‘Wild man – like’ Creatures

1. Basajaun

2. Am  Fear  Liath  Mòr

3. Straw  bear

4. Leshy / Lesovik

5. Moss  people.

Basajaun

In Basque mythology, ‘Basajaun’ is a huge, hairy creature dwelling in the woods who protects flocks of livestock and teaches skills such as agriculture and ironworking to humans.
The Basques themselves are an ethnic group which primarily inhabits an area traditionally known as the Basque Country (Basque: ‘Euskal Herria’), a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.

‘Basajaunak’, and other characters within the Basque mythology, largely did not survive the arrival of Christianity in the Basque Country between the 4th and 12th century AD.

Am  Fear  Liath  Mòr

Am Fear Liath Mòr (also known as the ‘Big Grey Man’ of Ben MacDhui or simply the ‘Greyman’) is the name of a presence or creature which is said to haunt the summit and passes of Ben Macdui, the highest peak of the Cairngorms and the second highest peak in Scotland (also the British Isles). It has been described as an extremely tall figure covered with short hair, or as an unseen presence that causes uneasy feelings in people who climb the mountain. Evidence of the existence of this creature is limited to various sightings and a few photographs of unusual footprints.

It was traditionally seen as a supernatural being, but Am Fear Liath Mòr has been compared to the Yeti of the Himalaya and the Sasquatch or Bigfoot of North America. References to wild ‘Greymen’ in Scotland and similar creatures elsewhere in Europe, sometimes called Wudewas or ‘Wood Men’, date back to the 13th century, and are believed by some to represent relict hominids.

–   In 1925, the noted climber John Norman Collie recounted a terrifying experience he had endured while alone near the summit of Ben MacDhui some 35 years before. “I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps. For every few steps I took I heard a crunch, and then another crunch as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own.” Collie was unable to make out the source of the noises because of mist, and continued “… [as] the eerie crunch, crunch, sounded behind me, I was seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles.” Other climbers have also reported similar experiences, many describing uncontrollable feelings of fear and panic, some actually seeing a huge grey figure behind them, and others only hearing sounds or even succumbing to inexplicable feelings of terror while in the area.

–   In the Matt Lamy book 100 Strangest Unexplained Mysteries, Lamy notes a sighting in the early 1990s in which three men caught sight of a bipedal creature with an eerie, inhuman face in a forest near Aberdeen. Several weeks later, whilst driving through the area at night, the creature appeared again and ran alongside their car even at speeds of 45 miles per hour, seemingly trying to enter the vehicle.

Similar panic responses have been reported in many North American Sasquatch encounters, and explanations involving infrasound or pheromones have been advanced. Cryptozoologist Karl Shuker has expressed belief that the creature is the guardian of an inter-dimensional portal in his 1997 book, The Unexplained. However, hallucinations and panic brought on by isolation and exhaustion, or an optical illusion similar to the Brocken spectre, are very plausible explanations for the Big Grey Man legend. A Brocken spectre, or ‘glory’, can occur in certain atmospheric conditions when the sun is at a particular angle. The subject’s shadow can be cast onto low lying clouds around them, creating the illusion of a large shadowy humanoid figure. This is the most commonly advanced theory to explain the reported sightings.

Straw  bear

A ‘straw bear’ (German: ‘Strohbär’, plural ‘Strohbären’) is a traditional character that appears in carnival processions or as a separate seasonal custom in parts of Germany, mainly at Shrovetide but sometimes at Candlemas or Christmas Eve.
The people playing the bears either dress in costumes made of straw, or are actually wrapped in straw. The straw used may be that of wheat, rye, oats, spelt or peastraw; twigs and modern artificial materials have also been used. The bears may be relatively realistic in appearance, with detailed masks, or fully rounded headpieces, or they may be more abstract, with narrow heads like a long, tapering sheaf.

Straw bears may be derived from the medieval carnival figure of the Wild Man. They were also interpreted by early folklorists as personifications of Winter, and their appearance in late winter or early spring was seen as a ritual expulsion of winter from the community. Others think they were merely intended to represent the real “dancing” bears that used to be taken from place to place for entertainment.
The bears were originally accompanied by groups of costumed attendants and musicians and visited houses, begging from door to door. One of the earliest known references is from Wurmlingen in 1852. In most cases they were rewarded with gifts of eggs, lard and flour (it may have been significant that these three items were white in colour), or fasnetsküchle (carnival fritters), or money. At the end of the day the group would share or consume their gifts in a tavern. This quête (begging) style of custom is no longer practiced; most bears now appear as part of carnival processions, although there are some which still remain independent of the carnival itself.

–   Straw bears appeared particularly in agricultural communities. Although the tradition is no longer as widespread as it once was, straw bears can still be found in Baden-Württemberg, Hessen (particularly the Vogelsberg), Lower Saxony, Bavaria, the Hunsrück and Eifel areas of Rheinland-Palatinate, and Thuringia.

Today they are particularly associated with the “Swabian-Alemannic Carnival” or Fastnacht of southwestern Germany in the area between the upper Neckar River and Lake Constance of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Formerly there were also straw bears in Pomerania, Rheinland and West Germany. In some places the straw-swathed characters are not intended to represent bears, and are simply known as straw men.

The decline in popularity of straw characters in carnival today is thought to be largely due to the difficulty of obtaining straw of suitable length and quality. Modern farmers generally prefer cultivars with shorter straw, or use chemical sprays to make the straw grow shorter so that their crops are less prone to damage by storms. Artificial materials have replaced straw in a few places. In other places, such as Hirschauer, where the Äschadreppler is traditionally clad in peastraw, crops are being specially planted to ensure the supply of the appropriate straw for the costumes.
Modern straw bear costumes may be kept from year to year; formerly they were often burned at the end of the day on which they were used. This still happens in some places.

