At the Mountains of Madness

Sculptured images of these Shoggoths filled Danforth and me with horror and loathing. They were normally shapeless entities composed of a viscous jelly which looked like an agglutination of bubbles, and each averaged about fifteen feet in diameter when a sphere. They had, however, a constantly shifting shape and volume—throwing out temporary developments or forming apparent organs of sight, hearing, and speech in imitation of their masters, either spontaneously or according to suggestion.

One more for the, er, gelatinous fictional things! I like to call them the precursors of Ditto, ha ha.

Ditto, by extension: a copy, an imitation. Huh. You learn something new every day.

Bunyan (Breath of Fire)

Bunyan (or Babaderu in Japanese) is a recurring character in Breath of Fires. He’s always a woodsman with almost superhuman strength, and in games three and four he’s also a master with, well, superhuman abilities that you can learn.

I don’t have a better picture of him but that big bearded fellow is Bunyan. The small crybaby is Ryu, ha ha. ❤

Now here’s the fun tidbit, translated by yours truly from Finnish:

[in the old Japan] woodcutters (yamagatsu) and dodgy woodsmen (ayashiki shizu) were believed to be exceptional special people who drew their vitality from the mountains.

Also,

They admired holy men (hijiri) who had totally abandoned the human world and lurked in the shadows of mountains and dedicated themselves to rigorous exercises. They were thought to be extraordinary in their powers like the woodcutters (yamagatsu) and other unhuman oddities.

That last part was a bit difficult to translate because the actual words used were ‘epäihmismäisten kummajaisten’ which literally translates into ‘inhuman freaks’, and it sounds so much harsher in English than in Finnish. Also, I suspect that it means yokai like the various babas and not actual people¹. Otherwise, he’d probably just repeated the ayashiki shizu at that part.

So there’s your bit of Japanese folklore of today, ha ha.

If anyone even reads my blog anymore.

---

¹ Oops, sorry, I think it referred to hinin after all. So, pretty harsh.

² I just realised that the Bunyan localisation of his name probably refers to Paul Bunyan, a giant lumberjack in American folklore. I don’t know what babaderu refers to but baba at least refers to hags, crones, in Slavic and Japanese folklore. I don’t know if there’s a connection, though. And deru just makes me think of, well, ‘deru’ 出. Knowing the Japanese, though, I have this suspicion that it’s a pun on something.

V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells.

Ha ha, now I know who started this too. Until I find something older, that is. This is another stable in horror video games. *thinks for a moment* Or maybe it isn’t that common?

Onryō 怨霊

Diet: none; survives solely on its wrath

Well, there’s another one for the list of inspirations, ha ha.

Onryō inflict a terrible curse on the people or places that they haunt. This curse can be transmitted to others like a contagious disease, creating a circle of death and destruction far more devastating than any ordinary ghost. . . . Moreover, an onryō’s vengeance can never be satisfied. While most yūrei only haunt a person or place until they are exorcised or placated, an onryō’s horrible grudge-curse continues to infect a location long after the ghost itself has been laid to rest.

So most of the Japanese ghost stories are about these, huh. I always just called them ‘spirit herpeses’. Er — but I guess it’s nice to get an official name for them?

Dorotabō 泥田坊

Diet: none; survives on vengeance alone

Ha ha! There’s an inspiration.

Deer Antlers

I decided to rewrite the previous night’s post and since I was going to rewrite it, I figured might as well repost it too. I wrote it just before bed so I was rather tired and it wasn’t the best quality. Apologies if this caused any confusion. You may file it under “why Chicory shouldn’t write or post when she’s tired”, ha ha.

But anyhow, in Breath of Fire you could hunt and harvest deer antlers and white deer antlers. Respectively, these items worked as an antidote for poison and as a restoration for AP, or ability points, which were basically magic points.

I did take a screenshot of the in-game text but it looked pretty awful so I figured might as well do without it this time.

But here’s the fun bit:

One shouldn’t put new deer antler²⁷⁴ to the nose and sniff it. There is a tiny insect in it that will enter through the nose and devour the brain.

²⁷⁴new deer antler: A powder made from a deer’s budding spring antlers was a popular tonic in traditional medicine.

— Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenkō

You know, if anyone who played Breath of Fire ever wondered “why deer antlers?”, ha ha.

Hitodama 人魂

The other title of this post: ‘fun tidbits from books’.

Hitodama are the visible souls of humans detached from their host bodies. They appear as red, orange, or blue-white orbs . . .

