Gwydion is the great trickster of Welsh legend, who uses a mixture of deceit and magic to get what he wants. Like many tricksters, Gwydion is a shapeshifter, but he's also a master of animating the inanimate - turning trees into soldiers and flowers into brides.
🎨 Margaret Jones
In the early stories of Merlin, he would often laugh when his powers of prophecy revealed ironic situations, such as a man expressing love for his "son" without realizing the boy isn't his, or a woman buying a dress even though she'll drown before she wears it.
The Sluagh (the "Host") of Irish and Scottish folklore are sometimes depicted as ghosts, sometimes as fairies. They fly through the sky like a flock of birds, and carry off anyone they find. Some humans are left on a remote island, others are never seen again.
"Lest the awe should dwell
And turn your frolic to fret,
You shall look on my power at the helping hour,
But then you shall forget!
Lest limbs be reddened and rent,
I spring the trap that is set.
As I loose the snare, you may glimpse me there,
For surely you shall forget!"
Kenneth Grahame, "Wind in the Willows"
🎨 Arthur Rackham
"The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond.... All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere."
Myrddin Wyllt was a 6th-century prophet who inspired the Merlin legend. After being traumatized by war, Myrddin fled into a Scottish forest and became a hermit. He supposedly wrote down his intense visions, which are collectively known as "The Prophecies of Merlin."
🎨 Alan Lee
In the Middle Ages, many Christian Scandinavians believed that the Norse gods had actually been humans from Troy who had fled their burning city and immigrated to Scandinavia, where they had used magic to make the locals believe that they were gods.
To drink from the Well of Wisdom, the Norse god Odin had to give one of his eyes to Mimir, the Well's guardian. In some versions, this is simply a general sacrifice, but in others it's a trade - the eye gives Mimir Odin's knowledge just as the drink gives Odin Mimir's.
🎨 Emil Doepler
The huldufólk (hidden folk) of Iceland are human-sized fairies whose communities are hidden in the hills. Sometimes they are depicted with cow tails. It is said that if the huldufólk marry a human, their cow tails fall off, and they become human themselves.
🎨 Brett Manning
The Welsh hero Lleu was cursed by his mother to never have a human wife, so the wizard Gwydion used flowers from the oak, broom, and meadowsweet to create a wife for Lleu called Blodeuwedd ("Flower-Faced"). However, Blodeuwedd fell in love with another man....
🎨 Jenny Dolfen
The cockatrice is a monster of English legend similar to a basilisk. It is born when a rooster lays an egg which is then incubated by a serpent; it resembles a rooster with a snake tail. The cockatrice kills with its gaze and touch, though the weasel is immune.
🎨 Marcus Gheeraerts
In Welsh folklore, the youth Culhwch requests that his uncle, King Arthur, help him find the maiden Olwen but first cut Culhwch's hair. A man's first adult haircut was an important rite of passage among the ancient Welsh, often performed by a respected male relative.
🎨 Alfred Frederick
"Scientific people," proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, "know very well that Time is only a kind of Space.... That line, therefore, we must conclude, was along the Time Dimension."
Though the Romans equated their war god Mars with the Greek god Ares, they portrayed him as very different. Mars was also a god of agriculture and a father to the Romans, who used war to create lasting peace, while Ares was only interested in slaughter and chaos.
"We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label 'scientific' and 'supernatural.' ... But the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class as real, the distinction begins to get blurred."
Many old buildings in Europe, even churches, have carved on their walls a face made of leaves or vomiting vegetation, called a "Green Man." There's a lot of debate about how this design began or what its purpose was, but many assume it was originally a pagan god.
In alchemy, the green lion devouring the sun represents how aqua regia (a potent acid) can dissolve and purify base matter - first step of the alchemical Great Work. It also symbolizes how purifying one's shining ego is needed for spiritual enlightenment.
Welsh folk saying: "Guinevere, daughter of Ogrfan the Giant / Bad when little, worse when great."
Was her father simply a tall man and Guinevere got worse-tempered as she got older, or did King Arthur's wife have giant blood and grew in size when angry?
When Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, chopped the head off the Green Knight at New Year's as part of a "game," the Green Knight picked up his head and told Gawain to meet him next New Year's to get his own head chopped off. Many scholars have debated this symbolism.
The Irish hero Cú Chulainn suffered from the ríastrad, a battle frenzy in which his body transformed, such as one eye getting sucked into his head while the other dangled down his cheek, his feet facing backwards, or the skin pulled back from his lips and cheeks.
🎨 Massimo Belardinelli
In Irish myth, the Fomorians were a supernatural race said to come from under the sea or the earth who battled Ireland's early settlers, especially the equally supernatural Tuatha Dé Danann. Many Fomorians were hideous, though some were beautiful.
🎨 John Duncan
Though in Shakespeare, Cordelia dies before her father King Lear, in the original British legend she outlives him and becomes Britain's ruler. Cordelia is a warrior queen, leading armies. Sadly, she is overthrown by her two nephews, who resent being ruled by a woman.
The al-mi'raj from medieval Arabic literature resembles a yellow hare with a black horn. It's so fierce that most other animals flee from it. The inhabitants of an island in the Indian Ocean gave Alexander the Great an al-mi'raj to repay him for slaying a dragon.