Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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The People of the Waters

In 1653, Swedish witch Karin Persdotter confessed to having learned her magic from a male water spirit, called variously the "man of the stream" (strömkarlen), "the river" (älven), and the "nix" (näcken) (Hall 32).

 

Readers of the Brothers Grimm will recognize this latter term: the nix (masculine) and nixie (feminine) (German nix and nixe) have haunted the rivers, lakes, and ponds of folk tales for (apparently) several millennia at least. They are, in effect, fresh water merfolk.

 

The Hwicce, the Anglo-Saxon tribe ancestral (some say) to today's witches knew a similar species. Their nicor survived in English folklore as the nicker or knucker. The youthful Beowulf was said to have wrestled with several while swimming.

 

In fact, all these names descend from the same ancestor: proto-Germanic *nikwiz, *nikwuz (Watkins 59). To judge by surviving folklore, all the Indo-European-speaking peoples knew of the People of the Waters. But of course, other peoples know them too; everyone knows them. Here in Minnesota, the Anishinabe (Ojibway) call them nebaunaubaequaewuk.

 

It's not quite swimming season yet here in the Land of Lakes, but it soon will be. (On Midsummer's Eve, they say, the Sun and the Moon come down to bathe in the waters; this marks the official beginning of skinny-dipping season here in the North.)

 

And the People of the Waters will once again be singing their siren call.

 

Heed it if you will, but be wise.

 

Though they have magic to teach, the stories all agree that their beauty is a dangerous beauty.

 

Hall, Mikael, “'It is Better to Believe in the Devil': Conceptions of Satanists and Sympathies for the Devil in Early Modern Sweden,” in The Devil's Party, ed. Per Faxheld and Jesper Aa Petersen (2013). Oxford.

Watkins, Calvert, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 3rd Edition (2011). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

 

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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