Loðsilungur

Variations: Lodsilungur, Lod-silungur, Shaggy Trout; Loðufsi (Shaggy Pollock)

The Loðsilungur, or “Shaggy Trout”, is one of the most toxic fishes to inhabit Iceland. The earliest accounts date from the mid-17th century, where it is obliquely referred to as the “poisonous menace”. Illness and death follow the consumption of a loðsilungur.

The appearance of the Icelandic shaggy trout varies, but a trout-like shape and the presence of hair are diagnostic. Loðsilungurs tend to be ugly and strange. The one described in Nordri in 1855 had a beard of reddish hair on its lower jaw and neck as well as hairy patches on its sides and hairy fins. Another account distinguishes between trout with shaggy hair near the front of their head, and trout with hairy manes on either side. The adipose fin is either reduced or absent, and scales may not be present. The most detailed description specifies that it is no bigger than an Arctic char, and is often the size of a man’s finger. The tail is narrower and the front thicker than in other trout. The small, deep-set eyes are set ahead of a bulbous skull. The short snout has a distinctive overbite. The teeth are pitch black. Finally, the loðsilungur is covered with fine, downy, cottony-white hair. This hair, the namesake of the trout, resembles mold and is visible only when the fish is dead and in the water; on dry land it lies flat against the scales and becomes invisible. This makes it easier to confuse with edible trout – and makes it that much more deadly.

Across Iceland the tale is told of a tragic group poisoning. In 1692 the inhabitants of the farm called Gröf were found dead around a table with a cooked loðsilungur. Two brothers in a hunting lodge near Gunnarssonavatn Lake died with plates of trout on their knees. The most notorious poisoning incident is that of the Kaldrani farm, where an entire household were killed by a meal of loðsilungur. Only one young pauper girl had no appetite at the time, and avoided a terrible death.

Dogs and birds of prey, normally indiscriminate in their eating habits, will refuse to eat a loðsilungur. The shaggy trout are also tenacious and will cling stubbornly to life as long as possible. A group of fishermen in Hoffellsvatn Lake found that out the hard way; they left a catch of fish out overnight, only to find a live loðsilungur squirming on top of the pile. The entire catch was discarded and the lake abandoned.

References

Davidsson, O. (1900) The Folk-lore of Icelandic Fishes. The Scottish Review, October, pp. 312-332.

Hlidberg, J. B. and Aegisson, S.; McQueen, F. J. M. and Kjartansson, R., trans. (2011) Meeting with Monsters. JPV utgafa, Reykjavik.

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Jarjacha

The Jarjacha is a nocturnal Peruvian beast, quadrupedal, with a long neck and glowing eyes. It lives on a diet of human flesh, but has very specific preferences: it feeds solely on incestuous men and women, or those who have committed carnal sins towards their spiritual compadres. It itself may be born from the soul of an incestuous person or taboo-breaker.

A jarjacha manifests primarily in its call, a loud rattling cry that echoes through the hills. “Jar-jar-jar-jar-jar”… It repeats, over and over. The villagers shiver, cross themselves, and lock their doors.

By morning the atmosphere is tense. Everyone knows there is a sinner among them, some incestuous wretch who has brought judgment down on themselves. The parish priest decries the existence of the son of Satan in their midst, one who will be punished by divine retribution. Eventually the shamed culprit is brought to light, and given an auto-da-fé in the public square.

Jarjacha is the worst insult that can be leveled at someone.

References

Bustamante, M. E. (1943) Apuntes para el folklore Peruano. La Miniatura, Ayacucho.

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Quvdlugiarsuaq

Variations: Auseq

Tales from Greenland, notably Aasiaat, tell of a gigantic maggot called Quvdlugiarsuaq. It is so big that the legend of Aqigsiaq tells of a dwelling place that survived an entire winter on the blubber of one quvdlugiarsuaq.

The Auseq is a similar creature described as a giant caterpillar. It is dangerous to humans.

References

Birket-Smith, K. (1924) Ethnography of the Egedesminde District. Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen.

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Erumía

Erumía is a gigantic jellyfish associated with the Papuan village of Mawata. She lives on the reef Tére-múba-mádja offshore of the Gésovamúba point. The édeéde, or normal jellyfish, are her children, and they are abundant on that reef. She is also the patron of all the fish. Her long, slimy, stringy tentacles can sting a man to death, and any swimmer who sees them stretching in their direction knows to flee for their lives. The tentacles can be seen floating around the mouth of the Bina River.

As the patron ororárora or spirit of Mawata, Erumía is associated with the people of the village, the “Erumía people”. She appears in dreams as a good omen and grants “lucky things” for fishing.

