ghosts and fairies and knowledge, o my

[marycatelli]

grumble

For some reason, I've been running across people who imagine that the folklore is all clear and distinct between fairies and ghosts.

Sometimes it's quick to clear up.  Like a time someone said that a rusalka looked like a ghost, not a fairy, and I cleared up the point:  the rusalki were water spirits from drowned maidens.

Others declare that while the -- ehem -- Good Folk might take you away for an afternoon that proves to be a century, like Rip van Winkle, Rip van Winkle himself was actually the victim of the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew, which is obviously different. Or the declaration that despite modern presentations of them as the undead, the bean sidhe (or banshee) was actually a fairy.  Now, while the very name bean sidhe means fairy woman, it was indeed often a ghost in folklore.  So were various brownie figures.  There was a fuzzy borderline, because of course some people only apparently die, being in reality taken by the Good Folk while a stock was left in their place, but a good number are clearly and definitely the dead.  It's not for nothing that the King of Faerie features in Sir Orfeo in Hades's place in the tale.

grouse.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think the clear boundary between natural and supernatural is a fairly new thing. In fact, thinking about it, clear boundaries of all kinds rather than fuzzy shading seem rather modern. Think of bird-names that encompass several kind-of-similar species that we now think of as obviously distinct, for example.

[marycatelli]

Ah, that one's clear. The boundary between natural and supernatural goes back to
Step 1: the pre-Socratic philosophers invent the concept of "Nature" meaning that everything that exists.
Step 2: Plato and Aristotle, believing in the existence of qualitatively different beings than those the early philosophers believed in, do not say, "Nature has more sorts of things than they thought existed," but "There are more things than Nature."

However it gets really complicated after that. I recommend C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Oooh, kind of like Great Heroes that become minor deities.....

[marycatelli]

true -- as long as you do not mean the Supreme Being by God, the term "god" is very loose about the edges.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

I follow the tradition of God being Himself, while god is everything down to the spring over there which you need to sacrifice a bird to so that it will rain. Or won't rain too much. Or something. "Supernatural powers," basically.

[marycatelli]

It's hard to come up with a small "g" definition that doesn't "a being who is worshipped."

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

But if we're going back far enough to worry about it being unclear about where the line between ghost and fae is, then we're far enough back that it's not clear what "worship" is-- "non-human power that might be persuaded and/or bribed into a preferred situation" with the understanding that "human power" means a living person, like a warlord or something. (as you also point out, "super natural" is likewise a kludge.)

[marycatelli]

True enough! We have "Your Worship" for humans out of respect at that.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

And "pray" being only religious is pretty new, too-- don't the Brits still use it in their gov't stuff?

[marycatelli]

Still used in America -- a former fundamentalist remembers the shock he got in court when his lawyer said his client prays the court. . . .