RIDERS OF THE SIDHE: By John Duncan
Tolkien, Lewis and the Medieval Model part 6 of 7
Throughout the High Fantasy stories of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien there are appearances by creatures from myth and fairy tale which fall into a group that were neither immortal, nor as short lived as humans; creatures whose place in Creation lies somewhere between mankind and angels.
“There used to be things on this Earth pursuing their own business, so to speak. They weren’t ministering spirits sent to help fallen humanity; but neither were they enemies preying upon us. Even in St. Paul one gets glimpses of a population that won’t exactly fit into our two columns of angels and devils. And if you go back further . . . all the gods, elves, dwarfs, water-people, fate, longaevi. You and I know too much to think they were just illusions” ”
—A discussion of the origins of Merlin’s type of magic in the C. S. Lewis novel That Hideous Strength.
In Lewis’s book on Medieval and Renaissance literature, The Discarded Image, he examines these Longaevi ( lit. “Longlivers”), or Long Lived Ones.
They are of great use to imaginary literature for, as Lewis writes:
“They are marginal, fugitive creatures. They are perhaps the only creatures to whom the Model does not assign, as it were, an official status. Herein lies their imaginative value. They soften the classic severity of the huge design. They intrude a welcome hint of wildness and uncertainty into a universe that is in danger of being a little too self-explanatory, too luminous.”
While J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay, “On Fairy Stories” writes:
“…fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being.”
“Stories that are actually concerned primarily with ‘fairies’, that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called ‘elves’, are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting*. Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches.”
( *”not very interesting” A statement I find ironic, coming from the writer who has done more to popularize elves in the modern imagination than any other person in the last hundred years.)
LONGAEVI, LONG-LIVED ONES:
In this essay, (with apologies to Professor Tolkien) I will discuss the Longaevi; giving a brief history of these creatures in mythology, as well as give some samples of their use in the High Fantasy works of our time where noteworthy.
The long lives of the Longaevi are one of their defining characteristics and also their curse, for many have this long life at the price of no afterlife, no immortal soul. From the earliest Greek mythology, in which the life of dryads were tied to the trees they inhabited, to the story of The Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Anderson in the 19th century, (4) the bodies of these long lived creatures returned to the soil or sea when they died, just like any other creature of nature.
The most famous example of the differences between human longevity and that of the Longeavi in modern literature is that of Tolkien’s elves in The Lord of the Rings and in The Silmarillion. There we read of the elves whose lives are tied to the world (Arda) until its end. Meanwhile, mankind was given the “Gift of Men,” mortality, by which Tolkien meant a chance to enter Heaven far sooner than the elves. Those of Half-elven lines could choose between the fate of Elven-kind or the Gift of Men. (7)
CATEGORIES OF LONGAEVI:
In The Discarded Image, Lewis gives us four categories of Longaevi that move in time through the literature of the Classical world and into the Renaissance:
1. “They could be a third species, distinct from angels and men.” ( Such as the *Elves & Fairies of European folklore, as well as Pans, Fauns, Satyrs, Silvans, Wood Nymphs, Sea Nereids, Giants, etc of Greek and Roman mythology or the Jinn of Islamic stories. )
2. “They are angels who have been “demoted”, so to speak.” ( The “Watchers” of the apocryphal Book of Enoch (43); who tried to remain neutral during the war in Heaven and were banished to the earth. This category of “demoted angels” is one explanation of the origin of Leprechauns. )
3. “They are the dead, or at least, a special class of the dead or other spirits.” (Such as the Brownies, Bogles and Boggarts of England and Scotland ).
4. “They are fallen angels (devils).”
( *Elves, fairies and giants can fall into any of these four categories, or be the offspring of their occupants, depending on the source material and time period. )
Lewis chose the name Longaevi for this chapter because:
“The alternative would have been to call them Fairies. But that word, tarnished by pantomime and bad children’s books with worse illustrations, would have been dangerous as the title of a chapter. It might encourage us to bring to the subject some ready-made, modern concept of a Fairy and to read the old texts in the light of it. Naturally, the proper method is the reverse; we must go to the texts with an open mind and learn from them what the word a fairy meant to our ancestors.”
