Forest Spirits
The leshy, the yeti, the sasquatch, the green man — the dwellers of the woods, the high peaks, and the edge of the human world.
In this section
Leshy: The Slavic Forest Spirit
The shape-shifting lord of the Russian forest, the mossy-bearded, hoofed master of animals who leads travellers astray and is the brother of the household Domovoi.
Yeti Legends
The abominable snowman of the Himalayas — the Sherpa mountain spirit, the bear of the high snows, the high-altitude cousin of Bigfoot, the modern cryptid, and the 2013 DNA study.
The forest spirit is the dweller of the wood, the mountain, the desert, and the snowfield. It is the figure of the in-between, the threshold between the cleared land and the uncleared, the village and the wilderness, the human and the older than human. It is the Leshy of the Slavic forests, the Yeti of the Himalayas, the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, the Yowie of the Australian bush, the Almas of the Caucasus, the Mapinguari of the Amazon, the Wild Man of medieval Europe, and the green man of the cathedrals.
The following pages collect two of the most distinctive of the forest spirits in the world folk tradition: the Leshy, the shape-shifting lord of the Russian forest; and the Yeti, the high-altitude dweller of the Himalayan snows. The forest spirits are a family within the larger bestiary of mythical creatures.
The shape of the in-between
The forest spirit is one of the great recurring types of the human imagination, and the type recurs in nearly every inhabited landscape on earth. The Slavic Leshy, the German Wild Mann, the Scandinavian Huldra, the French Homme Sauvage, the English Woodwose, the Italian Uomo Selvatico, the Greek Silenus, the Roman Faunus, the Iberian Hombre del Bosque, the Indian Vanara, the Chinese Shan-Xiao, the Japanese Yamabito, the Aboriginal Mimi, the Maori Tane, the Hawaiian Menahune, the Inuit Inua, the Amazonian Curupira, the West African Iwin — all are members of the same wide family, and all are described as the dwellers of the wood, the mountain, the snowfield, the desert, the marsh, or the boundary. The forest spirit is the inhabitant of the place the village has not yet cleared, and the village has not yet cleared most of the world.
The shape of a forest spirit
A forest spirit is a creature whose natural element is the wood, the mountain, or the snowfield, and whose body is in some way overgrown, hairy, non-human, or unhuman. The Leshy is a tall man with hooves, a mossy beard, and the ability to change his size. The Yeti is a tall, white, muscular, ape-like figure. The Sasquatch is a tall, black or dark-brown, muscular, ape-like figure. The Wild Man of medieval Europe is a hairy, naked, mute man, sometimes with a tail, often with a club, often with a chain. The green man of the cathedrals is a face disgorging leaves, the wood itself wearing a face.
The forest spirit is a creature of the boundary. It is in the forest, which the village has not cleared; in the mountain, which the village has not climbed; in the snowfield, which the village has not crossed. The forest spirit is also a creature of the world before: it is older than the village, older than the plough, older than the church. The forest spirit is therefore the figure of the older world that the village has not entirely replaced.
The Wild Man of medieval Europe
The Wild Man of medieval Europe is one of the oldest and most consistent of the forest spirits. The Roman Faunus, the Greek Silvanus, the homo sylvestris of the late Latin bestiaries, the woodwose of the English heraldry, the homo salvatico of the Italian bestiaries, and the sauvage of the French romances are all members of the family. The Wild Man is hairy, naked, mute, and lives in the deep wood. He is sometimes hostile — he kidnaps women, he devours children, he tears limbs — and sometimes benign: he protects the forest, he guides the lost, he teaches the herbalist.
The Wild Man is closely related to the medieval cult of the green man, the leaf-wreathed face of the churches. The green man appears in the cathedrals of York, of Wells, of Lincoln, of Roslin, of Kilpeck, and of Fougères, and his image — a face from which leaves and vines emerge — is a folk-image of the older world, persisted into Christian ornament. The image is older than the church: the leaf-wreathed face appears in the foliate heads of the Hellenistic world, in the folium of the Romanesque art, in the maskaron of the early medieval, and in the eighteenth-century forest-prefect of the court of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.
