‘I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us —don’t tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!’
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
#SwampSunday
Mélusine is a figure of European folklore, a female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down (much like a mermaid). She is also sometimes illustrated with wings, two tails, or both.
#SwampSunday
Ignis fatuus – called virvatuluke in Estonian, is a magical flash or flame usually seen in swampy landscapes or graveyards. It is believed that these flames are the restless souls of those long gone #swampsunday
'A marsh is a whole world within a world, a different world, with a life of its own, with its own permanent denizens, its passing visitors, its voices, its sounds, its own strange mystery.'
Guy de Maupassant
🖼️ Lily Seika Jones #SwampSunday
In Turkish folktales, the veil is thin around lakes. Supernatural women emerge from them to marry mortals. In a tale from Sivas, a young man goes to the lake to ask his mother-in-law for a favor. She drags him down into another realm ✨
#FolkloreSunday #SwampSunday
🎨G. Klimt
In India, strings of lemons and chillies are hung in homes to ward off Alakshmi, an ill-fortuned goddess. She has a taste for sour and pungent flavours, and so she will eat her fill of these foods and leave without entering the building, thus avoiding misfortune. #SwampSunday
Heqet, the Egyptian water goddess of birth, rebirth and fertility. She is associated with the annual flooding of the Nile River. She is often credited for the origin of the name of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft. #SwampSunday
🪷Art by Khristine Anja Page
A group of children were playing near water when a beautiful horse trotted over. Excited, they attempted to ride the horse, but became stuck to its back.
The horse then submerged, taking the children with it into the deep.
🎨The Kelpie Pond - Jaime Whitbread
#SwampSunday
Much wearied with her long and dreary way
And now with toil and sorrow well nigh spent
Of sad regret and wasting grief the prey
Fair Psyche through untrodden forests went
To lone shades uttering oft a vain lament
—Mary Tighe, Psyche
🎨Psyche Weeping, Kinuko Y. Craft
#SwampSunday
Sculptor Sophie Prestigiacomo swamp figures in the Marshes Nature Reserve of Séné, Gulf of Morbihan, France are modeled with mud & seaweed. The colours, textures & skin of the creatures change over time, along with the organic landscape they inhabit.
#SwampSunday
The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only —a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of the archangels.
—L.M. Montgomery
Anne's House of Dreams
#SwampSunday #BookChatWeekly
A Knucker is a water dragon that lurks in the knuckerholes of Sussex. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘nicor’- water monster. A famous knucker lived in a pond in Lyminster. He was killed by Jim Puttock who made him ill with a giant pudding then cut off his head. #SwampSunday