Lewis wrote “The Discarded Image” more than twenty years after Tolkien gave his lecture “On Fairy Stories” and a decade after it was published in book form. I don’t think Lewis is contradicting his friend and fellow Inkling Tolkien on the word “fairy,” but merely recognizing that modern usage had changed in its understanding of that creature.
I had wanted to begin by dividing Lewis’s four categories of Longaevi into two main groups; Physical Creatures and Spirits. However, I soon found that these creatures refused to remain in one category for long during their winding paths through folklore.
Many characters from these stories started out as one thing and then became another as the tale evolved in the telling. Lewis gives the example of Morgana la Fey, who started out as a Celtic sea goddess in pre-Christian times, then appeared as a fairy in the early tales of King Arthur: while in latter tales she was a sister of Arthur, who became a witch after tutelage with Merlin; who was himself said to be only half human, ( his father was listed in some tales as a spirit of the air, one of the Longaevi ).
And of course, we see the reverse of such transitions in classical Greek myth, wherein many a human hero who pleased the gods were put in charge of some noble task after death (1) or, when they angered the gods, were turned into some monstrous form. ( As in the sad case of Medusa, turned into a monster by the jealous goddess Athena after her husband Poseidon forced himself upon the poor mortal in Athena’s own temple. )
In Norse myth, we see little distinction between strongly magical creatures such as elves and creatures such as dwarves and giants; who may or may not have had some magical attributes, but whose distinguishing traits were more physical. For the Norse, dwarves were the Dökkálfar, the “Dark Elves” who live underground, while what we moderns would consider as elves are those the Norse called Ljósálfar, the “Light Elves,” those “who lived in the view of the sun”, i.e. above ground.
In other parts of Europe, there was more of a difference between dwarves and elves, both in physical stature and in function. Milton calls his two classes of elves, “Swart elves of the mine” (in Comus) which we may think of as dwarves and “Faery Elves” (in Paradise Lost) which, if we have read masters such as Tolkien, we may think of as “High Elves.”
HIGH ELVES:
The English word fairy derives from the Early Modern English faerie, meaning “realm of the fays.”(3) In medieval literature Fairies or Elves are dangerous creatures; with bodies higher than our own, ( somewhere in power between humans and angels ), but often with souls lower than our own, closer to neutral animals than to men, ( when at their best ) or closer to fallen angles, ( when at their worst ).
Tolkien’s portray of elves in The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion are our favorite version of these creatures, perhaps because they are ennobled by Tolkien and depart so much from the classical tradition. The elves of The Hobbit (1937) come closest to this classical version of elves, as they are otherworldly and inhospitable, beautiful and perilous. Tolkien, in his essay “On Fairy Stories,”(1939) takes the same classical viewpoint as he used in The Hobbit; but by the time of The Lord of the Rings, (1954-55) he seems to have taken a view of “The Perilous Realm” that is much more favorable to the elves.
After escaping from Moria, Aragorn decides that the fellowship must seek refuge in Lothlórien. Boromir objects, giving what we may call the classical view of the land of Fairy:
‘What other fairer way would you desire?’ said Aragorn.
‘A plain road, though it led through a hedge of swords,’ said Boromir. ‘By strange paths has this Company been led, and so far to evil fortune. Against my will we passed under the shades of Moria, to our loss. And now we must enter the Golden Wood, you say. But of that perilous land we have heard in Gondor, and it is said that few come out who once go in; and of that few none have escaped unscathed.’
‘Say not unscathed, but if you say unchanged, then maybe you will speak the truth,’ said Aragorn. ‘But lore wanes in Gondor, Boromir, if in the city of those who once were wise they now speak evil of Lothlórien.
‘Then lead on!’ said Boromir. ‘But it is perilous.’
‘Perilous indeed,’ said Aragorn, ‘fair and perilous; but only evil need fear it, or those who bring some evil with them.
And after they have met with Galadriel, there is this exchange:
‘Well, have a care!’ said Boromir. ‘I do not feel too sure of this Elvish Lady and her purposes.’
‘Speak no evil of the Lady Galadriel!’ said Aragorn sternly. ‘You know not what you say. There is in her and in this land no evil, unless a man bring it hither himself. Then let him beware!