The Slavic Leshy
The Leshy of the Russian and broader Slavic tradition is the lord of the forest. He is a tall man, sometimes the size of a tree, with hooves, a mossy beard, the ability to change his size and his shape, and the habit of leading travellers astray. He is the master of the animals, the keeper of the boundary between the cleared land and the uncleared. He is also the brother of the household spirit, the Domovoi, and the two together cover the whole of the Russian rural cosmos: the inside and the outside, the house and the wood, the kitchen and the deep forest.
The Leshy is closely related to the German Wild Mann, the Scandinavian Skogsfru (the forest wife) and Huldra, the Finnish Metsänväki (the forest folk), the Estonian Metsik, the Latvian Meža māte (the forest mother), and the Baltic Medeine (the forest goddess). The Leshy tradition is the largest single cluster of forest-spirit traditions in the Slavic-speaking world, and the figure is alive in the modern Russian horror film and the Slavic folk revival.
The Himalayan Yeti
The Yeti of the Himalayas is the high-altitude dweller, the snowman of the snows. He is known in the Lepcha tradition, the Sherpa tradition, the Tibetan tradition, and the Bhutanese tradition. The Lepcha call him Chu-mung-awai-lho-thing (“that which lives in the deep snow”). The Sherpa call him Yeti or Yeh-teh (“little man of the snow”). The Tibetan call him Michö (“man-bear”). The Bhutanese call him Migoi (“wild man”). He is, in all of these traditions, a powerful spirit, an inhabitant of the high snows, and a bringer of danger to the climber.
The Yeti is closely related to the Almas of the Caucasus, the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, the Yowie of the Australian bush, the Yeren of China, the Skunk Ape of Florida, and the Mapinguari of the Amazon. The figure is the same figure, in different mountains and forests, in different ages of the world.
The Sasquatch, the Yowie, the Almas
The Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest is the great ape of the American forest, the cousin of the Yeti. The name Sasquatch is an anglicisation of Sasq’ets, the Halkomelem word of the Coast Salish, meaning “wild man” or “hairy man.” The Sasquatch is described in the oral traditions of the Halkomelem, the Squamish, the Lushootseed, the Sechelt, the Stó:lō, and the Nlaka’pamux, and the descriptions are detailed: a tall (often 6–10 feet), muscular, bipedal, ape-like being, dark brown or black, with a strong smell, with footprints of 14–20 inches. The Sasquatch is the subject of the famous Patterson–Gimlin film of 1967, of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, of the modern popular culture, and of the Sasquatch chapter of the Dungeons & Dragons bestiary.
The Yowie of the Australian bush, the Almas of the Caucasus, the Yeren of the Chinese mountains, the Skunk Ape of the Florida Everglades, the Mapinguari of the Amazon, and the Agogwe of East Africa are all members of the same world-wide cluster of forest-spirit traditions. They are all described as large, hairy, bipedal, and shy. The cultural logic is the same: a world-untouched that the village has not yet entirely replaced.
The forest spirit as keeper of the boundary
The forest spirit is finally the keeper of the boundary. The forest spirit marks the line between the cleared land and the uncleared, the village and the wilderness, the human and the older than human. The forest spirit is the figure of the older world. The forest spirit is the figure that the village recognises as the master of the wood, and the figure that the wood recognises as the master of the village.
The forest spirit is also, often, the figure of the moral imagination. The Wild Man of medieval Europe is the natural man in the wild, the figure that the medieval moralist held up against the corrupt courtier. The green man of the church is the figure of the older world persisted in the Christian. The Sasquatch of the modern American is the figure of the continent before the settler, the figure of the older world persisted in the settler.
The forest spirit is one of the most durable of all the world’s mythical creatures, and one of the most emotionally powerful. The forest spirit is a figure we have not yet stopped seeing.