Athough I`ve been interested in myths and legends for most of my reading life...they were for decades after all the cornerstone of virtually ALL children`s literature and thus our predeliction for them is shaped early ;-)...it`s a more modern set of myths I`m presently interested in...the "silver airships" scare that swept the U.S in the 19th century in the few decades before dirigible lighter-than-air flight I.E. REAL airships
I remember a wacky theory that these were dragons with shining silver scales. Can't recall where, but it wasn't very convincing.
Re: your comment about the rapidity with which stories make it to the internet - I agree. That's also to say nothing of the modern phenomena of completely internet-based myths. A plethora of images have been photoshopped and caused a stir on the 'net (in fact, wasn't "Hogzilla" one of them?!) as well as things like the "Ningen" (a Japanese water monster which seems to have originated as an internet hoax), Black Eyed Children and the legendary (and non existent) computer game "Killswitch". The internet has heralded a whole raft of legends, myths and stories of its own.
I remember a wacky theory that these were dragons with shining silver scales. Can't recall where, but it wasn't very convincing.
There WAS IIRC an element of Chinese dragon mythology about a couple of the isolated spottings...but only because they were in and around towns that had a significant Chinese population after the transcontinental rail gangs moved through Chinese coolies provided the labour in the great American railway boom in the way that Irish navvies did in the UK ;-) They seeded quite large communities at towns that acted as temporary depots for the railway construction projects...which didn't up-sticks when the rail gangs moved out of reach...
Unfortunately, another typical phenomenon of the late 19th century West was a wave of really quite nasty xenophobia that saw these Chinese communities run out of town after town, complete with rioting, tar and feathering etc.
If you remember it, there was quite a marked strain of this early American xenophobia against the Chinese written into the old Kung Fu series with David Carradine.
Anyway - some of the sightings were attributed to "dragons" by nearby Chinese communities...but then they started being seen ALL across the country, in groups/clusters that were often several years apart
Spring Heeled Jack is a cracker, the Loch Ness Monster (a large sturgeon or Greenland shark briefly visiting the Loch), all the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, British myths - especially King Arthur, sea monsters (probably sightings of Architeuthis, Mesonychoteuthis, Oarfish, etc), the list is endless.
Not a myth as such but the identity of the Whitechapel murderer is also a conundrum and new suspects are always coimng up.
Spring Heeled Jack is a cracker, the Loch Ness Monster (a large sturgeon or Greenland shark briefly visiting the Loch), all the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, British myths - especially King Arthur, sea monsters (probably sightings of Architeuthis, Mesonychoteuthis, Oarfish, etc), the list is endless.
Not a myth as such but the identity of the Whitechapel murderer is also a conundrum and new suspects are always coimng up.
But we will probably never know.
There was a TV show which claimed a Greenland shark was responsible for Nessie but a Greenland shark would be dead within minutes of getting into Loch Ness (even if it could overcome the shallows of the River Ness). It was a very weird programme - the presenter was a marine biolologist, I believe, and *had* to know that his suggestion was completely impossible (not even just implausible). A sturgeon, though, could have got in and fooled folk.
There was a TV show which claimed a Greenland shark was responsible for Nessie but a Greenland shark would be dead within minutes of getting into Loch Ness (even if it could overcome the shallows of the River Ness). It was a very weird programme - the presenter was a marine biolologist, I believe, and *had* to know that his suggestion was completely impossible (not even just implausible). A sturgeon, though, could have got in and fooled folk.
I know but the perhaps the sharks great mass could have very briefly protected it from death by osmosis.
However I agree that it is highly unlikely to say the least.
There`s also the 18th and 19th century timelag before someone with access to "letters" sets it down in print ;-) Tales like Jack The Ripper and Spring Heeled Jack would be on DS and across the Internet days before they broke through to the television news channels nowadays, I`ve noticed it recently with a good half dozen minor news stories that were being discussed here before news editors picked up on them. Today, someone like Captain Swing would have a dozen "manifesto" vids on Youtube before lifting a hammer...
So we`re talking abut an indefinable time threshold before some of these more recent folktales and myths achieved the momentum to make it into print...and thus into the 19th century "broadcast media" I.E. newspapers Modern historiographers and researchers can trace these tales further back into their social development - but this ability ...and sometimes the desire to...was often missing in previous centuries. When urban populations were closer to their rural origins, myths and folktales were taken far more at face value ;-) Foreshortened horizons an` all that...you lived within the social boundaries around you, incuding folklore and myth, you didn`t question them as much as we do now.
You're right there, Phylo. A few years ago I was looking for something else entirely in a database of nineteenth century newspapers, and came across a case of a young woman who was having all kinds of (clearly hysterical) 'psychic' happenings and I realised it was very similar to the much later story of the Fox sisters. Essentially, all the paraphernalia and reported events of that kind of early spiritualism, but transplanted a few decades earlier. Sometimes these things take time to get momentum.
I overheard some kids telling my sons a bit of local folklore once when I moved home to Yorkshire after many years away and briefly lived in the village where I grew up - a story I'd grown up with. And in the intervening 40 years the story (a standard 'White Lady' at a well/spring) was word for word the same.
