BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhD)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Well, my snail-raising endeavor ended in unexpected tragedy. Although I was worried that the eggs weren’t fertilized (they were), that they would dry out (they didn’t) or that the hatchlings would get washed away during a water change under my ever-neglectful eye (I broke the egg mass myself, so there was no danger of that), I somehow managed to get a bunch of baby snails, each half the size of a pea (this is more a testament to their hardiness than to my skills in animal husbandry). So I put them in this little plastic container, the kind that salads and such come in when you order food, and went on my merry way to get some algal food for them, but I then got waylaid by a few projects and papers to read, forgetting in the process that it was Friday. That’s when rooms are cleaned in my dorm, so during my absence, the cleaning crew came in and thought that the snail bowl was trash, and out went the babies. Thus ended this chapter of the snail saga…but apple snails can lay multiple clutches in short order, so I can at least remain hopeful for more snaillings that are not destined for an ignominious death in a trash can.
In any case, let’s talk about folktales—anyone who has read the classics knows that they can get surprisingly gory, but sometimes they also get surprisingly strange. Here’s a look at a couple.
Bisclavret, a French lay that I’ve briefly mentioned before, concerns the fate of the eponymous knight, whose name means werewolf, which is also what he is. His wife does not know of his condition, however, and unfortunately for him, she’s appalled when she finds out (should’ve thought of that before marrying someone who is called, literally, Baron Werewolf). Bisclavret also has one glaring weakness: like selkies and swan maidens, he’s one of those shapeshifters who must store their other skin in order to transform back, so when he becomes a wolf and leaves for the night, his wife takes the opportunity to hide his human clothes and marries another knight while the poor man is stuck in his wolf form (this is a reversal of the typical state of affairs, since transformation usually requires the animal skin rather than human garments). Good fortune strikes, however, when Bisclavret finds the king and has the opportunity to prove his intelligence to him, and when he meets his wife’s new husband at a courtly celebration and gets to maul him real good. The king then figures that something’s a little off with his new wolf companion and orders a search of the knight’s house, where Bisclavret both reunites with his clothes and bites his unfaithful wife’s nose clean off, proving once and for all that cheating on your spouse is a very bad idea if that spouse also happens to be a werewolf.
Ainsel, a fairy tale, begins with a disobedient boy who refuses to go to bed on time, despite his mother warning him that a bed is the safest place to be at night, and that he’ll get spirited away by fairies if he doesn’t go to sleep. And sure enough, he soon meets a fairy in his room, but she seems benign and plays with him, animating lumps of ash into animals, trees and even people. He asks who she is, and gets “Ainsel” for an answer, and when asked back, he replies, “Just my own self, too.” This quickly becomes important when he pokes the chimney fire out of boredom (sapient ash golems evidently weren’t entertaining enough), causing cinders to fall on the fairy—whereupon her voice rises to a terrifying roar, and her fairy-mother calls from the chimney to ask who hurt her precious daughter, only to hear the answer, “It was ‘just my own self.’” She chides her child for making a ruckus over nothing…and then a long arm comes out of the chimney and drags her back into it. Realizing what he narrowly avoided and now successfully traumatized for life, the boy thereafter goes to bed right on the dot every night, while his mother and the fairy-mother presumably high-five each other for a job well done (I mean, it’s pretty obvious that those two were in cahoots to teach both kids a lesson).
The tale of the Lambton Worm is a local legend from northeast England about a man who skips church service to go fishing, and ends up hooking what he believes to be Satan. No, really. The alleged Old Nick is then unceremoniously dumped into a well and forgotten for years; surprising absolutely no one, the creature grows into a massive lamprey-dragon and begins terrorizing the countryside, being appeased only by a daily offering of milk (I’m reminded of the stories of Illuyanka and Yamata-no-Orochi—offering drink to a giant snake seems to be a rather common motif). Unfortunately for the devil-worm, the man who fished him out soon returns for revenge, having learned from a local wise woman that the beast can be slain by donning spiny armor and engaging it in a river—the creature has the ability to recover from any injury by reattaching its body parts, but the water will carry away its sections before it has time to do so. The worm is then dispatched without incident, but still keeps one last trick up its sleeve: its slayer must kill the first creature it sees after the deed, or be cursed for nine generations. The man arranges for his father to release a dog in advance of his approach so he may kill it and thus avoid this fate, but the older man forgets to do so and meets his son immediately after the battle, inadvertently forcing him to assume the burden of the curse.
The curse for those affected is to “not die in their beds,” so it isn’t really that bad, at least as far as curses go (Math fab Mathonwy’s spell on Gwydion and Gilfaethwy remains the most terrifying curse I’m aware of). Still, the star of that story is clearly the giant, tree-wielding (the Lambton Worm can uproot trees and swing them around with its tail) demon lamprey, which is what Eelektross should’ve been all along.