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.

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.)

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.

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.)

The Seven Patrons of Happiness

He keeps his bag tightly shut, for money easily runs away when the purse is once opened.

Glow Wood

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

Is this a real thing? I’m trying to think of glowing wood but all I can really think of is bioluminescent fungus or something.

The Child of Thunder

“A new field gives a scant crop,” the words of which mean also, “Human life is but fifty years.”