C.S.Lewis, writing about High Fairies/Elves gives this description:
“If we are to call the High Fairies in any sense’ spirits’, we must take along with us Blake’s warning that ‘a Spirit and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing; they are organised and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce’. And if we call them ‘supernatural’ we must be clear what we mean. Their life is, in one sense, more ‘natural’ -stronger, more reckless, less inhibited, more triumphantly and impenitently passionate-than ours. They are liberated both from the beast’s perpetual slavery to nutrition, self-protection and procreation, and also from the responsibilities, shames, scruples, and melancholy of Man.”
And Lewis, in describing their courts, writes:
“Luxury and material splendour in the modern world need be connected with nothing but money and are also, more often than not, very ugly. But what a medieval man saw in royal or feudal courts and imagined as being outstripped in ‘faerie’ and far outstripped in Heaven, was not so. The architecture, arms, crowns, clothes, horses, and music were nearly all beautiful. They were all symbolical or significant-of sanctity, authority, valour, noble lineage or, at the very worst, of power. They were associated, as modern luxury is not, with graciousness and courtesy.”
The origin of the elves come in several forms. Some Medieval sources (no doubt referencing The Book of Enoch) list them as a third group of angels, banished from Heaven because they had tried to remain neutral during Lucifer’s rebellion against the Lord God.
Later, 19th century folklorists theorized that the Romans, during their conquest of Britain, upon seeing the indigenous Picts, ( with their blue painted skin and ability to disappear, seemingly at will, after an attack upon their legions ), thought the tribes supernatural creatures. The “Roman origins” view is ironic, since many the ruins of a Roman fort in England were later thought to be “Fairy Forts” and Roman coins dug up from a farmer’s field “Fairy Gold” among the rural English up until the mid-20th century.
Some 19th century folklorists with a more Darwinian bend, thought that the earliest inhabitants of the Celtic areas of Europe were a smaller, pygmy like people, who were expelled or absorbed by the Celts. This theory may have came from some early description of Picts as being smaller folk than the Celts and living in domed homes half hidden in the earth. It may also have some origin in the folklore that held that iron would protect a home or barn from entrance by the Fey Folk. Despite the Picts smelting iron by the time of the Roman invasion, the theory was that Celts, armed with iron weapons, drove out the bronze using Picts and other first inhabitants of the area and therefore, they feared iron of any kind forever after.
C. S. Lewis alludes to some of this in “That Hideous Strength,” when the company from St Ann’s goes out in search of Merlin (recently awakened from his 1,500 year slumber). Lewis writes:
“The shock was still to take. …And suddenly all that Britain which had been so long familiar to him as a scholar rose up like a solid thing. He could see it all. Little dwindling cities where the light of Rome still rested—little Christian sites, Camalodunum, Kaerleon, Glastonbury—a church, a villa or two, a huddle of houses, an earthwork.
And then, beginning scarcely a stone’s throw beyond the gates, the wet, tangled endless woods, silted with the accumulated decay of autumns that had been dropping leaves since before Britain was an island; wolves slinking, beavers building, wide shallow marshes, dim horns and drummings, eyes in the thickets, eyes of men not only Pre-Roman but Pre-British, ancient creatures, unhappy and dispossessed, who became the elves and ogres and wood-wooses of the later tradition.”
Further Reading on Elves:
In modern fantasy literature, there are a few books which hold true to the older view of the faerie folk. Here are three:
The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, by Susana Clark
The Dresden Files (series) by Jim Butcher
For more on the origins of Irish fairies, see link in note 11.
DWARVES:
Much of how we think of dwarves in fantasy literature today comes from the works of Tolkien and, to a lesser extent, C.S. Lewis, but they were recalling much older stories.
The earliest written accounts that we have are the two 13th century Icelandic works known as the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda.
In the Icelandic Eddas, dwarves are merely described as “shorter than men.” By the time of the Brothers Grimm books on folklore, (beginning in 1812) the possessions of the Seven Dwarfs in their cottage are described by Snow White as “tiny.” In the Grimm version, Snow White is just seven years old when her evil stepmother tries to have her killed, so we can assume these dwarves were small indeed. ( There is a similar diminution of the stature of the elves; as the earliest accounts show them the same size as men, and then getting smaller and smaller through the centuries, until the Victorian writers depicted them as small enough to hide behind a single blade of grass. )
In the Poetic Edda, the first two dwarves begin as maggots, living in the skin of the giant Ymir. After the giant is killed by Odin and his brothers, they turn the maggots into manlike creatures who live in rocks or hollow mountains.
