#english mythology

[therealcalicali]

Excalibur, 1981

[eirene]

Merlin Presenting The Future King Arthur, 1873

Emil Lauffer

[ladyvictoriart]

Brutus the Trojan, exiled from Italy, sailed to Albion and slaughtered the giants living there. It is said the island was renamed 'Britain' after him.

[birdsofrhiannon]

Andraste by Anita Inverarity 

[chalkskyline]

Uffington White Horse, a hill in England, Oxfordshire, U.K., August 2024

[alraunedrow]

Pixie and Imp

🌿New slight redesign of MGE 🌿

I'm alive and my challenge isn't done💪💪💪

[stylized-corpse]

Finished reading the classic Old English / Germanic epic poem ‘Beowulf’ recently. It was interesting to see just how much influence this work had on fantasy in the modern era. The name Eomer that Tolkien used in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is taken directly from a minor character in this poem, as is the description of the hall of Heorot, which was undeniably an inspiration for Meduseld, the Golden Hall of Rohan.

On a similar note, High Hrothgar, the monastery of the Greybeards in ‘The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’, is named directly after Hrothgar, the King of the Danes in this poem.

Still haven’t seen the Robert Zemeckis animated movie from 2007.

[bestiarium]

The Gabriel Hounds [British/English folklore]

Northern English folktales tell of a mysterious, haunting howling or yelping sound that could sometimes be heard coming from the night sky. Supposedly, these otherworldly cries came from mysterious dog spirits called ‘Gabriel Hounds’, often called ‘Gabbles’ or also ‘Gabriel ratchets’ as ‘ratchet’ is an older term for dogs. The howling of a Gabble is an ill omen and hearing it means someone will die soon.

Stories of these creatures have been around since at least 1665, though the details and origin of these beings vary a lot. In 1866, ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ author J. Atkinson published an explanation where the hounds were the undead souls of a troupe of hunting dogs.

Their owner was so obsessed with the hunting sport that when the man was nearing the end of his life, he ordered his canine companions to be killed, so that they could all be buried with him. After he passed away, his dogs were indeed killed and laid to rest in the tomb of their owner. Even today, the hunter is still roaming the world in search of game, accompanied by his faithful dogs. 

A different story from Derbyshire tells of a squire who loved the hunting sport, and even organized hunts on Sundays, breaking a Catholic taboo. To put salt in the wound, he even chased game into a church one time, driving his troupe of hounds into the holy building. For this crime, he was unable to find rest after he died, instead being forced to wander the earth with his hunting dogs. Still another tale claims that the hounds are actually the ghosts of infants who died unbaptized.

At one point, and I am uncertain how old this tradition is, the Gabriel Hounds were most commonly depicted as dogs with a human face, or the face of a human child. Which is delightfully unsettling.

The name ‘Gabriel Hound’ was explained in a Derbyshire story where the yelping noises were really the cries of damned souls as they were being struck by the whip of the angel Gabriel, who was hunting the damned souls and urging them along. Alternatively, a simpler explanation is that the appellation ‘Gabriel Hound’ might be derived from ‘gabble’ which the noises kind of sound like. Indeed, the mysterious noises are often assumed to have been made by geese or other birds. In fact, there is also a version where the gabbles appear as spectral birds. These feathered fiends had unnaturally glowing eyes and made a shrieking sound, and those who heard it could expect the death of a close friend or family member in the near future.

Source: Simpson, S. and Roud, S., 2003, A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford University Press, 411 pp. The cited source in this work is Wright, J., 1898-1905, The English Dialect Dictionary. (image source: Bradz on Deviantart)

[deathianartworks]

CRYPTOBER DAY FOURTEEN: HUNKY PUNKS

[mythawolf]

Honestly I feel like a Robin Hood and King Arthur crossover is a criminally underused concept for a few reasons.

The earlier Robin Hood stories didn’t involve King John or Richard the Lionheart since they were way older.

It would be a good way to give Arthur character development. To show him how the system can and does hurt people.

The older stories have Robin Hood robbing people for profit rather than charity (though he still had a string moral code), so they could give character development to him too.

Reblog with your thoughts!

[thiefbracket]

[ladyvictoriart]

Perceval and the Grail

based on Chretien de Troyes 'Perceval: The Story of the Grail'

[birdsofrhiannon]

Andraste by Cahira63 

[gaelic-diary-holder-returns]

I absolutely love reading about religious beliefs that change and evolve with time but just won’t die out like how Saint George is a Christian version of Indo-European thunderstorm god in both England and Georgia and that The Maitreya Buddha is a Buddhist version of Mithra from Iranian mythology.

[antoniettabrandeisova]

Helen of Troy (detail) c. 1867. by Frederick Sandys

[mimismoviemayhem]

Knightriders may just be George A. Romero's most personal film.

Knightriders review is out now: