Fantasy Races and Bestiary

SIDHE

Ireland has two races, a visable race called the Celts and the invisible Faery People or the Sidhe.

It was from this time that the Gaelic gods received the name by which the peasantry know them to-day - Aes Sidhe, the "People of the Hills", or, more shortly, the Sidhe. Ever god, or fairy, is a Fer-Sidhe*, a "Man of the Hill"; and every goddess a Bean-Sidhe, a "Woman of the Hill", the banshee of popular legend. *Pronounced Far-shee

The Leanan Sidhe (Lan-awn-shee) is a faerie spirit of great beauty. She is known as both a blood-sucking vampire-like creature and the muse of poets. Those she inspires have brilliant, though short-lived carers. Even in death few who have felt her touch would trade their fate for any other.

The great Tuatha de Danann of Ireland flead to Tir Nan Og after their defeat by the Milesians, however those who remained in Ireland became the Daoine Sidhe. Side (Shee) is gaelic for 'people of the hills' Orriginally it referred to the mounds in which faeries lived, though it has now come to reffer to the inhabitants as well. With the introduction of christianity to Ireland, the Daoine Sidhe diminished in importance, and also shrank in size, from the gigantic Tuatha de Danann to that of more traditionally sized faeries. Their king is Finvarra, who like all of his clan is a skilled warrior. He is also fond of chess playing and womanizing. Despite the fact that his wife, Donagh, is one of the most beautiful women above or below the ground, he is known to abduct brides-to-be. Like the Seelie Court, the Daoine Sidhe, enjoy riding and are famous for their faerie steeds, which can carry a rider faster than the wind over land or water.

It was thought that at the feasts of Samhain and Beltaine (May 1st), supernatural events took place. Some believe Samhain is the time the fairy mounds open and the Sidhe--the fairies (pronounced "Shee")--swarm. Some believe the Sidhe are the spirits of the dead, others the Tuatha ("Too'ha")de Dannan. Nevertheless, it was a dangerous time to be abroad at night for fear of abduction by the Sidhe as they traveled around the countryside.

THE BANSHEE

For centuries the Banshees terrorized Ireland. Supernatural death messengers, they were Mna Sidhe, or Spirit Women. With the fierce western winds howling outside your house, if you heard her wail, you dared not look out of your window for fear of catching an awful glimpse of this ghostly creature combing her long black hair, announcing death or calling the house's very inhabitants to the grave.

The banshee , from ban (bean), a woman, and shee ( sidhe, a fairie), is an attendant fairy that follows the old families, and none but them, and wails before a death. Many have seen her as she goes wailing and clapping her hands. The keen (caoine), the funeral cry of the pesantry, is said to be an imitation of her cry. When more than one banshee is present, and they wail and sing in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one.

An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is the coach-a-bower (coiste-bodhar), an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan. It will go rumbling to your door, and if you open it, according to Croker, a basin of blood will be thrown in your face. These headless phantoms are found elsewhere than in Ireland. In 1807 two of the sentries stationed outside St. James's Park died of fright. A headless woman the upper part of her body naked, used to pass at midnight and scale the railings. After a time the sentries were stationed no longer at the haunted spot. In Norway the heads of corpses were cut off to make their ghosts feeble. Thus came into existence the Dullahans, perhaps; unless, indeed, they are descended from that Irish giant who swam across the Channel with his head in his teeth. -Ed. (from "A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore", Ed. W.B. Yeats)

UNICORNS

"Now I will believe that there are unicorns..."
--William Shakespeare; The Tempest

To this day, it is said, malicious animals poison this water after sundown, so that none can thereupon drink it. But early in the morning, as soon as the sun rises, a unicorn comes out of the ocean, dips his horn into the water to expel the venom from it so that the other animals may drink thereof during the day. This as I describe it, I saw it with my own eyes.
Johannes van Hesse of Utrecht
1389

"Then what is magic for ?" "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a Unicorn ?"
--Peter S. Beagle; The Last Unicorn

When God created the earth, he made a river which flowed from the Garden of Eden...
Then God told Adam to name the animals...
And the first animal he named was the unicorn.
When the Lord heard the name Adam had spoken, he reached down and touched the tip of the single horn growing from the animal's forehead.
From that moment on, the unicorn was elevated above other beasts.

