In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Rowling casually mentions “there is only one known instance of the successful slaying of a Chimaera and the unlucky wizard concerned fell to his death from his winged horse.” She is playing with the original legend, in which the monster was slain by the hero Bellerophon, who rode the winged horse Pegasus. Bellerophon survived that battle; but in a later adventure, when he arrogantly attempted to ride the horse to Mount Olympus, home of the gods, Zeus punished him by throwing him off Pegasus and crippling him.
The term “chimaera” has come to mean something (usually a living
creature) created by humans by artificially combining things that occur in nature.
See also: Boggarts Cornish Pixies Grindylows Kappas Merpeople Unicorns Veela
KELPIE
As described in Beasts, this Celtic water demon is usually seen as a horse with a mane of green rushes. It lures people onto its back, then drags them into deep water. As Rowling says, bridling a kelpie will subdue it. Because it is supernaturally strong, it can do the work of many horses.
SELKIES AND MERROWS
In the entry for merpeople in Beasts, Rowling mentions selkies and merrows. These are specific sorts of merpeople known in Britain. The selkies are seal people of the country’s northern islands. They can assume very beautiful human forms, but must resume their seal form in the water. To kill a selkie is to invite a disastrous storm. Merrows are from Ireland. The women are beautiful but the men are quite ugly. They are said to have magic hats, and if a human can steal the hat the merrow will not be able to return to the sea.
Why Would Sirius Black Become a Black Dog?
SIRIUS BLACK, HARRY’S GODFATHER, IS A fugitive from the Ministry of Magic, which mistakenly believes he is a Death Eater. He was able to escape Azkaban because he is an Animagus. He changed into his dog form, squeezed through the bars of his cell, and swam to his freedom.
THE DOG STAR
As an Animagus form, a black dog suits him perfectly. The name “Sirius” comes from the name of a star often referred to as the Dog Star. It has that nickname because it is in the constellation known as the Great Dog. (The star was given the name “Sirius” because it is the brightest star in the sky. The Greek word seirios means “burning.”)
That star has great significance in the magical world. As the symbol of the goddess Isis,The Egyptian goddess Isis.
Magical creature expert Carol Rose says some black dogs, such as two supposedly living near Somerset, England, are said to guard treasures or holy places.
it was central to the religion and philosophy of Egypt, where most magic originated.
The Egyptians used Sirius to set their calendar, because its movements are linked to the seasons. On the first day of summer, it rises just before the sun. That was New Year’s Day in ancient Egypt. It forecast the annual flooding of the Nile River, which gave vital nourishment to the growing fields. We refer to the long, hot days of summer now as “dog days” because Sirius marks their arrival.
According to the Egyptians, Sirius was not merely significant to life on Earth. The star was where the souls of humans traveled after death. The star was so important that temples were built to align with its path across the sky. An archaeologist determined that the long tunnels or airshafts in the Great Pyramid make the stars visible in daytime, and that the view
is that part of the sky where Sirius appears. One Egyptologist says those shafts were meant to guide one’s soul to Sirius.
PADFOOT
The Animagus form of a black dog is appropriate to Sirius Black in more than name alone. Magical black dogs appear mysteriously throughout Europe and North America. There have been many sightings in Britain, where they are known by names like Black Shuck (from the Anglo-Saxon scucca, meaning “demon”), Old Shuck, Shucky Dog, the Shug Monster, and Shag Dog. The residents of Staffordshire gave it the name Sirius uses: Padfoot.
Some say the dogs guard churchyards or certain roads; others say they roam the countryside at night. Eyewitnesses say they appear suddenly, sometimes right alongside a person walking alone. They tend to be larger than usual dogs. They may vanish in an instant, or slowly fade from view while standing still. Occasionally they appear without heads. Their eyes are almost always described as huge and “blazing.” Surprisingly, they tend to be silent.
Scholars were once convinced that the black dog was the preferred form of the Devil. Even among people with less anxious minds,In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Rowling reveals that names taken from astronomy are a Black family tradition: Sirius’s cousin Andromeda is named for a constellation; her sister Bellatrix is named for a bright star in the constellation Orion; and Sirius’s late brother Regulus is named for the brightest star in the constellation Leo.
It was once believed that the Greek goddess of sorcery, Hecate (HEK-uh-tuh), roamed rural Britain with two black dogs as companions. She was thought to be invisible, so two black dogs with no owner in sight were a bad sign.
See also: Animagus Egypt
black dogs are widely feared. Many consider them an omen of death. This is precisely what Professor Trelawney tells Harry his early sightings of Sirius mean. (She refers to the black dog as the Grim, another common name.)
The eyewitness reports go back many hundreds of years. One vivid account from 1577 describes the arrival of a black dog in church: “There appeared in a most horrible form a dog of a black colour, together with fearful flashes of fire which made some in the assembly think doomsday was come. This dog, or the Devil in such a likeness, ran the length of the church with great swiftness and incredible haste, passed between two persons as they were kneeling and wrung the necks of them both at one instant.”
