- pink mondays
1 hour ago
Spirituality, shamanism and other spices
machiavelli
I saw pale kings, and princes too,In Korea, the most frightening ghosts are the ghosts of young women who have not fulfilled their feminine potential. In other words, women who died without marrying and having children -- preferably male children. In the old days there was a custom of burying dead maidens in a flat grave on or near a well-traveled road in the hopes that some passing gentleman would expose to the maiden's spirit his "most precious thing."
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!" I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
--John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (1819, a year before his death of consumption).
by Ann B. Dalton, © 1999 |
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Further Reading:Nonfiction: Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-two Stories from a Medieval Japanese Collection, translated and edited by Marian Ury (Japanese folk tales, including several about kitsune). Mercury Rising: Women, Evil and the Trickster Gods, by Deldon Anne McNeely Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour, by Kiyoshi Nozaki (out of print, but well worth tracking down) Lilith's Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural, edited by Howard Schwartz The Alphabet of Ben Sira, translated by Norman Bronznick, et al. (The origins of Lilith.) Fiction: The Dream Hunters, by Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano The Fox Woman, by Kij Johnson When Fox Was a Thousand, by Larissa Lai "The Fox Wife" by Ellen Steiber in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, edited by Datlow & Windling The Shadow of the Fox by Ellen Steiber (for children) |
About the Author:
Heinz Insu Fenkl is the author of Memories of My Ghost Brother and other works. Copyright © 1999 by Heinz Insu Fenkl. This article appeared in Realms of Fantasy magazine, 1999. It may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission. |
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