Category Archives: Mythology

Holy Week Folklore

Posted on by
Reply

A detail showing Christ and the two theives on their crosses from “The Crucifixion” by Cranach the Elder (woodcut from approx. 1500-1504)

Holy Week, the days between Palm Sunday and Easter, is one of the most important and busiest times of the year in traditional European societies. Everyone is busy baking and cleaning and preparing for the great festival. There are many church services, especially at the end of the week on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

One of the more fascinating or frightening folktales of Holy Week tells us that in Prague and the Czech countryside, underground vaults, caves, and holes that contain hidden treasure will open up shine with a faint light as the Passion is chanted in church. A treasure-seeker can go outside church then and see these places and mark them to come back later. Or, if the treasure-seeker can’t wait to get rich, he can go inside the caves right then but he must get out before the last verse of the Passion reading is complete as the vault or cave will shut when the reading is complete and the treasure-seeker will be trapped inside until the next year.

In Russia, the tale is told that anyone who dies on Good Friday will be ushered directly into heaven just as the Good Thief was. (Many artists who painted depictions of the two thieves actually used the bodies of criminals who had been executed on the wheel as their models as no one was crucified any more; if you look closely, you can still see the thieves’ limbs twisted and bent in strange ways that don’t match descriptions of crucifixions because of their torture on the wheel.)

Much of the folklore associated with Holy Week involves protection of various sorts: To protect against the evil eye, wax from candles burned in church during the Holy Week services would be stuck to the heads of children or animals. Hanging a wreath on the door after sunset on Good Friday will protect the house against lightning. Hot cross buns baked on Good Friday and hung in the kitchen will protect against poverty and if they are hug over the bed, will protect against nightmares.

April 7: National Beer Day

Posted on by
Reply

Got hiccups? Plunge a dagger into a mug of beer and then drink it all in one breath. You’ll be cured!

National Beer Day celebrates the end of Prohibition with the Cullen-Harrison Act, which went into effect on April 7, 1933.

A thirsty public lined up outside breweries in 20 states and Washington, DC on April 6, or “New Beer’s Eve,” counting down until midnight. They purchased 1.5 million barrels and April 7 has unofficially been National Beer Day ever since.

Beer has a long history in folklore and mythology as well as US legal history. Aegir was primarily the Norse God of the Sea, but was also the brewer to the Gods of Asgard. He and his nine daughters (the billow maidens) brewed ale in a large pot given to Aegir by Thor. His association to brewing is most likely due to the foam on the ocean looking similar to the foamy head of an ale. Aegir was also a terrific host. The mugs in his house refilled themselves with more ale when you drained your cup so your never went thirsty. Albina was the goddess of white barley, which was used to make beer; one of the earliest names for the British Isles, Albion, is thought to come from her name. (Find out more gods and goddesses of beer here.)

St. Amand is the patron of bar staff, bartenders & beer merchants while St. Urban of Langres is the patron of coopers (barrel makers). St. Hildegard of Bingen protects hop-growers.

Beer is said to froth and bubble if an absent loved one is in danger. See? Never let a relative go drinking without you!

It is also said that if spilled beer runs toward you that good luck is coming your way which may be the source of the custom in some parts of Russia to pour beer over a groom’s horse at the wedding! But if you dream of beer, then trouble is on its way.

Don’t forget to celebrate beer on September 9 as well–since 2013, it’s been designated “International Buy a Priest a Beer Day!”

“Is fiction, which makes fact alive, fact too?”

Posted on by
Reply

Alexandra Cheira, a scholar of fairy tales and mythology at the University of Lisbon, recently presented a paper about the Come Hell or High Water trilogy at a conference. Her paper examines the relationship between historical fact and legend in the books; she uses the question Robert Browning asks in The Ring and the Book as the title for her paper (and I use it for the title of this post). Alexandra says that the interplay of fact and fairy tale in trilogy presents “a whole picture of the city, in which well-done research is matched by believable story-telling, so much so that the realistic narrative is interspersed by supernatural occurrences which do not strike even the most skeptical reader as out of character.”

She also writes that “the narrative structure is also well-balanced between realism and fantasy, with the description of the conferences, the delegates and the general camaraderie that accompanies them acting as a down-to-earth catalyst for the supernatural parts. The narrative tone is informed – but never lecturing – and the reader does actually learn a lot on a variety of subjects without realizing it.”

Alexandra concludes, “All in all, Morris has managed to create an urban-historical fantasy which pairs fiction and fact and brings to question what is real and what is imagined. ‘Fiction’ is an aid to ‘fact,’ something that can better a story, so that Morris’s ‘fictional facts’ do indeed ring true in the wider context of the novels.”

I am very happy that Alexandra chose to discuss Come Hell or High Water in her paper at the conference. As with all good critiques, she taught ME something about the books that I had not realized as I was writing them!