"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
The Witte Wieven (also spelled Wittewijven) are ghostly spirits rooted in Dutch and Germanic folklore, often associated with the spirits of wise women, healers, or witches who lived during ancient times. The name "Witte Wieven" translates to either "White Women" or "Wise Women," and these beings are...
The Gwrach y Rhibyn, also known as "The Hag of the Mist," is a figure from Welsh folklore often compared to the Irish Banshee. She is a harbinger of death, as her shrieks and wails warn of impending doom for those who hear them. She is described...
A story in Whitby -- a seaside town located on the North Yorkshire coast in the North East of England, between Scarborough and Redcar -- tells of the day Henry VIII decided to send his men to wreck the local Abbey (yeah, it's the Dracula...
Well, we're back with our collection of strange sea lore, and apologies for the interruption but work has been wild and I had to focus on the revision of my novel. Where? This legend takes place in Orford Castle -- in Suffolk, Southeast England -- a manor...
A little further north from where Milan stands, in the Western Dolomites, there is a beautiful lake also known as Lake of the Rainbow, called Lago di Carezza which literally means "Lake of the Caress". It's said to be the home of a water nymph,...
The Sjöfru is a kind of Rå, a keeper of a particular kind of land in Swedish folklore, and she presides over waterbodies, usually lakes or small scraps of the sea. Her name is usually translated as "Mistress of the Lake", "Sea Woman" or "Lake...
Eurynome was an Ancient Greek deity traditionally connected with water, whose cult has been discovered near the confluence of the Neda and the Lymax rivers, down in Peloponnesus. She's called an Oceanid by Pausanias, and her representation resembles a mermaid. Though Robert Graves offers us a...
The Capital City of Warsaw in Polonia sits on the River Vistula, and it's perhaps unsurprising to see a mermaid on its coat of arms. What catches the attention is that this mermaid is brandishing a blade and carrying a shield, and her story is...
Tuonetar is the Queen of the Underworld in Finnish mythology, and I promised you we'd talk about her when we saw her daughter Kalma, who's tasked to prevent the dead from escaping their tombs. She brews one kick-ass beer, and she's today's profile on my...
Venilia was a minor deity in Roman times, associated with the winds and the sea, and mentioned by both Virgil and Ovid. Part of a two-entities group associated with Neptune, Salacia and Vénilia, she expressed one of two aspects, domains or modes of action of...
