Feature Image: Fairy Resting on a Mushroom (1860), by Thomas Heatherley

The house we lived in when I was a child had a storage cupboard outside the front door. Possibly inadvisably, my father grew mushrooms in there, making the cool, dark, tiled space smell earthy and magical. Outside, our modern home bordered a wood rich with puffballs, ink caps, and all manner of strangely named fungi.

I always knew that the mushrooms in the cupboard were safe, but it was best not to touch the ones in the wood. As a little girl, I did not understand why; I was too young to tell the poisonous from the delicious, so I rationalized that those mushrooms in the woods were homes to fairies or pixies and that it would have been rude, not to mention risky, to disturb them.

I was being unexpectedly Victorian in my reasoning, as the 19th century love of mushrooms was science tinged with fairy folk. The growing interest in vegetarianism in the latter half of the century celebrated the “meaty” delights of some of the larger specimens, while the button mushroom was a little gem to be added to stews.

And with more and more lady artists casting about and searching for suitable subjects for their still-life paintings, it seems unsurprising that they’d be attracted to the smooth white caps, velvet gills, and pops of color that marked the different varieties of fungi. And still-life pictures of nature were considered safe and appropriate.

Not only the mushrooms themselves but the genteel peasants who gathered them became the subject of works of art. In The Mushroom Gatherers (1878), James Clarke Hook showed a girl holding a wide basket full of fungi, her little brother on the ground in front of her pulling up a particularly large specimen. Similarly, in James J. Edgar’s The Mushroom Gatherer (c. 1860s), a beautiful young woman in modest working clothes sits beside her equally beautiful basket of shrooms, all pale and ripe like their collector.

These girls might have been particularly fond of foraging because of its perceived link to witchcraft. In Valentine Prinsep’s Medea the Sorceress (1880), the beautiful witch gathers red-tipped toadstools and places them in her basket, no doubt to fuel her craft rather than her breakfast. Of course she’s gathering the Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, possibly the best known toadstool, renowned for its narcotic effect. For the Victorians, the red top with its white flecks symbolized positive magic as well as mischief and was even believed to have inspired the robes of Father Christmas (although I’m sure a certain cola company would have something to say about that). Broken into little pieces and soaked in milk, the fly agaric provided a powerful and irresistible poison to flies, and, when dried and swallowed whole, would inspire wild dancing and the spilling of secrets.

The botanist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke published a ten-volume guide to British fungi and wrote extensively about hallucinogenic plants and the mind-altering effects of the fly agaric shroom.

This stunner was also well-known as an antidote to nightshade poisoning, so Medea’s gathering might have been medicinal rather than murderous.

I’ve always wondered what the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool was and the answer is danger.

While there are stipulations that a toadstool has a stalk and a cap, we can all think of innocent white mushrooms that fit the definition but would never be called toadstools. During outbreaks of poisonings such as the epidemic in New York in 1893, the poisoning of the Marchant family in England in 1891, or the Andrieux family in Mureaux, France, in 1882, the perils of toadstools were always blamed. During the latter case, newspapers warned quite dramatically of “the danger of mistaking toadstools for mushrooms.” Quite honestly, all toadstools are mushrooms, but not all mushrooms are toadstools. The very word toadstool is a warning.

It also tells you there is something magical afoot. Do toads need to sit on stools? The toad in my garden needs to sit grumpily under my lavender bush and has never once expressed a desire for furniture.

Of course, where there are toads, other magical creatures usually abound. An interesting example is in John Anster Fitzgerald’s The Intruder (1865; pictured on page 38). The artist had such an obsession with the miniature magical world, he became known as Fairy Fitzgerald and was described by the London Daily Chronicle as “the well-known painter of hob- goblins, fairies, imaginative and classical subjects and portraits.” In The Intruder, wee fae folk confront a toad who wants to access his stool. The situation appears to have escalated fairly quickly with fairies of all sizes getting involved, yet the toad looks completely unbothered by it all—which is very brave because some of those little sprites look terrifying. More sensuous are the fairies of Thomas Heatherley (see page 71), their pink curvy bottoms and flaxen hair spilling over the white flesh of the mushroom cap. These are saucy fairies perched on pearly fungi, perfect and glittering, unconcerned with the matters of man.

There are often accompanying pointy-hatted pixies, mind you, fighting with snails, which is enough to entertain anyone.

As a complete contrast, the fairy ring mushroom, Marasmius oreades, brings such positivity that poet Eliza Cook wrote a whole ode to its glory. Her poem contains the repeated refrain “For, while love is a fairy spirit, / The world is a fairy ring.” While the toadstool seems to shun human interaction and keep company with some very unpleasant types, the fairy ring of mushrooms invites the human in to meet the fae. In Edward Robert Hughes’s Midsummer Eve (c. 1905) a girl stands amid a full fairy ring and jamboree with lots of tiny fairy lights and naked fairies, as one does.

Little Victorian girls seem to have had a particular affinity with mushrooms, seen especially in Edward Atkinson Hornel’s works The Little Mushroom Gatherers (1902) and Gathering Mushrooms (1930) and Florence Small’s The Mushroom Girl (1886). These girls are dressed in picturesque rural attire, with spotless aprons and little baskets and not a dirty fingernail among them. I wonder if the link between young girls and mushrooms is that their innocence chimes with the fae sprites that find them. That’s why it seems perfectly natural that, in the 1917 case of the Cottingley Fairies, it was young Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths who saw the fairies rather than their parents.

If human interaction with fairies and their rings seems to cause trouble, then far more civilized is Walter Jenks Morgan’s A Fairy Ring (1870–80; pictured on page 5). Here we have a very demure circle of fairies, both male and female, fully dressed and listening politely to the fairy who’s speaking. Maybe it’s the presence of humans that makes fairies behave wildly—do we lead fairies astray? I always thought it was meant to be the other way around, but upon further reflection, we humans are a rum lot. Morgan’s fairies obviously conduct themselves in a democratic manner—dressed, neat, free of fighting or debauchery. The pale mushrooms reveal white gills beneath, giving the impression of purity, refinement, and goodness.

These fairies and their mushrooms are positive forces in the world, but that world is not ours.

In the end, the problem with mushrooms may be that they’re not primarily made for humans. Mushrooms in all their guises are unexpectedly beautiful things, so it’s not surprising that people believed them capable of all manner of magic and, by extension, mischief and malice. I was surprised to find that the fly agaric—arguably the archetypal forest mushroom—is in fact a rare sight in Britain’s woodlands. Its dangerous red coat announces that particular toadstool’s poison, unlike some of

its more innocuous, pale cousins native to Britain’s woods. The destroying angel (Amanita verna) and death cap (Amanita phalloides) look very similar to the ones I have lined up for my risotto tonight, as it happens, all pearly white and innocent.

I ought to reassure you that as a sensible coward, I foraged mine from my local supermarket. The advice my parents gave me as a child was wise after all: Do not steal the fairy houses for your supper; you might not live long enough to have the leftovers for breakfast.

Over a decade ago, in light of many, many years of harassment, I underwent a dramatic transformation. Prior to this point, I was considered so extraordinary that people would shout at me in the street. I would be grabbed, pointed at, poked. Once in a record shop, a man brought his girlfriend to look at me as he couldn’t believe anyone like me would be allowed out in public. Another man crawled across the floor of a bar to take a photo of me.

An unexpected gift of money allowed me to suddenly, albeit painfully, alter my appearance, and since then, I have faded into invisibility, safe at last.

Because of my own transformation, I have always felt a kinship to those women in mythology who alter to find peace. Back in the mists of time, droves of women implored the gods for help and were altered for their own safety and sanity. Ambrosia turned into a grapevine to avoid murder; Clytie turned into a sunflower to eternally watch her lover, Helios the sun god, chart his luminous progress in the sky. Phyllis, in abandoned despair, transformed into an almond tree but did manage the rare feat of reversal, exploding dramatically out of the bark at her husband’s return.

Most famous of all the transforming maidens is Daphne, pursued by a man who felt she did not understand how lucky she was to be the focus of his attention. After all, he was Apollo, the most beautiful god of them all and, apparently, the most entitled. Daphne was devoted to Apollo’s twin sister, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and of the moon. She followed this wise and chaste leader’s example and wanted absolutely nothing to do with men. Apollo, as it turned out, had no such qualms about the opposite sex and was the lover of a multitude, including Adonis, all nine Muses, and a woman who afterward transformed into the astral constellation Virgo, which might say something of his performance. While out wandering in his sister’s forest, Apollo was shot with a mischievous arrow from the bow of Eros, the little god of lust. The first woman he saw afterward was the unfortunate Daphne, with whom he fell hopelessly in love. She was less enamoured, but he felt he did not have to accept her rejection. Daphne ran as fast as her huntress’s legs would carry her, faster than Apollo, who called after her that she should slow down or else she might hurt herself. Surely the reverse was nearer the truth.