Nancy Hathaway

"Once, long ago, before there was such a thing as time, the world was shrouded in darkness. Then came the splendor of light, bringing life and love into the Universe, and the Lord of Darkness retreated deep into the shadows of Earth, ploting his return to power . . . by banishing light forever. But precious light is protected, harbored in the souls of Unicorns, the most mystical of all creatures. Unicorns are safe from the Lord of Darkness, they can only be found by the purest of mortals . . .

Such a mortal is Jack, who lives in solitude with the animals of the forest. A beautiful girl named Lily loves Jack with all her heart. In their innocence they believe only goodness exists in the world. Together they will learn there can be no good without evil . . . no love without hate . . . no heaven without hell . . . no light without darkness. The harmony of the Universe depends upon an enternal balance. Out of the struggle to maintain this balance comes the birth of Legends." --From the movie "Legend"

SIRENS

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me."
--T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

He listened in thrall to the song of the siren,
Her voice like a star as it flew through the air.
He drowned in her eyes as she called him to follow,
And likened the sun to the gold of her hair.

She swept up her arms and held him close to her,
Her soft lips caressing the lines on his brow.
He could not resist her, a magic had trapped him,
And nothing could save him, for she had him now.

She pulled him down with her into the clear water,
He gasped as death started the grip on his soul.
His life ebbed away as she dragged him still further,
And laughed when she saw she'd accomplished her goal.

-Charlotte Lester

THE MER

SELKIES

I am a man upon the land I am a selkie on the sea

The legend of the selchie is found along the shores of Britain and Eire; there are selchie stories from Cornwall, Ireland, and most particularly the northern islands off Scotland: the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Hebrides.

The seal-folk of Scotland and Ireland, variously called selchies, selkies, silkies, or roanes, have a habit of swimming out of the mists of Faery and landing on the shores of reality.

The great seal, the grey seal, the crested seal and others, are called the selkie folk because it is believed that their natural form is human. That they live in an underwater world or on lonely skerries and put on seal-skins and the appearance of seals to enable them to pass through the waters from one region of air to another. The human-like quality of their cries and their human eyes only reinforces this belief. The smaller, more common seals are generally not said to be selkies; only with their larger brethren is there a question about what is real and what is part of the Dreaming.

"When angels fell, some fell on the land, some on the sea. The former are the faeries and the latter were often said to be the seals."
Anonymous Orcadian

Unlike other merfolk, selchies can shed their seal-skins on the land and pass for humans, usually with tragic consequences. The female Selkie is able to shed her seal skin and walk among humans as a beautiful woman, although doing so is risky, for if a human male finds her skin, she may be forced to become his wife. The marriage may become short lived, however , in that if she ever finds the skin, she will immediately return to her ocean home. Male Selkies are said to cause storms at sea, presumably to protect and avenge the slaughter of seals.

Selkies of the Seelie court are sometimes, in the oldest legends, referred to as roane. Roane tend to be mild and innocent, bearing little resentment against mortals in general and being steadfastly loyal. A legend often told, The Selkie that Deud No' Forget, tells of a fisherman who came upon a roane giving birth to her pups upon a rocky shore one night. He would have stolen the pups to sell their skins but he could not bear the human anguish with which their seal mother cried so he relented. Forty years later that same roane mother saved his life when he was cut off from land and set afloat by the rising tide.

Selkies of the Unseelie court, though, are not so soft-hearted as their brethren. Such fae have avenged the death of their kin by raising storms and sinking the boats of seal-catchers. In another tale, an islander who made his living by the killing of seals was confronted by a stranger on horseback offering to buy a large number of skins. Hoping to make a good sale, the seal-hunter mounted behind him and was carried away at a wild gallop which ended on a precipice overlooking the sea. There his strange companion grasped him and plunged with him into the waters. Down they went, and down, till at length they reached the abode of the selkie folk. Here he was made to heal the stranger's father, a seal whom the hunter had wounded that morning. Only after swearing never to slay a seal again was the man given a safe conduct home.

