Basile, Giambattista (c.1575–1632)
Born in Naples, Giambattista Basile was an Italian soldier, poet, writer, and collector of fairy tales. He is best known for his collection of Neapolitan tales, La Cunto de la Cunti (The Story of Stories) (1634, 1636), also known as Il Pentamerone, a collection of 50 stories based on traditional Italian folk tales. It was published posthumously by his sister under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. It includes the earliest recorded versions of many tales that are still familiar to readers today, including “Puss in Boots,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Cinderella.”
Basile’s collection influenced later fairytale writers and collectors, including Charles Perrault in France and the brothers Grimm in Germany.
Bathing Fairies
The curious phenomenon of a troop of fairies discovered bathing in the health-giving waters of Ilkley Wells in the north of England is recounted in the 1878 edition of the Folk-Lore Record. A local resident asks the villagers what kind of things these fairies were, and they usually maintain that they are active little beings and resemble the human form, that they are “lill folk, and always dressed in green, but so agile that no-one [can] ever come up to them.” The bathman, William Butterfield, who looks after the Wells, further describes how he came to open up the baths one morning and had great trouble with the door, until:
… with one supreme effort, he forced it perfectly open, and back it flew with a great bang! Then whirr, whirr, whirr, such a noise and sight! all over the water and dipping into it was a lot of little creatures, all dressed in green from head to foot, none of them more than eighteen inches high, and making a chatter and jabber thoroughly unintelligible. They seemed to be taking a bath, only they bathed with all their clothes on. He shouts, ‘Hallo there!’ then away the whole tribe went helter skelter, toppling and tumbling, heads over heels, heels over heads, and all the while making a noise not unlike a disturbed nest of young partridges.
The water is left “still and clear” and William Butterfield never sees them again.
Bauchan
(Or Bogan.) In Scottish folklore a type of hobgoblin. One example is described in J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860–1862) as the protector of a family on the Island of Skye, but otherwise as a violently hostile spirit. He appeared only in the hours of darkness, “and any stray man who passed was sure to become a victim, the bodies being always found dead, and in the majority of instances mutilated also … He was seldom, if ever, seen by women, and did no harm to either them or to children.” He was eventually caught and tucked under the arm of his captor, who wanted to see him in daylight. The bauchan had never been heard to speak, but began begging to be set free, swearing “on the book, on the candle, and on the black stocking” to be gone. He was liberated after this promise and flew off singing a mournful refrain.
Baumesel
Literally, “Ass of the Trees,” the Baumesel is a tree-dwelling goblin in the folklore of Germany.
Baykok
(Or Bakaak.) In the Ojibwe nation’s traditional beliefs, the baykok manifests as a malevolent skeletal presence who eats the liver of its victims. In Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha it represents death.
Bean Nighe
Another guise of the banshee in Scottish and Irish folklore is as the bean nighe, or washer woman, who is to be found beside lonely streams washing blood from the clothes of those soon to die.
On the Island of Skye the bean nighe is said to be “squat in figure and not unlike a small pitiful child,” according to J. G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900).
Bean-Sidhe
See Banshee; also Bean Nighe.
Bediarhari
Malaysian term for fairies, or the “good folk.”
Bela
A tree spirit in the folk beliefs of the Kolarian people of India. When the Kolarian people made a clearing in the jungle it was customary to leave a solitary tree standing for the spirits to take refuge in. These trees became shrines to the nature spirits of the jungle.
According to an account in the Annals of Rural Bengal (1868), a jungle shrine in Bengal consisted of a bela tree, where the spirit resided, along with a kachmula tree, and a saura tree. The Kolarian left earth, rice, and money at the foot of the bela tree as offerings to the tree spirit.
Belliegha
A Maltese water monster inhabiting, and controlling, wells and water sources; belliegha translates as “whirlpool.”
Bendith y Mamau
“The Mother’s Blessing,” the local name for fairies in Glamorgan, Wales, where, according to Sir John Rhys’ Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901):
… the parish was then crammed full of Bendith y Mamau, and when the moon was bright and full they were wont to keep people awake with their music till the break of day. The fairies of Llanfabon were remarkable on account of their ugliness, and they were equally remarkable on account of the tricks they played. Stealing children from their cradles during the absence of their mothers and luring men by means of their music into some pestilential and desolate bog were things that seemed to afford them considerable amusement.
Further accounts of their tricks include details of the underground secret passages leading to their dwelling and to caverns of stored gold where:
They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along this that they pass up and down. They have a little word; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him.
A farmhand accidentally gains access to the passage but is discovered by the fairies who take him to live with them and “… at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas.” However, he passes on the secret to a farmer, who accumulates great wealth:
… thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half-guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more.
Bendigeidfran