As she continued to flee Apollo, fearing she would not escape, Daphne called upon her father, a river god, to save her. The result created a moment that has inspired artists for centuries. From the tips of Daphne’s fingers grew twigs, and then branches and bark curled up around her legs and Daphne became a laurel tree, safe from the grasp of a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

This powerful image appeared in art as early as in Pompeii, as a wall mural, but it found a deep resonance during the Renaissance. Piero del Pollaiuolo’s 15th century masterpiece (opposite) shows the lustful young god attempting to carry away his victim, but she is already sporting two sizable trees from her shoulders—at any moment she will hopefully shout, “Timber!” and squash him. Apollo seems to be gazing up at his arboreal conquest with an expression that says, I’m sure she wasn’t that leafy when I started this pursuit, while Daphne’s resigned countenance suggests a woman who suspected her day would end like this.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s astonishing 17th century statue of the subject (above) shows the dramatic moment when Apollo catches Daphne as she transforms, the bark claiming her skin even before he does, so his capturing hand finds only knurls and nobbles rather than the smoothness he expected. As she spins in horror at his touch, her hair flares out and becomes leaves, her outstretched fingers are morphing into twigs, and by the time she faces him, he will be embracing her trunk, solid and resisting. The cold white marble and Daphne’s panicked expression make this an especially chilling rendition of the tale. Is she more frightened at the pursuit or her own change? Is this transformation, the epitome of a Renaissance “rebirth,” within Daphne’s control or just another decision made for her by a man? Choosing between violation or transformation seems like no choice at all when both change violently who Daphne was moments before.

Similarly, Michele Rocca’s Baroque-era painting shows the river god popping up to help his daughter right at the pivotal moment that a barely draped Apollo grasps the even less draped Daphne. They are almost tumbling into the river as she begins to sprout her leaves.

Apparently, a lot of dramatic fleeing was done in the nude in classical times. John William Waterhouse confirms this in his beautiful 1908 painting of Apollo and Daphne, but unusually, the tree appears to be encasing Daphne, gathering her close in protection. Again, like the Bellini marble, the tree intercedes between the persistent young man and the terrified young woman, so as he reaches for her, leaves cross her upturned palm, shielding her from his touch. I find it fascinating that in this painting, although Daphne calls to her father, it is Mother Nature that saves her, quite literally holding her close.

Possibly my favorite version of the myth must be Bartolomeo di Giovanni’s 16th century vision of the fleeing Daphne (above), but she transforms well before Apollo catches her. She turns to him, her tree-arms raised, looking as if she were about to clobber him. Apollo looks undeniably alarmed, and there is the potential of a sequel painting of a beautiful young man fleeing from a vengeful, girl tree who has had just enough of men’s nonsense and needs to settle some scores. She is the Marvel hero we never knew we needed.

I wonder if there is a connection between the Renaissance’s growing harnessing of the natural world, the growth of natural history as an academic subject, and the organization of agriculture, which implied that humans were becoming the master of nature. Images of the unknowable power of the natural world, and of women’s seemingly innate ability to link to ancient, mysterious earth power to thwart the will of man, grow as if watered by fear. The male art viewers were reminded that while your power may permit you to take what you want, nature will always have the last word.

At the end of the story, Apollo takes leaves from Daphne and weaves a headdress, a victor’s crown. He undoubtedly saw himself as the winner in that scenario, which raises so many questions, not least of which is, Can women really ever win? Not only that, he carries a piece of her away even after her transformation, claiming a small part of her forever while she remains rooted to the spot. Having taken my own transformation, I prefer to think more positively. For the rest of time, Daphne is left unmolested, her leaves waving in the wind, sunshine on her branches. If some of her leaves were needed for winner’s crowns, she simply grew more and no longer had to put up with presumptuous gods or the collateral damage from Eros’s jokes.

The gift of transformation is change and choice, and if you ever miss the person you were, remember why you needed that self-revolution. It is the power of rejection, of not only the people who harass you but also the feelings of fear. Remember to grow some thick bark, as the Apollos of this world rarely need an excuse.

It is my purpose to tell you about our English fairies so that you may appropriately honor them and avoid angering the Fair Folk, who are apt to pinch you black and blue if you do not treat them with the respect they deserve. What I write here applies equally to the fairies of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, and perhaps those of Ireland, although fairies of such far countries as France and Spain are beyond my knowledge.

First, I must tell you that there are many misconceptions about the Good People, or People of Peace, or whatever else you may call them, for they do not like to be called fairies by us, deeming it rude and overly familiar. The greatest of these misconceptions is that they are small, and this mistake may be found even in the works of our most popular playwrights. For example, Master William Shakespeare has written of the fairy Queen Mab,

She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.

Now this is very prettily written, but it is not true of the Fair Folk, and I am surprised that Master Shakespeare has thus far escaped their wrath for portraying them as so diminutive. But perhaps they are simply awaiting their just revenge, and one night, when he is stumbling home from a tavern, deep in his cups, they will come for him and take him into one of their hills, where he may compose entertainments for the Fairy Queen herself!

In truth, the Fair Folk are very much like you or me, only a little smaller and very finely made, smooth silk to our rough wool. Their maidens are as lovely as any ladies in the court of our Queen Eliza, their gentlemen as handsome as Lord Robert Devereux. Although I am not a philosopher, I will tell you systematically what is their appearance so that you might recognize them, and then something about their customs, such as dancing and stealing babies. I will speak also of their origins and their general character, whether good, bad, or indifferent. But most importantly I will tell you how to guard against them, for the Fair Folk are dangerous to meddle with or displease, and it behooves the good housewife or husbandman to keep in their good favor.

Now as to their appearance, I have said already that the fairies are very like us, only smaller and fairer, although those who have seen the Fairy Queen say that she is as tall as an ordinary woman and wondrous fair. Indeed, in the old ballads, True Thomas mistook her for Mary, Queen of Heaven, and those that have met her more recently swear that she is almost as beauteous as our Queen Eliza, and that is beauty indeed. But ordinary fairies are smaller, and their dress is very similar to our own, so that you may be purchasing turnips at a market and not know one of the Fair Folk is standing next to you. Therefore, you must always be mindful of your tongue and not use their names in vain or say anything disreputable about them, lest they seek revenge upon you. The common Fair Folk may be dressed in red, blue, or green, but their gentlefolk prefer green and wear that color almost always.

As for their customs, they prefer dancing to walking, so that you may see a kind of dancing even in their ordinary steps.

Many a husbandman, returning from his fields at the end of the day, has stumbled upon their toadstool rings and been forced to dance with them until dawn or until his strength gave out. Or he may be invited into one of their hills, where the feasting and dancing continue so long that when he returns, his children are as old as he. They love also baking, so that the cakes and other delicacies at their feasts are of the finest, although a man may eat of them all night and still be hungry at dawn. Also they are great hunters, and I myself have heard their hunting horns far off, although I have not seen their gallant company riding through the forest, attired all in green. It is said they plait bells into the manes of their horses so they make a sweet jingling as they ride, and you may hear that sound also upon the wind, in which case it were better that you leave the forest at once or risk being taken by them. They are also, I should have mentioned, reputed to be wonderful singers, with high, sweet voices like choirboys. They play music as well as our own court musicians, on flutes and fiddles and such like, but they perform only dance music, for they do not like solemn sounds, and indeed they are driven off by hymns and church bells.

There is some argument as to their origins, and certainly they were in Britain long before the Romans, for those Latin gentlemen wrote that when they arrived on our island, they found the same nymphs and dryads and hamadryads, and fauns and satyrs, that they had known back home in Italy. Those must have been our fairies, and indeed the Fair Folk may have the same origins in the old pagan times; that is, that they were the spirits of trees and waters, and guardians of the forests, etcetera. However, there are philosophers who say they are fallen angels, and who am I to gainsay such learned men? My own mother told me that the Fair Folk are the souls of the departed, and when her own sister, that is my Aunt Margery, was lured into a fairy hill, she saw her mother having a grand old time, kicking her heels up as though she had not died seven years before. Certainly this is a belief among many of the countryfolk. Whatever the fairies are and wherever they come from, they are more ancient than iron, which they fear and detest, so that one protection from them is putting a knife under your threshold or a horseshoe over your door.

