Sara C. Snider's Blog, page 26

Iord

Iord (or Jord) is the Norse personification of earth. “Jord” is also the Swedish word for “earth,” which is pretty cool. In terms of god relationships, Iord is a consort of Odin, mother of Thor, and daughter of Night.

Interestingly, Night is the daughter of the giant Narfi, which would mean Iord is of giant descent. I’m not sure if that’s significant or not, as my grasp of Norse mythology is sadly lacking. Iord’s father was someone called Annar, though I can’t find who he was other than being...

Hook

Not the Hook from Neverland, but the Hook from “Crack, Crook, and Hook” infamy. I wrote about Crack and Crook earlier and their misadventures in stealing from the king’s treasury. Well, the story that includes Hook seems to precede that.

See, Crack, Crook, and Hook, all being premier thieves, are not content until they find out who is the bestest. Crack goes to steal a magpie’s eggs. While he’s busy with that, Crook steals Crack’s bootheels without him noticing. Hook then steals the heels from...

Glaistig

The glaistig is a faerie that is one part sexy woman, one part goat. She wears a flowing green dress to hide her beastly features. It is said that she lures men to dance with her before feeding upon them by drinking their blood. But like many faeries, she also has a benign side to her personality, and has a gentle hand when tending children or the elderly. She has even been known to herd cattle for farmers.

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“Glaistig” by Candra. is licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0

I love this kind of duplicity in f...

The Fox

Foxes aren’t exactly mythological creatures, but they do show up in a fair amount mythological tales. In the books I have at home, the ones they showed up in the most were the Japanese and Russian tales. It was interesting reading stories related to foxes from these two cultures, for the stories themselves, as well as the role the foxes played, varied greatly.

Japanese Foxes

In Japanese lore, the foxes were interesting creatures, usually playing the part of a spirit of some sort. The foxes in t...

Emma

Emma is the king of hell in Japanese lore. In the few stories I read with him in it, people who die are brought before him for judgment. He sometimes sends them back, either for a chance to atone for their sins, or to carry out unfinished business (after which they will again immediately die). Overall, he seems to be quite a reasonable and not at all unpleasant fellow.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Source: Tyler, Royall, Japanese Tales, Pantheon Books, 2002.

Supernatural AtoZ

My Experience With Kirkus Indie Reviews

I’ve written a guest post over at Katie Cross’ blog, KCross Writing, about my experience in having my book reviewed by Kirkus.

She also summarizes the book in five words or less. The boggans would be pleased to find that they have made the cut.

Head on over there to check it out!

Kirkus Reviews and Bumps In the Night

Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden

“Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden” is a lovely Tewa story that reminds me a lot of the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice, which has been a long-time favorite of mine.

In this tale, Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden are two beautiful, talented individuals that are thought to be gifted by the gods. They fall in love and marry, yet their infatuation for each other only deepens, and they in turn neglect their duties, traditions, and religious obligations.

When White Corn Maiden suddenly dies, Deer H...

Crack and Crook

“Crack and Crook” is an Italian folktale of two thieves who find each other by trying to steal from each other. They then team up and break into the king’s treasury and make away with much of his riches. Flummoxed by this, the king consults a thief in his dungeon on how to best capture these rogues.

From here, the story starts getting weird. Attempts to capture the thieves start out simple enough: raising the price of meat so that only the thieves will be able to purchase it. But then it moves...

Boggans

“Boggan?”

“Foul little men that like to steal children, sometimes leaving a basket of leaves in its place. Quite fond of shiny things, though. Where I’m from, superstitious wives will leave a coin or silver spoon in the crib so that should a boggan arrive it will take that rather than the babe.”

Boggans are my own creation, inspired partly by boggartsand hobgoblinsof the faery realm (with a little bit of Annis if you noted the part about stealing children). They are generally harmless creatures...

Annis

This post marks the beginning of the A to Z Challenge! In case you missed it, I’m doing a theme that I like to call A Bestiary of Mythological Creatures (and People). If you’d like to know more about the theme, you can read the post I wrote about it. Otherwise, let’s move on to…

Annis

or

Black Annis

and even

Black Annis the Blue-faced Hag

I’ve had a long-term infatuation with Annis. Her name is one I’ve used instead of my own at times. She was also the inspiration for the creepy woman in my short s...