Related Myths
One of the origins postulated for the modern Harlequin is Hellequin, a stock character in French passion plays. Hellequin, a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell. The physical appearance of Hellequin offers an explanation for the traditional colours of Harlequin's mask (red and black).
It can be compared to other ghostly troops, such as the Santa Compaña in Galicia, a procession of the dead that recruits those who meet it; and the chasse-galerie, or bewitched canoe, of Québec.
In Flanders, Belgium, the wild hunt is rarely seen, but there are accounts of feasts in the fields, most often held by alvermannen (singlular form: alverman) of elves. One would be invited to sit at the table if the banquet was approached decently; then you could eat and drink and sit there for eternity, unless you ask for salt, then the party disappears instantly. If the party was dissrupted, there would be a punishment; usually the light in your eyes would be blown out.
Read more about this topic: Wild Hunt
Famous quotes containing the words related and/or myths:
“The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not on the way that it is related to other thoughts.”
—Jerry Alan Fodor (b. 1935)
“... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us—extraordinary.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)