It is, indeed, important to know the words and deeds that will guard against them, for while the Fair Folk are not exactly bad, they are not exactly good either. Rather, I might say that they enjoy meddling with mankind, particularly if mankind meddles with them. So the good husbandman must make certain not to plough fairy ground or take a scythe to their dancing floors, but let their spaces grow wild. The good housewife must set out milk for their drinking and water for their baths. She must keep her household clean, for the fairies do not like laziness, and if she does so, she may find a sixpence in her shoe or pocket, or in a pewter bowl as long as it is well polished. Maidens especially must keep their hair washed and brushed, or the fairies will cut it in the night. But if the Fair Folk do the goodwife or husband a favor, those persons must on no account speak of it, for the fairies hate boasting and their shining coins will crumble into dust as soon as they are mentioned.

Now the greatest danger is to be taken by the fairies, for they prefer human nursemaids for their babies and human babies to their own progeny. If you are taken by the fairies to nurse their children, say nothing, do as you are told, and hope that you are returned to your own household speedily. If you displease the fairy gentry by speaking out of turn, you may find yourself alone in a dark forest, abandoned to the wolves and wild boars. But if they are pleased with you, they may give you second sight, for they can foretell the future as well as Doctor John Dee, who reads the stars for our own blessed Queen. As for babies, until a human baby is christened, you must put iron under its pillow and there are various charms that can be placed around its cradle, which the minister may write for you on a bit of parchment. If your baby is taken and replaced with a changeling, which looks rather like a wizened old man than a healthy child, you must trick it by doing something so surprising that it will betray its origins, such as by cooking soup in an eggshell. Then the changeling will say, “I have lived a hundred years but never seen soup cooked in an eggshell,” and upon that confession, he will disappear and your child will once again laugh in its cradle.

Finally, I must say a word about the Fair Folk and witches, for there is a great deal of misunderstanding about their relations, since the trials of Joan Tyrrye, Bessie Dunlop, and Alison Pearson. Now all of these women were accused to have consorted with fairies and to have learned from them various spells, such as for healing both men and cattle. And it is said that the fairies take women and teach them witchcraft, which is considered a great evil. But for myself, I believe Joan, Bessie, and Alison never did an evil thing in their lives but learned of the fairies how to make medicines out of wayside herbs, how to read the stars and plants, and the virtues of minerals. This is not a wicked knowledge, and if the doctors cannot heal a man, why may he not go to the witches, who may have as much knowledge, and are not so given to bloodletting? Certain it is that witches and fairies are similar in many things, and even Saint Joan, who was burned as a witch by the French, was said to have received her knowledge from the fairies.

I am told there is no better description of the Fair Folk than in Master Edmund Spenser’s poem The Faerie Queene, in which the fairy Gloriana is an allegory of our blessed monarch and her glorious reign. However, this poem is very long and so I have not read it in its entirety. Some years ago, I saw Master Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream presented at court, and in that play he has well captured our English fairies, with their cunning tricks and enchanting ways. I myself was quite enchanted with Queen Titania, and if she had invited me to join her train of fairies and go into the forest with Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustard Seed, and the mischievous Puck, I certainly would have, even at the cost of losing my home in the human world and imperiling my immortal soul.

Now I have told you somewhat about the Fair Folk, so that you may guard yourself against them but also so that you may keep in their favor. For if you please them, you may find yourself rewarded with a sixpence, or a precious stone, or second sight. And I myself would give much to see, just once, fairies dancing upon the hillside or a fairy hunt riding through the forest to the jingling of silver bells, led by the Fairy Queen, who is almost as fair as our own Queen Elizabeth.

If any Pre-Raphaelite woman ever became the image that she portrayed, it was Jane Burden Morris. Although she was a stable hand’s daughter from the (relatively) mean streets of Oxford, Jane made such a remarkable transformation into art royalty that it allegedly inspired the OG Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion. Other models appeared as fallen women in Pre- Raphaelite art; Jane almost immediately ascended to her throne and never fell. She truly was the Pre-Raphaelite Queen.

When novelist Henry James met Jane in the late 1860s, he wrote a vivid account of her for his sister: “a tall lean woman in a long dress of some dead purple stuff … an apparition of fearful and wonderful intensity. It’s hard to say … whether she’s an original or a copy. In either case she is a wonder.” It’s not hard to see that the young Henry was in awe of this stately and, more to the point, silent woman (silent because, as he later admits, she had a toothache), and he imbues her with everything he knows of the Pre-Raphaelite vision of her. George Bernard Shaw, onetime suitor of Jane’s daughter May, likewise projected a persona onto Jane, concluding that she was “the silentest woman I have ever met. She did not take much notice of anyone.” Jane’s ability to remain silent in company drew people to fill in blanks, and they used the only evidence of her they felt they could: paintings of her.

The Pre-Raphaelites’ discovery of Jane was intimately tied to her future role as a queen in their work. When Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across her at a theater in Oxford in 1857, he begged her to pose for him and his friends, who were painting murals around the ceiling of the Oxford Union rooms in the colleges (now a library). Jane, with her towering height and halo of black crimped hair, was unlike the small, neat ideal of Victorian feminine beauty, but her imposing presence made her a striking choice for the female lead in their Arthurian vision. In Rossetti’s contribution to one mural, Jane, as a vision of Queen Guinevere, appears in the dreams of Lancelot as a symbol of his sins, preventing him from finding the Holy Grail. Despite the couple’s apparent romance, Rossetti was already avoiding two other women whom he had been romancing and left Jane high and dry as well. This was when Rossetti’s best friend, the shy, retiring, and very rich William Morris, asked to paint Jane, again as a queen.

I’m not saying the girl got typecast—but for her second modeling job, not only was Jane a queen, she was again a queen with fidelity problems. Morris, in a rather shy attempt to romance this stately lass, chose to portray her as the cheating wife of King Mark, La Belle Iseult. Such was his bashfulness, he apparently wrote on the back of the canvas, “I cannot paint you, but I love you.” The inscription renders the subject matter even more puzzling, as he cements his lady love’s persona as the beautiful cheater, the ruination of men. Jane’s repeated portrayal as a queen crowned with infidelity was an unsettling portent of what was to follow.

What is surprising is that Jane either hadn’t noticed the meaning of the roles she was playing for these men or opted to lean into them. After all, had she not risen from being a stable hand’s daughter to leading an enviable lifestyle among the painting elite? In 1860, the year after her marriage to William Morris, the couple collaborated on a wool-thread- on-linen embroidery of the figure of Guinevere, again based on Jane, and worked by them both. Why the Morrises wished to court disaster in a tragic-romantic manner is anyone’s guess, but possibly the answer lies in Morris’s 1858 poem The Defence of Guenevere. Morris imagines a time when Guinevere is charged with adultery, punishable by burning, and she tells her story, her life and loves, her dreary marriage and the rebirth through love for Lancelot. I can see why he would idolize Jane as his perfect woman, his Guinevere, but in marrying her the next year (1859), he became her Arthur—hardly the recipe for a happy marriage.

As a celebration of the marriage of William Morris to Jane, Rossetti painted the pair as Saint George and Princess Sabra in a beautiful 1862 watercolor. As Saint George, William washes the dragon off his hands while watching the villagers carry bits of the slain monster around outside. The grateful, freshly rescued princess kneels, holding up a water bowl and kissing his hands, which is both touching and unhygienic. This is Jane’s brief respite from the series of cheating queens and was one of the few instances where Jane and William appeared together in a painting. Despite being one of the most authentic images of affection, neither George nor Sabra look at each other, and the marked difference in their positions hints at an imbalance in the power dynamic between the pair. Viewing this painting in that light is interesting, particularly in contrast to sketches Rossetti made; in those, William often trails behind his stately bride, trying to make her happy in a bumbling, humorous manner while she remains stoic and unreachable.

If Jane as Sabra can be written off as Rossetti’s brief moment of generosity toward his friends, his projected series Twelve Coins for One Queen can be seen as a more brutally honest expression of how he came to think of his best friend’s wife. By the late 1860s, Rossetti had developed a morbid fixation on Jane. She became a regal, threatening figure looming out of darkness, haunting his vision in works such as Proserpine (1874), Astarte Syriaca (1876-77), and Mnemosyne (1881). Rossetti’s queen was his wife’s best friend, and an emotional affair between them became a keynote in both their lives. Due to Rossetti’s physical and mental illnesses, the Twelve Coins project—intended to comprise twelve portraits, each with an accompanying poem—was never realized. Only one of the portraits exists, Perlascura (1871), and it is one of the most beautiful and delicate portraits ever done of Jane. The medium is pastels, the composition featuring her shoulders bare and her hair shining. All that is missing is a crown.