That may have been an especially horrible incident. Not every encounter is so awful. In more recent sightings the black dog seems to have become less malevolent. Simon Sherwood, an expert on the subject, says, “There is rather more evidence that black dogs are friendly (or at least harmless) than that they are dangerous. Indeed the dogs are often positively helpful.”
Why Does the Black Family Appear on a Tapestry?
CONSIDERING J. K. ROWLING’S INVENTIONS include moving photographs and talking paintings, some readers of Phoenix may guess Rowling created the Black family tapestry at Grimmauld Place entirely from her imagination. But ornate storytelling tapestries have existed for thousands of years, going back to early Egypt and Asia. In Europe all the great medieval castles had tapestries, which were needed to help keep out drafts and to keep in heat. Naturally, wealthier people had more decorative tapestries, and the wealthiest had versions specially designed to show a family crest or a scene from family history. Churches also had them.
Some tapestries were woven from designs drawn by famous artists. Raphael (1483-1520), one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, was asked by Pope Leo X to design tapestries for the Vatican showing scenes from the Bible.“Toujours Pur,” the Black family motto, means “Always Pure” in French. Of course it refers to pure wizard blood, the obsession of so many generations of Blacks before Sirius.
The art of telling stories with tapestries never disappeared. Artist William Morris designed some in the 1800s. More recently, the Bayeux Tapestry inspired the Overlord Embroidery in Portsmouth, England. It shows the Second World War effort to send armies back across the English Channel that William I crossed in 1066.
Right: a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry
Tapestries were also designed to celebrate military victories. The Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most famous of all, tells the story of King William’s conquest of England in 1066. Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, has a tapestry that shows the 1st Duke of Marlborough’s victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 (for which he was given the land and the funds for the palace). Many, however, are symbolic. The complexity of the Unicorn Tapestries, seven works that portray a hunt for a unicorn, have prompted countless theories about what the artist had in mind.
Which Creature
Doesn’t Know When to Say Good-bye?
SOME MAGICAL CREATURES CAN BE MORE dangerous than others. A boggart might seem dangerous at first, because, as J. K. Rowling’s Hermione explains in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, it can “take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most.” But more than anything else, boggarts are annoying.
These are the same creatures known as “bogeys” or “bogeymen” in the United States, “bogle” in Scotland, and “Boggelmann” or “Butzemann” in Germany. Sometimes said to be mistreated spirits that have become malevolent, boggarts love mischief and usually aren’t very harmful. They like to come out at night, when they can be most convincing.
Often they are house spirits, and in those cases the only way to get rid of them is to move. This is easier said than done, as aFrom the words bogey and boggart we also get names of less frightening annoyances like “bugaboo” and “bugbear.”
See also: Beasts Cornish Pixies Goblins Trolls Veela
boggart will sometimes take the trouble to move with a household it finds particularly entertaining. The more frustrated the family becomes, the more fun the boggart has.
Harry faces boggarts in Azkaban and in the maze in Goblet. He defeats them with advice from Professor Lupin that sounds like what children in our world have been told for centuries: “The thing that really finishes a boggart is laughter” (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling). Of course, this is easier for wizards, who can simply use the Riddikulus charm to turn the boggart into something funny. Yet even then it’s not always easy. If you face a truly cruel boggart like the one Mrs. Weasley encounters in Phoenix, it can be hard to keep calm. Some jokes just aren’t funny.
Have Witches Always Flown on Broomsticks?
BY LEGEND, BROOMSTICKS ARE THE MOST common means of transportation for witches. A popular American writer of the nineteenth century, Oliver Wendell Holmes, penned this rhyme on the subject:
In Essex county there’s many a roof
Well known to him of the cloven hoof;
The small square windows are full in view
Which the midnight hags went sailing
through,
On their well-trained broomsticks
mounted high,
Seen like shadows against the sky;
Crossing the track of owls and bats,
Hugging before them their coal-black cats.
Women were more likely than men to use this means of travel, perhaps because the broom is used for domestic chores, which men avoided. Sorcerers, when they did fly, usually rode on pitchforks. For reasons never explained, witches in Europe and America were seen flying more often than those in Britain.
Witches were sometimes accused of flying out to sea to create a storm.
Witches were rumored to rub their broomsticks with a magical ointment to make them fly. Then, according to legend, they rode straight out of the chimney. This colorful exaggeration derived from the real practice of pushing a broom up a chimney to let neighbors know one was away from home. Still, it sounds a bit like traveling by floo powder.
If villagers suspected that witches were flying about they would ring church bells, which reportedly had the power to knock witches off broomsticks.
One witch has emerged from the chimney on her broomstick, and another is halfway up it, in this sixteenth-century woodcut.
Why Would Mundungus Fletcher Steal Cauldrons?
CAULDRONS ARE IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO be required for all first-year students at Hogwarts, and, as we learn in Phoenix, valuable enough for Mundungus Fletcher to trade in stolen ones. It’s the same in our world. Cauldrons are one of the oldest and most widely known symbols of magic. They are more rooted in history and myth than flying broomsticks, and are thought to have even greater powers.
