Эльфийский словарь

Bugs, bugs-a-boo, boggle-boos, bugbears, etc. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Bugs, bugs-a-boo, boggle-boos, bugbears, etc

Буки, буги, буг-а-бу, богглы-бу, букозвери и другие

Всех их обычно считают детскими страшилками, выдуманными для устрашения и усмирения детей. До некоторой степени подробно их рассматривает Джиллиан Эдвардс в книге «Хобгоблин и дружочек Пак» (с.83-89), видящая в них производные от древнего кельтского «bwg». Большинство этих слов относится к воображаемым страхам типа «…куст ракиты или волк» Такая трактовка слова bugbear отражается в переводе одной итальянской пьесы, поставленной около 1565 года и названной «The Buggbear». Пьеса посвящена заклинателям-шарлатанам.

Old Woman of the Mountains. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Old Woman of the Mountains, the

Старуха с Гор

Представительница валлийских гвиллион. Ее личной страстью, судя по всему, было заводить и кружить путешественников. О гвиллионах можно узнать немало и у Вирта Сайкса, и у Риса.

[Мотивы: F491; F491.1]

Blue-cap. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Blue-cap

An industrious mine spirit, who worked as hard as any brownie, but, unlike a brownie, expected to be paid a working man's wages. An account of him appeared in the Colliery Guardian in May 1863:

The supernatural person in question was no other than a ghostly putter, and his name was Blue-cap. Sometimes the miners would perceive a light-blue flame flicker through the air and settle on a full coal-tub, which immediately moved towards the roily-way as though impelled by the sturdiest sinews in the working. Industrious Blue-cap required, and rightly, to be paid for his services, which he moderately rated as those of an ordinary average putter, therefore once a fortnight Blue-cap's wages were left for him in a solitary corner of the mine. If they were a farthing below his due, the indignant Blue-cap would not pocket a stiver; if they were a farthing above his due, indignant Bluecap left the surplus revenue where he found it.

At the time when this was written, the belief in Blue-cap — or Bluebonnet, as he was called in some of the mines — was already on the wane.

[Motifs: F456; F456.1; F456.2; F456.2.1]

Oakmen. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Oakmen

There are scattered references to oakmen in the North of England, though very few folktales about them: there is no doubt that the oak was regarded as a sacred and potent tree. Most people know the rhyming proverb 'Fairy folks are in old oaks'; 'The Gospel Oak' or 'The King's Oak' in every considerable forest had probably a traditional sacredness from unremembered times, and an oak coppice in which the young saplings had sprung from the stumps of felled trees was thought to be an uncanny place after sunset; but the references to 'oakmen' are scanty.

Beatrix Potter in The Fairy Caravan gives some description of the Oakmen, squat, dwarfish people with red toadstool caps and red noses who tempt intruders into their copse with disguised food made of fungi. The fairy wood in which they lurk is thrice-cut copse and is full of bluebells. The Fairy Caravan is her only long book, and is scattered with folktales and folk beliefs. It is probable that her Oakmen are founded on genuine traditions. In Ruth Tongue's Forgotten Folk-Tales of the English Counties there is a story from Cumberland, 'The Vixen and the Oakmen', in which the Oakmen figure as guardians of animals. This rests on a single tradition, a story brought back by a soldier from the Lake District in 1948, and may well have been subject to some sophistication, but these two together make it worth while to be alert for other examples.

[Motif: F441.2]

Bogies. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Bwca. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Bwca [booka]

The Welsh brownie (but see also Bwbachod). A story collected by John Rhys (Celtic Folk-Lore, pp.593-596) shows how close the connection can be between the Brownie and Boggart, or the Bwca and Bugan.

Long ago a Monmouthshire farm was haunted by a spirit of whom everyone was afraid until a young maid came, merry and strong and reputed to be of the stock of the bendith y mamau, and she struck up a great friendship with the creature, who turned out to be a bwca, who washed, ironed and spun for her and did all manner of household work in return for a nightly bowl of sweet milk and wheat bread or flummery. This was left at the bottom of the stairs every night and was gone in the morning; but she never saw him, for all his work was done at night.

One evening for sheer wantonness she put some of the stale urine used for a mordant in his bowl instead of milk. She had reason to regret it, for when she got up next morning the bwca attacked her and kicked her all over the house, yelling:

The idea that the thick-buttocked lass

Should give barley-bread and piss

To the bogle!

Oberon. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Oberon

Оберон

Обероном именовали короля эльфов гораздо чаще, чем королеву эльфов — Титанией, даже если приравнять к Титании шотландскую Диану. Обероном звали короля эльфов во французском романе XV века. «Гюон Бордоский», который перевел на английский в 1548 году лорд Бернерс. Этот король являет собой пример эльфика ростом с трехлетнего ребенка, но малый рост его — следствие проклятия, наложенного на него злой феей при крещении. Оберон Шекспира — типичный эльфийский король во всем, включая и шашни со смертными, и следует отметить, что Дрейтон называет короля своих эльфов Обероном, хотя вместо Титании у него королева Маб. В эпоху раннего Возрождения духов-прислужников звали Ауберон и Обериком. Некоторые производят «Ауберон» от того же корня, что и имя немецкого карлика Альбериха.

[Мотив: F252.1]

Ogres. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Ogres

The word 'ogres' is used sometimes to describe man-eating giants, monstrous both in shape and habits, but it may also be taken to mean a race of creatures of mortal size who are anthropophagous.

George MacDonald in Phantastes uses the word in this sense to describe the sinister woman with the pointed teeth who sits quietly reading and looks up from her book to advise the hero not to look in a certain cupboard, advice that has more the effect of a temptation than a warning. It is possible that the giant in 'Mallie Whuppie', the Scottish version of 'Hop O' My Thumb', was an ogre rather than a giant, for his children were certainly of ordinary mortal size, though they would have grown up with a hereditary taste for human flesh.

[Motif: G312]

Ossian. Статья из «Эльфийского словаря» К.Бриггс

Ossian [isheen]

'Ossian' has been the usual Highland spelling of the Irish Oisin since the time of James Macpherson's poem Ossian, loosely founded on the Highland Ossianic legends. J.F.Campbell, in his discussion of the Scottish Ossianic legends in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands (Vol.IV), well establishes the widespread knowledge of the Ossianic poems and ballads in 18th-century Scotland and of the Fingalian legends. All over the Highlands, Ossian was known as the great poet and singer of the Feinn, who survived them all and kept the memory of them alive by his songs. Many of the Fenian legends survived in these songs, and in such early manuscripts as The Book of Leinster. 'The Death of Diarmid' and other tragic stories of the last days of the Feinn were deeply remembered and the tragic plight of Ossian, old, blind and mighty, is the most vivid of all. What is not recorded in the Highlands is his visit to Tir Nan Og and the happy centuries he passed with Niam of the golden hair.

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