Welcome to a few festive and feral folktales.
THE WOLF-WITCH In a cottage within a forest there dwelt a man named Glass and his good wife.
One day he went out into the forest to fell a tree,
But he did not offer the proper prayers before felling the tree,
And a wolf-witch,
A vargamore,
Appeared.
She transformed him into a wolf as punishment.
His wife mourned him for years,
Not knowing what had happened to her dear husband.
One Christmas Eve there arrived a beggar woman,
Poor and ragged at the cottage door.
The good wife gave her a kind welcome,
And shared food and wine with her before the fire.
As she left,
The beggar woman said that the wife may well see her husband again,
For he lived but walked the forest as a wolf.
The wife did not know what to think of this,
But continued her chores and went to her pantry to prepare the meat for Christmas Day.
When she turned to leave,
A wolf stood before her with sorrowful and hungry eyes.
If you were my husband,
We would be feasting on this meat tomorrow,
She said,
And in an instant the wolf's skin fell,
And her husband stood before her.
It was a blood-sucking bavanchy.
Four men had been hunting through the Scottish Highlands.
The weather icy.
And after a long day,
They were delighted to find a cosy bothy to shelter in.
So they tie up their horses and head inside,
Pleased to see a hearth stacked with wood ready to light a fire,
And four chairs waiting for them.
They settle in and share a wee dram of whisky,
And enjoy the warm fire as the cold winter night falls around them.
In high spirits,
They declare that the only thing that would make this night more pleasant would be for maidens to join them.
Not a moment after they say this,
Four beautiful maidens tap at the door and ask to be let in,
Saying they had become lost in the winter wilderness.
They dance and sing,
Entrancing the men,
But one of the men longs for his dear wife and is more reticent.
He pauses just long enough to hear the scuffing of hooves and see a drop of blood splash upon the floor.
He knows now what these creatures are,
And he bolts for the door.
He seeks refuge amongst the horses and their iron-shod hooves.
And the fourth Bavanshi watches the last man all long winter's night,
But cannot get close,
While her three sisters are having a jolly time inside the bothy.
And when daylight breaks,
All four maidens are gone,
Back into the winter wilds.
Finally able to return to the bothy,
The last man finds his three companions with their necks and bellies cut open by sharp nails and their innards devoured by the ferocious teeth of the Bavanshi.
The Red Deer of the Mountains of Scotland were known as the cattle of the Kaliak,
A crone goddess who brings forth winter and the dark half of the year.
The Kaliak has many embodiments,
Including the tetris of wild things,
And is a deer goddess tending her herds of deer in Glen Nevis.
And some say that the Kaliak,
The Celtic queen of winter,
Carries a blackthorn stick,
And the crone goddess moves across winter mountains,
Driving and safeguarding her beloved herds of wild cattle and deer with her blackthorn staff.
If the winter goddess is slow to depart in spring,
And cold weather is still present when the blackthorn is flowering,
That is known as a blackthorn winter.
Folk names for blackthorn include slow plum,
Wishing thorn,
Mother of the woods,
And dark crone of the woods.
In Irish mythology,
A blackthorn tree was home to fairies.
If you cut one down,
They could wreak havoc upon you.
And there is a beautiful story of the Lunar She,
Moon fairies who inhabit and guard the blackthorns of Ireland.
The dark fruit of the blackthorn,
Known as slows,
Are the sweetest,
Harvested after a frost,
And the best time to harvest slows is on the full moon nights of midwinter.
For this,
On the most frosted of full moon nights,
Is when the Lunar She fairies have left the tree to visit the moon goddess.
Wishing you all a festive and ferociously fun winter season.
Thank you for joining me.
May you always find magic in the wildwood and beyond.
