Animal Metamorphosis in Celtic and Classical Myth

via Wikimedia Commons

I just finished the delightful new novel The Scottish Prisoner, which makes extensive use of the Wild Hunt myth. The Wild Hunt is a widespread European myth (although, as Gabaldon points out in the author's note, not a native Celtic one.) It is a spectral group of hunters led by a mythological figure, frequently the Norse god Odin.

I vaguely recalled a story associated with the Wild Hunt about a girl having to pull her fiance out of the procession and hold him while the fairies transform him into a series of animals. I (again, vaguely) thought there might be interesting similarities between this story and the 'courtship' of Peleus and Thetis, in which he compels her to wed him by restraining her while she transforms. Actually reading up on these narratives made everything quite a bit more complicated.

The Wild Hunt story comes from a Scottish ballad called Tam Lin. Everything I told you above is true, except that the fiance is a) a fairy who b) assaults young women traveling through 'his' territory. Not to mention that c) his fiancee is pregnant and d) he's about to be given to the devil as the fairies' 'tithe to hell', a tax paid every seven years.*

His fiancee, Janet, wants to avoid having to marry an older knight she doesn't love just because she is pregnant. She has returned to Tam Lin's forest to obtain an herb that will cause her to miscarry. Tam Lin tells her how to turn him back into a mortal man, explaining that he believes he is about to be given to the devil by his fairy buddies. She does so and weathers the anger of the fairy queen to, presumably, live happily ever after.

Thetis is a minor goddess in the historical period in ancient Greece who may have been much more powerful in prehistoric times. Zeus would like to 'marry' (make baby gods) with her, but fears the prophecy that her son will be more powerful than his father. She is married off to the Greek hero Peleus to neutralize this threat. The sea god Proteus, an expert on metamorphosis, tells him how to overcome Thetis' transformative abilities. She agrees to marry him after he creeps up on her asleep and restrains her through a series of transformations into water, fire and serpents. Apart from his skill at goddess-abducting, Peleus is a rather unremarkable hero, a grandson of Zeus and a companion of Heracles, like most of the generation prior to the Trojan War.

The Peleus and Thetis myth is a distasteful story even by ancient standards. (Although the modern 'love match' was an alien concept, complaints about arranged marriages and the unequal treatment of goddesses are not unknown in Greek literature.) Surprisingly, I found that 'Tam Lin' was far less egalitarian than I remembered. Tam Lin commits serial assaults on woman and only agrees to marry Janet because it's better than an eternity spent in Hell. Janet is motivated less by love than a desire to avoid unwed motherhood or marriage to the "auld grey knight" who revealed her secret.

The differences between the stories come down to one thing: female agency. Neither myth reflects a romantic world, nor one particularly fair to women, but any ancient Greek would have been shocked at the notion of a woman lying in wait for a demigod lover and forcibly restraining him as a way of saving his life (so to speak). There are strong, forceful women (within limits) in Greek literature, but the total impossibility of a myth like Tam Lin reminds us not to look for Wonder Woman in the megaron.


*This is all based on the earliest version, Child 39 A.  The 'tithe to hell' plays an important role in Gabaldon's novel. Pin It