When I was a kid some of our teachers came from other places and didn't know the local lore. I vividly remember going on a 'nature walk' in the late 1960s when at junior school and the teacher told me off and told me I couldn't possibly be right when I told he the name of the lane we were on, and some landmarks. None of the names I knew were on the maps. They were the old field names we grew up with - and I'm willing to bet if there was an old tithe map - you'd find them. Although they had changed in the intervening years and were now different on maps and sign posts. But us kids all knew them.
Reminds me of a 'story' we studied in English class one day, about the animal prints in the snow on the roof of a house in Southern England. Very very strange prints indeed. Nobody could work out what they were from. Can't remember the exact story though
Reminds me of a 'story' we studied in English class one day, about the animal prints in the snow on the roof of a house in Southern England. Very very strange prints indeed. Nobody could work out what they were from. Can't remember the exact story though
Is that the one I posted above? The Devil's Footsteps?
The Children of Lir was the one I remember most from my playschool,/primary school days and is marked with a sculpture in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, it symbolises the rebirth of the Irish nation after 900 years.
I had the proper version in a first posting...then the webpage expired as I was looking for the pics and I couldn't be arsed cutting and pasting it again!
I had the proper version in a first posting...then the webpage expired as I was looking for the pics and I couldn't be arsed cutting and pasting it again!
...the legend of the little old lady with the hot sweet tea!
Every motorcyclist of a few years' standing meets this fearsome demon on the road - it can be by day or by nght, there can be a crowd of other people there, or it can be some "lost desert highway"...but if he/she falls off his bike, sooner or later at one of these painful events the little old lady with the hot sweet tea will appear! You can be literally MILES from the nearest house, in the middle of the night...and yet there she'll be complete with pinafore apron and fluffy slippers And a cup of hot sweet tea....on a tray with a teapot!
I've met her - years ago it was, my second ever get-off....and I was picking my bike up about 30 seconds after falling off it on a wet greasy corner on a country road. And she appeared, complete with cup of tea....But I said I was all right, and rode on...
A few days later I was on the same stretch of road, at the same corner...and I discovered the only building for a mile in either direction was a garden centre! CLOSED at the time of summer evening I had my accident... No houses anywhere nearby, let alone ones with roses and slightly too-long grass that would house any possible OAP....!
...the legend of the little old lady with the hot sweet tea!
Every motorcyclist of a few years' standing meets this fearsome demon on the road - it can be by day or by nght, there can be a crowd of other people there, or it can be some "lost desert highway"...but if he/she falls off his bike, sooner or later at one of these painful events the little old lady with the hot sweet tea will appear! You can be literally MILES from the nearest house, in the middle of the night...and yet there she'll be complete with pinafore apron and fluffy slippers And a cup of hot sweet tea....on a tray with a teapot!
I've met her - years ago it was, my second ever get-off....and I was picking my bike up about 30 seconds after falling off it on a wet greasy corner on a country road. And she appeared, complete with cup of tea....But I said I was all right, and rode on...
A few days later I was on the same stretch of road, at the same corner...and I discovered the only building for a mile in either direction was a garden centre! CLOSED at the time of summer evening I had my accident... No houses anywhere nearby, let alone ones with roses and slightly too-long grass that would house any possible OAP....!
Is this just a NI thing then or what? father used to be big into bikes and the brother still is - never mentioned anything about a old wan giving out free tea as far as I can remember
I visited Loch Ness recently, within four seconds I saw a truly amazing sight, a huge serpentine form roared out of the water!
It must have been 100 metres long long glowed a bright luminus green and had twelve heads spitting fire. When it crashed back into the water it created a small Tsunami from which I was very lucky to escape alive.
But when I told people they seemed to be very sceptical.
As for Greek stories, I like the one where one God was kicked out for stealing fire and then tied to a rock, then some birds came along and ate his insides. Since he was immortal, he'd come back to life after they've eaten him, his insides regrown to be eaten by the same birds the next day.
Gory, but those are the ones that stick in your head.
Prometheus, but he wasn't a God, he was a Titan, an eagle (which was the symbol of Zeus) came and ate his liver every day Also credited with fashioning man from clay.
Going back to Hogzilla's black dogs, there's supposed to be a talking one up the road from us which hangs around/haunts a ruin known locally as John o'Gaunt's hunting lodge at Dob Park.
There's also rumour of a passage way from the lodge down to Otley Parish Church (which is about four miles as the crow flies).
Comments
I remember a wacky theory that these were dragons with shining silver scales. Can't recall where, but it wasn't very convincing.
Re: your comment about the rapidity with which stories make it to the internet - I agree. That's also to say nothing of the modern phenomena of completely internet-based myths. A plethora of images have been photoshopped and caused a stir on the 'net (in fact, wasn't "Hogzilla" one of them?!) as well as things like the "Ningen" (a Japanese water monster which seems to have originated as an internet hoax), Black Eyed Children and the legendary (and non existent) computer game "Killswitch". The internet has heralded a whole raft of legends, myths and stories of its own.
Sadly, someone essentially did.
