Animals in Folklore

Animals have been the first language of human storytelling. Before the gods had names, the animals had stories. The wolf ran on the edge of the camp; the raven sat in the tree above it; the bear rose from the cave. From those early encounters, an entire body of folklore grew, in which the animals were at once real beasts, family totems, omens, teachers, and gods. The pages gathered here trace that long relationship, from the wolf that walked the border of the farm to the raven that carried the news of the world.

The Wolf at the Edge of the Camp

The wolf is one of the oldest and most constant figures in European folklore. It was the edge of the human world: the predator that took the straying sheep, the beast that walked the forest at night, the shape that the werewolf wore. The Norse Fenrir would one day devour Odin; the Roman Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf; the Irish Ossian was led through the wild by a wolf; the Slavic vlkodlak was a man who walked the night in wolf’s shape. The wolf was a teacher, a threat, a god, and a way of picturing the wild itself.

The wolf was not only feared. The American Indian peoples who lived alongside the wolf honoured it, and the Cherokee in particular have a long tradition of the wolf as the elder brother. The Japanese Ōkami, the great wolf-god, was a protector of the villages, and the shrine of Mitsumine is still visited by people who pray for the wolf’s protection. The wolf, in this older view, is the friend of the human, a being that has walked alongside us for many tens of thousands of years.

The Raven Above the Camp

The raven is one of the great messengers of world mythology. The Norse Huginn and Muninn flew from Odin’s shoulders every morning and returned at evening to whisper the news of the world. The Welsh Bendigeidfran, the great Branwen, was a giant whose name meant “white raven” and whose head was buried beneath the Tower of London as a protection. The Pacific Northwest Raven is the great trickster of the Tlingit and Haida, who brought the sun out of the box and made the world. The Hebrew ravens fed Elijah by the brook Cherith. The ravens of the Tower of London are still cared for, because the kingdom of England is said to fall if they leave.

The raven is a creature of the in-between. It eats the dead, and it brings the messages of the gods. It is a bird of prophecy in the Roman tradition, and a bird of judgement in the biblical. Edgar Allan Poe made it the bird of lost love, and the modern fantasy tradition has made it the bird of the king, from the ravens of the Iron Throne in Game of Thrones to the great rooks of the Old Forest in The Lord of the Rings. The raven, in every form, carries the weight of the message.

The Bear, the Fox, the Serpent

The bear is the great figure of the north. The Ainu of Hokkaido honoured the brown bear as a god, and the great bear festival of the Ainu is one of the most important of the surviving bear cults. The Sami of Scandinavia had a similar relation with the bear, and the Sami word for bear, guovža, was taboo — a euphemism was used instead. The bear, in the older view, was the lord of the forest, the being who stood upright like a man, and the figure to whom the hunters said a prayer before the hunt.

The fox is the great trickster of the north, and the figure of Reynard the Fox is one of the great cycles of European medieval literature. The fox is the small, clever, often cruel figure who tricks the wolf, the bear, the lion, the king, and the priest. The fox is also the messenger, the lover, the shape-shifter, and the figure who speaks in riddles. The Japanese kitsune is a similar figure, with the power to take human shape and to be a bride, a husband, a friend, or a curse.

The serpent is one of the most ancient of animal figures. The serpent of the Garden of Eden, the serpent of Moses’ staff, the serpent of the Greek oracles, the serpent of the Maya, the Naga of India, the rainbow serpent of Australia — all are versions of the same figure: the being that knows, the being that guards, the being that can be either friend or enemy. The serpent was, in many traditions, the first being to teach the human about wisdom, and it is also the figure of the fall. The double image is one of the deepest in world folklore.

The Bee, the Ant, the Spider

The small creatures have their own folklore. The bee was, in many traditions, the bringer of honey, the figure of the soul, and the messenger of the gods. The Greek priests of the Eleusinian mysteries were called the Melissai, the bees, and the priestess of Demeter was said to be a bee herself. The Egyptian bee was the king’s mother, and the bee hieroglyph stood for the king of Lower Egypt. The bee, in all these traditions, is the small bright figure of the social order, the being that works for the whole, the figure of the city.

The ant is the figure of industry. Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper is the most familiar of the ant stories, and the ant is held up, in much of European folk tradition, as a model of hard work and prudence. The Australian Aboriginal tradition has a different image, in which the ant is the figure of the blind will, the worker who has no wisdom. The same creature, in different cultures, can be a teacher or a warning.

The spider is the great weaver. Anansi of West Africa is the spider who brought all the stories into the world, and the Anansi tradition is one of the great storytelling traditions of the world. The Greek Arachne was the great weaver who challenged Athena. The Cherokee grandmother spider, the Kananesv of the Eastern Cherokee stories, brought the sun into the world for the people of the cold country. The spider is the figure of the story itself: the small creature that sits in the centre of the web and knows every thread.

The Salmon, the Whale, the Eagle, the Owl

The salmon of knowledge swam in the river Boyne, and the first person to taste its flesh would have the wisdom of the world. Finn mac Cumhaill, the great Irish hero, tasted the salmon and gained the wisdom of the thumb. The Welsh and Scottish traditions have similar stories, and the salmon is one of the great figures of the Celtic world. The salmon is also the figure of the return, the fish that swims back from the sea to the source of the river.