Hitodama can be distinguished from other hi no tama by the distinctive tails of light which trail behind them.

— Matthew Meyer: The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons

“Now, some one is dying,” thought the little girl, for she had been told by her old grandmother, the only person she had ever loved, and who was now dead, that when a star falls a soul goes up to Heaven.

— Hans Christian Andersen: The Little Match Girl

And indeed, there is a similar belief in Serbia and Mongolia that a falling star symbolises someone who is dying.

Huh, actually, upon reflection, that makes sense.

. . . appeared the star that men in book-Latin call “cometa”: some men say that in English it may be termed “hairy star”; for that there standeth off from it a long gleam of light, whilom on one side, whilom on each.

— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

As usual, you may make of that what you will.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

It was quite difficult to get a good angle on these screenshots but guess what this is?

A little fish is swimming there in the second picture.

This is in a kitchen in an inn. It’s also an actual thing in Japan — or well, at least in Harie because I don’t know if these still exist elsewhere. Basically, they’re these outhouses called kabata which are connected to the canals of the village; people wash their food and dishes in these by putting them in the stream, and then koi carp come inside to eat the leftovers.

As an aside, the waters in this village are so clean that it’s one of the few places where fireflies can still breed.

When I learned of these, I thought ooooh, I want one too, because you get to have your own stream and cute fishes and you don’t have to use detergent to wash your dishes.

As another aside, before the invention of fridges people used to keep their vegetables in clear, cool water.

But of course, progress marches on and kabata are falling out of use. Just like in Europe where people stopped keeping vegetables in their own sources of water.

You know, if you think about it, it’s greenwashed progress that’s eating people’s freedom, independence and traditions. Well, among other things. Cities — that is, when we knew and could build actual cities — used to be a lot greener than the greenwashed cities of nowhere and for no one. Almost every — house cluster? — had their own inner courts and thus their own gardens. Y’know, unlike those front lawns of dead grass today. Nowadays the city may kindly rent you a small plot for a fee in the middle of nowhere.

The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath

. . . the central void where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark.

Wait, is this thing supposed to be a black hole? Also, this particular story refuses to end.

II. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse

From a wide circle of ten scaffolds set up at regular intervals with the flame-girt monolith as a centre hung, head downward, the oddly marred bodies of the helpless squatters who had disappeared.

At least now I know who started this trend. Well, until I find something older.

The Unnamable

“No—it wasn’t that way at all. It was everywhere—a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory.”

This sounds a lot like the lake-sized amoeba in Dean Koontz’s Phantoms.

The White Ship

And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.^*

∞

“The gods are greater than men, and they have conquered.”

⋅ Nota Bene ⋅

^* Related.

Foxfire Fungi

I don’t know if anyone recalls this post: Aarnivalkea. In it I wondered if ‘will o’ the wisps’ were actually references to bioluminescent fungi since the Finnish word for ‘will o’ the wisp’ is aarnivalkea — the ‘aarni’ being an archaic word for a giant tree. This brought to mind these two quotes:

The mole took a piece of decayed wood in his mouth, for that glimmers like a light in the dark, and then went on in front, and lighted them through the long dark passage.

— Hans Christian Andersen: Thumbelina

. . . in a rotten tree stump found some bits of glowing wood like fire . . .

— William Elliot Griffis: Japanese Fairy World

And as it turns out, there is a bioluminescent fungus! Or well, there’re quite many of them but foxfire fungi at least grow in decaying wood. I’m not going to go through the whole list of bioluminescent fungi, I’m just content that my thoughts were proven correct.

As a fun aside, the word for foxfire in Finnish is ‘peikonkulta’ which means ‘troll’s gold’. It could also be translated as ‘goblin’s gold’ which is a bioluminescent moss.

Aarnivalkea

Aarnivalkea is basically the Finnish word for ‘will o’ the wisp’. In folklore, will o’ the wisps are strange lights that lure travellers off safe paths. In some folklore, will o’ the wisps also lead to treasure which becomes relevant in a bit.

So, here comes the fun part. The Finnish word ‘aarni’ can mean either:

treasure (archaic, mythology)
or
giant; giant tree (archaic, mythology)

When I saw that definition of giant tree (which, to be fair, I probably should’ve figured out from the word ‘aarniometsä’), I immediately thought of these two tidbits:

The mole took a piece of decayed wood in his mouth, for that glimmers like a light in the dark, and then went on in front, and lighted them through the long dark passage.

