Strange and obscure folklore and sayings relating animals

Unfortunately, I was too young back then to take notice...

 

Yes, it´s clearly pagan in origin (Christianity considers snakes evil). It falls within worthip of ancestors and belief in protective little demons and ghosts that live in house. People would try apease them by sacrifice of food or other items. Ancestors in ancient times were most often small statues of either old men or very young boys, kept on shelf or in niche in the most "saint" corner of each house (diagonal from oven), some rural parts in east Czech republic had this tradition alive up to 19th century.

In many cultures, people believe that their most former ancestors were certain animals who became humans or that wild animals or ghosts can take human shape on some occasions. In old Slavic folklore, it´s strictly the other way around. It´s humans who can turn (either after death or still alive) into real wild animals, mystic creatures, ghosts, trees or inanimate objects. They may behave good or bad, just like humans, they often will get magic powers. But they retain at least some of their past memories and inteligence. And that means you can soothe them, anger them and you can definitely barter with them, make promises of sacrifice to them in exchange for good outcome. Sacrifice (and divination) was central part of Slavic pagan beliefs, based on scarce literal resoures or some surviving rituals and beliefs. Christianity did go in length to uproot these pagan views, but they also often coopted some of the old rituals.

I know I´m out of original topic. But I wanted to show some example of ritual pagan sacrifice that survived here within Christian rituals, where people themselves don´t understand anymore the pagan origin and meaning of it. They perform it just because it´s folklore tradition and fun (ofcourse there is no real killing anymore at the end).

Hody (=feast) - this is traditional mass celebration that lasts at least 3 days and whole village will participate. Today, it is officialy a celebration of the patron of local Catholic church. However, most important part of it is a procession with music, and at the front of the procession is held a domestic animal, decorated by flowers, cloth or colorful ribbons. Most often a duck, geese or sheep. It ends with rituals called "beating of a duck" or "cutting a head of a sheep" and in the past, when animals were still killed, it was important to make their death long, painful and with lot of blood shed. It would be roasted and distributed among people, the meat was believed to have magic power. Blood was collected and used for divination.


Jízda králů (=ride of kings) - is sort of very similar celebration, but done only once every 4 years or so because it is expensive to organize. A pre-teen boy from the village is selected to be a king, he is dressed in festive girl's costume, put on horse and paraded through the village. He is surrounded by a group of young men also riding horses and protecting him (or preventing his escape) with sable in hand. He would have a rose in his mouth and is prohibited to speak. Groups of men from other villages would try to steal him (if they succeeded, it was great shame for his home village who had to pay ransom to get him back). Nobody knows the origin of this tradition, not locals, not researchers, it´s just tourist attraction now. But due to the clear pararels with animal sacrifice rituals, and proved sacrifice of children in old Slavs, this may be a last echo of such long forgotten religious practice.

 

The term "foxy lady" would be quite appropriate to use in Japan.

In Japanese folklore and particularly in "Yōkai" (supernatural tales) foxes were considered to be messengers of the "Kami" (divine) and associated with the "Inari Ōkami", a group of dieties in the indigenous Shinto religion.

Temples dedicated to the Inari in Japan like the famous Fushimi Inari-taisha of Kyoto often contain statues and shrines with striking fox statues and iconography.



The Inari were believed to send messengers in the form of foxes amongst the world of humans known as the "Kitsune" which translates as "fox".

The Kitsune are believed to be sly and wiley trickster type figures and to have the power to shapeshift into human form and cause mischief and discord in the world of humans (a bit like the coyote in Native American mythology and culture).

Kitsune were often believed to be malevolent entities that transformed themselves into beautiful women who seduced and tricked men feeding off their sexual energy before abandoning them to social disgrace.

However, there are stories which are more romantic and tragic in tone where a beautiful Kitsune becomes a devoted wife before being discovered by the man to be a fox spirit and disappearing back into the spirit world.

Source: "The Goblin Fox and Badger and Other Witch Animals of Japan", U.A. Casal, 1959.

