MONSTERS

MONSTERS . Strictly speaking, a monster is a mythical being and may be human or animal or a combination of both; it may be huge, misshapen, or grotesque, malevolent, savage, or terrifying. Such creatures have been a feature of popular lore and religious cult in all parts of the world from earliest times. The term is applied also to human "freaks," or "monstrous births," that is, persons with more or less than the normal number of limbs or organs, Siamese twins, hermaphrodites, and even albinos.

In popular legend, monsters are commonly portrayed as both stupid and gluttonous. What they have in brawn, they lack in brain, and when they devour their victims, it is not because they are innately hostile to the human race but because they possess insatiable appetites. It is often their obtuseness and greed that prove their undoing.

One kind of mythical monster is the dragon, the embodiment of primordial chaos, who is believed to have been subdued in battle by a leading god before the world order could be established. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia spoke of such a combat between the monster Azag ("demon") and the god Ninurta; the Babylonians, of the defeat of the rebellious Tiamat by their supreme god Marduk; the Hittites, of the defeat of a sea serpent named Illuyankas by the combined efforts of the goddess Inaras and a mortal hero; the Hebrews, of Yahveh's rout of Leviathan; the Hindus, of Indra's subjugation of Vṛtra; the Iranians, of the dispatch of the serpentine Azhi Dahaka; and the Greeks, of the triumph of Zeus over the contumacious Typhon.

The primordial monster appears not only in myth but also in ritual. It is a widespread custom to inaugurate a new year or season by staging a mimetic combat between two antagonists who represent respectively the old year and the new, winter and summer, drought and rainfall, and the like—a combat that survives, albeit in distorted form, in the English Mummers' Play and similar seasonal performances elsewhere. What thus inaugurates each separate year or season is thought to have inaugurated the entire procession of years and seasons in any given era and to be destined to happen again before a further era can begin. The defeat of the monster is therefore retrojected into cosmogony and projected into eschatology: Leviathan, Vṛtra, Azhi Dahaka, and Fenrisúlfr of Norse mythology, for instance, are said to be imprisoned but not slain and will eventually burst their bonds and have to be subdued again.

In several myths, the monster personifies the swollen rivers or winter squalls that threaten to inundate the earth unless properly channeled. In Chinese folklore, the subjugation of raging streams is called "caging the dragon." Conversely, however, the monster sometimes personifies a malevolent power who impounds the subterranean waters that have to be released in order to prevent drought.

Adverse natural phenomena are also personified as monsters, though it is sometimes difficult to determine whether these represent the phenomena themselves or the demonic powers that are believed to cause them. One such monster is the gigantic North American deity called the Thunderbird, the flapping of whose wings is believed to cause storms. The ancient Sumerians spoke likewise of a gigantic bird named Heavy Wind (Im Dugud) who caused storms; the Teutons spoke of Hraesvelgr. Analogous figures appear in the folklore of such diverse peoples as the Chinese, the Burmese, and several American Indian tribes.

Hurricanes are often attributed to the rampages of monsters. In the Mesopotamian creation epic Enuma elish, the rebellious Tiamat is accompanied into battle by a cohort of gruesome monsters that includes Stormwind, Cyclone, and the like. The Seneca Indians saw in hurricanes the activity of a monstrous bear named Ya-o-gah. According to some scholars, the English word for this phenomenon derives ultimately from Hurucán, the name of a monstrous wind god of the Quiché Indians of Central America.

Equally widespread is the belief that eclipses are caused by a monster's swallowing and then disgorging the sun or moon. The Hindus spoke of a dragon called Svarbhanu; analogous figures appear almost universally. In the language of the Turkic-speaking Chuvash and of Estonian folklore, a verbal form translated into English as "eaten" is used to describe an eclipse. Drums and gongs are beaten, bells rung, and trumpets blown in many parts of the world to scare away the dire adversary. A variant of this notion asserts that the sun is pursued nightly by a voracious monster—in ancient Egypt by the serpent Apopis and in Norse mythology by the wolf Skoll.

Another natural phenomenon personified as a monster is the whirlpool, which is said by some scholars to be the original referent of the word gargoyle (from the Latin gurges ). In Arabic a waterspout is popularly termed tinnīn ("dragon"); in the Old Testament the sea monster Leviathan is sometimes referred to by the term tannin. So, too, Edmund Spenser describes a whirlpool as a whale.

Not only natural phenomena but also human situations and infirmities are personified as monsters or are attributed to their activities. In Babylonian magical incantations, epilepsy and palsy are represented as a demonic monster with a bird's head and human hands and feet, and impotence as one with a lion's mouth, a dragon's teeth, and an eagle's talons. In Jewish folklore, noontime sunstroke and dizziness are attributed to an ogre who has the head of a calf with a revolving horn in the center, one eye in its breast, and a body covered with scales, hair, and eyes.