Leshy  / Lesovik

The Leshy or Lesovik is a male woodland spirit in Slavic mythology who protects wild animals and forests. There are also ‘leshachikha’/’leszachka’ (wives of the leshak) and leshonky (children of the leszy). He is roughly analogous to the Woodwose of Western Europe and the Basajaun of the Basque Country.

The Leshy is known by a variety of names and spellings including ‘Lesiy’, ‘Leshii’, ‘Leszi’, ‘Lesovik’, etc.

A leshy usually appears as a tall man, but he is able to change his size from that of a blade of grass to a very tall tree. He has hair and a beard made from living grass and vines, and is sometimes depicted with a tail, hooves, and horns. He has pale white skin that contrasts with his bright green eyes. A leshy has a close bond with the gray wolf, and is often seen in the company of bears as well. He is the Forest Lord and carries a club to express that he is the master of the wood. He has blue blood, which makes his cheeks the color blue. Legend describes him as having a red scarf and his left shoe on his right foot. He also had no shadow.

–   Leshy protects the animals and birds in the forest and tells them when to migrate. He can shapeshift into many different forms. As a human, he looks like a peasant with glowing eyes, and his shoes are on backwards.

–   A person who befriends a leshy can learn the secrets of magic. Farmers and shepherds would make pacts with the leshy to protect their crops and sheep. The leshy has many tricks, including leading peasants astray, making them sick, or tickling them to death. They are also known to hide the axes of woodcutters. A person gets lost in the woods when a leshy crosses their path. To find the way out, you have to turn your clothes inside out and wear shoes on opposite feet.

–   Leshies are terribly mischievous beings: they have horrible cries, and can imitate voices of people familiar to wanderers and lure them back to their caves, where the leshies will tickle them to death; they also remove signs from their posts. Leshies aren’t evil: although they enjoy misguiding humans and kidnapping young women, they are also known to keep grazing cattle from wandering too far into the forests and getting lost. Sometimes cow herders will make pacts with a leshy by handing him their crosses from around their necks and sharing communion with him after Christian church gatherings; these pacts are said to give the cowherds special powers.

–   Sometimes more than one leshy inhabits a forest, and then they will fight for their territory, knocking down trees and scaring animals.

A leshy is a demon or spirit in the Dictionnaire Infernal. There he is a Slavic forest being, similar in nature to the Polevik sprites. He protects the birds, trees, and animals of the forest; he appears in the shape of a human with blue skin, two great horns, green hair, and a long green beard across his face, carrying a club or whip indicating his mastery of the forest.
Should one ever encounter a leshy, one must thwart him immediately by turning all one’s clothes inside out and backwards, and placing one’s shoes on the opposite feet.

Moss  people

The moss people or moss-folk (German: ‘Moosleute’, “moss-folk”, wilde Leute, “wild folk”), also referred to as the wood people or wood-folk (Holzleute, “wood-folk”) or forest-folk (Waldleute, “forest-folk”), are a class of fairy-folk, variously compared to dwarves, elves, or spirits, described in the folklore of Germany as having an intimate connection to trees and the forest. In German the words Schrat and Waldschrat are also used for a moss person. (Compare Old Norse skratti, “goblin”.)

–   They are sometimes described as similar to dwarves, being the same size as children, “grey and old-looking, hairy, and clad in moss.” In other descriptions they are said to be pretty or even have butterfly wings.
According to legend, these fairies would occasionally borrow items from people but would always compensate the owners generously. In certain myths, the moss folk would ask humans for breast milk to feed their young.
They were often but not always the object of the Wild Hunt. According to folklore, in order to escape the hunt they enter the trees that woodsmen have marked with a cross that will be chopped down.

The moss people are similar to hamadryads. Their lives are “attached to the trees; if any one causes by friction the inner bark to loosen a Wood-woman dies.”

Jacob Grimm believed that Gothic skohsl,”demon”, in the New Testament, was related to Old Norse skogr and Old English sceaga, both meaning “forest”, and therefore represented a cognate of the moss people in Gothic folklore. Subsequent authors, however, have related skohsl with English “shuck” (from Old English scucca, “evil spirit”) and German Scheusal, “monster” (from Middle High German schusel, though by folk etymology identified with scheuen, “to dread”, and -sal, a noun suffix).

Parallels have been drawn between the moss people and woodwoses. Early descriptions of Germanic beliefs include descriptions of “wood people” by the 6th century Roman historian Jordanes and “woodland women” by the 11th-century Rhenish bishop Burchard of Worms. Furthermore, Grimm recorded the terms wildiu wip, wildero wibo, wilder wibe, wilden wibe, wildaz wip (all meaning “wild wife”) and wilde fröuwelin (“wild maiden”) from various early medieval texts.

According to Jacob Grimm :

       ”   Between Leidhecken and Dauernheim in the Wetterau stands the high mountain, and on it a stone, der welle fra gestoil (the wild woman’s chairs); there is an impression on the rock, as of the limbs of human sitters. The people say the wild folk lived there ‘wei di schtan noch mell warn,’ while the stones were still soft; afterwards, being persecuted, the man ran away, the wife and child remained in custody at Dauernheim until they died.   “

Des Knaben Wunderhorn records “folk-songs [that] make the huntsman in the wood start a dark-brown maid, and hail her: ‘whither away, wild beast?’, but his mother did not take to the bride.”