References

Landtman, G. (1917) The Folk-tales of the Kiwai Papuans. Acta Societatis Scientiarium Fennicae, t. XLVII, Helsingfors.

Landtman, G. (1927) The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea. MacMillan and Co. Limited, London.

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Circhos

Variations: Cricos, Crichos

The story of the Circhos is one fraught with misunderstandings, mistranslations, and general confusion. It should serve as a morality tale on the importance of accurate information transmission.

Aristotle describes the habits of hermit crabs in detail. The carcinium (“small crab”) is soft-bodied after the thorax, resembling a spider, with two red horns and forward-pointing eyes. The mouth has hair-like appendages and two divided feet that it uses to catch prey. There are two additional smaller pairs of feet beside them.

Of the hermit crabs, the kind that lives in the nerita or brita shell is unusual because its right divided foot is small while the left one is large. It walks more on the left foot than the right. The nerita itself, Aristotle adds, has a large, smooth, rounded shell, and a red hepatopancreas, as opposed to the ceryx and its black hepatopancreas. During a storm the crabs hide under a rock, and the gastropods attach themselves to the rock and close their opercula.

All of the preceding information is stated consecutively. Michael Scot’s translation of Aristotle gives the name of kiroket to the nerita shell. Thomas de Cantimpré takes Scot’s kiroket and his descriptions of the hermit crab and gastropod, but omits connecting names and details to combine them into a single confused account. It is likely that Scot’s jargon and neologisms threw Thomas off.

Thomas de Cantimpré’s cricos (corrupted from kiroket) now has two fissures at the end of its feet, giving it three fingers and three nails on each foot (Thomas’ “common-sense” addition). Its left foot is big and its right foot is small, and it carries its weight on its left foot. The comparison of hepatopancreas colors becomes the shell of the cricos, colored black and red. In good weather, the cricos moves around; in bad weather, it attaches itself to rocks and doesn’t move.

Albertus Magnus takes up Thomas’ account, but drops the confusing details of the feet. The Ortus Sanitatis, on the other hand, creates some additional features out of whole cloth. The circhos or crichos has the head of a man and the body of a sea-dog (i.e. a dogfish or shark); it is healthy in good weather, but weakens and turns ill in bad weather.

Olaus Magnus borrows the circhos of the Ortus Sanitatis to populate his Scandinavian sea. The physical description of a human-headed fish is wisely redacted. Whether it was meant to represent an actual Scandinavian animal, or is merely plagiarism, remains unclear.

It is Olaus Magnus’ account that is best known today. Concept drift in modern retellings have led to fabrications such as a limping gait that forces the circhos to move only in fine weather and cling to rocks during storms, and even a “humanoid” appearance.

References

Aristotle, Cresswell, R. trans. (1862) Aristotle’s History of Animals. Henry G. Bohn, London.

Barber, R. and Riches, A. (1971) A Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts. The Boydell Press, Ipswich.

de Cantimpré, T. (1280) Liber de natura rerum. Bibliothèque municipale de Valenciennes.

Cuba, J. (1539) Le iardin de santé. Philippe le Noir, Paris.

Gauvin, B.; Jacquemard, C.; and Lucas-Avenel, M. (2013) L’auctoritas de Thomas de Cantimpré en matière ichtyologique (Vincent de Beauvais, Albert le Grand, l’Hortus sanitatis). Kentron, 29, pp. 69-108.

Magnus, A. (1920) De Animalibus Libri XXVI. Aschendorffschen Verlagbuchhandlung, Münster.

Magnus, O. (1555) Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Giovanni M. Viotto, Rome.

Magnus, O. (1561) Histoire des pays septentrionaus. Christophle Plantin, Antwerp.

Magnus, O. (1658) A compendious history of the Goths, Swedes, and Vandals, and other Northern nations. J. Streater, London.

Rose, C. (2000) Giants, Monsters, and Dragons. W. W. Norton and Co., New York. Unknown. (1538) Ortus Sanitatis. Joannes de Cereto de Tridino.

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Ilomba

Variations: Malomba (pl.); Mulombe, Mulolo, Sung’unyi (Kaonde); Ndumba (Alunda); Man-Snake

The Ilomba is one of several familiar spirits associated with sorcerers and witchcraft in Zambia. Malomba appear as snakes with human heads and share the features and emotions of their owners. As malomba are obtained through deliberate sorcery in order to kill enemies or steal food, anyone suspected of having an ilomba is up to no good. That said, powerful chiefs and hunters are said to have their own malomba to protect them from witchcraft. Owners of malomba are usually male.

