rson, n and ornic Man and Beast in American Comic Legena • PART~ American Legendary Creatures All the peoples of the world take seriously certain legendary crea­ tures of a lower mythology with whom they associate on familiar terms. All, that is, save the people of the United States. Alexander H. Krappe once asserted that America possessed no folklore. What he should have said was that some of America's folklore differs from that of the rest of the world. As examples of creatures of legend intimately bound with the culture, the lives, the psyche of a people, consider the fairies of Ireland, the kappa of Japan, and the jinn of Egypt. In common they possess supernatural powers; their existence is credited by a sub­ stantial sector o.f the national population; and their attributes are known to all in their land. The popular and the literary as well as the folk culture pay them tribute. They occupy only their own pa­ tria. (I once asked Sean O'Sullivan why the Irish in the United States do not sight fairies, and he opined that it was probably be­ cause the circles of greensward known as fairy rings on the Ould Sod did not appear in America.) These figures, in their various forms, live among their chosen folk, enter their homes, marry them on occasion, lurk in their gardens, fields, and streams, and transport them to other places. Yet the three also differ considerably from each other in their legendary lineaments. The fairies take the shape of little green men and women, ani- 1 2 AMERICAN LEGENDARY CREATURES . American Legendary Creatures 3 mals, ordinary human beings, and ghosts. Myriad are the memo­ big fish to the samurai's garden and instructed him in setting bro­ rates that recount meetings with the fairies by Irish farmer folk. In 2 ken bones. the best of the collections about the fairy faith, Visions and Beliefs The kappa permeates Japanese culture. He appears as a character of the West of Ireland, Lady Gregory set down cycles of testimonies in novels, short stories, comic cartoons; his likeness is depicted in telling of neighbors who had been taken ~~away" by ~~them," or of wood carvings, on place mats, checks, and on television. In the sum­ seeing harm come to those who traversed fairy routes, or of being mer of 1975 in a Tokyo hotel, I saw on my color TV a documentary cured by healers in converse with the fairy people. In Dublin in on the kappa, with scenes of farmers pointing out to the interviewer 1951, lunching in the faculty dining room of University College streams where the goblin resided. Although the camera did not with folklorists Sean O'Sullivan and Kevin Danahe~ I heard one of catch a live kappa, inserted stills of kappa drawings indicated their academic colleagues describe, with great inten~ity, how at the plainly enough the subject of the animated discussion. age of two he had seen the fairies dancing on the green by a fairy Even more than the fairies and the kappas, the jinn live close to fort, which was desecrated shortly after by a workman, .who died the homes of men. In Cairo they occupy old houses, ovens, latrines, within the year. Later in the week I visited the fieldworker in baths, and wells; they take the form of cats, dogs, men, and mon­ County Kerry for the Irish Folklore Comil_lission, Tadhg Murphy, sters, or become invisible. Created before Adam, they resemble the and heard him relate a lengthy experience that he had collected human species, but live for centuries and perpetrate magical mis­ from a narrator who had heard Sean Palmer tell how strangers had chief. Malicious jinn perched on rooftops hurl bricks and stones into taken him by boat in a few hours to America, where he called on the streets and courts of Cairo and other cities in Egypt. Some hu­ relatives. An elegant Yankee suit, a fine tobacco box and a five­ man magicians of unusual powers are believed to have obtained dollar bill displayed by Sean Palmer next day convi~ced his wife them from marrying a female jinni. During the first ten days of that he had indeed in one night visited America, thanks, of course, Moharram, a jinni in the form of a water-carrier knocks at the door to the fairies. 