Lost in the Rabbit Hole

In this episode we wander along the coastlines of many Northern places; these are often stark and lonely places, the people who live there quiet to outsiders, but somehow a tale is always shared around a campfire as the whiskey passes from hand to hand.

The tales of of the SEAL PEOPLE, the special magical selkies sometimes called silkies, sometimes thought to be quite different from the seals you normally see tearing apart your fishing nets. Don't run afoul of these beings or you might rue the day! Legend has it that these are the beings made from the souls of the drowned, those lost at sea, now magically changed.

Join me on this little walk as we share the tale of the Seal People.

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REFERENCES
Episode title is from, "The Selkie Wife's Daughter", Jeannine Hall Gailey. 2006. "Jeannine Hall Gailey's poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Rattle, Columbia Poetry Review, and other journals. The poem, which is based on selkie legends, first appeared in Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006). For more information, visit the author's blog."

Tales of the Seal People, Duncan Williamson, 1992; 2019. "A collection of 14 selkie (half-seal half-human creatures) tales from the Orkney and Shetland islands off the northern tip of Scotland which embrace the fantasy, romance and unusual perspective of the Scottish travellers."

On Mermaids, Meroveus, and Melusine; Reading the Irish Seal Woman and Melusine as Origin Legend, Gregory Darwin (August 2015), Folklore Journal issue 126. "‘The Seal Woman’, a migratory legend attested throughout north-western Europe, is commonly associated with particular families in Ireland. A structural reading of this legend reveals similarities with other tales and dynastic origin myths involving supernatural, aquatic female ancestor figures, and identifies similar social functions for such narratives."

David Thomson (2018) The People of the Sea: Celtic Tales of the Seal-folk:  "Introduced by Seamus Heaney, The People of the Sea brings to life the legend of the mythical selchies, in beautiful, poetic prose."

Want more selkie tales? Visit Orkneyjar, a website curated by folk enthusiasts and those historically minded. You can read many tales here, some selkie, and find out more just in general about these kinds of stories.

WILDERNESS IRELAND, “Irish Myths & Legends Part 4: The Selkie,” Dawn Rainbolt. This is just a super fun website with stories and little facts and more. 

Welcome to PART TWO, or another two-part episode of LOST IN THE RABBIT HOLE. In this episode, we cover just some of the variants of The Wild Hunt tales, which come from Europe, but can also be found in some form all over the world.

The Wild Hunt is a tale of a pack of spectral beings riding horses, sometimes flying, late at night. Sometimes there are demon dogs, or other packs of animals. These tales are moral tales, with the riders or hunters presaging something really bad -- war, plague, discord, or even the death of the person who sees the riders.

We see in this episode (both parts) that the frame of the pack of ghost hunters carries across cultures, but with some interesting shifts and detail changes.

PART ONE: focuses on the background of the tale frame; from WODEN/ODIN leading the pack to the HERLE KING, this is an old lore that is still somehow very elastic. Part one includes the history of FRAU BERCHTA , one of the female figures to lead the pack of night riders.

PART TWO: shares other cultures' tales, including THE NIGHT OF A HUNDRED DEMONS from Japan, HAWAIIAN NIGHT MARCHERS, the Canadian New Years tale of THE BEWITCHED CANOE, and the Old American West tale of the GHOST RIDERS.

References for Part Two of this episode:

NIGHT OF A HUNDRED DEMONS
Elizabeth Lillehoj, in her article “Transfiguration: Man-Made Objects as Demons in Japanese Scrolls” (Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp 7-34; 1995)
Michael Dylan Foster  (Author), Shinonome Kijin (Illustrator), The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore
Masako Watanabe, Storytelling in Japanese Art
Matthew Meyer's Night Parade of One Hundred Demons
Maria Kitsunebi's blog, HYAKKI YAGYO: THE NIGHT PARADE OF ONE HUNDRED YOKAI
Amelia Starling's blog, Tsukumogami: Japan’s Household Spirits, is also really fun

LA CHASSE-GALARIE
Donovan King, Haunted Montreal
Honoré Beaugrand, La chasse galerie: Légendes Canadiennes

THE HAWAIIAN HUAKA'I PO
Martha Warren Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology
Wounded: A Native True Crime Podcast, Night Marchers: Huaka'i Po'
This is a blog post from the To Hawaii website The Legend of the Nightmarchers

AMERICAN OLD WEST GHOST RIDERS
Fairweather Lewis's blog post on the song Ghost Rider's In The Sky

Welcome to another two-part episode of LOST IN THE RABBIT HOLE -- this is PART ONE. In this episode, we cover just some of the variants of The Wild Hunt tales, which come from Europe, but can also be found in some form all over the world.

The Wild Hunt is a tale of a pack of spectral beings riding horses, sometimes flying, late at night. Sometimes there are demon dogs, or other packs of animals. These tales are moral tales, with the riders or hunters presaging something really bad -- war, plague, discord, or even the death of the person who sees the riders.

We see in this episode (both parts) that the frame of the pack of ghost hunters carries across cultures, but with some interesting shifts and detail changes.

PART ONE: focuses on the background of the tale frame; from WODEN/ODIN leading the pack to the HERLE KING, this is an old lore that is still somehow very elastic. Part one includes the history of FRAU BERCHTA , one of the female figures to lead the pack of night riders.

PART TWO: shares other cultures' tales, including THE NIGHT OF A HUNDRED DEMONS from Japan, HAWAIIAN NIGHT MARCHERS, the Canadian New Years tale of THE BEWITCHED CANOE, and the Old American West tale of the GHOST RIDERS.

