In C. S. Lewis's novel Perelandra, the protagonist, Elwin Ransom, goes to the planet Venus. In Lewis's fictional universe Venus isn't the scorched, acid-soaked hell we now know it to be; it's a water world, with floating islands of lush vegetation, tame animals, and a climate like something out of paradise.
In fact, to Lewis, it is paradise; a world that hasn't fallen (in the biblical sense). Ransom runs into a woman who appears to be the planet's only humanoid inhabitant, and she exhibits a combination of high intelligence and innocent naïveté that is Lewis's expression of the Edenic state. Eventually another Earth person arrives -- the scientist Weston, who is (more or less) the delegate of the Evil One, playing here the role of the Serpent. And Weston tells the woman about humanity's love for telling stories:
"That is a strange thing," she said. "To think abut what will never happen."
"Nay, in our world we do it all the time. We put words together to mean things that have never happened and places that never were: beautiful words, well put together. And then we tell them to one another. We call it stories or poetry... It is for mirth and wonder and wisdom."
"What is the wisdom in it?"
"Because the world is made up not only of what is but of what might be. Maleldil [God] knows both and wants us to know both."
"This is more than I ever thought of. The other [Ransom] has already told me things which made me feel like a tree whose branches were growing wider and wider apart. But this goes beyond all. Stepping out of what is into what might be, and talking and making things out there, alongside the world... This is a strange and great thing you are telling me."
It's more than a little ironic -- and given Lewis's impish sense of humor, I'm quite sure it was deliberate -- that a man whose fame came primarily from writing fictional stories identifies fictional stories as coming from the devil, within one of his fictional stories. Me, I'm more inclined to agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."
Our propensity for telling stories is curious, and it's likely that it goes a long way back. Considering the ubiquity of tales about gods and heroes, it seems certain that saying "Once upon a time..." has been going on since before we had written language. It's so familiar that we lose sight of how peculiar it is; as far as we know, we are alone amongst the nine-million-odd species in Kingdom Animalia in inventing entertaining falsehoods and sharing them with the members of our tribe.
The topic of storytelling comes up because quite by accident I stumbled on Wikipedia's page called "Lists of Legendary Creatures." It's long enough that they have individual pages for each letter of the alphabet. It launched me down a rabbit hole that I didn't emerge from for hours.
And there are some pretty fanciful denizens of the "alongside world." Here are just a few examples I thought were particularly interesting:
- The Alp-luachra of Ireland. This creature looks like a newt, and waits for someone to fall asleep by the side of the stream where it lives, then it crawls into his/her mouth and takes up residence in the stomach. There it absorbs the "quintessence" of the food, causing the person to lose weight and have no energy.
- The Popobawa of Zanzibar, a one-eyed shadowy humanoid with a sulfurous odor and wings. It visits houses at night where it looks for people (either gender) to ravish.
- The Erchitu, a were...ox. In Sardinia, people who commit crimes and don't receive the more traditional forms of justice turn on the night of the full Moon into huge oxen, which then get chased around the place being poked with skewers by demons. This is one tale I wish was true, because full Moon days in the White House and United States Congress would be really entertaining.
- The Nekomata, a cat with multiple tails that lives in the mountains regions of Japan and tricks unwary solo travelers, pretending at first to be playful and then leading them into the wilds and either losing them or else attacking them. They apparently are quite talented musicians, though.
- The Gwyllgi, one of many "big evil black dog" creatures, this one from Wales. The Gwyllgi is powerfully-built and smells bad. If you added "has no respect for personal space" and "will chase a tennis ball for hours," this would be a decent description of my dog Guinness, but Guinness comes from Pennsylvania, not Wales, so maybe that's not a match.
- The Sânziană of Romania, who is a fairy that looks like a beautiful young woman. Traditionally they dance in clearings in the forest each year on June 24, and are a danger to young men who see them -- any guy who spies the Sânziene will go mad with desire (and stay that way, apparently).
- The Ao-Ao, from the legends of the Guarani people of Paraguay. The Ao-Ao is a creature that looks kind of like a sheep, but has fangs and claws, and eats people. It is, in fact, a real baa-dass.
- The Tlahuelpuchi, of the Nahua people of central Mexico. The Tlahuelpuchi is a vampire, a human who is cursed to suck the blood of others (apparently it's very fond of babies). When it appears, it sometimes looks human but has an eerie glow; other times, it leaves its legs behind and turns into a bird. Either way, it's one seriously creepy legend.
- The Dokkaebi, a goblin-like creature from Korea. It has bulging eyes and a huge, grinning mouth filled with lots of teeth, and if it meets you it challenges you to a wrestling match. They're very powerful, but apparently they are weak on the right side, so remember that if you're ever in a wrestling match with a goblin in Korea.
So that's just the merest sampling of the creatures in the list. I encourage you to do a deeper dive. And myself, I think the whole thing is pretty cool -- a tribute to the inventiveness and creativity of the human mind. I understand why (in the context of the novel) C. S. Lewis attributed storytelling to the devil, but honestly, I can't see anything wrong with it unless you're trying to convince someone it's all true.
I mean, consider a world without stories. How impoverished would that be? So keep telling tales. It's part of what it means to be human.
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