In the Prose Edda, the origin of the dwarves is given a bit differently, as coming spontaneously from the giant’s dripping blood.
Dwarves are often depicted as having lesser magic than the elves. They may make magic items for the Norse gods, but the main magic they themselves commonly possess is shapeshifting into an animal or invisibility through a tool, such as a cloak.
In both Norse and Germanic stories, dwarves are short, bearded and having a love of gold. Their height though is relative, as they are often described in the oldest stories an simply shorter than men. In some tales this shortness is part and parcel of a description that is trying to say that dwarves are unpleasant looking: as in ugly, short and rough.
There is some evidence that the Sami people of the Lapp regions of Scandinavia, being shorter than the Norse, Swedes and Finns, may have contributed to the origins of the mythology of dwarves in those countries. (See note 12 for some examples from 19th century and early 20th century encyclopedias which use similar descriptions for Lapps as one finds in the old tales about dwarves.)
There seems to be a reoccurring theory in the 19th century that the shorter ethnic groups in Europe were the first people into an area and that the taller ethnic groups who later immigrated into these areas and largely displaced or absorbed them, would eventually transform stories of these early peoples into the elves or fairies of local folklore. But the opposite is also true. In some areas, (such as Cornwall, Wales and Brittany ) giants were said by some scholars to be the original inhabitants or at least represented the original deities of pre-Christian tribes. More on this below.
GIANTS, OGRES AND TROLLS, OH MY!
As we saw with the definition of dwarves and elves in Norse myth; size is a difficult attribute to pin down in these old tales. Some creatures we normally think of generally as larger than us, did not always fall into a definitive category in traditional folk lore.
GIANTS: (from Old French geant, earlier jaiant “giant, ogre”, from Vulgar Latin gagantem, from Latin gigas “a giant,” from Greek Gigas (usually in plural, Gigantes). Giant replaced Old English ent, eoten. (44 )
Our earliest view of giants in western literature comes from two sources, the Hebrew Bible and Greek mythology.
From the Old Testament: (Bible passages are from the King James translation, unless otherwise noted.)
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
—Genesis 6:4
“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, who come of the giants. And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Numbers 13:33
King Og of Bashan was the last survivor of the giant Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide. It can still be seen in the Ammonite city of Rabbah. (NLV translation)
-Deuteronomy 3:11
In addition to the aforementioned verses in the Old Testament, the most famous biblical description of a giant is that of Goliath of Gath, killed by the shepherd boy David.
In 1 Samuel chapter 17, we find a description of Goliath’s height: ( ranging from a “low” of 6’9” to a “high” of 9’9”, depending on which text is used ) followed by his armor and weapons, which also emphasize his great size and strength:
“He wore a bronze helmet, and his bronze coat of mail weighed 125 pounds. He also wore bronze leg armor, and he carried a bronze javelin on his shoulder. The shaft of his spear was as heavy and thick as a weaver’s beam, tipped with an iron spearhead that weighed 15 pounds.” (NLV translation)
In Amos 2:9 we read of a giant destroyed by the armies of Israel with help from The Lord God. Scholars say this likely refers to Og.
“Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath.”
In all the Biblical descriptions, we see the giants depicted as of great height, proud and strong, but basically similar to very large humans. The point of the narrative seems to be that their great size and strength is no match for the God of Israel. (for more on Biblical giants, see note 9)
Despite their pride, the giants of the Bible all seem to be of at least average intelligence. In Medieval fairy tales however, we find giants usually depicted as rude, crude and more than a bit slow-witted. The medieval writers may have gotten their ideas on the low IQ of giants from reading the tales of the ancient Greeks. (10)
In Book 9 of Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus and his men come upon an island rich in land good for agriculture, but with no farms; a harbor perfect for fishing vessels, but with no ships. The Greeks can hear men working in the distance and decide to find them “to learn who they are, whether they are cruel, and wild, and unjust, or whether they love strangers and fear the gods in their thoughts.”
They find a cave filled with sheep, milk and a large supply of cheese, but no shepherd present. After eating their fill, Odysseus decides to wait for the shepherd so they can receive a guest gift, the traditional token of hospitality.
