Post by faemonyx on Aug 18, 2014 8:58:24 GMT -5
One of my favorite folklorists, Thomas Keightley, included the French Legend of Melusina the fairy-wife who was secretly a sort of serpentine centaur. While this version had it that the divorce of Melusina's mother and father came about from a breach of privacy that Melusina's husband was doomed to repeat, Donald Tyson (in Sexual Alchemy, which I'm currently re-reading) had it that Prossina had a hoof so whatever version that he'd read had it that therian appearances in fay lineage was just a commonplace thing.
Flora Annie Steel's compilation of English fairy tales included one called "The Three Feathers" wherein it's the mortal woman, Psyche-like, who invades her fairy husband's privacy and he turns into a bird and flies away.
James Child's 39th listed ballad, the Scottish story of Tam Lin, has it that during the liminal time that Janet or Margaret rescues her fairy boyfriend from being a tribute, he transforms into like five different animals and one or two inanimate objects.
W.B. Yeats included, in his compilation of Irish fairy tales, a similar one where the young man rescues a woman who lived in fairy land, and she also turns into different animals and one or two inanimate objects during the crossover. Unlike with Tam Lin, who prepared Janet thoroughly on his transformations, this isn't highlighted. The Irish hero is just like, "Huh. Weird. But whatever!"
While the English, Scottish, and Irish fairy tales mentioned above suggest that the therian state is not inborn, but a curse to be broken along with being "trapped" in fairyland, unlike with the French fairy tale where it is inborn--a mainland European version of "Beauty and the Beast" called Hans My Hedgehog, portrays it as sort of in-between. Both of Hans' parents were human, but his mother's desperate wish to have a child "even one as ugly as a hedgehog" had him born as a hedgehog, probably by passing fairy wish-granting, or changeling exchange student program or something. The shift to the human wife's point of view years later make Hans' "reverse werewolf" habit a mystery (That is, at night, or during a full moon or something--he turns human...and then in the Jim Henson Storyteller version the wife snuggles with the hedgehog skin he left behind, which I consider a very interesting counterpoint to the majority of stories where the wild, fay side is a source of revulsion for the human spouse--such as with The Frog Prince, or Beauty and the Beast.)
What could we make of these? I'm no historian, so I wouldn't know if the time that these stories were originated had a culture where people were more in tune with the natural environment and animals or fae within the natural environment would be personified and considered fellows (such as with the Icelandic tribal fylgja, or totems in some Native American tribes), or if the animal features were meant to do the opposite and convey strangeness, or if it's a metaphor for puberty because these are love stories and parents at the time would usually get their kids married off pretty quickly or something. But the stories are there.
Flora Annie Steel's compilation of English fairy tales included one called "The Three Feathers" wherein it's the mortal woman, Psyche-like, who invades her fairy husband's privacy and he turns into a bird and flies away.
James Child's 39th listed ballad, the Scottish story of Tam Lin, has it that during the liminal time that Janet or Margaret rescues her fairy boyfriend from being a tribute, he transforms into like five different animals and one or two inanimate objects.
W.B. Yeats included, in his compilation of Irish fairy tales, a similar one where the young man rescues a woman who lived in fairy land, and she also turns into different animals and one or two inanimate objects during the crossover. Unlike with Tam Lin, who prepared Janet thoroughly on his transformations, this isn't highlighted. The Irish hero is just like, "Huh. Weird. But whatever!"
While the English, Scottish, and Irish fairy tales mentioned above suggest that the therian state is not inborn, but a curse to be broken along with being "trapped" in fairyland, unlike with the French fairy tale where it is inborn--a mainland European version of "Beauty and the Beast" called Hans My Hedgehog, portrays it as sort of in-between. Both of Hans' parents were human, but his mother's desperate wish to have a child "even one as ugly as a hedgehog" had him born as a hedgehog, probably by passing fairy wish-granting, or changeling exchange student program or something. The shift to the human wife's point of view years later make Hans' "reverse werewolf" habit a mystery (That is, at night, or during a full moon or something--he turns human...and then in the Jim Henson Storyteller version the wife snuggles with the hedgehog skin he left behind, which I consider a very interesting counterpoint to the majority of stories where the wild, fay side is a source of revulsion for the human spouse--such as with The Frog Prince, or Beauty and the Beast.)
What could we make of these? I'm no historian, so I wouldn't know if the time that these stories were originated had a culture where people were more in tune with the natural environment and animals or fae within the natural environment would be personified and considered fellows (such as with the Icelandic tribal fylgja, or totems in some Native American tribes), or if the animal features were meant to do the opposite and convey strangeness, or if it's a metaphor for puberty because these are love stories and parents at the time would usually get their kids married off pretty quickly or something. But the stories are there.