Z is for Zoology, or, fantastical critters in fiction.
For the last post in this series, we will check out some of the unusual folk lore of mythical creatures to be found in fiction.
We’ll start with unicorns, those virgin-hunters who can be trapped by a pure maiden. Not necessarily a young girl - in Terry Pratchett’s Lords And Ladies, the elderly witch Granny Weatherwax is able to force the unicorn to come with her to be shod.
Unicorns vary from book to book. The unicorns in the Harry Potter books are the kind we think about first when we think of that word. They are beautiful, innocent beings which have blood that will bring you back from the brink of death, but which curses you because how dare you kill something so innocent and pure! They do prefer “the woman’s touch”, so Professor Grubbly-Plank, covering Hagrid’s class, gets the girls to come to the front.
On the other hand, there are the dangerous ones. The one in Lords And Ladies is running around the kingdom killing people on behalf of the evil Fairy Queen.
In Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers Of London novel, Broken Homes, the paranormal police Constable Peter Grant is investigating a case in the countryside when he encounters a unicorn which is huge, totally crazy and carnivorous. The fairies are around too, and they are not nice either. The unicorn is definitely not sweet, innocent or pure. It kills! I do recommend this series, by the way, it’s funny and touching and - did I say it was funny?
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| Arthur Rackham, Questing Beast: public Domain |
We first meet the Questing Beast, or “beast Glatisant”, in Malory’s Morte D’Arthure. Well, it’s where I first met it, anyway! It has the head and neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, haunches of a lion and feet of a hart. It makes a sound like “thirty couple of hounds questing.” I believe it’s to be found in a lot of Arthurian literature. In Malory, it’s the beast traditionally hunted by the family of King Pellinore. I assume they never catch it. It does eventually get caught, in Malory, by the Saracen knight Palomides.
T.H White writes it into his Arthurian novel The Once And Future King. In that novel, Pellinore is a comical character who isn’t really trying to kill the Beast; he just collects its fewmets(hard droppings). They have a relationship - the Questing Beast enjoys the hunt.
The Beast appeared in an episode of Lost In Space, along with a knight chasing it. When the knight finds out the Beast is female, he doesn’t want to continue, so the Beast, feeling sorry for him, teases him into hunting her again.
Dragons appear in so much fantasy fiction, it’s just too much for this post, so I will just note a few.
As you may know, dragons are different in the east and the west. In Asia, they are benign water beings which are respected. The only Asian dragon novel I have read is Tea With The Black Dragon by R.A MacAvoy. The Black Dragon of the title, Maryland Long, is in human shape for reasons explained later in the novel. He is a distinguished Chinese gentleman who works with the heroine, Martha Macnamara, a middle-aged woman who is a folk musician to find her daughter, who has gone missing. It’s a lovely, charming novel,well worth a read.
And then there are the other kind of dragons. You know - the fire breathing Western dragons. In tradition, they are not benign animals. They are connected to the devil. When St George kills the dragon and rescues the maiden, he is saving the Church. There are dragons which are symbols, such as the red and white dragons seen fighting in the story of young Merlin, which symbolise the British(red) and the Saxons(white).
Those do turn up in Arthurian fiction.
Terry Pratchett has dragons that only stay solid if you believe in them, in his first Discworld novel The Colour Of Magic. It’s not a good idea to stop believing while you are riding one in flight…
Mostly, though, there are the little swamp dragons, which are so fragile they can and often do, explode. They first appear in Guards!Guards!, the first novel in the City Watch series which features policeman Sam Vimes. Someone has been calling up a “noble dragon”, a much bigger variety which no longer lives on Discworld. It turns out not to be a good idea at all, as the dragon can’t be controlled. Sam visits Lady Sibyl Ramkin, who breeds, shows and sells swamp dragons. By the second novel, Sam marries her.
It’s a very funny story and be careful not to be drinking tea when reading it, as the laughs start on the first page.
The Gorgon is a being from Greek mythology we are all familiar with. She was a beautiful woman turned into a hideous creature with snakes for hair, turning people into stone if they come near. In the end, she is killed in her cave by Perseus, while minding her own business and asleep. It’s not even to protect a community, just to achieve a quest Perseus has been set by an evil king who wants to marry his mother and is getting him out if the way.
I have just started on a collection of Tanith Lee short stories The Gorgon: And Other Beastly Tales. The book’s title tells you all. Each story is about a fantastical being. The title story has a meeting on a Greek island with a mysterious masked woman. The reason for the cover up is not quite what you might think, but at the end, the narrator, a professional writer, does feel he has been turned to stone if not in the way you would expect from a Gorgon. I bought this in Apple Books, where it’s cheap.
In the anthology Mythic Resonance(in which I have a story) there is a story called “Through These Eyes I See” which is a twist on the story of Medusa. Mandy is a girl, living with her parents, who has a gift of healing - her look heals, not turns to stone. She has a room full of mirrors, which protect her, not those who come for healing. She is being used; the gift doesn’t help her. The book is available in Apple Books.
Australian author Simon Haynes wrote a very short piece in which, in modern times, the Gorgon has become a sculptress who takes men home and… well, you can guess what happens next!
Finally in this post, werewolves. The standard werewolf of folklore turns into a wolf at the full moon. Professor Lupin in Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban is that kind of werewolf. Once in wolf shape he can’t control himself, which is why the Whomping Willow and the Shrieking Shack are set up for his benefit while he is at school, before his friends work out a way to become animagi and join him in animal form. You can be turned into a werewolf by being bitten, as in folklore, and Remus Lupin was turned as a child by a nasty piece of work called Fenrir Greyback who specialises in turning children. I couldn’t help feeling, as I read, that it’s a symbol for pedophilia - and shuddering.
But many werewolf stories don’t bother with the full moon thing. In Petronius’s Satyricon, there is a story told about a werewolf who protects his clothes before simply changing, with a spell created by urinating in a ring around them. (I used that idea in my werewolf novel!). There are stories in Greek myth about men turning into wolves for several years before turning back.
Terry Pratchett’s character, Angua, a member of the City Watch, is a werewolf. You are born a werewolf in this series, and there are great werewolf clans in her country, Uberwald. It’s not possible to be turned. She is an aristocrat where she comes from, and not very fond of her family. Silver does affect her, though only in the sense of controlling her. A family member was born a wolf instead of human with shapechanging abilities, and killed by her family. A brother of Angua’s fled the family home and has done well, getting himself a job as a sheepdog.
Tanya Huff’s novel Blood Trail is one I found intriguing because it did something different with werewolves. There is a peaceful werewolf family with a farm. They aren’t just humans who can shapeshift, they are a pack of wolves in human form, so the brother and sister have to be separated from each other before they do something incestuous, not acceptable for humans.
A fascinating series, by the way, one I do recommend highly. It involves Vicki Nelson, a private investigator with an eye condition that forced her to leave the police force and makes working at night almost impossible. Her partner is Henry Fitzroy, the son of Henry VIII, who has lived for hundreds of years as a vampire, so he can work at night and needs help during the day. Henry makes a living as the author of bodice rippers. He doesn’t harm anyone, as he only needs a small amount of blood, which he takes from sexual partners who have no idea what he is doing!
I think I will leave it here, with a short reflection tomorrow. I’m going to catch up with visiting your blogs in the next day or two. I have been held up for various reasons, but I do want to read what you have done.
I hope you have enjoyed this set of posts as much as I have enjoyed sharing them with you! Thank you for following!
