The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A–Z of Fantastic Beings from Myth and Magic. John Matthews
witness his own death. It is widely believed among all bear hunters that if they do not observe this ancestral respect for grandfather bear, as he is invariably called, he will not show himself again.
Among the Haida of British Columbia, they tell how a young woman was taken into the bear’s den and became a Bear Wife. She grew a pelt and bore twin children who were half human, half bear. But her brothers had been searching for her all this time; when they discovered the den, the Bear Husband knew he must die but he taught her and his sons the songs that hunters must use over his dead body to ensure good fortune. The Bear Sons became great hunters once they had removed their bear coats. They showed their kinsmen where bear dens were to be found and taught them the sacred songs before returning to live among their own people once again.
Bear is the supreme physician and herbalist, because he digs in the woods for herbs and plants and because he has the ability to heal his own wounds, as many hunters who have wounded bears have testified. A Hupa Indian story tells how Bear discovered medicine for pregnant women.
Bear is also the giver of tools. A Siberian story relates how Bear tried to cross a river. As the waters engulfed him from foot to head, he said, ‘My heels shall be whetstones, my knees grinders, my shoulder-blades palettes for grinding out colours, my blood will give the colour red and my excrement will be the colour black.’ This miraculously recalls the first cave-painters who ground pigment upon bears’ scapulars to create the very first art.
Bear fell pregnant and found herself growing too big to walk. She wondered whether she would be the same if she visited the Indian world. As she had that thought, a voice cried, ‘Put me in your mouth. You are in this condition for the sake the Indians.’ She saw a redwood sorrel growing and put it in her mouth, thinking that this medicine would also help the Indian. She gave it to the Indian nations and every time it is used in childbirth, they are able to talk to her through it.
As bears grew more secretive and less easy to see, bear stories remained popular. From the Norwegian folk story East of the Sun, West of the Moon in which a white bear marries a young woman, to the armoured bears of Philip Pullman’s modern masterpiece, His Dark Materials, the bear fulfils its mysterious guardianship over our world. Today the bear is one of the most protective toys of children. The teddy bear which is given to young children derives from the beginning of the 20th century when President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear cub while on a hunt in 1902. From that time onwards, stuffed toy bears were manufactured. Literary bears, such as Winnie the Pooh, Paddington and the bears of the Goldilocks story continue to enchant us, hinting of a deeper power and intelligence that we must respect.
BEAST OF GEVAUDIN
During 1764–7, the Beast of Gevaudin terrorized parts of south-eastern France. A wolf-like beast, it drove off cattle and preyed upon people, tearing out their entrails. It was said to have red fur and a black-coloured back. A Paris newspaper speculated that it might be a cross between a wolf and a hyena. Despite having been shot at, it continued its predations. King Louis XV sent out soldiers to kill the beast but even after they had thought the beast dead, it killed again. In June 1767, the beast was finally killed by Jean Chastel; he fired two silver bullets into it, believing it to be a vampire. The corpse of the beast was taken to Paris. A film was made of this story, Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001).
BEAST OF LEETIR DALLAN
This ancient Irish monster had the head of a man and the body of a vast creature, which swelled up like a smith’s bellows. It was the son of a priest’s daughter who was seduced by an Each Uisge.
BEAVER
In North American Algonquian legend, Beaver was one of four sacred animals that were dispatched to bring back a single granule of soil with which Manabusch, the Great Hare, could recreate the world after the flood caused by the Anamagqkiu which destroyed the world. Beaver died trying, along with Otter. Mink failed in the attempt but Muskrat found a grain of sand so that Manabusch could work his magic.
In European lore, the beaver was the byword for industry – ‘to be as busy as a beaver’. Beavers had the reputation for being the source of a substance that cured all diseases; this was held in their testicles which it would bite off if pursued and cornered, so as to deprive the hunter of his prize. If it escaped and was hunted once again, it would cast itself on its back to demonstrate the uselessness of the hunt. For the Zoroastrians of Persia, the beaver was believed to be the Luck of the Rivers. To kill a beaver would bring drought to the area as well terrible misfortune to the hunter.
BEDIARDARI
In Malayasia, Bediardari is the name of the fairies. They are also spoken of as ‘the good folk’ in the same euphemistic way as people in Britain and Ireland have always done.
BEE
Throughout the world, the bee has been revered as the bringer of sweetness and light, as people have always collected the honeycomb to sweeten their palate and used the wax from beehives and nests to make candles. In Spain, 8,000 year-old cave paintings at Cueva de la Araña show scenes of people collecting honey from a sheer rock face with the help of ropes. Bees are seen as idealized emblems of civilization, with their organized colonies. Respect for the bee has been shown because it was believed the bee was the only creature to have come from paradise completely unchanged by this world. Their industry and the manner in which they build their own intricate hive has impressed many cultures. You were highly favoured if bees built a hive on your land. It is perhaps for this reason that it has been necessary to ‘tell the bees’ any significant family news, to treat them as members of the family. It was not understood until modern times that the chief officer of the hive is the Queen Bee, early writers speaking of the King of the Bees instead.
Among the Maya of South America, bees were under the patronage of the god Ah Mucan Cab. Among the Chiriguane tribe of South America, the star constellation of the Pleiades is called the bees. Among the Aztecs, the god Quetzalcoatl goes on a journey into the Land of the Dead during which he is said to become a bee. In India, Vishnu, Krishna and Indra are termed ‘the nectar-born’ ones. Vishnu often appears as a blue bee perched upon a lotus, while Krishna is depicted with a blue bee on his forehead. This blueness denotes the colour of the sky and ether, the sacred fifth element, which can only be assigned to the gods, not to men.
In Egyptian myth, the sun god Ra’s tears turned into bees as they fell upon the earth. Egyptians saw the bee as the giver of life, and so they used the bee to represent birth, death and resurrection, as well as a symbol of chastity, balanced living and royalty. The king of Lower Egypt was called ‘he who belongs to the bee’ and the temple of the goddess Neith at Sais was called ‘house of the bee’.
In Greece, a similar connection was made between hives of bees and colonies of temple servants. The priestesses of Demeter were called melissae or ‘bees’, and the priestess of the oracle at Delphi was called the Delphic Bee. The word for a full-grown bee larva is ‘nymph’ and the Greek nymph Melissa was the first to discover honey as foodstuff. Greeks mixed honey with water to create hydromel, a celebratory drink. They associated honey with eloquence after the tuneful buzzing of bees, and many poets and orators have the nickname Chrysostom or ‘golden-mouthed’. It is said that the bees of Hymettus dropped honey upon the lips of Plato as he slept when a child, and that the poet Pindar was fed with finest nectar while he was a baby in his cradle. A similar epithet is used of poets among the Celtic peoples for whom mead was the sublime drink that was offered to heroes, imparting intoxication and ecstasy.
The same respect for honey was found among the Mazdeans of Persia, who saw it as the essential ingredient in the divine drink of soma. The Romans held that collectors of honey must be chaste or abstain from sexual intercourse or they might drive the swarms away. They also believed that sudden swarms of bees alighting in a place were bringers