Well, there’s a
surprise – a Southern New England Horned Serpent has a Harry Potter connection. It turns out that,
in the Harry Potter World, there was an American wizarding school, Ilvermorny:
“The great North American school of magic was
founded in the seventeenth century. It stands at the highest peak of Mount
Greylock, where it is concealed from non-magic gaze by a variety of powerful
enchantments, which sometimes manifest in a wreath of misty cloud,” writes J.K.
Rowling in “Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” on the Pottermore
blog.
The Horned Serpent
“William began to introduce Isolt to the magical creatures
with which he was familiar. They took trips together to observe the frog-headed
Hodags hunting, they fought a dragonish Snallygaster and watched newborn Wampus
kittens playing in the dawn.
Most fascinating of all to Isolt, was the great horned river
serpent with a jewel set into its forehead, which lived in a nearby creek. Even
her Pukwudgie guide was terrified of this beast, but to his astonishment, the
Horned Serpent seemed to like Isolt. Even more alarming to William was the fact
that she claimed to understand what the Horned Serpent was saying to her.
Isolt learned not to talk to William about her strange sense
of kinship with the serpent, nor of the fact that it seemed to tell her things.
She took to visiting the creek alone and never told the Pukwudgie where she had
been. The serpent’s message never varied: ‘Until I am part of your family, your
family is doomed.’
Isolt had no family, unless you counted Gormlaith back in
Ireland. She could not understand the Horned Serpent’s cryptic words, or even
decide whether she was imagining the voice in which he seemed to speak to her.”
There's more about some other characters based on Indigenous Legends from this corner of Turtle Island and I'll maybe get to that but for now I wonder, "Are there any "stone walls" on Mt. Greylock? Do they in any way resemble very large snakes made of stone, contain other effigies or connect certain places - all that stuff I wonder about whenever I make observations of any "stone wall?"
There's more about some other characters based on Indigenous Legends from this corner of Turtle Island and I'll maybe get to that but for now I wonder, "Are there any "stone walls" on Mt. Greylock? Do they in any way resemble very large snakes made of stone, contain other effigies or connect certain places - all that stuff I wonder about whenever I make observations of any "stone wall?"
How Western Massachusetts' Mount Greylock Became Inspiration
For Literary Legends
ReplyDelete“The Pukwudgie is also native to America: a short, grey-faced, large-eared creature distantly related to the European goblin. Fiercely independent, tricky and not over-fond of humankind (whether magical or mundane), it possesses its own powerful magic. Pukwudgies hunt with deadly, poisonous arrows and enjoy playing tricks on humans...Faithful to the taboos of his people, the Pukwudgie refused to tell her his individual name, so she dubbed him ‘William’ after her father.”