The deaths of Rossetti in 1882 and William Morris in 1896 might have meant that Jane’s royal days were over. Yet one more artist came to crown this Pre-Raphaelite queen, but with an interpretation far different from that of the men who had loved her. In Evelyn De Morgan’s 1904-7 painting The Hourglass, Jane is once more enthroned, but she is watching her time coming to an end. Now older, gaunt, and seemingly exhausted, she sits in her finery, watching the sands of an hourglass trickle away. Behind her are medieval tapestries not unlike those she worked on with her husband, and outside she is serenaded by a trumpeting figure of Life. But the rose at her feet has seen better days, and so has she. As her fingers rest on the eponymous hourglass, you wonder if she’s trying to summon the strength to turn it back over and relive those glory days once more—but it is pointless. We all get only one turn of time, and her sand is running out.

Following the death of her husband, Jane lived on in solitude at Kelmscott in Oxfordshire. Although she lived in near obscurity, it was still considered a great honor for undergraduates at Oxford to be brought to meet her in her old age, as if they were being presented at some mythical court.

When Jane died in 1914, her obituaries remembered her as a distinguished beauty and discussed how, with her death, the last link to Pre-Raphaelitism had been broken. The latter claim is indicative of how entirely Jane and her image ruled the idea of Pre-Raphaelitism; models and artists like Annie Miller and Marie Spartali Stillman lived on until the 1920s, but it was Jane’s death that was seen as the official end of the era.

The role of queen bookended Jane’s life, from a tempted, remorseless Guinevere to De Morgan’s mournful, lonely woman watching her time trickle away—a reflection of how women are often seen still. When we’re young and beautiful, we’re accused of inspiring desire in others, but if we age, we’re decried for allowing that lust to die. In many ways, De Morgan’s painting typifies that struggle for women and the way our power rises and then counts down, from our birth to our last desirable day, when we might as well cease to exist. The riches that surround De Morgan’s queen mean nothing, as they’re not where a woman’s power resides.

Jane’s face had raised her from humbleness to wealth, from obscurity to worship. In Shaw’s Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle’s transformation from flower seller to lady is so complete that Professor Higgins’s former pupil Nepommuck suspects she’s of “the blood royal.” Likewise, in the art she inspired, as well as in the many accounts from admirers and her obituaries, Jane’s humble origins have been overlooked and even concealed. “Queen Jane” reigned from her throne, seeking love from unreliable men with the blessing of her king until the last grain of golden sand fell.

But before we feel too sorry for her, remember that of all her peers raised from working-class origins, she had the most comfortable life. She has also likely had the most books and exhibitions dedicated to her and her work. Her homes are preserved for pilgrims to pay homage. There is no doubt that even in death, Jane still reigns.

Feature Image:
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), by Simeon Solomon

According to the Ancient Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene, “No man sings like a Lesbian singer.” A very progressive statement for 600 B.C., but he was actually speaking of the magic and beauty of the lyric poets of the island of Lesbos and, more particularly, of his contemporary Sappho. Possibly the most heralded singer-songwriter of pre-Christian times, Sappho is mainly remembered today for her love of the ladies, as so little of her poetry survives. Yet for a woman who literally gave her name to a euphemism for female gayness, she wrote an awful lot of lust poems about men as well and even apparently threw herself off a cliff because a man didn’t love her. All this complication leads me to Sappho’s unexpected heyday, the 19th century, where this magical Greek poet by necessity became all these things and more.

Let’s start with who Sappho was. As someone who lived around six hundred years before Christ, she didn’t leave a lot of personal information, but we know that she wrote lyric poetry that was intended to be sung with accompanying music and that her work was so popular that she was christened the “Tenth Muse.” Much of what we know about Sappho is inferred from her poems, as the earliest biography of her wasn’t written until nearly 800 years after her death. Most of her poetry is now lost, however, with only fragments and one complete poem, the famous “Ode to Aphrodite,” surviving. But such was the power of her reputation and the lines that were discovered that she remained in the canon for centuries. Then along came the Victorians, for whom she would personify all aspects of womanhood. Do you want a talented poetess whose work has transcended centuries? Do you want a decadent lover, whose queerness knows no shame? Do you fancy a suicidal, spurned tragic heroine? A love witch with incantations for her errant lovers? There is a Sappho for every occasion—but how many of them were figments of the 19th century imagination?

The Victorians loved the classical period. Painters joyously placed wistful figures on cold marble benches, draped in flimsy fabric. In Sappho, they found the perfect subject onto which they could project all the ideas of the civilized intellect that the homogenous “classics” evoke. In Sappho at Mytilene (1876), Pierre Coomans shows bevies of classical beauties listening to Sappho while offering her laurel crowns. Similarly, John William Godward’s 1904 Sappho of Lesbos shows a buxom woman wrapped in diaphanous fabrics, sensibly sitting on a fur rug—I’m guessing marble is a tad cold, especially first thing in the morning. In Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s 1881 Sappho and Alcaeus, the painter, well-known for his classical scenes, places the two poets together, with Sappho leaning forward in contemplation as she listens to her contemporary’s song. These images are like corporate portraits: Sappho at work as an intellectual, among her peers who respect and celebrate her. It’s unsurprising that poets such as Felicia Hemans, Katherine Bradley, and Edith Cooper (who wrote under the male pseudonym Michael Fields) wrote in praise of their sister poetess.

Not that there weren’t scores of male poets who also aligned themselves with Sappho. Most famous among them was Algernon Swinburne, whose extremely florid verse envisaged “the Lesbians kissing across their smitten / Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings.”

Possibly what Swinburne was imagining in “Sapphics” (1866) was an 1864 painting by Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene. In this work, Sappho is not kissing her beloved Erinna across her smitten lute; she has instead sensibly put her instrument to one side. No one wants a lute awkwardly poked in their ribcage during an embrace.

Solomon in turn was apparently inspired by Swinburne’s earlier poems about the life and loves of Sappho, including
of her fellow poet Erinna. In Sappho’s own poem “Ode to Aphrodite,” the poet calls upon the goddess to make the girl she desires fall in love with her. In return Aphrodite recites an incantation, some love magic that will win her heart: “She who shuns love soon will pursue it, / She who scorns gifts will send them still: / That girl will learn love, though she do it / Against her will.” In Solomon’s painting, it’s noticeable that Sappho seems far more enamored of Erinna, leaning in, eyes closed. Erinna, by contrast, just sort of sits there, not really getting involved. It is tempting to think that Sappho was calling for help from Aphrodite because Erinna was just not that into her. Here, however, we encounter the main problem with Erinna and Sappho’s relationship: They never met. Erinna played very hard to get by being born a few centuries after Sappho’s death. Sappho undoubtedly sang to Aphrodite about the love of a girl, or possibly a few girls, but who they were remains unknown.

Another problem with the well-known Lesbian is that she also wrote about her love of boys. In my favorite of her fragments, she foreshadows Charli XCX’s 2017 lyrical ballad “Boys,” telling her mother she can’t possibly do any weaving today as she is busy thinking ’bout boys …

I can’t take the shuttle in hand,
There is a boy, and lust
Has crushed my spirit …

This bisexuality could well have come from some overzealous translators correcting Sappho’s “mistake” of putting girl where she obviously meant boy. There is a fair amount of back and forth in the translations, as some poems could be interpreted as a boy speaking of his love of a girl, and some feature boy lust that leaves you too weak to weave. All of these could be said to have a narrator who is not Sappho but a character. But when Sappho names herself in the poem, such as in “Ode of Aphrodite,” there is no mistaking that she is asking for the love of a girl. Then the obvious conclusion is that Sappho fell in lust with everyone. No wonder she had no energy for weaving.

All this rampant queerness startled some of her more conservative translators and readers, and so another myth of Sappho came to take the artistic world by storm: that of a tragic leap to her death. According to legend, Sappho fell in love with Phaon, a boatman who had been made young and beautiful by a magical ointment given to him by Aphrodite. His newly found hotness turned him into a very unpleasant chap indeed, and when he mistreated Sappho, she threw herself off the Leucadian cliffs to cure herself of her love for him.

But this is rather spurious, as Phaon was entirely mythical. For Sappho to die for his love would be a bit like me falling into despair because Sherlock Holmes won’t call me back. Yet the idea of the poetic, lovelorn Sappho atop a cliff became a recurring theme for such artists as Charles Mengin. In his Sappho (1877), the poet is so distraught in love that her boobs have fallen out of her frock. Similarly, Miquel Carbonel Selva’s The Death of Sappho (1881) shows the poet casting aside her lyre and preparing to plunge into the tumultuous seas below. Charles Lenoir goes a step further in his 1896 painting, showing the drowning Sappho sinking beneath the water, clutching her lyre, completely naked. Unrequited love seems to make all your clothes fall off.

