#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: The robin‘s determination to survive harsh winter conditions must have been seen as inspirational and a sign of hope, endurance and renewal to our ancestors. He represents the beginning of the New Year and Spring, and regular visits from a robin are said to signify the presence of a departed loved one watching over you.
Source: Ali Isaac | Substack
https://twitter.com/womensart1/status/1593998741119569920 + #Celtic#FolkloreSunday: Killing a wren, which is associated with winter, brought bad luck, even death. Such ill fortune could extend itself to the herds, which were thought to give bloody milk after a wren’s murder. In #Brittany, even to touch a wren or its nest would bring acne; worse, lightning could strike the home of such an invader, or the hand that touched the wren’s babies would wither and drop off.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#FolkloreSunday: The wren is especially associated with the winter season. In ancient times the bird was considered a prophet, although its cries were notoriously hard to interpret. The glossarist Cormac refers to the wren as “the #druid bird.”
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#FolkloreSunday: The European wren is known for its habit of singing even in mid-winter, and its name in the Netherlands, "winter king," reflects this. #Celtic names of the wren (draouennig, drean, dreathan, dryw etc.) also suggest an association with druidic rituals.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: Local legends once reported that, at the stroke of midnight on Christmas night, one of the menhirs that stood on the summit of Mont-Belleux near Luitré was lifted by a mere blackbird to momentarily reveal a great treasure. Anyone impudent enough to try to seize it was doomed to be crushed to death as only the magical korrigans could move fast enough to take the gold.
Source: The Magic of Christmas – Bonjour From Brittany (wordpress.com)
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: After relentless insistence, a Breton baron had revealed to his wife the reason why he disappeared for 3 days every week: he was a bisclaveret (Breton for werewolf). At last he even divulged the vital secret where he hides his clothing before he becomes a werewolf.
The wife, fearing her strange husband, sought help from a knight she once rejected. She revealed her husband’s secret and asked the knight to steal his garments. The husband disappeared, never to return. After a year, the search ended and the wife married the knight.
Source: The Were-Wolf from LEGENDS & ROMANCES OF BRITTANY https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30871/30871-h/30871-h.htm#linki_23
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: Months later, the king's hounds were about to seize the werewolf. But Bisclaveret—for it was he—turned with such a human gesture of despair to the King that the royal huntsman was moved to pity. To the King’s surprise the werewolf placed its paws together as if in supplication, and its great jaws moved as if in speech. The werewolf behaved so gently that it became the king's constant companion.
One day, the werewolf's unfaithful wife and her new husband attended a royal reception. The Bisclaveret attacked the two, who were saved by the king. In the end, they confessed to the plot. The werewolf was given fine clothes and promptly transformed back into the baron. The two culprits were chased away.
Source: The Were-Wolf from LEGENDS & ROMANCES OF BRITTANY https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30871/30871-h/30871-h.htm#linki_23
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: “Some folk were haymaking when a gust of wind suddenly arose. A girl who happened to be holding a knife at that moment threw it into the midst of the whirlwind. The wind vanished immediately, to the great pleasure of the haymakers who were shouting that the Devil was inside it. Everyone looked for the knife but it could not be found and so they thought that it was likely embedded in the body of someone being carried away by the Devil. One day, as the same girl was washing clothes in a nearby farm, she recognized her knife in the hands of a young woman. When asked where she had got it from, the girl answered that she had sold herself to the Devil in order to be rich because she was fed-up working but the Devil had carried her away: ‘Without your throwing a knife into that wind, I would have become a lost soul’, she said.”
Source: The Wind-Charmers of Brittany – Bonjour From Brittany
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: Along the coast of the Bay of Saint-Malo, between La Pointe du Grouin and Cap Fréhel, the myriad caves fronting the sea were said to be the abode of the fairies; some were said no larger than a rabbit warren while others were as grandiose as a cathedral. If one was surprised at the smallness of some caves, legends were at hand to explain that they had not always been like this but had fallen victim to some cataclysmic event or that, like at the Teignouse grotto, they had collapsed the moment the fairies abandoned the country. The largest dwellings were said able to accommodate extended families and their households with only the antechamber visible at low tide; some were said to extend deep into the land, even as far as 40km (25 miles).
In some legends, the caves inhabited by the fairies were not damp, dark holes punched into the earth but a microcosm of the world above them with sun, sky, floral meadows, trees and even stately castles. However, most tales mention only normal but spotlessly clean caves that were sometimes closed by a stone door or hidden behind a nondescript old door covered with wet seaweed and other plants.
Source: The Wind-Charmers of Brittany – Bonjour From Brittany
#Celtic#FolkloreSunday: Aside from their great age and magical powers, fairies were believed to live their lives as their human neighbours did; albeit with an assumed lifestyle more akin to those Bretons living near the top of the social spectrum. The fairies baked their own bread, they spun yarn, did the laundry and were even held to keep chickens and to tend their own herds of cattle.
A very few tales mention male fairies, known as féetauds, who are almost always described as husbands, brothers or sons; in the fairies’ realm, males were thought to have been fewer in number and held magical powers inferior to the females. Many legends also note that the fairies lived with a unique race of little men or elves known as fions. These men – there were no female fions – served as servants and cowherds to the fairies and were said to be so small that their swords were no larger than bodice pins.
Source: The Wind-Charmers of Brittany – Bonjour From Brittany
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