In the old tales, it is often said that a Selkie can only take human form on certain nights in the year. Midsummer's eve. All Hallows. But the world makes up its stories for things they cannot understand; Selkies were most often seen as humans on these days because they are more likely to come to the water's edge for their festivals and these are festival nights for all of the fae. Even in the time before the sundering selkies did not keep themselves totally apart from mortal folk. Male selkies were thought to have had many trysts with women, both married and unmarried. Selkie men tend to be quite handsome and charming with almost magical seductive powers over mortal women. The oldest tales suggest that to call a selkie man, a mortal woman need simply shed seven tears or seven drops of blood into the sea at high tide. Many a woman was left forlorn and with child when her lover returned to the sea; and return he always did for the sea is his true home. After a seven year wait, selkies often returned to claim their children, sometimes callously offering a nurse's fee to the mother for caring for her own child. Sometimes these tales end in tragedy with the woman's mortal husband killing the selkie child he helped raise, mistaking it for a seal. And, if the selkie men are attractive in the eyes of mortal women, selkie maids are no less charming in the estimation of men. More than a few young men either trick or try to steal a selkie-girl's seal skin and force the beautiful maiden to marry them, eventually siring children. These tales usually end sadly, though, for the pull of the sea on a selkie is relentless. Sometimes it is the children who return her skin to her, freeing her to return to her ancestral home, often taking them with her.

Selkie kinain are often known as the 'Sliocha nan Ron' or 'Sliechd nan Ron', meaning children or offspring of the seals. They are believed to be under the enchantment of the selkies and to carry the seal blood within them. An example of one such family are the MacCodrums of North Uist in the Western Islands. Fae blood runs thinly, though, and without consistency. However, it is said that some of these kinain can, in fact, take on the form of a seal with the proper magic. But, not being true changelings, once they have done so they can no longer return to live on the dry land. Often in the Hebrides local people have heard strange, sorrowful music out at sea that would move them deeply. This is the 'Dan nan Ron', the song of the seals, which was greatly feared for it was sung by both selkies and their kinain who had given up mortal form for the watery depths.

Awakening to the Dreaming for a selkie changeling is most often spurred by the discovery of their seal skin. All selkies have a skin although the manner in which that skin comes to them can be as different as the sources of the four winds. Some, born into the Sliocha nan Ron, may actually be birthed with the skin which their parents hide and care for until their child is ready for the wonders of their Chrysalis. For others, the skin may be part of a legacy stretching back centuries, having come into the family through some great magic for the day this child would be born. Selkie skins are individual; the discovery of a skin is not like the discovery of a treasured book or chimerical item, magically transforming any mortal who finds it into a changeling. Each skin is intended for a single changeling, no matter how that skin was found or what its origins are, and it is part of the magic of Glamour that each skin eventually finds its owner. Perhaps it is the failure of this process that accounts for the scarcity of selkie folk in the modern age.

KELPIES

In Gaelic folklore the most well known mythological animal is the kelpie, or water horse (each uisge). Kelpies were normally considered to be the guardian spirits of certain rivers, lochs and pools. Today we still speak of 'mares' tails' to describe the foaming white waves on the sea. Kelpies were once seen quite regularly by humans, who usually described such a being as a black, wild eyed horse that haunts fords and pools. An unsuspecting traveler that came upon it would make the fatal mistake of mounting the friendly and docile animal. No sooner had they done so, when the kelpie would take off at an alarming speed, hurling itself straight into the depths of the nearby loch.

[Origin: Dalriada Celtic Heritage Society, Isle of Arran]

Kelpies are guardians of rivers and lakes. They can shift between human looking and a horse with fins around the hoof area. When a human is attracted to them and enters their presence, usually that person has disturbing problems in their life. When a Kelpie is touched it can hold onto the person like they are stuck with glue. Once a Kelpie has a person they will take them under the water where they will be forced to face their darkest fears. After this experience the Kelpie will release the person and swim away.

CENTAURS

The Centaurs were demi-gods who taught heroes how to ride and use bows and arrows. Trusted as wise advisors, they were patient and brave but often drank too much. They had the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse.

Greek centaurs were said to be the descendents of Centauros, a son of Ixion and a cloud. Ixion had tried to seduce the goddess Hera but she escaped by giving the cloud her form temporarily while she escaped. Centauros later mated with a mare to produce the first centaur.

They lived in the mountains of Thessaly and Arcadia. Often they were depicted drawing the chariot of Dionysus or being ridden by Eros. These associations occurred because the centaurs were slaves of their animal sides. With two exceptions they are depicted as wild, lawless and inhospitable.

While some people explain them as spirits of mountain torrents, winds or similar they may also be the result of a folk memory of some savage tribe who's neighbours believed to be half-beast. In myth contests with the centaurs appear to symbolize struggles between 'barbarism' and civilization.