My favorite take on this motif must be Lawrence Koe’s 1888 masterpiece of Sappho, naked on a rock, clutching her lyre. It’s hard to work out if she’s dead, mad, or just having a bit of a tough day, but there are shades of Ophelia about her. While we have no proof that Sappho hurled herself off a cliff for the love of a feckless man, there are shades of that torment in her poems, such as “In all honesty, I want to die,” where Sappho and her lover say that despite everything they have been through, they can’t help but remember the good times, and it is hard to say goodbye to that.

The poetry of Sappho, more than 2,500 years old, has a magic that is eternal. This fact was apparent to Sappho herself, who says to us in a fragment:

“I declare / That later on, / Even in an age unlike our own, / Someone will remember who we are.”

For previous eras, she spoke openly about love in all the different shades and flavors, how she loved those that did not love her, how she was parted from those she loved and learned to love again. The reason the Victorians were drawn to her work was partly because of the discovery of more fragments in archaeological digs, but it was also that her free discussion of love chimed with the decadent aesthetic period. Feel your feelings and love your loves!

Yet the myth of the suicidal Sappho also serves as a warning against such behavior: Too much love will be the death of you. A woman in full pursuit of a lover will never be successful; let that be a warning to you. Despite that, the Victorians made her beautiful and uncompromising even in death.

When I see the paintings of Sappho sitting on a marble bench looking thoughtful, I don’t believe she is having the intellectual thoughts the artist probably intended. Instead I imagine her thinking one her poems: “May you bed down, / Head to breast, upon / The flesh / Of a plush / Companion.” Our girl Sappho spoke the eternal truth that everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.

Feature Image:
Persephone’s Return BY KINUKO Y. CRAFT

Ah, Persephone, it was never your fault! Whatever gifts you were born with—be they beauty, innocence, certain (dare I say) bewitching qualities, or merely because you were born into a family of gods—we all know that what happened was not your fault. The long winter, well, maybe, but life is what you make out of difficult circumstances.

Do I need to remind you that you have responsibilities up here too? The mortals are waiting for us to appear, together, so the spring Mysteries can begin. So you are being very naughty, lingering here at the edge of the Underworld, pouting about a husband you don’t like and a lover who didn’t want to stay down there with the two of you.

Oh no, Adonis doesn’t think any less of you because of where you live! But understand also that the boy is mortal, and that place—

I always think of you in sunlight, my dear. Never, never in shadows! You must know that. All those months after you first disappeared, while I searched and searched, I wouldn’t let a single blade of grass grow, lest a vine or a branch be hiding you. It was a long time before Helios told me what he’d seen—yes, I agree, I was annoyed with him too for keeping the secret so long—but at least then I knew where to look, and it wasn’t in sunlight.

One moment there you were, as merry as you please, strolling through
an Eleusinian meadow with Artemis and those silly sea nymphs. I picture you gathering juicy treasures of berries and flowers, laughing at the stains your fingers left as you wiped them on your white chiton … those reds and blues and pinks and greens …

If I blame your prissy cousin Artemis for anything, it was for scolding you then, for holding your chin in her hand and wiping your mouth with her hem and asking: “When will you grow up?” For I understand that it was her voice that attracted the beast.

Hades. My disgusting little brother. I grew up with the fellow chasing me around and pulling my pigtails, holding me down and belching into my face. I wouldn’t have wished him on my worst enemy, let alone on my own daughter.

Well, maybe I’d wish him on Artemis now. Honestly, the earth splits asunder at your very feet, and a monster grabs one of your friends and pulls her into the earth—wouldn’t you tell someone? The girl’s mother, for example? But no, she went running off through the forest with her dogs and her bow and arrows, calling herself the moon, and I had to hear it from the sun.

But I’m the Mother Goddess; my job is to empathize. I’ve tried to understand Hades just seizing you like that, and your half-sister Aphrodite encouraging him… Well, she was jealous is all, because you’re every bit as pretty as she is. I’m sure Adonis thinks so too. And you know she really loves you, because when she found that infant curled up in a box, she brought him straight to you. It’s just bad luck that when he grew up, both of you fell in love with him.

I talked it all over with Zeus while you were away, and I do believe he meant to be fair. Zeus catches a lot of blame in this family. He was trying to please everybody (which is impossible, you know) when he decreed that Adonis would live with you for four months and Aphrodite for four months, and then wherever he liked for the rest of the time.

So Adonis did not choose you this winter—maybe he’s waiting for you aboveground now! Come see! …

No, no, I’m not choosing sides against you; I only want us all to get along and have a great summer together. I’m trying not to be so angry all the time.

Fine, my dear, you’re stuck being Queen of the Underworld. There are worse things you could be. Rude, for example. You might say it’s inevitable that you forget yourself and your manners when you’re down there feasting with ghosts half the year. But Persephone, if you want someone to fancy you, do not let your husband’s bad habits become yours!

All right, I’ll give an example. Hermes and I also worked through a few issues recently, and he told me that last summer, he chased you through one of those fields up north. He said he almost caught you too, but as soon as he touched your elbow, you—my dear, he said you snorted at him. Now, that doesn’t sound like a harbinger of springtime sweetness, does it? Can you understand why Adonis would be put off, hearing something like that?

Oh, certainly, “When in Rome …” But this is not Rome or the Underworld. Ghosts may snort; Olympians do not.

And haven’t I always told you to be careful about accepting hospitality if you don’t want to linger? You’re the one who ate those pomegranate seeds—six of them, greedy girl—when Hades offered them to you. It was your own choice.

So maybe I do blame you, just a bit. But you know how much I love you. And you love Adonis, so please think how he feels, finding out that you expect him to join you—and your husband—on the other side of the Styx! But he might fall for the girl who comes bursting through the earth every March in her clean white chiton, setting the meadows abloom with a touch or a word …

Be that girl.

Now, take my hand; it’s time. I’ll pull you the rest of the way into the light. I have a sheaf of wheat for you, and I’ll carry oats and poppies, just as usual. We have a year’s worth of harvest to seed.

You deserve to be loved for yourself, not your manners or your address. And do you know who loves you that way? Family. Especially your mother.

Now, don’t keep me waiting!

For the Victorians, witchcraft was a thing of both fantasy and all too real fact. As late as 1895, there was the terrifying case of Bridget Cleary in Tipperary, Ireland. Believed to be bewitched, she was burned alive by her husband on the evidence that one of her legs was longer than the other—ample proof that she must have been bedeviled. Bridget’s fate was extreme, but more mundane tales regularly peppered the newspapers throughout the later 19th century. Regional papers carried accounts of witchcraft resulting in the killing of livestock, illness in servants, and drying up cow’s milk. That particular spell was supposedly countered by putting a pair of breeches on the cow’s horns, causing it to run toward the house of the witch. Against a backdrop of all these rural accusations and superstitions, it seems odd that painters would choose witches as their glamorous muses, but women and their magical powers have always fascinated male artists. When the spell is cast, however, who has the power and who should be afraid?

You don’t have to search too far in 19th century art to find an archetypal witch. She is the fairy-tale type, the trope of an old crabapple-faced bundle lurking malevolently in a cave and cackling at inappropriate moments. Images like Edward Brewtnall’s 1882 painting Visit to the Witch shows witchcraft as a preserve of the old while young nubile maidens come to visit, flirting with the chance of a bit of magic on their side without having to put in the hard work of gathering herbs and squeezing toads and the like. The beautiful and youthful are merely spell tourists, not yet dedicated to the world of black cats and brooms. The old, wizened witch of art is sexless and amoral, not actively evil but fiddling with the natural order of things. The girls who visit want love potions to ensnare an unwilling suitor, proving to men that women are always up to something when you leave them alone together.

There is a definite difference between a sorceress and a witch in art. John William Waterhouse’s The Magic Circle (1886) shows a young and beautiful creature with overtones of Kate Bush in her long gray-lavender dress and wild hair. She is alluring but to be feared, as she is serious in her craft. Similarly, Frederick Sandys’s Medea (1868) is so intense in her art that she’s in the act of yanking off her coral beads. The significance is that coral protects children, and part of the spell she is casting will kill her errant lover’s children and his new wife. Men are right to fear a sorceress; just look at Merlin and Vivien of Arthurian legend. There was a wizard who was capable of great magic, such awesome power, and he is left ensnared and entangled by Vivien, the beautiful enchantress. A sorceress or an enchantress has definite overtones of sex in their arsenal. Vivien and Medea have that power over men, yet neither use it for merely love. Medea wants to rain death down upon him and Vivien wants Merlin locked away. If a woman has ultimate power, she will not use it to make you love her. She will destroy you, unless you get her first.