References for Part One of this episode:

Jacob Grimm, German Mythology, volume 1

D. L. Ashliman, THE WILD HUNT LEGENDS

Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Boogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures

Brian Branston, The Lost Gods of England

Ari Berk and William Spytma, Penance, Power, and Pursuit: On the Trail of the Wild Hunt

Jennifer Westwood. Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain

The Old Magic of Christmas, Linda Raedisch

The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil, by Al Ridenour

Ridenour also has a terrific podcast, here is the episode on Frau Berchta

Also, from 2011, the VoVatia blog, Baby, Baby, It's a Wild Hunt 

Are you ready for PART TWO, where we continue the tale of the abandoned children, "Little Brother and Little Sister", aka Hansel and Gretel?

"Tale Types: Abandoned Children
What’s always so fun about these tales is to see how they are often mash-ups of other sorts of tales, but with a core narrative running through. For many of these abandoned children tales, we have three recurrent patterns:  

1. the children are lost in some manner in a forest, 
2. they meet an ogre, 
3. there’s a “show me how” moment within the tale, and 
4. the children return home."

Versions Referenced in this episode:

• "Little Brother and Little Sister" aka "Hansel and Gretel" (Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812-1840)
• "Ninnillo and Nennella" (Italy, Giambattista Basile, 1635) also here
• "Little Thumb" aka "Hop on my Thumb" (France, Charles Perrault, 1697)
• "Jan and Hanna" (Poland, author unknown, 1863)
• "Finette Cedron" aka Cunning Cinders, (France, Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, 1967)
• "Little Earth Cow" (Alsace, Martin Montanus, 1557)

Reference Materials
The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales: From the Brothers Grimm to Andrew Lang  by Jack Zipes
The Classic Fairytales, Iona and Peter Opie
The Third Horseman A STORY OF WEATHER, WAR, AND THE FAMINE HISTORY FORGOT By William Rosen

This is HUGE! For the month of DECEMBER the LOST IN THE RABBIT HOLE podcast will be a TWO PARTER!

Join me as I delve into the variant tales of abandoned children. Hansel and Gretel are only a part of this story.

We begin: "Long, long ago, beside one such Winter forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and their two children – a little boy and a little girl. They lived humbly in a house made of wattle and daub, all snug together under their thatch roof. There was a little coop around back for the chickens, and the woodcutter’s wife kept a vegetable garden full of lush, ripe tomatoes in the summer and squash in the fall. The house was perfectly placed between two aspen sentries, each guarding a side."

Come along down the sugared path and I promise, no one will bite.
PART TWO is available immediately.

Versions Referenced in this episode:

• "Little Brother and Little Sister" aka "Hansel and Gretel" (Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812-1840)
• "Ninnillo and Nennella" (Italy, Giambattista Basile, 1635) also here
• "Little Thumb" aka "Hop on my Thumb" (France, Charles Perrault, 1697)
• "Jan and Hanna" (Poland, author unknown, 1863)
• "Finette Cedron" aka Cunning Cinders, (France, Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, 1967)
• "Little Earth Cow" (Alsace, Martin Montanus, 1557)
  
  

Reference Materials

The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales: From the Brothers Grimm to Andrew Lang  by Jack Zipes
The Classic Fairytales, Iona and Peter Opie
The Third Horseman A STORY OF WEATHER, WAR, AND THE FAMINE HISTORY FORGOT By William Rosen

In this episode we are lost in the dark woods, the enchanted forests, and we come upon the sleeping beauty. 

How many times have we walked through a small grove or copse of trees and been startled from a rattle just off to our right? Was it a little bird, or maybe a squirrel? But when you looked, nothing else moved. Except the shadows; shadows don’t make any noise. Do they?

 Angela Carter tells us how “The woods enclosed. Like a net, like a cage.” She says, “There is no way through the wood any more…Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again…”

 And we see in our folktales that these woods hide secrets, we lose our sense of self, and our identities are hidden. There’s a different kind of beating heart deep in the woods, with a blood stream literal streams pumping life to the dark center. The lungs are high overhead, rattling a leafy canopy, and we know all around, the woods are alive.

Folktales, fairytales, myths, legends, medieval romances, plays, and even today in contemporary works of literature and movies, forests and woods and even just clumps of trees in the distance manifest as representations of…something…something big, something small, something dark, something needed. 

Episode Notes

For more information on all of the stories and authors and themes
VARIATIONS of Sleeping Beauty tales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 410
translated and/or edited by D. L. Ashliman
Disney's, Sleeping Beauty
Andrew Lang's, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (1891, The Blue Fairy Book)
The Grimms, Little Briar Rose
Charles Perrault's, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood
Giambattista Basile's, The Sun, The Moon, and Talia

References Used

1. Angela Carter, "The Erl King", from The Bloody Chamber
2. Sara Maitland Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairy Tales 
3. Amelia Starling, “Sleeping Beauty: The Meaning of Fate, Sleep, and Death” WILLOW WEB 
4. “The Enchanted Forest of the Brothers Grimm”, Jack Zipes 

In this episode, we explore "Little Red Riding Hood," the origins, but also some of the lesser known grotesqueries, naughty bits, and other things.

QUOTABLES:
In The Grandmother’s Tale, when our girl says, “"I'll take the Path of Pins.” The bzou replies, "Why then, I'll take the Path of Needles, and we'll see who gets there first."

The bzou follows her to the banks of the river and demand that the washerwomen help him cross. They agree, but once he is halfway across the river, they drown him.

Or maybe I’m the little black cat – the one that knows bad things are happening, but no one will listen. Instead, I get a shoe tossed at me for even trying.

To read The Grandmother's Tale and other variations of this tale
To read more from Jack Zipes
To read more from Marina Warner
To read more from Maria Tatar
For more on The Path of Pins and the Path of Needles
Music Darkest Child by Kevin MacLeod
Original Podcast Artwork created by Heather Scheeler