Beasts of Celtic Myth

So, coming all the way back home, Celtic myths, and how they're really much darker than just this guy on the front of the Lucky Charms box:

Kelpies

Kelpies and Morgens are very similar, both disguised as beautiful women in the water, both waiting for men to pass by so as to drown them in the lakes of Scotland and Ireland. Neither is what they seem to be. There are some really big differences though, like how Morgens are basically Sirens, whereas Kelpies are actually horses.They can be differentiated from the lost ponies they pretend to be by their constantly dripping manes. It had an either black or white hide, and the skin of a seal- smooth, but as cold as death if you touched it. They would change into their womanly form and hide underneath the water all but their eyes, and look around for men to lure in. In its horse form it would lure people, and children in particular, to ride it, but once they touched it's skin they couldn't pull their hand away no matter how hard they tried, and the water-horse would jump into the lake, swimming down to the bottom to eat its victims, leaving nothing but the heart or the liver.

The Banshee

The Banshee is known as an omen of death, and is found in folklore from all over the world, just with different names. This fairy woman would always be seen washing the blood-stained clothes of a person that was about to die. The Banshee originally was just a woman from the Otherworld keening at the deaths of people, but then the story seemed to twist over time into her having the ability to predict deaths. They are able to appear any age that they would like, and either breathtakingly beautiful or as a hideously ugly old woman. She also has the ability to take the form of a hooded crow, a weasel, a stoat, and a hare. Although, sometimes in stories, a woman that seemed to be a banshee turned out to actually be the Irish battle goddess, the Morrígan. The Banshee's screech has been described in different ways all across Ireland, and even as a "low, pleasant singing" in Kerry. 

How not to greet a Griffin

So this seemed pretty relevant

Norse Mythology

Coming slightly closer to home, these are some mythological beings from Norse legend, just because the Vikings and their lore are ever so entertaining

The Bergkonge

The Bergkonge, also known as the Mountain King, is a creature of lore that can assume the shape of a man wearing nothing but a cape made of leaves. He appears in the forests, seduces women who he finds alone, and brings them into the mountains with him. The women are never seen again. In its non-human form, the Bergkonge was said to have been monstrously huge, and kind of arachnid- or lizard-like, roaming in the forests and mountain ranges.

The Huldra

The Huldra is almost the female version of the Bergkonge, attracting men with her beautiful human form, long blonde hair, and crown of flowers. However, she also had a cow's tail, which made most men run in the opposite direction once they saw what was behind her. If you weren't fast enough and she caught you, the Huldra would take you up to the mountains and keep you captive up there until you agreed to marry her in a church of God. Once marrying her, she lost her tail, BUT she also turns into an incredibly ugly woman, which I find funny because it doesn't exactly take a mythical creature for that to happen sometimes.. But carrying on, in return for her being ugly, she would gain the strength of 10 men, so, quite useful.

The Troll

Trolls are kind of similar to ogres, but less aggressive, and mainly from Norway as opposed to England. There are different kinds of trolls though, some that looked like the ogres, and some that were smaller, more devious, and more human-looking. Often it was the ones that looked like the humans that were the most dangerous, although they usually live in the wilderness, in mounds, hills, caves, and mountainsides. Or the other kinds of trolls, the forest ones that like to hibernate near deep springs or rivers. Trolls were said to be temperamental, explaining the situation in the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, in which a troll refused to let a small family of hungry goats cross his bridge to eat some grass.

juuuust kidding. here, for real:

Myths in the Middle East

The first kind of monsters here are going to be those of legends in the Middle East, and some of the stories may seem surprising when you take the general landscape of the Middle East into consideration.

الغول  The Ghoul

What many people don't know is that ghouls originated in Arabian mythology, making their first appearances as a creature associated with graveyards and death, and counted as a member of the undead. Ghouls were known and feared because of their taste for human flesh. A ghoul is a desert-dwelling shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. However, in ancient Arabian folklore the Ghoul would dwell in burial grounds or other uninhabited areas. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, taking the form of the person most recently eaten.

بهموت‎   The Bahamut

Surprisingly enough, the Bahamut is not actually a creature conjured from the imaginations of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, but was a beast of the Arabian folkloric tales. This giant fish was said to have lived underneath the ground, acting as one of the Earth's layers and supporting the entire Earth. The monster was supposed to be "altered and magnified" to be so immense that no human could bear its sight. However they managed to learn about this creature without anyone ever having sight of it, I'm not entirely sure. BUT, point being, this was a huge fish (slightly unusual for people living in areas where the landscape is mostly desert) that was described as being so large that "all the seas of the world, placed in one of the fish's nostrils, would be like a mustard seed laid in the desert." This fish does have some variation though; in some stories it's been said to have the head of a hippo or elephant.

ساندوالكير The Sandwalker 

The Sandwalker is a beast out of Arabian folklore and as its name suggests, it spends most of its time in the desert (and were creatures that appeared in the movie Wrath of the Titans). They were said to favour a steady diet of camels and horses. Which makes sense, because camels are probably the tastiest thing in the desert anyway. They basically look like a really big scorpion, around the size of a horse, who were described to have the beak of an eagle, notoriously sharp claws and a menacing stinging tail that was loaded with poison. The good news is that the poison is fairly redundant because if you were impaled by the tail, there’s a good chance you would die of blood loss (or organ loss) before the poison had any time to really kick in. Worse than this is the fact that they only come out at night, when their black exoskeleton makes them almost invisible, and that they could hide themselves under the desert sands incredibly fast- all in all, not a creature you'd like to come across.

Getting Started

I'm Michelle, and this is my geography blog about creatures of myth in different cultures around the world. Depending on the geography of the place, cultures all developed differently, so did the stories of those cultures, and that's what I'm going to be looking at. It's something that's always interested me, so hopefully you'll enjoy reading about all the monsters I can find