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A bestiary is a compendium of beasts. Originating in the ancient world, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus. Thus the bestiary is also a reference to the symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, or the Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as cryptids, a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by mainstream science: it is neither a branch of zoology nor of folklore studies. It was originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson.
A demon is a supernatural entity, typically associated with evil, prevalent historically in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, anime, and television series.
An elf is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves generally seem to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. However, the details of these beliefs have varied considerably over time and space and have flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures.
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. Monsters are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive with a strange, grotesque appearance that causes terror and fear. Monsters usually resemble bizarre, deformed, otherworldly and/or mutated animals or entirely unique creatures of varying sizes, but may also take a human form, such as mutants, ghosts and spirits, zombies or cannibals, among other things. They may or may not have supernatural powers, but are usually capable of killing or causing some form of destruction, threatening the social or moral order of the human world in the process.
The preternatural is that which appears outside or beside the natural. It is "suspended between the mundane and the miraculous".
The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson was an English folklorist. She was a scholar at the University of Cambridge and The Folklore Society, and specialized in the study of Celtic and Germanic religion and folklore.
A hellhound is a mythological hound which embodies a guardian or a servant of hell, the devil, or the underworld. Hellhounds occur in mythologies around the world, with the best known examples being Cerberus from Greek mythology, Garmr from Norse mythology, the black dogs of English folklore, and the fairy hounds of Celtic mythology. Physical characteristics vary, but they are commonly black, anomalously overgrown, supernaturally strong, and often have red eyes or accompanied by flames.
"Wið færstice" is an Old English medical text surviving in the collection known now as Lacnunga in the British Library. Wið fǣrstiċe[wið ˈfæːrˌsti.t͡ʃe] means 'against a sudden/violent stabbing pain'; and according to Felix Grendon, whose collection of Anglo-Saxon charms appeared in the Journal of American Folklore in 1908, “the charm is intended to cure a sudden twinge or stitch, possibly rheumatism that can be due to being shot by witches, elves, and other spirits that fly through the air.” Scholars have often sought to identify this as rheumatism, but other possibilities should not be excluded. The remedy describes how to make a salve, but its main interest lies in the unique charm which follows. This describes how the færstice has been caused by the projectiles of 'mighty women', whom the healer will combat. The charm also mentions elves, believed responsible for elfshot, and provides the only attestation outside personal names of the Old English form of the name of the old Germanic gods, known as the Æsir in Norse mythology.
Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf, the other two being Grendel and the dragon. Each antagonist reflects different negative aspects of both the hero Beowulf and the heroic society that the poem is set in. Grendel's mother is introduced in lines 1258b to 1259a as: "Grendles modor/ides, aglæcwif".
Layamon's Brut, also known as The Chronicle of Britain, is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. The Brut is 16,096 lines long and narrates the history of Britain: it is the first historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Named for Britain's mythical founder, Brutus of Troy, the poem is largely based on the Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut by Wace, which is in turn a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Regum Britanniae. Layamon's poem, however, is longer than both and includes an enlarged section on the life and exploits of King Arthur. It is written in the alliterative verse style commonly used in Middle English poetry by rhyming chroniclers, the two halves of the alliterative lines being often linked by rhyme as well as by alliteration.
Christ and Satan is an anonymous Old English religious poem consisting of 729 alliterative verse, contained in the Junius Manuscript.
A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin, varying from mischievous household spirits to malicious, bestial thieves. They often have magical abilities similar to a fairy or demon, such as the ability to shapeshift.
The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic is one of the constituent departments of the University of Cambridge, and focuses on the history, material culture, languages and literatures of the various peoples who inhabited Britain, Ireland and the extended Scandinavian world in the early Middle Ages. It is based on the second floor of the Faculty of English at 9 West Road. In Cambridge University jargon, its students are called ASNaCs.
La cruz del diablo is a 1974 Spanish horror film directed by John Gilling and starring Carmen Sevilla, Adolfo Marsillach, Ramiro Oliveros and Emma Cohen. Its plot concerns a drug-addicted British writer who travels to Spain to visit his sister only to discover she has been murdered by a sinister cult.
Richard Raiswell is an historian at University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Graduate Studies, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton. He teaches classes on medieval and Renaissance History, as well as the History of Ideas, specialising, in particular, on premodern geography and exploration, and the antecedents of the Scientific Revolution.
The Laud Herbal Glossary is a twelfth-century copy of the single biggest compilation of plant-name glosses of its time in England, rooted in Anglo-Saxon sources. Its lemmata are mostly Latin, and these are mostly glossed into Old English/Middle English.
Lisa M. C. Weston is a scholar of medieval literature and Old English language. She teaches at Fresno State Department of English, and served as interim Chair of the department in 2019.
References
- ↑ "Peter Dendle" | Penn State Mont Alto
- ↑ "Cinema's (Still) Dead" | On the Media Archived December 1, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "'Devil Possessions'" Swept England After Invasion, Study Suggests" | National Geographic News
- ↑ "Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds" | Folklore
- ↑ "Cryptozoology and the Paranormal in Harry Potter: Truth and Belief at the Borders of Consensus" | Children's Literature Association Quarterly
- ↑ "Textual Transmission of the Old English 'Loss of Cattle' Charm" | The Journal of English and Germanic Philology
- ↑ "Direct Discourse and Gender in the Ágrip af Nóregs konunga sögum" | Neophilologus
- ↑ "How naked is Juliana?" | Philological Quarterly
- ↑ "The Old English “Life of Malchus” and Two Vernacular Tales from the Vitas Patrum in MS Cotton Otho C.i: A Translation" | English Studies