RIVER OF LIFE
Hogwarts wizards use cauldrons to mix potions, the use we now think of most often. Yet in early myth and legend they have other powers. In Scandinavian mythology, a magical cauldron called Hvergelmer lies deep in the Scandinavian version of the underworld, a frozen land of everlasting night known as Niflheim. Dangerous rivers flow from theWhat sort of name is Mundungus? The perfect name for someone who smells as bad as he does. It’s an old word for stinky tobacco or anything that reeks like garbage. When Mundungus lights a pipe in Phoenix, it smells as though he is smoking socks.
“Alas, poor man; his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bowed: pray, pray, for a metamorphosis. Change thy shape and shake off age; get thee Medea’s kettle and be boiled anew.” William Congreve, Love for Love (1695) (Act IV, scene xv)
cauldron, making wind, rain, snow, and ice. Poison that flowed from it formed a giant, and from him the Earth was then formed.
The magical power of cauldrons also goes back to early mythology. Medea, the grand sorceress of Greek mythology who helped Jason win the golden fleece, used her cauldron to perform her greatest feat. She boiled a brew of exotic plants gathered from all over the world, along with the wings of an owl, parts of a werewolf, the skin of a snake, and other delicacies, and, “with these and a thousand other nameless ingredients” she accomplished “a deed beyond mortal power”: slitting the throat of Jason’s elderly father and filling his veins with the potion, she restored his youth. Even the gods on Olympus were impressed.
It’s no coincidence that at the climax of Goblet Voldemort attempts his own version of Medea’s recipe.
TOO MANY COOKS SPOIL THE SOUP Celtic lore had its own version of the Medea myth: Bran the Blessed, the warrior giant, had a cauldron with the power to bring the dead back to life. Along with the lore there were rituals known as the “cauldron mysteries.” These secret rites dealt with the great questions of death and rebirth. There is evidence that humans were sacrificed in cauldrons as part of some rituals.
Perhaps the most famous Celtic cauldron legend is the story of Cerridwen and Taliesen. In old myths, Cerridwen is a goddess of magic and wisdom; in legends from the Christian era, she is a gifted sorceress; in both she has a special cauldron kept hot by a fire fed by the breath of muses, the goddesses of the arts. To give her son wisdom, Cerridwen decided to mix a special brew. Made from magical plants and the foam of the sea, it had to boil for a year and a day just to yield three drops. One day the boy hired to stir the cauldron accidentally splattered some on his hand and licked it.
He became smarter in an instant. But being smarter, he knew Cerridwen would be furious. Fortunately, he had also gained so muchBritish doctor Francis Potter (1594-1678) was inspired by the myth of Medea and Jason’s father to attempt the first blood transfusion.
Woodcut from a 1582 German book warning against magic.
People once believed that witches flew in cauldrons.
See Animagus
knowledge he turned himself into a hare to run away; unfortunately, Cerridwen turned herself into a greyhound. He became a fish; she became an otter. He became a rabbit; she became a hawk. Finally he changed himself into a grain of wheat to hide in a field. But she found him, and, changing herself into a hen, ate him. Nine months later she gave birth to a new boy, brilliant and beautiful, who went on to become a great poet named Taliesen. His special gifts came directly from the muses that helped to heat Cerridwen’s cauldron.
You might guess that Mundungus could find something more worthwhile to peddle than stolen pots. But in Harry’s world as in ours, very little is valued more than divine wisdom and eternal youth.
Why Do Centaurs Avoid Humans?
CENTAURS ARE MYTHICAL BEASTS WITH THE legs and bodies of horses, but with human torsos, arms, and heads. In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, J. K. Rowling says “they prefer to live apart from wizards and Muggles alike.” This feeling is echoed in Phoenix when Bane feuds with Firenze for being friendly with humans. This fits the ancient legends. According to those stories, centaurs come from the mountains of Greece, where their relations with the local people were rather mixed. Because some centaurs were fond of wine, they t
ended to be boisterous, wild, and quick to anger. They fought many battles with humans. The most famous skirmish followed a wedding at which the centaurs, as usual, had celebrated a little too enthusiastically. They tried to carry off the bride, which led to a great war. (The centaursCentaur, from a second-century AD sarcophagus.
The centaur Nessos, foe of the hero Hercules, as pictured on a Greek amphora (vase) made in the seventh century BC.
lost.) Scenes from that war were a favorite decoration of Greek potters.
However, some ancient centaurs were recognized to be as noble as Firenze. In fact Firenze’s surprise appearance as a Hogwarts teacher in Phoenix is connected to mythology. The Greek centaur Chiron, having been taught arts such as medicine and hunting by the gods Apollo and Artemis, founded a school where he taught some of the great heroes of the time, including Achilles and Odysseus.
LOST IN THE STARS
Although Chiron was immortal, a wound from a poisoned arrow threatened to cause him unceasing agony. Instead, he chose death. But
The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter Page 3
