columbia River Gorge. It seems that the birds are not afraid of humans or human activities, and many of those raised in captivity and released into the wild have been killed when interacting with people or structures such as power lines. The human population in the Columbia River Gorge scenic area is much lower than in southern California, and the birds may have a better chance of surviving here.

When Weird Washington’s Jeff Davis visited Chinook County Park to find the site where Lewis and Clark killed their condor, he found a small park with an interpretive sign about the incident. As he paused to take some pictures, a bald eagle flew overhead and screeched at him. Coincidence? Maybe the eagle had its own interpretation of the events there.

article from weirdus.com

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Drac Dracs are fairy creatures in the folklore of South France.

Dracs by Robert M. Carlos

The word Drac is apparently derived from Draco or Duerg. We must recollect that the Visigoths long occupied Provence and Languedoc. Fa le Drac, in Provençal, signifies Faire le diable.

Etymology

Goudelin, a Provençal poet of the seventeenth century, begins his Castel en l’Ayre with these lines:

Belomen qu’ yeu faré le DracSe jamay trobi dins un sacCinc o siés milante pistolosEspessos como de redolos.

Legend

Gervase of Tilbury, who resided in the kingdom of Arles around 1250, said about the first inhabitants of Arles in De lamis et dracie et phantassis, :

“They also commonly assert, that the Dracs assume the human form, and come early into the public market-place without any one being thereby disturbed.

These, they say, have their abode in the caverns of rivers, and occasionally, floating along the stream in the form of gold rings or cups, entice women or boys who are bathing on the banks of the river; for, while they endeavour to grasp what they see, they are suddenly seized and dragged down to the bottom: and this, they say, happens to none more than to suckling women, who are taken by the Dracs to rear their unlucky offspring; and sometimes, after they have spent seven years there, they return to our hemisphere.

These women say that they lived with the Dracs and their wives in ample palaces, in the caverns and banks of riven. We have ourselves seen one of these women, who was taken away while washing clothes on the banks of the Rhone. A wooden bowl floated along by her, and, in endeavouring to catch it, having got out into the deep water, she was carried down by a Drac, and made nurse to his son below the water. She returned uninjured, and was hardly recognised by her husband and friends after seven years’ absence.

“After her return she related very wonderful things, such as that the Dracs lived on people they had carried off, and turned themselves into human forms; and she said that one day, when the Drac gave her an eel-pasty to eat, she happened to put her fingers, that were greasy with the fat, to one of her eyes and one side of her face, and she immediately became endowed with most clear and distinct vision under the water. When the third year of her time was expired, and she had returned to her family, she very early one morning met the Drac in the market-place of Beaucaire.

She knew him at once, and saluting him, inquired about the health of her mistress and the child. To this the Drac replied: ‘Harkye,’ said he, ‘with which eye do you see me?’ She, pointed to the eye she had touched with the fat: the Drac, immediately thrust his finger into it, and he was no longer visible to any one.”

Respecting the Dracs, Gervase farther adds:

“There is also on the banks of the Rhone, under a house, at the North-gate of the city of Arles, a great pool of the river . . . . In these deep places, they say that the Dracs are often seen of bright nights, in the shape of men.

A few years ago there was, for three successive days, openly heard the following words in the place outside the gate of the city, which I have mentioned, while the figure as it were of a man ran along the bank: ‘The hour is passed, and the man does not come.’

On the third day, about the ninth hour, while that figure of a man raised his voice higher than usual, a young man ran simply to the bank, plunged in, and was swallowed up; and the voice was heard no more.”

There are variations on the story. Some say lavender seller got her dragon-sight by accidentally getting 'Dragon cream' in her eye. Others say the Drac gave her a box of human fat to rub into the hatchling's scales so that it would be visible to humans (otherwise she would not be able to care for it). She was supposed to clean the fat off her hands every evening with special water; but, one evening, she forgot to do so, rubbed her eyes with her dirty hands, and acquired her dragon-sight. Some say it was both eyes, or just the one. Still other versions confuse this beast with other monsters of regional folklore, and claim the Drac was slain by some saint or heroine.

