To help avoid potential harrassment from the vättar, one should first declare "Se up därnere!" ("Look out down there!") before urinating on the ground or chucking water out of the house. 🖼️Reine Rosenberg

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While not always confined to German households, Kobolds are often domestic in nature, much like a Scottish brownie. Believed to be a lingering pagan deity removed to a smaller stature, they were prominent enough that even Martin Luther took them seriously.

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Riveted sheet copper alloy cauldron, found in the remains of a ruined chapel, from an abandoned village, lost in the marshes. Northeye,

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Dworowy is a Slavic folklore creature who protected the household. He was portrayed as an old man with a long white beard and often with multicoloured hair. He liked offerings of shiny things, sheep’s wool and good bread.

Art by Paweł Zych

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Leave out milk, bread, and honey and you'll have less housework to do: the brownie is a Scottish spirit that at night will tidy up the home a bit if given offerings. If ignored or offended, they become boggarts, so be kind.

🖼: T. DiTerlizzi

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🪄🔥🪄The hearth as a sacred space is an ancient belief. It was kept neat out of respect for the household gods who dwelt there, and fire-irons were ceremonially placed in the hands of a new bride, to symbolise that she was now the mistress & guardian of the home.

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On the Galician atlantic coast, sailors feared the ALARBIOS. They are horrible cyclops who travel by boat and capture the shipwrecked sailors to take them to their island. Once there, they feed them and, when the time comes, they devour them.

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Maruxinhos are small in size and wear red clothes and hat ❤️, even so apparently inoffensive to humans they are described as highly tricksy.
The Portuguese Maruxinhos or Trasgos are part of the North of the country Folklore, specially Trás-os-Montes and Douro.

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Barabashka in Russian mythology is a noisy spirit. It is believed every building has its own barabashka. Also “barabashka” is nickname for an angry household spirit domovoi. If for some reason domovoi gets angry then he begins to make noises.

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In Aztec religion, Chantico is the deity reigning over the fires in the family hearth. Chantico's name means "she who dwells in the house" or "she who comes to make the house." The male Aztec deity reigning over fire is named Xolotl.

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Devilish & deadly cover art from Der Orchideengarten, one of the first fantasy fiction magazines. Founded by Karl Hans Strobl in Munich & published from 1919-1921, it featured Gothic, horror, fantasy tales and illustrations.
(Uni. Heidelberg digital library)

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The Arming and Departure of the Knights.
One of the sumptuous 19th-century tapestries by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, & John Henry Dearle. ⚔️

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Men grow mighty in the May,
Proud and gay the maidens grow;
Fair is every wooded height;
Fair and bright the plain below.

A bright shaft has smit the streams,
With gold gleams the water-flag;
Leaps the fish, and on the hills
Ardor thrills the leaping stag.

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Harpies appear in the stories of Charlemagne where they harried Senapus, the blind king of Abyssinia, by fouling his food so that he would have died of starvation if Astolpho had not arrived in time to drive them off and so save his life.

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-Changelings

"I want to tell myself she is not you,
This strange girl wearing my eyes,
Whose every gesture rings untrue,
Familiar, but in disguise."

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🍄🔥🍄Unbaptized babies were believed especially vulnerable to being stolen by the Fae, who would leave a changeling in their place. The child might be taken because of its beauty, to strengthen the Fae bloodline, or used to pay the septennial tithe owed to hell.

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In Wales, changelings were known as crimbals. One story is of Dazzy Walters in Ebbw Vale who woke up just as her baby was being stolen, but managed to hold onto its foot before the fairies disappeared with it. 🧚🏼‍♀️



🎨 Kate Greenaway, April Baby Hush-a-bye, Baby.

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'The goddess, from the "great above"
she set her mind toward the "great
below,"
Inanna, from the "great above" she set
her mind toward the "great below."
My lady abandoned heaven, abandoned
earth,
To the nether world she descended.'

🎨Marcela Bolivar

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"Why, the question is often asked of me
Do you choose as subjects for painting
So often death, perishing and the grave?
In order to one day live eternally
One must often submit oneself to death"

Caspar David Friedrich died 1840

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