Evil sorcerers can make malomba in a number of ways. Most commonly, a mixture of certain medicines and water is made and placed on a piece of bark. Five duiker horns are placed next to this. A plait of luwamba or mbamba (spiky grass) is made to about 15-18 inches long and 0.5-1 inch wide; the duiker horns are placed at one end of this plait. Fingernail parings from the client are put in the horns, and blood taken from the client’s forehead and chest are mixed with the medicine. Some of the concoction is drunk by the client, while the rest is sprinkled onto the plait with a second luwamba plait. After the first sprinkling, the plait turns ash-white. The second sprinkling turns it into a snake. The third gives it a head and shoulders that resemble the client in miniature, including any jewelry present. The shoulders soon fade away to leave only the head.

The ilomba then addresses its master. “You know and recognize me, you see that our faces are similar?” When the client answers both questions in the affirmative, then they are given their ilomba.

Once obtained, an ilomba will live wherever the owner desires it to, but usually this is in riverside reeds. Soon it makes its first demand for the life of a person. The owner can then designate the chosen target, and the ilomba kills the victim. It kills by eating its victim’s life, by consuming their shadow, or by simply feasting on their flesh or swallowing them whole. Then it returns and crawls over its owner, licking them. People who keep mulomba become sleek and fat and clean, are possessed of long life, and will not die until all their relatives are dead. This comes at a steep price, however, as the ilomba will hunger again, and continue eating lives. If it is not allowed to feed itself, its owner will grow weak and ill until the ilomba feeds again.

Soon the unnatural death toll will be noticed, and a sorcerer is called in to divine the hiding place of the ilomba. To kill an ilomba, a sorcerer will sprinkle nsompu medicine around its suspected lair. This causes the water level to rise and the ground to rumble. First fish, then crabs, and finally the ilomba itself appear. The snake is promptly shot with a poisoned arrow – and its owner feels its pain. They die at the same time.

References

Melland, F. H. (1923) In Witch-bound Africa. J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

Turner, V. (1975) Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

White, C. M. N. (1948) Witchcraft, Divination and Magic among the Balovale Tribes. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 18(2), pp. 81-104.

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Chouyu

Variations: Jiuyu, Jiyu

The slopes of Exceedingly Lofty Mountain in China are home to the Chouyu. It is like a rabbit but has a bird’s beak, owl’s eyes, and the tail of a snake. It falls asleep (i.e. plays dead) when it sees people. If a chouyu is seen it is an omen of a locust plague.

Mathieu identifies this animal as the armadillo, but admits with impressive understatement that China is a bit far from the neotropics…

References

Mathieu, R. (1983) Étude sur la mythologie et l’ethnologie de la Chine ancienne. Collège de France, Paris.

Strassberg, R. E. (2002) A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas. University of California Press.

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Sermilik

The Sermilik, “ice-clad”, is an enormous and highly dangerous polar bear found in the seas around Aasiaat in Greenland. Unlike the bears it resembles, it has very long fur completely covered with ice. Four lumps of ice at the surface are in fact the four paws of a sermilik lying in wait, and young hunters are warned never to paddle near those.

References

Birket-Smith, K. (1924) Ethnography of the Egedesminde District. Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen.

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Dingonek

The Dingonek is a creature that lives in the Maggori River in Kenya, as well as in Lake Nyanza (Victoria). Our primary source for the dingonek comes from big-game hunter John Alfred Jordan, as recorded by Edgar Beecher Bronson. As a tale told by one big-game hunter to another, there is no reason to believe there was any embellishment or exaggeration involved.

Legends of aquatic monsters predate Jordan’s account, but they describe a generic large water python. Clement Hill claimed to have seen one in Lake Nyanza that attempted to seize a man on the prow of his boat. It had a dark, roundish head.

The dingonek as described by Jordan is a cross between a sea serpent, a leopard, and a whale. It is fourteen or fifteen feet long. Its head is similar in shape and markings to that of a leopard, but is the size of a lioness’ head. There are two long white fangs protruding downwards from the upper jaw. The back is broad like that of a hippo, patterned and colored like a leopard, and “scaled like an armadillo”. The tail, used for aquatic propulsion, is broad and finned. When ashore, the dingonek leaves behind prints as wide as a hippo’s but with reptilian claw-marks.

A .303 shot behind the ear had no effect on the dingonek. It reared straight up out of the water, and Jordan ran for his life. The dingonek was not seen again.