The shepherd returns and turns out to be the giant cyclops Polyphemus, a son of the sea god Poseidon. Homer describe his great strength thus: “Then he lifted on high and set in place the great door-stone, a mighty rock; two and twenty stout four-wheeled wagons could not lift it from the ground, such a towering mass of rock he set in the doorway.”
You probably know the rest of the story. Polyphemus kills and eats several of the Greeks, while Odysseus devises a plan of escape. He knows that he must wound rather than kill the giant, or they will never escape the cave. That night Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk on strong wine he has brought with him from his ship. (13) It is here that Odysseus tells the giant that his name is “no-man”; which proves to be wise when the other cyclops ask who has wounded their bother. The cyclops thanks his guest for the wine by promising to eat Odysseus last. Early in the morning, while the giant is still asleep, the Greeks cut a six foot section from the giant’s staff, sharpen it to a point and and heat the point in the fire. They then bury the red hot point in the eye of the cyclops, blinding him. The Greeks escape the giant’s search for them by clinging to the underside of his sheep as he moves the heavy door-stone and lets the sheep out of his cave.
This motif of a cunning human, outwitting a cruel and slow-witted giant is later seen in the Jack and the Beanstalk/Jack the Giant killer stories. (14)
“Fe fo fi fum
I smell the blood of an Englishman
Be he living or be he dead
I’ll grind his bones to be my bread.”
—The giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. ( This rhyme is far older than the tale that has come to us. See note 8 and notes 14A, B & C)
Outsmarting a slow witted giant may be a common theme in fairy tales world wide. (Psychologists say that such stories help children overcome their fear of adults and social scientists claim that these tales allow peasants to vicariously get back at the aristocracy, while modern folklorists tell us that giants represent unpredictable forces of nature, such as earthquakes. )
Jack the Giant Killer of England, however, may have roots going back to Norse tales of Thor fighting frost giants and even to Greek mythology, in that all three country’s stories share weapons used to defeat the giants such as invisibility cloaks, caps of knowledge, shoes of swiftness and magic swords. The first written version of a Jack the Giant Killer story appeared in England in 1711. The common themes of the various versions of the Jack stories give us many of the tropes we associate with giants in fairy tales today, such as: slow-witted, violent and having a taste for human flesh.
Prior to the Jack stories were the Welsh tales of the Medieval era, in which giants were sometimes the good guys, sometimes the bad, but far closer to the Biblical amounts of large, proud man-like creatures than the monstrous simpletons of the Giant Killer stories. (16)
In the Mabinogion, (compiled in the 12th and 13th centuries from earlier oral sources) Britain is ruled by the giant Bran the Blessed.
In the story of Culhwch and Olwen, Ysbaddaden, chief of giants, is the father of Olwen, a beautiful maiden sought by Culhwch, a cousin of King Arthur’s.
Gogfran the Giant is recorded in the Welsh Triads as the father of Gwenhwyfar, Arthur’s third wife. A tale tells of the imprisonment of a number of his sons by the giants of Bron Wrgan, leading to Arthur’s attack on the abode to free his brothers-in-law. (On the lack of giants in Irish mythology see note 17).
OGRES: (From Wikipedia) ogre (n.) from French ogre, first used in Perrault’s “Contes,” 1697, and perhaps formed by him from a dialectal variant of Italian orco “demon, monster,” … and has even older cognates with the Latin orcus and the Old English orcnēas found in Beowulf lines 112–113, which inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Orc. (15)
Ogres can share the same great size as giants, but differ in that they are more often described as ugly in appearance, with large heads, body hair and unusually colored skin. Unlike giants, who will eat humans of all ages, ogres prefer eating infants and are capable of cannibalism of their own kind. While giants often inhabit a land far away from humans, ogres are often set as rulers over human subjects, (this latter attribute in stories often makes them a better allegorical candidate for a cruel aristocrat than many giants).