Tragically, this was the case for Dorothy Henry, the beautiful young model for artist John Currie, who was obsessed with her. He painted her portrait and, after leaving his wife, vowed to marry her, his muse and torment. His obsession grew deranged, and he painted her again in 1913 as The Witch, in which she combed her hair and smiled in a knowing manner. Dorothy had become Lady Lilith, a Biblical witch and destroyer of men’s dreams, combing her hair in her self-absorbed vanity. No man is enough for these creatures, no man can fulfill the desires they have. Only their own reflection is enough, and that is a frightening thought. Currie, mad with jealousy and anger, shot Dorothy in her Chelsea apartment in 1914. He then shot himself, telling a policeman who found him as he died that he had done it because he loved her. Currie left his wife a letter of explanation, saying that Dorothy had power over him, was ruining him, and he had no choice, even at the expense of his own life. She was twenty years old.

In a climate of such fear, it is unsurprising that artists sought to strip witches of their power by stripping them of their clothes. Among the necklace-clutching sorceresses and wrinkle-cheeked grannies are a swath of naked, nubile, naughty witches astride their broomsticks, some of the most beautiful painted by Luis Ricardo Falero. Twin Stars (1881) is possibly Falero’s best known, if not most notorious, work. It was once boarded up by Scotland Yard’s vice squad for being obscene, but now graces the walls of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It didn’t take long for Falero to add flying witches to his heavenly bodies, and they were equally as gorgeous. Falero painted witches many times, clutching their broomsticks between plump pink thighs as they hurtle about deep blue night skies. One is even riding side-saddle in The Witches’ Sabbath, her flame-red hair flickering behind her as she holds a torch to light her way. In The Belated Witch, Falero shows us one of the sorcery-sisterhood who has obviously been too busy getting ready to get to the Sabbath on time. For Falero, witches are Titian-haired, like fiery thunderbolts, far more titillating than threatening.

But in 1878, Falero produced the truly epic Witches Going to the Sabbath, a whirlwind of bottoms, boobs, thighs, and the occasional goat. This swirl of naked flesh shows half the witches not even bothering with a broom at all, some hanging on to others. A game old hag is shown grabbing both a goat horn and a younger witch and even a chap with a beard in this equal-opportunity Sabbath. It’s hard to know where to look as there is enough disturbing erotica to satisfy everyone. It is an unusual witch picture that involves men, so what is this hurricane of a Sabbath warning us about? Surely by making the women young and sexy, Falero has given the male gaze the power and made the witch merely an excuse for women to be naked in a picture? There is a playfulness in all of Falero’s nudes, but Witches Going to the Sabbath is different. There is urgency and determination in the journey, and these denizens of the night have gathered as a group, providing strength in numbers. Unlike his other nubile ladies, these witches are not displayed for your pleasure—they have somewhere to be. The witches in this picture have a gathering to attend that is none of your business, and you should be afraid. But what could those naked ladies be up to that could be of concern?

The answer may lie in Jean Veber’s turn-of-the-century picture Witches (1900). Like Falero, Veber’s girls ride naked on a broomstick. One girl has her hair streaming behind, the other has hers piled up in a Gibson Girl–style pouf on the top of her head. These are very Edwardian witches, modern and ridiculous, but below them is a neat little sketch of presumably the same two girls on a tandem bicycle. We are suddenly struck that these witches not only want freedom in the skies; they want freedom over themselves. Susan B. Anthony wrote in 1896: “I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-  reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood.”

Witchcraft!

The spell these women Witches (1900), Jean Veber wanted to cast was one of emancipation, and it is no coincidence that the suffragettes embraced the bicycle as their chosen form of transportation, free of male control. Through cycling, they were able to slowly transform their style of dress away from constriction and corsets to gathered trousers and freedom. With the new harem-style pants, you could clearly see that a woman had two legs! She might as well be naked. The bicycle was mostly a vehicle for one, a way for a woman to travel away from the control of
her father, brother, or husband. She could determine her own path, her own destination, and she could go at speed. A woman on a bicycle needs no husband to transport her or decide her destiny. The Suffragette Spinster on her bicycle was the epitome of self-determination and became the poster woman for the new market for bicycle sales to young women. Despite being embraced by capitalism, the lingering distrust of a cycling spinster remained. It’s no coincidence that in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, the frantically peddling Miss Gulch transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West, her bicycle morphing into a broom before Dorothy’s eyes.

The power of the witch lies in her autonomy. The Victorians feared that women would discover freedom was for life and not just for Sabbath, and make off on their tandems or broomsticks, whichever was to hand. I have always wondered about the significance of a witch’s broomstick. Is it meaningful that a woman could use possibly her most important domestic tool, a symbol of labor and servitude, to subvert and deny male power? If women cannot be trusted alone with brooms, what can be done? Even removing their clothes does not make women behave, although it does give us something pretty to look at. Freed of clothing, aboard transport built for one (or shared with a like-minded friend), women move more quickly, bright and fast like comets, finding others that share their beliefs. Together, the witches will gather, will combine their magic.

If I were the patriarchy, I’d be worried—and start watching the skies.

Feature Image:
Destruction of Leviathan (1865), by Gustave Doré

Article from the Summer 2022 Nautical Issue
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Maybe it’s the isolation. Maybe it’s the up and down and back and forth of the waves. Maybe it’s purely a sense of adventure—when you’ve been out at sea for a while, you’re going to feel spoony. And you’re going to make mistakes. There are reasons that most shipboard romances fail. Failure’s even more likely if you hop off the deck and join your lover in the water. You’ll end up awash in narcissists, teases, and love bombers there just as likely as on land, and the monstrous breakups at sea are even more devastating. Too many of us have lost our limbs as well as our self-esteem and our ability to trust.

Proceed with caution. Here there be dragons.

Charisma, Love Bombs, and Spite: the Sea Serpents and Dragons

I understand the attraction. Long, muscular bodies, glittering scales, a tail or two to twine around and make you feel really held … Sea serpents and dragons are the Clark Gables and Gal Gadots of the maritime world. It’s always dazzling when Clark Gable and Gal Gadot want you. Especially when they can breathe fire, even underwater. So you may pine for a creature such as Chile’s Coi Coi-Vilu, the serpentine god or goddess who rules over all sea life—just don’t expect your affection to be returned to the same degree.

Your sense of awe and helplessness should have told you something. Big oceanic reptiles have charisma to burn, and they are certainly masters and mistresses of the Grand Romantic Gesture. They make you feel wanted. But just as with any two-legged date, you have to be careful not to get swept away: These lovers are toxic.

Take the Bakunawa of the Philippines, for example. Whether you consider him a dragon or a serpent, you have to remember that you are not the only girl or guy for whom he’s put on a show. He likes causing tidal waves, and he lives to work up an eclipse. With all these fancy stunts, you may be hearing a first-date I love you, but what he’s saying is I love you right now, but you know, things change. Love bombers never mention that their disarming declarations have an expiration date.

Sometimes you and your sea serpent tick along so happily for a while that you start to scoff at the naysayers. You remind your friends that Warren Beatty was a notorious mimbo before he met Annette Bening. Your friends are then right to remind you about Jörmungandr, also known as the Midgard Serpent or the World Serpent of Norse mythology. When über-god Odin lobbed Jörmungandr into the sea, the snake grew so big that he has now encircled the globe and holds his own tail in his mouth. (Fun fact: There is a way to tell what part of a serpent is the tail—just look for everything after his anus.) He’s got the whole world in his scales, and you are just one tiny part of that co-dependent, ultimately self-involved relationship.

But this is one vindictive narcissist. The moment someone demands enough attention to make him stop sucking his tail, he’ll writhe his way onto land and spray poison into the air and sea, bringing on Ragnarök.

Trust me, you do not want to be around for Ragnarök, much less be the cause of it.

Empty Promises: the Sirens

No creature has greater charisma than the sirens. They’re beautiful, yes, and they have throaty, seductive voices … Whether you believe that they are women from the waist up and fish down below, or as Homer (mistakenly, I think) did, that they are half bird instead, they are inextricably identified with the ocean and with seduction. Their songs promise dreams fulfilled. Best of all, they promise that you will be fulfilled, that you’re as gorgeous and clever and talented as they are.

Sadly, this is probably a lie. They are supernatural beings, after all, and we mortals can’t quite compete. But the promises are so beautiful!

No one is better at wrapping you around her littlest fin than a siren, but
a tryst with her is designed to end in destruction. She wants you to crash your ship into the rocks or fling yourself into the sea to catch her. The sailors of C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader explain it well: The clouded water over which songs are floating is not where your daydreams and wishes come true but where your dreams do—it’s the space of living nightmares.