Hobley tells of another man who swears he saw a dingonek. When the Mara River was in flood, the eyewitness said he saw a creature floating down the river on a big log. It had its tail in the water, but its length was estimated to be sixteen feet. It had scales, spots like a leopard, and a head like an otter, but no long fangs. When shot at, it slipped into the water and disappeared. Apart from the (surely inaccurate) length given, this is a good account of a Nile monitor lizard.

Finally, rock art from a cave in Brakfontein Ridge, South Africa, has been claimed to depict a walrus-like dingonek, but the location is far from the dingonek’s habitat, and the association is arbitrary.

Heuvelmans initially believed the dingonek to be an odd species of prehistoric crocodile. Later he revised this to create an aquatic saber-toothed cat whose wet fur clumped and gave the appearance of scales.

As armadillos are New World animals, modern reconstructions have assumed the armadillo “scales” to be those of a pangolin instead. Other recent additions include a single horn and a stinger tail, neither of which have any basis.

Cryptozoologists have equated the dingonek with a number of other creatures, including the far better known Lukwata, the Ndamathia, and the Ol-umaina or Ol-maima of the Mara River. This is known to the Masai and has been described by Hobley as fifteen feet in length and scaly with a dog-like or otter-like head, leopard spots, small ears “marked somewhat after the fashion of a puff adder”, a short neck, short legs with claws. It may be seen sunning itself on logs and riverbanks, and dives into the water when threatened. Hobley’s ol-umaina account is copied by Heuvelmans, who expresses some confusion at the “ears” comment but otherwise affirms that the dingonek and the ol-umaina are one and the same. Shuker corrects the name to ol-maima.

All of this is moot. Ol-maima (or, more correctly ɔl-máɨ́má) is the Maa term for a cripple or a Nile monitor lizard (owing to its waddling movement on land). The descriptions are exaggerated but recognizable accounts of monitor lizards – as the dingonek itself almost certainly is.

References

Bronson, E. B. (1910) In Closed Territory. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago.

Bryant, A. T. (1948) The Zulu People. Shuter and Shooter, Pietermaritzburg.

Conway, J.; Kosemen, C. M.; and Naish, D. (2013) Cryptozoologicon Vol. I. Irregular Books.

Heuvelmans, B.; Garnett, R. trans. (1958) On the Track of Unknown Animals. Rupert Hart-Davis, London.

Hobley, C. W. (1913) On Some Unidentified Beasts. The Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society, III(6), pp. 48-52.

Oswald, F. (1915) Alone in the Sleeping-Sickness Country. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London.

Payne, D. L. and Ole-Kotikash, L. (2008) Maa Dictionary. University of Oregon, accessed online.

Shuker, K. P. N. (1995) In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. Blandford, London.

Stow, G. W. and Bleek, D. F. (1930) Rock-paintings in South Africa. Methuen & Co. Ltd., London.

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Roeschaard

Roeschaard’s name is attributed to his call of “Roes, roes, roes!” Etymologically it may be derived from the Scandinavian ruske, “to rush at”; the Anglo-Saxon breosan, “terrify”, or the Dutch roezen, “making a din”. It may also simply be another variant of Osschaard, derived from ors, “horse” or “mount”, and hard, “strong”. Sometimes the name is used to simply mean the devil.

The 1874 almanac of Blankenberge tells of the dreadful storm of 1791. It destroyed the hut of a suspected witch on the beach, and the inhabitants were overjoyed, smashing what little was left of the ruins. Then a spinechilling sound rang out over the dunes – “Roes, roes, roes!” A huge black dog with bells around its neck came running down the dunes, and the villagers scattered. That dog was Roeschaard.

Roeschaard puts his shapeshifting powers to use in performing cruel pranks. There is no limit to the forms he can take. He turns into a fish and allows himself to be caught before destroying the net. He gets into boats and tips them over. He pounces on people’s backs and rides them to exhaustion. In the form of a baby, he allows people to take him home before laughing wickedly and escaping, calling out “Roes, roes, roes!” behind him.

The sailors of Blankenberge eventually found a way to escape Roeschaard’s attentions. By giving themselves a second baptism and a new name, they would break Roeschaard’s power over them. The ceremony undertaken by new sailors involved being splashed with salt water while the following formula was intoned:

I baptize you, and may Roeschaard, the thrice-ugly one, turn away. Turn, turn, turn, your name is [here the requisite sea-name was given]

Thus if Roeschaard came to claim someone, they could simply tell him they were not the person he was looking for. Since then Roeschaard’s power has been in decline.

References

van Hageland, A. (1973) La Mer Magique. Marabout, Paris.

de Vries, A. (2007) Flanders: a cultural history. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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