TROLLS: (From Wikipedia) The Old Norse nouns troll and tröll (variously meaning “fiend, demon, werewolf, jötunn”) and Middle High German troll, trolle “fiend” developed from Proto-Germanic neuter noun *trullan. Additionally, the Old Norse verb trylla ‘to enchant, to turn into a troll’ and the Middle High German verb trüllen “to flutter” both developed from the Proto-Germanic verb *trulljanan, a derivative of *trullan. (18)
We commonly think of trolls as the ogre-like creatures met by Bilbo Baggins or Harry Potter, but the trolls in the original Norse myths and Scandinavian folklore were a more complex subject, usually describing a variety of human sized or slightly smaller beings. Norse myths use the term “troll” for mountain-dweller, a witch, an abnormally strong or large or ugly person, an evil spirit, a ghost, a heathen demi-god, a demon or a berserker. Trolls are described as “vicious, sly and underhanded,” (much like modern internet trolls.) They often live in rocks, mountains, or caves (or in their parent’s basements) and, in later tales, lay waiting to attack travelers from under bridges. (See notes 19 and 20 for more on Norse trolls)
The fear trolls have of thunder harkens back to the fights Thor had with giants, while the ability of church bells to drive them away comes from the Christian era; perhaps as an explanation for why trolls are no longer seen among men, (at least in the Scandinavian countries of continental Europe. In Iceland, they are said to be present, but invisible).
That trolls can be turned to stone by sunlight comes from later Scandinavian folklore and is often the explanation given for large stones of a semi-human shape in those countries. This is the reverse of what occurred with fairies, in that trolls grew in size as the tales came into the modern era, while the size of fairies diminished.
LEPRECHAUNS, BROWNIES, HOBGOBLINS, KOBOLDS, SUCCUBI, INCLUBI & JINNS:
I’ve put all mythical humanoid creatures that are usually described as spirits more than physical creatures in this category.
LEPRECHAUN: (From Wikipedia) The Anglo-Irish (Hiberno-English) word leprechaun is descended from Old Irish luchorpán or lupracán, via various (Middle Irish) forms such as luchrapán, lupraccán, (or var. luchrupán). (21)
In the Medieval Saga of Fergus mac Léti, Fergus king of Ulster, encounters water-sprites called lúchorpáin or “little bodies”; this is thought to be the earliest known references to leprechauns. The creatures try to drag Fergus into the sea while he is asleep, but the cold water wakes him and he seizes them. In exchange for their freedom the lúchorpáin grant him three wishes. (22)
Folklorists of the 19th century often placed the Leprechaun in that “in between” station of morality:
“Midway, however, between the good and evil beings of all mythologies there is often one whose qualities are mixed; not wholly good nor entirely evil, but balanced between the two, sometimes doing a generous action, then descending to a petty meanness, but never rising to nobility of character nor sinking to the depths of depravity; good from whim, and mischievous from caprice.
Such a being is the Leprechawn of Ireland, a relic of the pagan mythology of that country. By birth the Leprechawn is of low descent, his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy; by nature he is a mischief-maker, the Puck of the Emerald Isle. He is of diminutive size, about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over a little, old, withered face.”
(From Irish Wonders, pg 140. Author: D. R. McAnally, Jr. 1899. Link in note 23)
BROWNIES: (From Wikipedia) “A brownie or broonie (Scots), also known as a brùnaidh or gruagach (Scottish Gaelic), is a household spirit from Scottish folklore that is said to come out at night while the owners of the house are asleep and perform various chores and farming tasks.
Descriptions of brownies vary regionally, but they are usually described as ugly, brown-skinned, and covered in hair. In the oldest stories, they are usually human-sized or larger. In more recent times, they have come to be seen as small and wizened.
They are always either naked or dressed in rags. If a person attempts to present a brownie with clothing or if a person attempts to baptize him, he will leave forever.” (24)
Dobby the House Elf in the Harry Potter series is a Brownie, but Rowling may have preferred an alternate term, (Dobby is another variation on Brownie.) Perhaps Rowling used “house elf” to avoid confusion with the Girl’s Scout group or the chocolate confection. (Although the girls scouting group “Brownies” was named after these creatures.) (24)
The English equivalent is the bit more mischievous Hobgoblins (25)
The German equivalent is the Kobold, although these may inhabit mines and ships as well as homes. (26)
I did not include Goblin as a category in this essay because the use of the term through Europe has so many different meanings. (36)
INCLUBI & SUCCUBI: (From Wikipedia) “An incubus is a demon in male form who, according to mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleeping women in order to engage in sexual activity with them. Its female counterpart is a succubus. The word incubus is derived from Late Latin incubo “a nightmare induced by such a demon” from incubare “to lie upon,” while succubus is derived from Late Latin succuba “paramour”; from succubare “to lie beneath” (sub- “under” and cubare “to lie”). (28)
Merlin the magician of King Arthur’s time was said to be fathered by an Incubus. (29) This origin is alluded to in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength:
“Then let us all to prayers,” said Merlinus. “I was not reckoned of much account . . . they called me a devil’s son, some of them. It was a lie.”