Outside of that my favourites are Spring-Heeled Jack (mentioned earlier)
The Grinning Man (this is maybe more of a mystery but eh
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/05/the-grinning-man-alien-apparition-or-mib/
and the Devil's Footsteps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Footprints
There WAS IIRC an element of Chinese dragon mythology about a couple of the isolated spottings...but only because they were in and around towns that had a significant Chinese population after the transcontinental rail gangs moved through
Unfortunately, another typical phenomenon of the late 19th century West was a wave of really quite nasty xenophobia that saw these Chinese communities run out of town after town, complete with rioting, tar and feathering etc.
If you remember it, there was quite a marked strain of this early American xenophobia against the Chinese written into the old Kung Fu series with David Carradine.
Anyway - some of the sightings were attributed to "dragons" by nearby Chinese communities...but then they started being seen ALL across the country, in groups/clusters that were often several years apart
The 'Boggart' was a new name for the big black dog myth for me when we moved up north:
http://peaklandheritage.org.uk/index.asp?peakkey=41200321
Spring Heeled Jack is a cracker, the Loch Ness Monster (a large sturgeon or Greenland shark briefly visiting the Loch), all the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, British myths - especially King Arthur, sea monsters (probably sightings of Architeuthis, Mesonychoteuthis, Oarfish, etc), the list is endless.
Not a myth as such but the identity of the Whitechapel murderer is also a conundrum and new suspects are always coimng up.
But we will probably never know.
Cheeky! ;-)
There was a TV show which claimed a Greenland shark was responsible for Nessie but a Greenland shark would be dead within minutes of getting into Loch Ness (even if it could overcome the shallows of the River Ness). It was a very weird programme - the presenter was a marine biolologist, I believe, and *had* to know that his suggestion was completely impossible (not even just implausible). A sturgeon, though, could have got in and fooled folk.
I know but the perhaps the sharks great mass could have very briefly protected it from death by osmosis.
However I agree that it is highly unlikely to say the least.
It's a sturgeon for me.
You're right there, Phylo. A few years ago I was looking for something else entirely in a database of nineteenth century newspapers, and came across a case of a young woman who was having all kinds of (clearly hysterical) 'psychic' happenings and I realised it was very similar to the much later story of the Fox sisters. Essentially, all the paraphernalia and reported events of that kind of early spiritualism, but transplanted a few decades earlier. Sometimes these things take time to get momentum.
I overheard some kids telling my sons a bit of local folklore once when I moved home to Yorkshire after many years away and briefly lived in the village where I grew up - a story I'd grown up with. And in the intervening 40 years the story (a standard 'White Lady' at a well/spring) was word for word the same.
When I was a kid some of our teachers came from other places and didn't know the local lore. I vividly remember going on a 'nature walk' in the late 1960s when at junior school and the teacher told me off and told me I couldn't possibly be right when I told he the name of the lane we were on, and some landmarks. None of the names I knew were on the maps. They were the old field names we grew up with - and I'm willing to bet if there was an old tithe map - you'd find them. Although they had changed in the intervening years and were now different on maps and sign posts. But us kids all knew them.
Is that the one I posted above? The Devil's Footsteps?
Quite possibly
thanks for drawing my attention to the link
Don't some people call their house that? A bit weird having learned a little bit about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Stewart#T.C3.ADr_na_n.C3.93g
Quite an astounding little corner of the estate, that brief entry doesn't do it justice at all...
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4076/4943588680_bdbcd024b2.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2608/3945709911_a8a9a8c0d0_m.jpg
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=image%2Fjpeg&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=MDT-Type&blobheadername3=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=inline%3B+filename%3D304%252F983%252Ftirnanog-aerial_thumb_460x0.jpg&blobheadervalue2=abinary%3B+charset%3DUTF-8&blobheadervalue3=image%2Fjpeg&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1349097583949&ssbinary=true
He's the man :-)
...the legend of the little old lady with the hot sweet tea!
Every motorcyclist of a few years' standing meets this fearsome demon on the road - it can be by day or by nght, there can be a crowd of other people there, or it can be some "lost desert highway"...but if he/she falls off his bike, sooner or later at one of these painful events the little old lady with the hot sweet tea will appear!
I've met her - years ago it was, my second ever get-off....and I was picking my bike up about 30 seconds after falling off it on a wet greasy corner on a country road. And she appeared, complete with cup of tea....But I said I was all right, and rode on...
A few days later I was on the same stretch of road, at the same corner...and I discovered the only building for a mile in either direction was a garden centre!
It must have been 100 metres long long glowed a bright luminus green and had twelve heads spitting fire. When it crashed back into the water it created a small Tsunami from which I was very lucky to escape alive.
But when I told people they seemed to be very sceptical.
Prometheus, but he wasn't a God, he was a Titan, an eagle (which was the symbol of Zeus) came and ate his liver every day
Going back to Hogzilla's black dogs, there's supposed to be a talking one up the road from us which hangs around/haunts a ruin known locally as John o'Gaunt's hunting lodge at Dob Park.
There's also rumour of a passage way from the lodge down to Otley Parish Church (which is about four miles as the crow flies).