Sexual dreams are commonly represented in popular lore as due to the assaults of monsters who consort with sleeping men and women. Those that assail men are known as succubi; however monstrous their activities, they are usually portrayed not as grotesque harridans but as voluptuous sylphs or femmes fatales. Those that assail women are known as incubi. Belief in such creatures was widespread especially in the Middle Ages and was held even by such noted churchmen as Augustine. They were thought to be the demon lovers of witches, and intercourse with them was said to produce "monstrous births," deformed persons, hermaphrodites, and sometimes albinos. Indeed, according to many medieval commentators the "sons of God," who are said in the Book of Genesis (6:1–4) to have consorted with mortal women and thus engendered a race of giants, were in fact incubi.

Fairly universal is the belief in a monstrous beldam who seizes and strangles newborn babes and kills their mothers or drains the mothers' milk. In ancient Mesopotamia, she was known as Lamashtu and was portrayed with a lion's head, a woman's body, and bird's feet. She held serpents in both hands and suckled a black hound and a pig at her breasts. The Hittites knew her as Wesurya ("strangler"); known among the Greeks as Gello, Lamia, or Strix, she could take the form of a screech owl or bat. The Arabs saw her as a goggle-eyed hag whose one foot was that of an ass and the other that of an ostrich. In German folklore, she is a sharp-nosed, scrawny harridan. Superstitious Jews identify her with Lilith, the legendary first wife of Adam, who was expelled childless from Eden for her rebellious behavior and who is therefore envious of all new mothers. In many parts of the world plaques and amulets are hung up to ward her off.

Not only diseases and human infirmities but also death and the netherworld are portrayed as monsters. In several passages of the Old Testament (Is. 5:14, Hb. 2:5, Prv. 1:12) hell is depicted as a being with jaws agape, a portrayal frequent in medieval art, for example, in the east window of York Minster. Supay, the Peruvian deity of the nether regions, is similarly characterized.

There are also animal monsters, creatures that combine the parts of several different beasts or of beasts and human beings. Not all of them are regarded as harmful; some, despite their grotesque forms, represent beneficent spirits or deities. Many of these monsters acquired acceptance through descriptions of them in medieval and later bestiaries, which in turn derive largely from a book about animals known as the Physiologus, compiled (probably in Greek) between the third and fifth centuries ce by an unidentified writer and subsequently translated into many European and Oriental languages. Under the hands of Christian redactors, symbolic and allegorical meanings were given to the fabulous beasts, and they were thus incorporated into heraldry (e.g., the lion and the unicorn of British heraldry). Prominent among such creatures are the unicorn, the phoenix, the griffin, and the manticore.

The unicorn is first mentioned by the Greek writer Ctesias (third century bce) as native to India and akin to the rhinoceros. It was later portrayed in art and literature as a white horse with a single horn protruding from the middle of its forehead. It is identified by some early translators of the Old Testament with the re'em, a beast mentioned in several passages, and on the basis of this identification it became prominent in Christian symbolism. The re'em, however, is said explicitly to have more than one horn (Dt. 33:17, Ps. 22:21) probably it is the now extinct aurochs. Legend asserted that the unicorn could be caught only if it leapt into the lap of a virgin sent into the woods to entice it.

The phoenix, a red bird variously identified as an egret or flamingo, is said to be native to Arabia. It was believed to live for five hundred years and then to burn itself in its nest. Out of the ashes arose a new phoenix. Modern scholars believe that this is simply a Greek transmogrification of the Egyptian mythical bennu bird, who represented the resurgent sun and rose daily from a flaming tree at Heliopolis.

The griffin is a creature with a lion's head and the wings of an eagle who, in Greek mythology, guarded the gold in the north. It is probably to be identified (even in name) with the biblical cherub (Babylonian karūbu ), who was not an angel, as is commonly supposed, but a monster who guarded the entrance of ancient Mesopotamian palaces and who is also related to the legendary dragon who guards the pot of gold.

The manticore is a hybrid monster described in the bestiaries as possessing a lion's face, a man's body, and a tail with a serpent's head and a scorpion's sting. It has gleaming eyes and can leap prodigious lengths. It is said to be native to the Far East but may in fact derive from the fabulous Indian monster makara.

In general, harmful demons are often portrayed as monstrous beasts. A representative example is the Russian Zmei Gorynych, a snake that typifies all evil and is prone to run off with mortal girls.

One example of a beneficent animal monster is the Iranian Senmurv, part dog, part bird, and sometimes part reptile, who gave mankind seeds scattered from a tree in which it lived. Another is the Chinese Qilin, a spirit of good luck who has a deer's body, a bushy tail, cloven hoofs, and horns.