1 of a sleeping person, who calls out, ~~Who is there?" The jinni re­ Unlike the shape-shifting fairies, the kappa appears in one con­ sponds, ~ti, the water-carrier; where shall I empty the skin?" ~~Empty stant guise, that of a goblin-boy with a saucer-like cavity in its head. into the water-jar," ritually states the lucky one, aware that water­ If the fluid in the cavity is spilled, say by jostling the kappa, he loses carriers do not come at night, and later he finds the jar full of gold. his malignant power. Kappas inhabit rivers, ponds and lakes, and Sometimes the jinni arrives in the form of a mule bearing saddle-· seize children swimming in the waters, or pull down horses and bags full of gold and a dead man's head upon his back.3 Evil jinn cattle from the river banks, enter their anuses, draw out their intes­ known as ghouls haunt burial grounds and feed on dead bodies and tines, and suck their blood. Dictionaries and travel books describe the living who happen to come their way. Egyptians of the Islamic the kappa as an ugly naked child with greenish-yellow skin, a mon­ faith utter various charms against the jinn, such as ~~Iron, thou key face, a tortoise-like shell, webbed fingers and toes, and a fishy unlucky!" especially when they see approaching across the desert a smell. Kappas wrestle with men and rape women, but they have whirlwind of sand caused by the flight of ajinni. their kinder side, too, and will teach the art of bonesetting to fami­ Examples could readily be multiplied of these supernatural­ lies that have befriended or captured them. In one tale a kappa fell legendary-mythological beings who mingle intimately with the peo­ in love with the beautiful wife of a samurai and touched her but­ ples to whose culture they belong and enter their personal experi­ tocks as she sat on the toilet. Next night she took with her the short ence tales. This past year, Martha Blache of Argentina completed a sword of her husband and cut off the creature's hand as he stroked doctoral dissertation in folklore at Indiana University on memo­ her. The shaggy little man ran off shrieking, and night after night rates and anecdotes of such beings that she collected from the Gua­ appeared at the samurai's bed pleading for the return of his hand. rani Indians.4 She speaks of the pombero, a small fairy whose On receiving it he joined it to his arm, and the next day brought two friendship and protection may be cultivated with offerings left out- 4 AMERICAN LEGENDARY CREATURES American Legendary Creatures 5 side the house; of the yasy yatere, a pretty, fair haired creature that form of loose paraphrase or generalized accounts. Only in the case whistles and entices children into the woods at noon; and the luis6n, of the hoopsnake, who does perform an action-rolling like a hoop, the seventh son of an uninterrupted series of boys, a thin, ailing, chasing a man, and striking his stinger into a tree, which shortly unsociable man by day, and a dog that feeds on dead bodies on withers and dies-and the sidehill dodger, who can be caught by Friday nights. being turned around, are manifold texts available. The Windham The mainstream culture of the United States exhibits no directly frogs did participate in an event but long before the days of field comparable creatures. We were born too late to develop a higher or collecting, so for their escapade we rely on literary texts. Further­ lower mythology, and unlike our northern and southern neighbors, more, the total complex of the critter's tradition involves more than we excluded the Native American, erased the Afro-American, and a tale, since community response, tourist interest, hoax perpetra­ suppressed the ethnic American goblins from our folk-belief system. tion, protofestival activities, and media and literary recognition The winds of rationalism and secularism blew away these uprooted come into play and require ethnographic treatment and analysis. traditions, even the ubiquitous Devil once regularly sighted in the Excellent studies of these phenomena are John Gutowski's disser­ seventeenth century. tation on Oscar the Turtle and William Harris's article on the White Instead we have acquired a comic mythology of"fearsome critters" River Monster, which will be cited in due course. who perform services and reflect the United States ethos in a man­ The best single source, although not a collection of oral texts, is a ner comparable to the roles of the kappas, jinn, and fairy folk. We comic bestiary titled Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, with yarn about, identify with, hunt for, depict, extol, and chuckle over a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts, which appeared in 1910, before these critters. Belief and dread are not wholly absent, but in con­ the emergence of the Paul Bunyan pseudo-legend. William T. Cox trast to the rest of the world, we engage in hoaxes, pranks, tall tales, wrote a one-page description of each of the twenty bizarre animals. and tomfoolery with our legendary creatures. I have nominated ten Coert DuBois illustrated each on a facing page with poker-faced zoological marvels for the American Hall of Fearsome Critters, se­ drawings, and the press of Judd and Detweiler in Washington, D.C., lecting them on the basis of longevity, in terms of our short history; issued the forty-seven page book.