And a bit later in the story we read:
“Sir,” faltered Merlin, “you have been in Heaven. I am but a man. I am not the son of one of the Airish Men. That was a lying story.”
For more on Merlin’s origins in medieval literature, see the wikipedia pages on Cambion (30) and Changeling. (31)
As for the female demons called succubi; the first account comes from medieval rabbinical texts, wherein Lilith was Adam’s first wife, who later became a succubus after committing adultery with an angel. (32)
Lewis alludes to this in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe:
“That’s what I don’t understand, Mr. Beaver,” said Peter. “I mean isn’t the Witch human?”
“She’d like us to believe it,” said Mr. Beaver, “and that’s how she is trying to call herself Queen. But she’s no Daughter of Eve. She comes from your father Adam’s”-here mr Beaver bowed-“first wife, Lilith. She was one of the Jinn. On the other side she comes from the giants. No, there isn’t a drop of real human blood in the Witch.”
Which brings us to our next creature.
JINN (From Wikipedia): Jinn (Arabic: جن, jinn)—also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirits or demons, depending on source)—are supernatural creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian and later Islamic mythology and theology. Since jinn are neither innately evil nor innately good, Islam acknowledged spirits from other religions, and was able to adapt spirits from other religions during its expansion. Jinn are not a strictly Islamic concept; they may represent several pagan beliefs integrated into Islam.
The anglicized form genie is a borrowing of the French génie, also from the Latin genius. It first appeared in 18th-century translations of the Thousand and One Nights from the French, where it had been used owing to its rough similarity in sound and sense and further applies to benevolent intermediary spirits, in contrast to the malevolent spirits called ‘demon’ and ‘heavenly angels’, in literature. (33)
The most famous Jinn in the western mind is of course the genie from the story of “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp” (34) from “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights” (AKA The Arabian Nights).
While most of these stories were compiled over several centuries from traditional Islamic tales (there are fragments of text dating from the 9th century), some of the stories commonly associated with the Arabian Nights—particularly “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”—were not part of the collection in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by French translator Antoine Galland after he heard them from the Syrian Maronite Christian storyteller Hanna Diab on Diab’s visit to Paris in 1709. (35)
The stories found in the Thousand and One Nights give us another example of how universal fairy tales are. Similar stories can be found in ancient Sanskrit fables from India and in Buddhist tales from 300 BC.
ELEMENTALS: GNOMES, UNDINES, SYLPHS & SALMANDERS
I’ve put these creatures in their own category since they are one of the few places prior to the modern era that we can point to a specific time and author for their creation, a Swiss physician and alchemist known as Paracelsus. (37) His book on elementals, A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, was published posthumously in 1566. (38)
(From Wikipedia) According to Paracelsus, there are four categories of elementals, which are gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders. These correspond to the four Empedoclean elements of antiquity: earth, water, air, and fire, respectively. (39)
Paracelsus identified four types of elemental beings as:
Pygmy/Gnome, as beings of the earth.
Nymph/Undine, as beings of the waters.
Sylph/Sylvestris, as beings of the air.
Salamander/Vulcanus, as beings of fire.
With each being able to move through its element as easily as a human walking upon the earth.
Paracelsus thought of them not so much as spirits but as beings between creatures and spirits, generally being invisible to mankind but having physical and commonly humanoid bodies, as well as eating, sleeping, and wearing clothes like humans. He noted that undines are similar to humans in size, while sylphs are rougher, coarser, longer, and stronger. Gnomes are short, while salamanders are long, narrow, and lean. Just as in the case of classical Longaevi, Elementals have no immortal soul, but may gain one if they wed a human.