The whale, in the maritime traditions, was the great beast of the deep, the figure of the unknown. The Norse fishermen, who hunted the great right whale in the North Atlantic, told stories of the whale that sank the ship. The Pacific Northwest Native traditions have the killer whale, the orca, as a great figure, and the figure of the whale is at the centre of the Haida and Tlingit mythologies. The whale is the figure of the world below, the body that is also a continent, the being that carries the people on its back.

The eagle is the figure of the sky. The American eagle is the national bird of the United States, and the golden eagle of the Old World is the bird of the mountains. The Roman legions bore the eagle as their standard, and the eagle of Jupiter was carried from the Capitol to the farthest reaches of the empire. The eagle, in nearly every tradition, is the figure of the highest, the bird that looks directly into the sun. The owl, by contrast, is the bird of the night, the figure of wisdom and of death. The owl of Athena was the symbol of the city of Athens, and the owl of the American Indian traditions is the bird of the medicine woman.

The Hare, the Stag, the Horse, the Pig, the Cat

The hare is the figure of the spring, the animal that never sleeps, the messenger of the goddess. The English Easter bunny is a folkloric descendant of the older hare of the spring festivals. The Irish tradition has the hare as a witch’s shape, and to meet a hare in the field is to meet a woman who is no longer a woman. The Chinese hare of the moon is the companion of Chang’e, the moon goddess, and the hare of the Buddhist tradition is the figure of the self-sacrifice, who gave his body to feed the hungry.

The stag is the great figure of the forest, the king of the deer. The stag of the Celtic world was the figure of Cernunnos, the horned god, and the stag of the medieval hunt was the figure of the king. The white hart of the English tradition was the figure of the holy grail, and the stag of the Russian folk tale is the figure of the helper who appears in time of need. The horse, in many traditions, is the figure of the war, the messenger, the helper of the hero. The Norse Sleipnir was the eight-legged horse of Odin, the fastest of all steeds. The Welsh Rhiannon rode a white horse, and the fairy host of the Welsh tradition was a procession of white horses. The three horses of the Sun and the Moon of the Japanese tradition pulled the chariots of the sky.

The pig is the figure of the harvest, the boar’s head is the great Christmas dish of the English tradition, and the pig is the figure of the farmer’s wealth. The cat is the figure of the home, the mouser, the witch’s familiar, the silent observer. The cat of the Egyptian tradition was sacred to Bastet, and the killing of a cat was a serious crime. The cat, in many folk traditions, walks alone, and the figure of the solitary cat has its own quiet power.

Animals as Clan Totems and Creation Helpers

In many parts of the world, animals were the ancestors of the people, and the clan was named after the animal. The Native American clans of the Northeast — the Wolf, the Bear, the Turtle, the Deer, the Hawk — were totemic, and the figure of the animal was the figure of the clan’s identity. The same pattern can be seen in the Scottish clan system, in the African clan system, in the Siberian clans, and in the Australian Aboriginal skin groups. The animal ancestor was the figure of the people, and the people were bound to the animal by a set of reciprocal obligations: the animal gave its name, the people protected the animal.

Animals were also the helpers of creation. The Navajo emergence story tells of a long climb through the worlds, with the help of animals at each stage: the badger, the locust, the wind, the spider, the hawk. The animals showed the people how to find the way, how to build the hogan, how to plant the corn. The same pattern can be seen in the West African and the Australian Aboriginal traditions, in which the animals were the first teachers and the first owners of the land.

The Migration of Animal Motifs

Animal motifs migrate across cultures with extraordinary ease. The dragon-slayer story appears in nearly every continent: Perseus in Greece, Sigurd in Scandinavia, Beowulf in England, St. George in the Christian tradition, Indra in the Vedic tradition, the hero twins of the Maya, the boy who slew the dragon of the Chinese lakes. The wolf-warrior story appears in nearly every culture that has a wolf: the Norse berserker, the Roman Mars, the Japanese Ōkami, the American Indian wolf-warrior. The raven-messenger story appears in nearly every continent: the Norse Huginn and Muninn, the Welsh Branwen, the Hebrew raven, the Australian Raven, the Pacific Northwest Raven.

The migration is a reminder that folklore is not a collection of separate stories, but a vast network of motifs that move with the people and with the trade in ideas. The same story, told in different landscapes, takes on the colours of the landscape, but the bones of the story remain the same. The trickster tales of the world — Coyote of the Native American Southwest, Anansi of West Africa, Loki of the Norse, the fox of the European medieval stories — are all cousins under the skin.

See Also

• Wolf Symbolism — The edge of the camp, the shape of the werewolf
• Raven in Mythology — The messenger of the gods
• Nature & Landscape — The wider world of nature folklore
• European Folklore — The wider context of the wolf and the raven
• Norse Folklore — The world of Fenrir, Huginn, and Muninn
• Celtic Folklore — The world of Branwen, Cernunnos, and the selkies
• Slavic Folklore — The world of the rusalki and Baba Yaga
• Native American Folklore — The Coyote, the Raven, and the world of the trickster