Read the whole story

Event

From 20–22 June each year, the town Beaucaire in Provence, celebrates the myth of the Drac. The townsfolk bring the monster to life the form of a long procession, which snakes through the town led by a swarm of children carrying Chinese-type lanterns.

Source

Laurent Jean-Baptiste BERENGER-FERAUD, Contes populaires des Provençaux de l'Antiquité et du Moyen-Âge, 1887

Categories: French mythology | Fairy creatures | Shapeshifters | Water spirits | Dragons

article from monstropedia.org

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Ypotryll

  Mythical Number: #3673 Culture:   Medieval

Attribute:   Heraldic

Behaviour:   Friendly

One of the beasts of heraldry that has the appearance of a camel but with the head and tusks of a wild boar. Also unlike the camel that has its specialist designed camel toes, the Ypotryll has cloven hooves like a boar. Pictures of this legendary animal tend to show it with two humps on its back. The Ypotryll features on the coat of arms from the Tudor period in England. Some speculate that the creatures derives its name from the Greek word ‘hippo’ and is thus a creature that may be related to or actually be a hippo. However this is only mere speculation.

  definition from mythicalcreatureslist.com

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Mermaid (Ancient)   In folklore, a supernatural, sea-dwelling creature; from the waist up, a mermaid is a beautiful, alluring woman and from the waist down she has the body and tail of a fish, complete with scales. The mermaid is frequently described as appearing above the surface of the water and combing her long hair with one hand while holding a mirror in the other. While grooming herself she is likely to sing with a voice so enchanting that men cannot resist it. Mermaids, in the numerous tales told of them, often foretell the future, sometimes under compulsion; give supernatural powers to human beings; or fall in love with human beings and entice their mortal lovers to follow them beneath the sea. Most mermaids are kind and gentle but some are cruel (there are tales that depict some mermaids as drinkers of blood). A similarity exists between many mermaid stories and those told about the Sirens.  In Irish folktales, one is named Merrow, a mermaid who warns fishermen of coming storms. 

  definition from onespiritx.tripod.com

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Ipotane

Description - People with horse's feet.

 Features - Fast runners.

 Related to - Centaurs? Hippopotamus? Sea-Horse?

 Described By: Mandeville- "And in another isle be folk that have horses' feet. And they be strong and mighty, and swift runners; for they take wild beasts with running, and eat them."

Mandeville- "In that country be many hippotaynes that dwell some-time in the water and sometime on the land. And they be half man and half horse, as I have said before. And they eat men when they may take them."

  description from eaudrey.com

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Bigfoot The original name for Bigfoot was Sasquatch. It comes from the Salish Indians of southwest British Colombia. The name Bigfoot was invented later by a newspaper. The creature is also referred to by other names such as Omah or Seeahtiks. The Bigfoot has been reported in Canadian and North American Territories since the early 19th centuries. Its footprints indicate the Bigfoot to weigh around 800 pounds. There was also a film taken of Bigfoot in 1967. Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a figure in North American folklore alleged to inhabit remote forests, mainly in the Pacific northwest region of the United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia. In northern Wisconsin, Lakota Indians know the creature by the name Chiye-tanka, a Lakota name for "Big Elder Brother". Bigfoot is sometimes described as a large, hairy bipedal hominoid, and many believe that this animal, or its close relatives, may be found around the world under different regional names, such as the Yeti of Tibet and Nepal, the Yeren of mainland China, and the Yowie of Australia. Bigfoot is one of the more famous examples of cryptozoology, a subject that the scientific community classifies as pseudo science because of unreliable eyewitness accounts, lack of scientific and physical evidence, and over-reliance on confirmation rather than refutation. Scientific experts on the matter consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes. Despite that status, Bigfoot is nevertheless a popular symbol, including as "Quatchi," one of the mascots of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and to name both a provincial park and the annual Sasquatch Daze event in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. 

definition from paralumun.com