In short, a siren makes you feel great until she wrecks you utterly upon the rocky shores of a fake relationship.

You can still dream big for yourself. Just don’t listen to a monster who tries convince you she can give you the world. Wait for the one who loves where you are and helps you get further. to

The Tease: Cetus

To the ancient Greeks, ketos referred generically to any sea monster, but when most of us see the name in its Latin form, we think of one enormous sinister beast with a body as big as a ship and a head as tall as a house. The Greeks described Cetus as a sort of spiky dolphin, with spines a foot and a half thick—think of a water-bound stegosaurus with a snaking tail and the face of a boar or a dog. He is the forefather of dragons, the taunter of virgins, the monster who gave his name to an order of sea creatures, the cetaceans. He spends most of his time bobbing along in the waters offshore, waiting for the Greeks to get tired of a girl and toss her to him.

In fact, Cetus seems to enjoy threatening more than devouring. If you are serious about offering him a victim, you have to chain her up until he can be bothered to make a move. The Trojan princess Hesione had to wait so long
(naked, no less) that Hercules had time to travel a far piece and make a bargain with her father for her rescue. When Cetus finally showed up, he swallowed not the girl but the hero, who then spent the next few days hacking his way out of the monster’s belly.

Andromeda, seen above with a snakier Cetus, waited even longer than Hesione, such that her man Perseus was able to wing his way over and slay Cetus—again just as the monster opened his enormous maw. Perseus waved Medusa’s head around and turned Cetus to stone. Reports of his death, however, may be greatly exaggerated. There will always be a Cetus.

I submit that this monster must be more interested in the heroes than the heroines. Why else would he wait so very long to taste the girls’ flesh and move in just as the guys showed up?

You don’t need a Cetus in your life. When you’re undressed and tied up, you deserve all of your lover’s attention. If that’s what you’re into.

The Jealous Monster: Leviathan

You already know him by reputation—one of the most wondrous things God ever made, with unbreakable scales, fiery breath, and a chip on his shoulder about his first wife’s death. He slithers through several books of the Hebrew Bible, eating a whale a day, boiling the sea with the heat of his malodorous breath, poking his horns out of the water and threatening the Israelites.

And yet, you fall for him. Hard. Partly because he instantly seems to feel so close to you. He wants to know all about you; he wants to spend every minute together.

At first his jealousy is cute—the way he insists on eliminating all rivals for your affection in the same way as he got rid of the sea’s “great fishes,” or whales, and replaced a handful of Egyptian gods. But. There’s a reason the Christians associate him with both the deadly sin of envy and the devil.

Leviathan is the original green-eyed monster. Life with him is a constant Where were you? and Who were you with? and Is Cetus bigger than I am? His envy and jealousy are not about you; they are about Leviathan and his rivals. He will not die till the end of time, so it’s up to you to walk away before he decides to make you a part of himself forever, if you catch my drift. If you feel the water around the two of you heating up, swim fast.

So Handsy: the Giant Cephalopods

If two hands are good, a thousand tentacles must be better, right? Nope. Friends, this is the same faulty thinking that has people insisting that size really matters when we all know it’s really the motion of the ocean.

We also know that giant species of squid exist because they’ve been caught, killed, and documented, which is one reason their species might be a bit shirty with ours. They grow up to fifty feet long—not quite big enough to wrap their arms around a ship and pull it down, as artists love to show touchy-feely cephalopods doing, but still. Big.

The monstrous cephalopods are bigger.

First described in 1701 by Italian travel writer Francesco Negri, the many-armed kraken of Norway rises from the icy waters and wraps his arms around your ship as if to share some of its warmth. Trouble is, hugging and sinking ships is all the kraken is known for. Ditto the giant octopus of which Victor Hugo wrote, or Jules Verne’s incompletely described creature, which could be either squid or octopus. These are not the brightest or most creative bulbs in the sea.

You’ll find another impressive monster in the Bahamas, where the lusca (sometimes considered a hybrid octopus-dragon, emphasis on octopus) is supposedly seventy-five feet long and spends its life darting in and out of the “blue holes” around the island of Andros. (The metaphors just write themselves, don’t they?)

If size and sucker count are all that matter to you, go ahead and hook up with a monstrous cephalopod. You’ll probably get bored and leave long before he has a chance to drown you.

Narcissist With Poor Hygiene: the Hafgufa

Unappealing as we consider the kraken to be, its cousin the hafgufa is the outcast at family gatherings. Also living in the waters off Norway, the hafgufa loves himself a bit too much and has disgusting table manners. He hunts by using his own vomit as bait—that is, like many sailors, he heaves into the sea, but unlike the rest of us, he swallows the vomit again, along with the low-standards sort of fish attracted by it.

Demand more for yourself. If you find yourself on a date with a hafgufa, quietly pay your half of the bill and move on. Let him chow down with Leviathan; they deserve each other.

Bottomless Pits of Neediness: the Mouthy Monsters

The sea is a hungry mistress, and so are the monsters whose bodies are sometimes mistaken for maelstroms, waves, whirlpools, and the sea itself. I’m talking about something much worse than, say, the Japanese umibozu, or sea priest—that man-faced dragon is easy to recognize, and though he’ll stir a calm sea into a whirlpool for the sheer joy of watching a ship go down, he’s easy enough to distract by tossing out a barrel. The hungry-mouthed monsters are much more insidious.

If you sail the strait between Sicily and the Italian mainland, you may find yourself being courted by two very different yet equally unappealing potential lovers: Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla (by the boot) is a six-headed, twelve-legged dragon who’s rather good at math; from each ship that passes, she plucks and devours precisely one sailor per mouth. Charybdis, just off the Sicilian coast, is a whirlpool that opens up and sucks whole ships clean into her mouth indiscriminately—and she never has enough. Which monster is your monster? To sail that strait is to face a choice so difficult that it has entered our language as “being between Scylla and Charybdis.”

My advice: Choose Scylla. She has the discipline to take only what she can eat in one sitting. Then again, why do you have to choose? Try, like Odysseus, to steer clear of both. You deserve someone who won’t eat you before getting to know you.

Mr. Big: the Reformed Whales

Who doesn’t love a whale? They’re smart, handsome, good mothers, good at what they do in general. At least, so they want you to think. On occasion, a devil whale has also been known to lurk below the ocean’s surface, sucking prey down through a whirlpool.

The one we meet in Sinbad the Sailor may tell us something about how Charybdis would look above water. When Sinbad, a native of Baghdad, takes to sea to win a fortune, he and his fellow mariners count themselves lucky to make camp on a nice tree-covered island. But that island is not actual earth; it’s a giant whale who’s been asleep so long that the trees on his back have grown tall. The sailors’ campfire awakens the monster, who dives under the waves. The panicked seamen take off—all except Sinbad, who is forgotten and must beg Allah for mercy while treading water.

Many Christians have reported the same experience. Long ago, they concluded that what is not god must be the devil. Whatever your personal creed, we all would do well to use caution when building a fire on an island of which we know nothing. You don’t want a devil whale.

You might not want a whale at all.

The devil whale’s impulsive behavior and passion for swallowing ships in one gulp are obviously red flags. For centuries, in fact, any even sort of large whale was feared and kept many sailors from taking the plunge overboard. Just think of Captain Ahab, last seen riding Moby Dick’s back and stabbing for all he was worth, in the only sort of interaction imaginable between man and cetacean.

But something changed when modern technology took over the sea. With the global endangerment of all whale species, the situation has changed. Now whales are friendly big galoots: Surfers and scuba divers report gleefully that they love a group swim and are as curious about us as we are about them. And we are doing our best to keep the love alive. We listen to recordings of the songs the whales sing to each other; we sign petitions and wear T-shirts exhorting others to save them. Instead of swallowing Jonah, what today’s reformed whale wants is a cuddle on the beach and a long-term relationship.

Yes, the monstrous whales that were once so many Mr. Bigs to our Carrie Bradshaws—toxic bachelors, moody and predatory and dismissive—have been tamed, just like the home-loving Big of the last movie. However, you would do well to remember the whales’ past, in which they were (like Lord Byron) mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Don’t fall for their “poor sensitive me” pose now. They are still a danger.

As with any monster, when it comes to Sex and the Sea, maintain good boundaries.

The Protectors: Some Monsters Make Good Friends

Hard as this may strain belief now, a few legendary sea creatures are kindly by nature, at least some of the time—so kindly that they’re revered in local religions. If you manage to escape without being eaten, it is just possible that you can form some kind of friendship.

In New Zealand, taniwha are spirits similar to dragons or serpents; the Maori report that some are predatory and some are protective. Though they occasionally capture human women to live as their wives, the women aren’t always unhappy about it.

