A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Myths And Fairy Tales In Fiction - H Is For Hogfather And Harry Potter

 

Hogfather is Terry Pratchett’s Christmas novel. In it, Susan Sto Helit, Death’s granddaughter, must investigate the disappearance of the title character, the Discworld version of Santa Claus, while Death himself is covering for him, in order to keep belief in the Hogfather going among children. 

The Hogfather is pretty much a god in this world - you pray to him for gifts,  you offer him sacrifices in the form of drinks and cookies, he rewards you for good behaviour - of course he’s a god! And gods disappear when no one believes in them any more. So yes, Death - a lovable character in the Discworld - takes over the sleigh pulled by pigs, puts on the red robes and a fake beard and flies around to distribute gifts. In the course of the story he encounters Good King Wenceslas(he throws him out of the hut of the peasant who doesn’t want his offerings) and the Little Match Girl of Hans Christian Anderson’s story(he lifts her off the street and sends her to the City Watch station, demanding she be given a warm meal and a bed and throws snowballs at some angels who have turned up to take the dead child to heaven).

It not only has fun with the whole Christmas festival thing, it also messes around with all the mythological stuff, indicating that the Hogfather started as first a seasonal human sacrifice, then a shaman and finally the recognisable fat man in the red suit. If you’ve ever read Frazer’s Golden Bough or Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths, you’ll recognise it, though it probably has no connection with Santa Claus. On the other hand, there are so many different stories from around the world connected with that being, who knows? 

The Tooth Fairy is also a major part of this novel. Tooth fairies in general are ordinary young women doing a job, but what happens to all those teeth? We find out that they are being collected by the real Tooth Fairy to protect children from being affected by sympathetic magic. So, if you got hold of those teeth, you could, for example, stop them believing in the Hogfather…

Oh, and bogeymen are real on the Discworld. They even go to the pub when they aren’t hiding under children’s beds; Susan, who is a nanny, pulls them out from under her children’s beds and throws them out.

There is a very good telemovie of this, with a cameo role by Terry Pratchett in the last scene, as a toy maker.

H is also for Harry Potter. There is probably not much you don’t know about the Boy Who Lived and his adventures, but what about folk tale and mythology elements? 

While she does invent some of her magical creatures, there are many which are part of real world stories. 

Unicorns, of course, which appear in the first book and briefly in the fifth book, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, where they are the subject of a class in Care Of Magical Creatures(by a female teacher while Hagrid is absent). 

There are also Centaurs, from Greek mythology, who live in the Forbidden Forest in the school grounds. They have their own culture and don’t like dealing with humans(wizards). One who does, coming to the school as a teacher, is shunned by his fellow Centaurs. Astronomy is important to them. The Centaurs of Greek myth are mostly savage people, not too bright, although the wise Centaur Chiron was tutor and mentor to quite a few heroes. 

Dragons appear a number of times. They are pretty much European dragons, with fire connections, though one of them is called a Chinese Fireball. However, actual Chinese dragons, symbols of imperial power, are connected with rain rather than fire. Still, no reason not to play with the basic dragon. 

Buckbeak the hippogriff(Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) is based on a creature first introduced at the beginning of the 16th century by Ariosto in Orlando Furioso. They are a cross between a griffin and a mare, so have a body partly horse as well as an eagle’s head and wings. I don’t think there is anything about bowing to them, as in the novel. You can ride them, though, and sorcerers do.

The basilisk appears in the second novel, Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. It is a giant snake which travels through the school’s pipes and kills by its glance. It also has lethal venom in its fangs; by the final book, Hermione and Ron are able to enter the Chamber Of Secrets and grab the fangs from its skeleton to use in the battle against the Death Eaters. But in the second book the Chamber and its inhabitant are still very scary, and no wonder. 

The basilisk is first mentioned by Pliny the Elder in 79 CE. From this and later mentions, we learn that yes, the basilisk is every bit as lethal as in the Harry Potter books, but it’s nowhere near as big. It’s only about a foot long. When you think about it, that’s even more terrifying, to think something that small is so lethal. It can burn stuff. If you are stabbing it with a spear from horseback, it can kill you and the horse. Now, that is scary! 

Finally in this post, how about Fluffy the giant three-headed dog who guards the  vault with the Philosopher’s Stone in it? If you know even a little bit of Greek myth, you’ll recognise Fluffy as Cerberus, the three headed dog guarding the Underworld.

Only Hagrid could call a creature like this by such a cute name…