@juergen_hubert@raymccarthy@germany@folklore You’ll be delighted or terrified to know that even in this day and age many people in SE Asia refuse to plant Banana plants near their homes due to the spirit associated with them.
The Thais call her Nang Tani, Malaysians call her Hantu Pokok Pisang while Indonesians and Cambodians call the spirit by different names - we all agree that it is a female and often malevolent spirit.
German folklore does have some “grain spirits”, such as the “rye mother” and the “rye wolf”. They mostly serve to terrorize children so that they won’t go into ripe grain fields and thus damage the crops.
@juergen_hubert@raymccarthy@germany@folklore In elementary school in Malaysia - as late as the 1970s - there were mentions in our textbooks of Rice Spirits (Semangat Padi) which were bound to the fields where the crop grew. Back then rice was grown only 1x or 2x a year instead of three plantings per year the way it is today. The main lesson behind the story was that the spirit needed to “rest” and farmers shouldn’t overplant/harvest.
There’s little of that in German folklore - the biblical command to “subjugate the earth” tends to override environmental concerns in the tales.
Though there _is_ a tale where you are supposed to leave a corner of the field alone during the harvest time, in order to appease a certain group of angry, hungry spirits. I couldn’t help but wondering if this was a remnant of older beliefs about spirit worship.
Sometimes the “wisdom” is a little dubious. The folklore of the European alps holds that the upper ranges of the mountains were once fertile meadows, but got covered by ice due to “the sins of humans”.
Considering that those same glaciers are now rapidly melting away _because_ of the “sins of humans”, I find this deeply ironic.
Here is another thing that was probably influenced by Christianity: German folklore constantly harps on about how cursed those people are who mess around with other people’s field boundary markers. They not only inevitably return as ghosts as punishment for their crimes, but frequently as ghosts _set on fire!_
I suspect that this is directly derived from Deuteronomy 27:17:
“Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone.”
I suspect that cultures that _don’t_ have Christianity’s obsession with clearly marked lots of land don’t have such legends, either. And I gather that many cultures have a more communal approach to land ownership.
@raymccarthy @Ellirahim @germany @folklore
Yeah, there are spirits of mountains, lakes, springs, and forests aplenty in German folklore - but not of individual plants.
There _are_ some extremely weird, supernatural plants in German folklore - but there is usually no indication that they are actually spirits.
@juergen_hubert @raymccarthy @germany @folklore You’ll be delighted or terrified to know that even in this day and age many people in SE Asia refuse to plant Banana plants near their homes due to the spirit associated with them.
The Thais call her Nang Tani, Malaysians call her Hantu Pokok Pisang while Indonesians and Cambodians call the spirit by different names - we all agree that it is a female and often malevolent spirit.
@Ellirahim @raymccarthy @germany @folklore
German folklore does have some “grain spirits”, such as the “rye mother” and the “rye wolf”. They mostly serve to terrorize children so that they won’t go into ripe grain fields and thus damage the crops.
@juergen_hubert @raymccarthy @germany @folklore In elementary school in Malaysia - as late as the 1970s - there were mentions in our textbooks of Rice Spirits (Semangat Padi) which were bound to the fields where the crop grew. Back then rice was grown only 1x or 2x a year instead of three plantings per year the way it is today. The main lesson behind the story was that the spirit needed to “rest” and farmers shouldn’t overplant/harvest.
@Ellirahim @raymccarthy @germany @folklore
There’s little of that in German folklore - the biblical command to “subjugate the earth” tends to override environmental concerns in the tales.
Though there _is_ a tale where you are supposed to leave a corner of the field alone during the harvest time, in order to appease a certain group of angry, hungry spirits. I couldn’t help but wondering if this was a remnant of older beliefs about spirit worship.
@juergen_hubert @raymccarthy @germany @folklore I’d like to think of that as eco-wisdom passed down from our early farmer ancestors.
@Ellirahim @raymccarthy @germany @folklore
Sometimes the “wisdom” is a little dubious. The folklore of the European alps holds that the upper ranges of the mountains were once fertile meadows, but got covered by ice due to “the sins of humans”.
Considering that those same glaciers are now rapidly melting away _because_ of the “sins of humans”, I find this deeply ironic.
@juergen_hubert @raymccarthy @germany @folklore Ooh, that sounds like the influence of the organized religion. And sadly that never seems to gel with what Nature needs.
@Ellirahim @raymccarthy
Here is another thing that was probably influenced by Christianity: German folklore constantly harps on about how cursed those people are who mess around with other people’s field boundary markers. They not only inevitably return as ghosts as punishment for their crimes, but frequently as ghosts _set on fire!_
I suspect that this is directly derived from Deuteronomy 27:17:
“Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone.”
I suspect that cultures that _don’t_ have Christianity’s obsession with clearly marked lots of land don’t have such legends, either. And I gather that many cultures have a more communal approach to land ownership.