But it’s hard to tell just by looking at a taniwha whether he’ll protect your village or eat everybody in it. Try following his rules and you might be okay. The reward for a good relationship? When you die, you could become a taniwha yourself.

Makara is your best bet for stability. Widely depicted in art throughout the Hindu world, he is a friendly aquatic spirit whose front half looks like a stag, boar, or elephant, and whose rear is usually a fish or a snake. The most modern Makara closely resembles a crocodile, which would make him harder to pick out of a crowd.

At least one sea-monster expert believes Makara looks a bit like Cetus, but we would never compare the two. Makara protects human thresholds and temples and is the vehicle for the river goddess Ganga and the sea god, Varuna. Most promising of all, the flag of the Hindu love god, Kamadeva, depicts a version of Makara—which makes him beautiful in our eyes.

If you two ever break up, you know you can call on him for help if you lock yourself out of your house. If you consider Makara a little less exciting than some of the storm-tossing monsters, the sea goddess Tiamat, “the glistening one” of ancient Mesopotamia, might be more your speed. She is both the chaos out of which the world formed and the mother who gave birth to the first gods—and when she got mad at those kids, she birthed the first dragons, whose veins still run with poison rather than blood. Her ribs now make the vault of our sky, which proves that in some sense all our lives depend on sea monsters.

Word to the willful from an ancient mariner: Most of these creatures will never make it work with anyone. Before you lose yourself and get really hurt, try turning the monstrous lover into your ex. You don’t have to stay friends—you just have to stay safe.

Visit Susann on Instagram @susanncokal or susanncokal.net.

Photography by THE WITCHING HOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

Model: Tatiana Pimentel
Jewelry: Parrish Relics
Set and styling: Jen Parrish-Hill
Wardrobe: Lisa Gill

An enchanted castle, bursting with roses and secrets. A princess, a youngest son, a clever girl living by her wits.

A king, a queen, and wishes.

We know a fairy tale when we see one. We feel it in our bones. This is a fairy tale, a story drenched in wonder, magic, and possibility.

But pinning down what exactly a fairy tale is, how to define it and understand what it does—that’s an altogether trickier proposition!

Our English term fairy tale is a gift from the daring French authoresses of the 17th century who wrote contes de fées, or “stories of the fairies” … even though most fairy tales don’t feature fairies at all! Folklorists might use the German term märchen, or “wonder tales,” instead.

We find our way into fairy tales using many different paths. The simplest path is to consider what fairy tales are made of: the standard plots, characters, and themes that we see repeated again and again. Folklorist Stith Thompson says that fairy tales take place in “an unreal world … filled with the marvelous. In this never-never land, humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms, and marry princesses.” Often, fairy-tale characters are very poor or very wealthy, very good or very bad, full of extremes and exaggeration. These tales are full of quests, searches, and problems to be solved, all against the backdrop of magic and enchantment. But even though they sparkle, they’re not always light or frothy. Many of our most beloved fairy tales involve challenging topics like difficult marriages, murder attempts, starvation, and neglect, revealing that these stories were once considered very much the province of adults—not tales suitable only for children, as too many people tend to think today!

Another, more rugged path considers what fairy tales do. Fairy-tale scholars Jennifer Schacker and Christine Jones write that “the idea of the fairy tale might be better understood as an open-ended, playful way of engaging social and political issues in a form that defies the constraints of realist fiction rather than as a fixed discursive form that corresponds to a set of narrative rules.” In other words, fairy tales are supernatural or magical stories that are told in order to comment on the real world that we live in—they’re a way to challenge how things are through the mirror of metaphor and magic. This isn’t always through a tidy moral printed at the end—in fact, fairy tales frequently don’t have those—but instead through broader themes, the cunning use of humor, or a playful turn of phrase.

Perhaps the twistiest, most challenging path, knobbly with tree roots and fading into fallen leaves, is to return to where we began, with how fairy tales make us feel. Word-magician J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote that a fairy tale “touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faerie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic—but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power.” For Tolkien, a fairy tale is atmosphere, sensation, the spell it casts on the reader.

But why, in our world of smartphones and Netflix and Frappuccinos, do these short, simple stories of the unreal still matter? Why do we still feel their pull, the magnetic force that makes us turn back to them again and again? Why do so many television shows, movies, books, and even advertisements still depend on their structures, their characters, their ideas?

It’s because a fairy tale is a spark, a challenge, a lesson, a spell. It’s how you feel when you think, Oh, if only this story were true, followed by a kind of knowing: It is true. As Neil Gaiman stated when he paraphrased G.K. Chesterton, these stories are “more than true—not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” They tell us that there is more to the world than what we can know rationally, that there is a kind of magic everywhere, if we choose to see it. They tell us that the powerless can sometimes overcome the powerful, that kindness helps, and that you should always be careful what you wish for. They give us a structure for understanding the world through stories.

So, this evening, when the world is quiet and the stars wink through your windows, take down your favorite book of tales and read one. Read two. Feel their “peculiar mood and power.” Soak up their spells.

The most famous prayer to the greatest goddess of abundance the world has ever known is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. This prayer-hymn, which tells the central story of the goddess Demeter, was influential enough that it became the fulcrum around which the ancient secret Eleusinian Rites revolved. We still know very little about these rites, but what we do know is that Demeter’s story, as related through her hymn, was central to them. We also know that some of the most illustrious and influential people of the day were initiates in these rites—names you’ve heard of, like Socrates.

The hymn opens in a flower-strewn meadow—the perfect picture of the wild abundance of spring. Here is Demeter’s daughter, Persephone “of the lovely ankles” and “low-slung girdle.” Here is the heady-scented, pollen-filled air. Abundance everywhere. But then the plenitude is interrupted by the Lord of the Underworld, Hades, capturing Persephone as his own. Suddenly the prayer to the great goddess of abundance becomes a hymn of grief and loss, one that takes some strange turns and eventually finds resolution in the striking of a bargain as a juicy pomegranate seed is crushed between pearly white teeth.

What does it mean that the goddess of the harvest, the goddess of plenty, she who was known to “boost all verdure in the world,” is best known and praised in a story that is not about gain but loss? This is the crux of the Hymn to Demeter: The testament to her greatness is illustrated through her ability to deprive.

Once the goddess of abundance realizes that she has lost her beloved daughter and understands that no god or divinity is going to step forward and help, she begins to pull away her power. The land goes into drought, the flowers and fruits wither on the vine, and the people cry out in sorrow. Even mortal women have a hard time conceiving, and when they do, the births are harder. It is not until Hekate, a Titaness who is older than all the Olympian gods and goddesses and the patroness of magic, tells Demeter that she saw the abduction of Persephone that we see there is a journey to take and the possibility of hope and restoration at the end of the story.

When we think of goddesses of abundance today, we think of the more benevolent face of the goddess, a holy helper that looks on the land and all creatures with love and bestows blessing. We catch her movement in the unfurling of a rose, the slowly ripening cluster of grapes on the vine, the golden sheaths of wheat, and ears of corn waving in a late summer breeze. We find her too in the clinching of the deal, the gaining of the promotion, the fattening of our bank account, or the development of a skill or talent.

Abundance goddesses do not just bring good things into our life and the world; they are also traditionally patrons of cities and large civilizations. Grain and cereal crops, which most harvest goddesses are associated with, were key to our earliest human settlements. Harvest goddesses are not just bringers of life; they are also builders of culture and connection. Even today we spend much of our time sowing intentions, growing our dreams and ideas and imaginings into fully furled possibilities, ensuring that these seeds have the proper environment to mature fully. And then, when the time is right, we harvest that fruit and let it nourish us and our lives and loved ones. A single seed extends far beyond one individual.

The harvest revolves around an ancient paradox that we see in Demeter’s hymn. The height of abundance is also the precise moment when the scythe is being sharpened to make the first cut. To appreciate abundance means being aware also of loss, grief, and the ways to navigate both. For many of us, this has been a year that has illustrated this truth more powerfully than others. Every joy and pleasure we have experienced this year has been made sweeter in contrast to what we collectively and individually experienced the year before. It is not that one “causes” the other, but rather that they are sides of the same coin. The other side of abundance is loss. This is what we learn from Demeter’s tale.

This is perhaps the greatest blessing of the old harvest goddesses. They are not only with us when times are good, but even more likely to walk by our sides when we descend into our own underworlds. They know the terrain well and know how to call sweet life back up to the surface. They will remind us as many times as needed how to find abundance, especially when we are standing neck-deep in loss. Demeter has been there too, and as her story promises, all will bloom again once more.