 

You know, I think that this could be a pre-christian pagan belief that has survived and been culturally transmitted to the present day but one rooted in a biological rationality.

You mention that these snakes are beloved of small rural farming communities and historically these communities would have been dependent on crops such as barley and wheat for the staple food of bread.


What animal is the worst enemy of an agriculturalist trying to grow cereal grain crops ?

Rodents such as rats and mice of course.

Rural communities would have suffered from famines and starvation if crop fertility / production was adversely impacted by population boom cycles of rats or mice.

What biological control agents were available in the pre-synthetic factory mass produced poisons age ?

Snakes of course.

 

About Janas story about snakes: grass snake was considered beneficial in the household locally in rural Poland up to ca. early 20. century, and at least parts of Germany. It was also believed to drink milk from cow udders or milk offered on a saucer (of course, reptiles don't drink milk and cannot digest lactose). To my knowledge, there was no belief of snakes relation to human ancestors. There indeed seems to be a link to lingering pre-Christian beliefs.

Another myth was a snake king wearing a crown, which was variously considered helpful or evil. This can be explained by snake beginning to shed its skin.

Re: shapeshifting. People turned into animals were a widespread belief in Europe in medieval times. Usually such animal was not evil, a person was a victim of some magic, or was punished for his sins and seeked to redeem itself by helping people in the animal form. There are many tales about it.

 

Thanks for your comment @Jurek7 !

Really interesting regarding the folklore surrounding grass snakes in Poland.

Particularly because this kind of tradition would almost certainly have been seen as witchcraft in other areas of Europe (feeding animals as "familiars") and the people practicing it would likely have been persecuted and burned at the stake or drowned.

 

Yes, I think to some extent this might have happened @Jurek7 .

But I dont think it was the norm for shape shifting to be seen as beneficial or accepted (at least in Western Europe I am guessing) and particularly during the Medieval and Early Modern era where this was associated with witchcraft and werewolves.

Shapeshifting in agricultural societies (even to some extent within hunter-gatherer societies) is usually seen negatively as being a grave and terrifying transgression of liminal boundaries that separate man from animal and very taboo. It is usually greatly feared by people and those believed to practice it are persecuted.

Just like with "witches" there were a lot of trials of "werewolves" in Central Europe and particularly in Germany and France and a lot of people accussed of this were tortured and forced to confess to being lycanthropes and burned at the stake, boiled alive or hung, drawn and quartered.

In some cases this was just mass hysteria augmented by the church and religious authorities and the tragic cases of very unfortunate people who were caught up and accused of things that we now know to be totally absurd.

However, there was at least one case in Germany (Peter Stumpp) where the person may have been a serial killer and these acts were interpreted by the society of that time as being those of a "werewolf" rather than as we see it now as the crimes of a very sick and evil person.

 

During fieldwork in Indian communities in Oaxaca, Mexico my assistant saw a young boy tied to a tree by his foot. When she asked , the villager told her the boy had a nagual or animal spirit of a Jaguar or puma and that the child was dangerous until the nagual spirit would leave him. His grandfather had been an important brujo who also had a Jaguar nagual. The evangelical family I was staying with told me that the boy should be sent to their church so he could be exorcised to the expell the demon of brujería or witchcraft.

 

Thank you for your comment and sharing this @carlos55 !

I know that you are an anthropologist at the UNAM so this contribution of yours to the thread is really very interesting and very much appreciated.

I find this very interesting indeed as when I lived in Mexico I would often hear people talk about the nagual. It was very obvious that people in rural areas feared them and that some individuals I met in urban areas also firmly believed in it as a phenomenon.

I think that in many ways numerous prehispanic beliefs and traditions have survived the conquest of Mexico and up to the present day through a syncretism or at least a co-existance (often an uneasy one) with Roman-Catholicism.

I've always thought that this cultural survival is often a very beautiful thing and indeed I think it is one of the many things that makes Mexico such a unique country and culture. However, I know that it is far more nuanced than that and there are what many people would consider to be darker aspects of this too.

