Seeing as it’s prime vacation season, I figured, why not take Fun Fact Fridays on the road? 😉 For the month of July, we’re touring a historical archive where fantastical beings and things that go bump in the night lurk. So far, we’ve seen witches and fairy tales. Today’s subject? Beasts.
Beasts can be both good and bad in fairy tales and lore. There’s the famous Beast stuck in a cursed castle until Beauty comes along, of course, and there are also helpful animals in some stories, like the talking horse in “The Goose Girl.” But then there are the scary beasts. Creatures like . . .
Did you notice Rumpelstiltskin hiding in there? The concept of “beast” is a tough one. In many stories, Rumpelstiltskin is a goblin or non-human character. Does that mean he is a beast? Well, maybe in one meaning of the word–where beast means something more like monster and less like animal. But this is the kind of argument we could spend all day going round and round discussing.
And rather than go in circles, I’d like to move on to a lesser-known character–the Questing Beast. This one makes appearances in Arthurian lore, and it’s particularly fun because it’s described as being a hodge podge of other animals–head of a snake, body of a leopard, feet of a deer, and so on. Similar descriptions were once given of unicorns! Without the snake bit, though. 😉
Many thanks to the Drew University archive, and Erich Huhn and Mary Cannaday in particular! 😀