Besides these individual theriomorphic monsters there are also classes of such beings, for example, centaurs, Gorgons, and harpies. Centaurs are most commonly described in Greek literature and portrayed in Greek art as half human and half horse. It should be observed, however, that this is but one variety of them, for their human parts are said to be combined alternatively with those of asses and other beasts. It has therefore been suggested by some modern scholars that centaurs are really the mythical counterpart of the bands of wild men who are said to rampage in animal pelts and perform ritual dances at certain seasons in Balkan countries and who find their congeners in the hobbyhorse performers of English folk custom. The Gorgons are, in Greek mythology, three horrendous sisters whose glance petrifies the beholder. Their hair consists of serpents, and they possess golden wings, brazen claws, and huge teeth. One of them, Medusa, is mortal. Harpies ("snatchers") are filthy winged monsters, part woman and part bird, who defile whatever they encounter and who, according to Hesiod, also carry off newborn babies. In the latter capacity, they have their counterpart in Canaanite lore. Hesiod calls two of them by the names Aello ("stormwind") and Ocypete ("swift flier"). These names are included to this day in the Jewish amuletic plaques mentioned above as a device for averting the child-stealing beldam.

Human "monsters" or freaks are popularly attributed to the union of mortal women (especially witches) with incubi, or demons. Included among them are misshapen children and adults, androgynes, and persons with extra limbs and organs. An outstanding example is the Pig-faced Lady, Tanakin Skinner, who appeared in London in the early seventeenth century. An otherwise gracious person, she was said to have the head of a sow and to eat from a trough. Her grotesque form was attributed to divine vengeance on her mother, who had refused alms to a poor woman begging for the sustenance of her child. Another example is the Elephant Man, the subject of a well-known play by Bernard Pomerance. Albinos too fall into this class, although the popular attitude toward them is ambivalent. In Senegal, for instance, they are regarded as ominous; in Gabon they are killed at birth, whereas in New Guinea they are deemed holy.

Remote, "outlandish" peoples are often depicted as monsters in traveler's yarns, medieval romances, and the writings of various ancient authors. Herodotus (485?–425 bce) and Pliny the Elder (23–79 bce), for example, mention a legendary people of the far North named the Arimaspeans, who have no heads but have eyes in their stomachs. Japanese legend tells of Jon-li, a remote island inhabited by people whose bodies are half human and half dog. Marco Polo says that the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are dog-headed, and other writers similarly describe the Karen of Burma. The Jewish traveler Binyamin of Tudela (twelfth century) reports that men who live in the Turkish steppes have no noses, although this may refer to flat-nosed Mongolians. In the same vein, Jean Struys (1650) asserts that tailed men are to be found on the southern side of Formosa, and a similar statement is made by later writers about an allegedly cannibal race called the Nuam-ni'aros who lived between the Gulf of Benin and Ethiopia. Jews during the Middle Ages were also commonly accused of cannibalism.

Some monsters are not objects of actual belief but are deliberately invented to scare unruly children. The outstanding monster of this type is the Greek figure Mormo ("bogey"), also called Mormolukeion ("bogeywolf"), who survived in British nurseries as late as the nineteenth century. Similar creatures are the beldam Bebau in central France and the windigo of the Ojibwa Indians of North America.

The conquest of a draconic monster who ravages a country or holds a princess or other fair maiden captive is a standard motif in heroic legend. One is the Chimera, a fire-breathing monster, part lion, part dragon, and part goat, who ravaged Lycia and the neighboring lands but was slain by the hero Bellerophon mounted on the winged horse Pegasus. Typhon, a hundred-headed, fiery being, challenged the sovereignty of Zeus but was destroyed by a thunderbolt and buried under Mount Etna. The Minotaur, half bull and half man, was kept in a labyrinth by King Minos of Crete to devour the youths and maidens demanded of Athens as periodic tribute. He was eventually defeated by the hero Theseus with the aid of the princess Ariadne. (The exaction of periodic tribute by water spirits as the price of averting inundation is a not uncommon theme in world folklore.) The Hydra was a hundred-headed monster of the Peloponnese who was slain by Herakles as one of his twelve labors. Whenever one head was severed two grew in its place, but the hero eventually scorched the growth with a firebrand. Geryon was a monster with three heads or three bodies whose herds near Gades (Cadiz) Herakles carried off as his tenth labor, slaying their guardians, the giant Eurytion and the two-headed hound Orthros, as well as the Geryon itself. Fenrisúlfr (Fenriswolf) was the monstrous offspring of Loki in Norse mythology. The gods eventually bound him with a fetter made by dwarfs from the sound of a cat's footfall, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird, and then imprisoned him in the depths of the earth. He will break forth, however, at the final twilight of the gods (Ragnaro̜k) and slay Óðinn (Odin), only to be himself slain by Óðinn's son Víðarr. Battles against monstrous dragons are familiar also from the legends of Perseus, Beowulf, Saint George, and many other heroes.