— Hans Christian Andersen: Thumbelina

. . . in a rotten tree stump found some bits of glowing wood like fire . . .

— William Elliot Griffis: Japanese Fairy World

One of the theories for will o’ the wisps is that they’re some kind of marsh gas or whatever. But what if they aren’t gas? Maybe they’re rotting wood that glows? For whatever reason that I can’t discern yet but, to be fair, I haven’t really been in close contact with rotting wood. The only thing I can still think of is some kind of bioluminescent fungus or something.

I See How It Is

Henceforward I haunted the tomb each night; seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal.

— H. P. Lovecraft: The Tomb

It is not I who will tell you, but the prophet Isaiah: “They lodge among tombs and in caves for the sake of dream visions.” You observe, then, how ancient among the Jews was this work of witchcraft, namely, sleeping among tombs for the sake of dream visions.

— Julian: Against the Galileans

Raiko and the Shi-ten Doji

There were no bridges over the streams, and frightful precipices abounded. Once they had to stop and build a bridge by felling a tree, and walking across it over a dangerous chasm. Once they came to steep rock, to descend which they must make a ladder of creeping vines. At last they reached a dense grove at the top of a cliff, far up to the clouds, which seemed as if it might contain the demon’s castle.

⋅ Nota Bene ⋅

(This explains so many things about Japanese video games, ha ha.)

Two Graves

Confucius supposedly said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,” but I don’t recall seeing this in The Analects at least. The point of this post isn’t whether Confucius said this or not, though.

One of Japan’s more famous stories is the story of The Forty-Seven Rōnins. It’s a story about two lords and their retainers, and a greedy twit who was supposed to teach them the proper ceremonies during an envoy’s visit. The Greedy Twit wasn’t happy with the gifts he received from the lords and so, like any reasonable and gentlemanly person would, he heaped abuse on them. The other lord was saved by his counsellor who bribed the Greedy Twit. This made him abuse the other lord twice as hard until he finally snapped and tried to introduce his dirk into the Greedy Twit’s eye. Sadly, he failed and was sentenced to death.

So the lord’s retainers were left lordless and jobless, and forty-seven of them decided to revenge their dead master. They got it and at the end of the tale they went back to their lord’s grave and killed themselves.

The idea behind seppuku, basically, is to retain or regain your honour. The Japanese used to believe that soul resided in the innards — which makes sense if you consider where most of your psychosomatic responses happen. When you showed your innards, you were basically showing that your soul is clean.

I always think about this tale when I hear the abovementioned saying. It’s not really so much that revenge is bad or that you shouldn’t have revenge (because supposedly Confucius also said that you shouldn’t live under the same sky as the murderer of your parents), but that you have to ritualistically suicide to regain the honour you lost by killing the person you took revenge on.

I think I like the lesson I gleaned from one of the Icelandic sagas more: if you’re going to take revenge, then make sure you finish the damn job.

How the Jelly-fish Lost its Shell

This is a Japanese fairy tale in the Japanese Fairy World, collected and translated by William Elliot Griffis.

This tale depicts that jellyfish used to have shells:

In those days he had a shell, and as his head was hard, no one dared to insult him, or stick him with their horns, or pinch him with their claws, or scratch him with their nails, or brush rudely by him with their fins.

Fairy tales can be surprisingly old — for example, the Australian aboriginals allegedly have preserved their oral tales from sixty thousand years ago, East Europeans have preserved their tales from Ancient India, and the origins of the tale of Yeti might be the vestiges of early humans meeting anthropoid apes.

So being the curious, enterprising young lady that I am, I asked myself if this tale had some trace of truth in it.

It took some digging — because internet search engines are freaking useless — but apparently ancient comb jellies used to have external skeletons that could’ve been support or defence.

But here’s the problem: these things used to live five hundred million years ago. So probably not, ha ha.

Tie the Knot

I haven’t yet read a lot of Celtic literature (the phrase apparently comes from Celtic customs) but one fun little tidbit just occurred to me.

In this sombre picture the only graceful touch is the custom which lovers or spouses had of tying each other’s girdles when about to part for a time,–a ceremony by which they implied that they would be constant to each other during the period of absence.

Reading is so much fun.

Little Silver’s Dream of the Shoji

Old grannies and country folks believe that if you have a picture of a tapir under the bed or on the paper pillow-case, you will not have unpleasant dreams, as the tapir is said to eat them.

⋅ Nota Bene ⋅

(It actually used to be a Japanese creature called baku. But this changed at some point to a tapir.)