Hans Christian Anderson based some plot points of his story The Little Mermaid on Paracelsus’s Undines and Sylphs. (40)
For a brief time Tolkien considered calling one of his family of elves gnomes, but changed the name to Noldor to avoid confusion with dwarves. (41)
Salamandrines are the indigenous inhabitants of Hell and its bounty hunters of souls attempting to escape in Wayne Barlowe’s novel “God’s Demon.” (42)
HIGH FANTASY AND THE MEDIEVAL MODEL:
INTRODUCTION
Part 1: Advanced Future vs. Golden Past
Part 2. Urban vs Rural
Part 3: Knights and Angels in the Age of Chivalry
Part 4: Cosmos vs Chaos
Part 5: Hierarchy vs Equality
Part 6: Longaevi: The origins of fantasy creatures in Medieval Literature
Part 7: The Good God vs. “gods”
Notes
1: A long list of mortals who were rewarded after death by the Greek gods and made into spirits in charge of various things can be found here:
https://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/deified-mortals.html
https://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/star-myths.html
2. Tolkien, J.R.R.. Tales from the Perilous Realm. HMH Books. Kindle Edition.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf
4. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/fairy-tales-could-be-older-ever-imagined-180957882/
5. https://www.amazon.com/Uses-Enchantment-Meaning-Importance-Fairy-ebook/dp/B004FGMPHG/
Note: There is some question of how much did Bettelheim borrow from earlier works on the subject; (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uses_of_Enchantment ) but I found the book both enjoyable and accessible.
6. In The Little Mermaid, Anderson gives the mer-people a lifespan of 300 years. After this they cease to exist and turn into sea foam. In the story, the little mermaid makes a deal with a sea witch and exchanges her long life for that of a human and a chance to gain an immortal soul. If she does not wed the human prince she has fallen in love with, she will die the day after he weds another. At the end of the story, in reward for a good deed she has done, instead of turning to sea foam, she becomes a spirit of the air and is given 300 years to live and the chance to gain an immortal soul, if she does enough good deeds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid
7. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Half-elven
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-fi-fo-fum
9. The “Giants,” not “Fallen ones” the Nephilim, ( Hebrew נפילים ) of Genesis 6 by Dr. Michael Heiser
10. https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/odysseus-fooled-cyclops/
11. Tuatha Dé Danann: The origin of Tolkien’s High Elves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatha_D%C3%A9_Danann
12. https://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/scandinavia/lappenc19.html
13. In the 1954 movie Ulysses, starring Kirt Douglas, Polyphemus is sent out to collect grapes, which the Greeks manage to turn into wine in just a few minutes of stomping on them. Wine in just minutes? A surprising plot hole from the Italian film makers! 😉 .
14: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Giant_Killer
14A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-fi-fo-fum
14B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trold,_der_vejrer_kristenblod
14C. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-people-eat-during-siege
15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogre
16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_(Welsh_folklore)
17: https://www.aliisaacstoryteller.com/post/were-there-giants-in-ancient-ireland
18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll
19: http://www.dur.ac.uk/medieval.www/sagaconf/armann.htm
20: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2oqzjz/what_is_the_origin_of_the_folklore_that_trolls/
21: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun
22: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergus_mac_L%C3%A9ti
23: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19486/19486-h/19486-h.html#toc67
24: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_(folklore)
25: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownies_(Scouting)
Originally the girls were called Rosebuds, but were renamed by Lord Baden-Powell after the girls had complained that they didn’t like their name. Their name comes from the story “The Brownies” by Juliana Horatia Ewing, written in 1870. In the story two children, Tommy and Betty, learn that children can be helpful brownies instead of being lazy boggarts.
26: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobgoblin
27: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobold
28: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus
29: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin
30: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambion
31: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling
32: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus
33: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn
34: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin#Plot_summary
35: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights
36: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin
37: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus
38: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Book_on_Nymphs,_Sylphs,_Pygmies,_and_Salamanders,_and_on_the_Other_Spirits
39: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental
40: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undine
41: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Gnomes
42: https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Demon-Wayne-Barlowe-ebook/dp/B004N635WM/
43: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)
44: https://www.etymonline.com/word/giant
PHOTO CREDIT: – Riders-sidhe-L.jpg, Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46031727
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