From time to time—especially in the present century—reports have circulated of gigantic prehistoric monsters sighted in various parts of the world. These are commonly termed "monsters," but that designation is misleading, for a monster is essentially abnormal, whereas these creatures are supposedly surviving specimens of mammoths, mastodons, and the like. To this class belongs especially the celebrated Loch Ness monster of Scotland, said to have been seen sporadically throughout the ages, but a subject of public interest only since 1933. It is reputed to have been seen since then by no fewer than four thousand witnesses, and several scientific expeditions have attempted to photograph and identify it. A group of sonar and photographic images obtained in 1973 by the Academy of Applied Science has, for some, lent credence to its existence. It is usually described as being dark gray or brownish black in color, about fifteen to twenty feet long, with a thin neck, small head, long tail, four paddles or fins, and several humps. Another such alleged prehistoric monster is the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, said to have been sighted or to have left gigantic footprints in remote areas of the Himalayas. He is described as resembling an ape, standing nearly six feet tall, shaggy in appearance, with huge teeth in a large mouth, and a head tapering to a point. However, native Sherpas declare that he is far smaller and has red or black tufts of hair and the face of a monkey. He has no tail and apparently walks on two legs.

Cousin to the Yeti is Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, a hypothetical species of primates said, since 1840, to have been sighted in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. This creature is reported to be between seven and nine feet in height and to weigh from six hundred to nine hundred pounds. He is not ferocious. He looks like a furry ape, walks upright, and leaves footprints sixteen inches long and six inches wide. Sasquatch plays a role in the folklore of the Northwest Coast Indians and in turn has a cousin in the Mono Grande of the Andes. It has been suggested that the Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, and Mono Grande may be surviving specimens of a prehistoric ape-man known as Gigantopithecus, fossils of which have been discovered in China and other parts of Asia.

Monsters and ogres survive also in popular lore in such figures as Frankenstein's monster, King Kong, and the like—staples of horror movies, television, and comic strips. An interesting development in this respect is the circulation of stories about visitors from outer space allegedly seen emerging from flying saucers. Significantly, many of these stories come from rapporteurs of Irish descent, and the creatures are described as having a form closely resembling that of the leprechauns of Irish folklore.

Finally, it may be observed that monsters also appear as figures of political propaganda. An outstanding instance is the protrayal of the Japanese in World War II as "monkeys"—a tendentious revival of the old practice (mentioned above) of so characterizing remote, unfamiliar peoples. Similarly, barbaric historical personages are commonly designated "monsters," for example, Attila and, in our own day, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengele. In such characterizations, the essential nature of a monster is effectively expressed; huge, savage, and hostile, he is the direct opposite of the diminutive dwarf, elf, or gremlin, who, albeit mischievous, is essentially benevolent.

See Also

Dragons; Therianthropism.

Bibliography

For general works on the theme of monsters, see Charles Gould's Mythical Monsters (London, 1886) and C. J. S. Thompson's The Mystery and Lore of Monsters (London, 1930). On the cosmogonic dragon, see my Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East, 2d ed. (1961; New York, 1977), pp. 137–153. Animal monsters are the subject of Peter Lum's Fabulous Beasts (London, 1952) and T. H. White's The Book of Beasts (London, 1956); more particularly, see, on the unicorn, Odell Shepard's The Lore of the Unicorn (New York, 1930) and, on centaurs, John Cuthbert Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910; New York, 1964), pp. 190–225. On the child-stealing beldam, see my The Holy and the Profane (New York, 1980); on bogeys, see Elizabeth M. Wright's Rustic Speech and Folklore (Oxford, 1913). Sabine Baring-Gould discusses tailed men in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1866; New York, 1884), pp. 86–89, and Richard Andree treats albinos in Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (Leipzig, 1881), pp. 278–280. John Napier discusses Sasquatch in Bigfoot (London, 1972) and the Yeti in The Abominable Snowman (New York, 1973).

New Sources

Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. New York, 1998.

Davidson, Hilda Ellis, and Anna Chaudhri, eds. Supernatural Enemies. Durham, N.C., 2001.

Friedman, John Block. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Medieval Studies. Syracuse, N.Y., 2000.

Gilmore, David D. Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. Philadelphia, 2003.

Jones, Timothy S., and David A. Sprunger, eds. Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations. Kalamazoo, Mich, 2002.

Platt, Peter G., ed. Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture. Newark and London, 1999.

Theodor H. Gaster (1987)

Revised Bibliography