Favourite Music Friday – The Mummer’s Dance

I love Loreena McKennit’s music and The Mummer’s Dance is one of my favourites. It’s also serving as part of the inspiration for the Flash! Friday story I’m busy with today (no title thus far).  It just popped into my head when I saw the end of the story in my mind...

The story itself will be posted later tonight.

Mythology as Writing Inspiration: The Mythical Creatures Bible

The Mythical Creatures Bible: a Definitive Guide to Legendary Beings by Brenda Rosen

Although The Mythical Creatures Bible is a small volume (only in size, it has nearly 400 pages), it contains a huge variety of mythological and folklore figures and almost all of them are illustrated.

The volume consists of five parts:

• An introduction
• Fabulous Animals
• Creatures from the Shadow World
• Nature Spirits
• Sacred Creatures

The 250 beings are grouped together by similarity, not by mythology, which makes it very easy to see how different cultures and religions react to similar occurrences or types of beings. This is quite similar to the way in which The Golden Bough and parts of Wilkinson’s Myths & Legends: An Illustrated Guide to Their Origins and Meanings are structured.

Folktales, myths, cultural epics

A short description of the differences between folktales, legends, and myths are given, as well as references to “cultural epics” like the Ramayana (Which is still on my to-read list). The meaning and a description of the popular heraldic animals are given (though this is only two pages long and other sources should be consulted for an in-depth look).

Astrology, films, books, and cryptozoology

Both astrological creatures, like the Capricorn, and the Chinese zodiac is covered in a few pages. This gives the reader the basic knowledge, but, again, this isn’t the book for you if you only want information on these subjects.

The use of mythological creatures and monsters are given a few pages, covering only the most popular beings like Frankenstein’s monster. Cryptozoology is covered with short explanations and a short discussion of Bigfoot, Yeti, and Loch Ness monster.

The beings themselves

What delights me about this book is that it contains such a wide variety of creatures. While it contains some human figures, it focuses mostly on animals, hybrid creatures, and the supernatural. It contains creatures from the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the array of dragons found all over the world and from Quetzalcoatl to the Buraq.

The text is kept simple, letting the illustrations do most of the talking, and this contributes to the way which makes this book a good starting point for these beings. This volume can be used extremely well as inspiration for art and writing, or simply if you want to know more about the creatures found in your favourite speculative fiction.

Rosen,Brenda. (2009). The Mythical CreaturesBible: The Definitive Guide to Legendary Beings. New York: Sterling Publishing Company.

Folklore Wednesday: Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga by I. Bibilin (1900)

One of the first tales – that I can remember – which really scared me was a tale of Baba Yaga in a children’s story compendium which contained stories from around the world. This specific tale ended with Baba Yaga’s eyes smeared with tar. The illustration with the story was really the thing that scared me – she was drawn as having a forked tongue and had chicken feet as a necklace around her neck. It was only later, when I really got into folklore and mythology, that I learned more about the figure of Baba Yaga.

A witch from Eastern European lore, she lives in a house that stands on chicken legs and have windows which shut like eyes. “Surrounding the hut is a fence made of human bones and decorated with skulls.” (2008:234) The Mythical Creatures Bible describes her as a Hag and adds “…[l]ike other Hags, she is a wizened old woman with a long hooked nose”  (2008:234). In the same volume she is described as travelling through the air in a mortar which she rows with its pestle and clears her tracks with a birch broom. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (2007:183), however, describes her means of travel as an iron kettle with which she flies through the air.

One thing on which all sources seem to agree is that she is “a cannibalistic witch who lures human victims, especially children, to her hut and devours them.” (2008:234). The Mythical Creatures Bible also notes “scholars believe that Baba Yaga was originally a potent female nature spirit, a provider of healing, protection, and guidance” (2008:234).

There are many illustrations of Baba Yaga (not all of which are quite as scary as the one from the children’s book in which I first read about her!), but here I am only going to show a few. Or go and look on this board on Pinterest.

Baba Yaga by Rima Staines (2010) - Follow the linkfor her other wonderful artwork. 

For more information and stories about Baba Yaga, visit these pages:

Sacred Texts

Old Russia  

The Wikipedia article  

Sources:

Rosen, Brenda. 2008. The Mythical Creatures Bible. Sterling Publishing, New York.  

Cotterell, A. & R. Storm. 2007. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology. Hermes House, London. 

Seeing the Alien, Seeing Magic – Writing Wednesday

While writing what was supposed to be a piece of flash fiction, I was confronted again by just how important details are when setting a story in a specific location. In this case the story is set in my hometown. Well, city, to be exact. I sent the story in for critiques to my writing group (The Anomalous Sandbox) and received some notes which made me realise just how alien the description was to someone on the other side of the world. While the bustling streets were familiar, layout of streets and shops, things in the shops and the weather were noted as being “wrong”.

Photo courtesy of 
Belovodchenko Anton

As I had described a neighbourhood akin to mine (and weather I’ve been living with my whole life) I knew that what I was describing was indeed “right”. But I had not painted a clear enough picture of the setting. Not only that, I had not included the details which I take for granted every day which would have set the story more firmly in a specific city (or neighbourhood).

I started reworking the story, putting in a bit more description here, a little bit more “local flavour” there, and soon realised that a bigger story was waiting behind the first scribbled draft. I’m still working on the second draft, though, but this time around it is most definitely set in SA. Or, at least, the small part of the country which I live in.

It’s a strange mixture of cultures, languages, violence and compassion. Only when speaking to some people from other countries do I realise anew that it’s not second nature for everyone to switch between two (or more) languages during a day, or normal to walk into the kitchen at work and hear four different languages spoken. And I realised once more that setting a story in my little part of the world is as alien to some readers as if I had set in on another planet.

Protea, SA's National Flower

You may ask yourself ‘what is the point of all this rambling?’ Good question. My answer is that the point is learning to see _your_ world through different eyes. Not the eyes of the person who travels the same route to work every day, or who visit the same shop every week. It’s the eyes of a person who sees a place for the first time, who sees anew the people, the neighbours, the streets, the music, the poetry and the jokes. There is a magic, a fantastical world waiting to be discovered in your everyday surroundings. And, sometimes, I forget that.