However, I think with the arrival of Evangelical missionaries to rural indigenous communities (throughout Latin America not just in Mexico and often with Afro-descendant communities too) these kind of beliefs are less likely to survive cultural erosion as people from those communities are converted in ever increasing numbers.

From what I have observed in Latin America the Evangelical churches often (I cannot generalize and say all of them do though) practice a very austere, alien and really quite fanatical religious "school of thought" which can interpret everything not seen through a very narrow prism as a threat to faith that must be stamped out.

 

While the barbirusa may not be crowd pullers in zoos or attract very much attention from disinterested visitors these animals have always been deeply significant to people in South-East Asia.

The barbirusa perhaps due to its strange and somewhat sinister appearance is the subject of many indigenous folk stories in Sulawesi.

Some ethnic groups in the region believe that the world once sat on the back of a giant barbirusa. The pig felt an itch in its back and began to rub itself against a palm tree to relieve the itch which caused an earthquake which created the current world.

However, the most curious tale told is that they use their strange tusks to hang from the branches of trees in the forests at night presumably to avoid predators and human hunters.

One of the earliest cave paintings by humans dates from 35 thousand years ago was recently discovered in Sulawesi and portrays a barbirusa.

This shows that these curious animals have been imbued with meaning (though we obviously don't know what this was in prehistory) in their native South-East Asia since the time that humans first arrived in the region in prehistoric times.

Sources : Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia, Aubert et al, 2014 (Journal: Nature).

 

In Central and North-Eastern Madagascar there is a curious "fady" taboo that exists amongst the Sihanaka ethnic group.

The hunting and consumption of the meat of the hedgehog tenrec and the lowland streaked tenrec is strictly forbidden within Sihanaka culture.

This taboo exists because tribal legends and myth state that these animals historically protected the ancestors of the Sihanaka in ancient times from dangers such as natural disasters and war.

Such strong and entrenched cultural beliefs that prevent the hunting of these spiky small mammals for bushmeat may be beneficial for their conservation in this region of Madagascar.

Source: A systemic review of resource habitat taboos and human health outcomes in the context of global environmental change, Alexander Angsongna et al, 2016 (Journal : Global Bio-Ethics).

 

It's a pity that some of the fady no longer exist. In the past, the fady prevented people from killing certain species of lemurs.

 

Oh I totally agree @Dassie rat, I think the cultural erosion of many fady can have devastating consequences for conservation of biodiversity in Madagascar.

 

This is a fascinating yet disturbing comment @Jana

But I think that human and animal sacrifice have always historically been common traditions and rites of worship in all human cultures across the world.

We in modern times mostly view these things with horror but we have to acknowledge that at some point in history / pre-history our ancestors would have practiced these kinds of rituals and conceived of it as something holy and divine to appease the gods.

 

I think we discussed earlier: people worldwide reasonably often have beliefs that some harmless animal is poisonous or venomous. The species is always rather rare. So such beliefs persist, because avoiding the animal is easy and checking beliefs carries a possibly big risk. So there was a belief not to touch a toad in medieval Europe, belief that chameleons are dangerous in Madagascar, belief that the garden lizard Calotes versicolor is venomous in modern Sri Lanka, etc.

 

Yes, I think this is often a tendency in folklore worldwide and I think and you are right that these are animals that are typically seldom encountered by people.

I can't remember any other examples of this right off the top of my head at the moment but I know that there are lots of these out there.

 

In the US (and maybe elsewhere) it is an extremely common belief that harvestmen (AKA daddy longlegs) are "the most poisonous spider in the world but their fangs are too small to bite a human". I have no idea where this came from but it is just so wrong on so many levels.

 

Ah, but how do you know it is wrong ?

 

Well first of all, they aren't spiders and biting has nothing to do with being poisonous. So even if they were venomous it would still be wrong on two levels.

 

I know, lol, just messing around