VERY INTERESTING, BUT... GODDESS? In most modern versions of the story, Melusine is a fairy. So why would I (and Maggi Sanger) write about her as a goddess? By working our way backward, chronologically. In the more modern versions of Melusine's story there are Christian overtonessince pagans don't believe in Satan (the enemy of the Christian god), then the Angevin idea of Melusine as Satan's daughter clearly was created since France was Christianized. It is likely the detail about the "deformed" children in the Lusignan version of the legend also owes its genesis to a more modern world in which anything magic is clearly suspect. In earlier versions of the story, Melusine's children may not have been ugly at all. Would the Counts of Lusignan have claimed such a matriarch if, during their own time, legend implied they came from deformed stock? So we move backward to a pagan France, to a world that believed in magic without automatically condemning it, and to the word "fairy." In many contexts, fairy simply means "magic woman," as in Morgan le Fey you'll notice that in fairy tales, the good magic users are called fairies and the evil magic users are called witches. But both words mean "powerfully magic woman," and if you go far enough back in time, the stories told about powerfully magic women were being told about goddesses. "Morgan" le Fey may herself be a derivative of the powerful Irish goddess, the Morrigan. Several other ingredients in Melusine's story identify her as divine. The most significant of these is the idea of her turning into a part snake. Snakes are an ancient goddess symbol. One of the more famous goddess statues found in Crete is the Minoan Snake Goddess, which shows a bare-breasted woman with a snake in each hand. The Aztec goddess Coatlicue is depicted wearing a skirt of snakes. Notice that in the Garden of Eden story, it's Eve whom the serpent approaches. More about this can be found in the book Goddess in the Grass: Serpentine Mythology and the Great Goddess by Linda Foubister. Other ingredients include the fact that she is usually found bathing in a spring (like Boticelli's Aphrodite and so many other water goddesses) and the setting of a taboo. Taboos used to be very old goddess. Once it was no longer safe to believe in and talk about goddesses, people demoted them to "fairy" status rather than lose their stories completely. Other sources by which to research Melusine: Alban, Gillian M.E. Melusine the Serpent Goddess in A.S. Byatt's Possession and in Mythology, 2003. Maddox, Donald and Sara Sturn-Maddox, editors. Melusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France. 1996. |
AKA Goddess Book 1 of The GrailKeepers |
Melusine Maggi Sanger's family goddess, on her paternal grandmother's side, is named MELUSINE. Yes, she IS real--at least, there is a real legend about her, as surely as there are legends about Isis, Freya, Diana, and many other goddesses. Here is her story. |
MY BACKGROUND WITH MELUSINE: I first came across the Melusine legend back in the early 1980's, when I was researching my first romance novel, which was set in medieval France and England. So far, Knight's Enchantress (said novel) still hasn't sold. But my fascination with Melusine has lasted ever since. Here's how I used it in the novel: Centuries ago, when pagan rites were still practiced in hidden corners of France, two different noblemen courted scandal by taking unknown brides. Both women were extraordinarily beautiful--both magical. And when their lovers discovered their strange identities, both women turned into malformed creatures which flew away, shrieking, leaving behind children to continue their ungodly bloodlines. In one legend, the enchantress was the daughter of Satan. In the other, she was a faerie. Isabelle had loved a descendent of each.... Clearly, when I decided to start the GrailKeeper series, I had incentive for going back to one of my earliest goddesses. |
THE MAIN LEGEND (of LUSIGNAN): Once upon a time there was a beautiful fairy named Melusine. Because her father (a king of Scotland) had broken his word to her fairy mother, the mother, Melusine, and Melusine's two sisters were forced to leave the kingdom forever. Apparently it was a fairy thing. When Melusine learned this story, she and her sisters locked their father up in a mountain. Her mother was so furious upon learning this that she cursed the girls. Melusine's curse was that once a week, she would transform into a monster. She would grow a snake tail, and in many versions, bat wings. The only way to ease the agony of this transformation was to spend the entire day in a bathtub, keeping wet. Worse, if ever she married, and if ever her husband saw her in her monster form, she would be cursed to remain that way forever. Of course she did marry. One day a French nobleman (in most accounts, Raymond of Poitou or of Lusignan, which is in Poitou), came across her bathing in a spring. He fell immediately in love with her, and begged her to marry him. She told him she would, on one condition: He must leave her alone in her tower every Saturday night, and never, never spy on her. Raymond was so enchanted by this beautiful woman that he willingly agreed. She turned out to be a wonderful wife, too. Being magic, she could build an entire castle in a single nightas she is said to have done in Lusignan, and in Vouvant, and in Parthenai. Raymond grew rich and powerful, and they had ten sons. (In some versions of the story, each of the children was in some way deformedmore on that at the end). But as will usually happen in stories like this, things turned bad. One of Raymond's jealous knights urged him to distrust Melusine's weekly secrecy, suggesting that she was having an affair. At his prodding, Raymond snuck into his wife's chambers as she bathed, transformed. When he saw the creature she became, he made a sound of horror, giving himself away. With an unearthly scream, Melusine flew out the tower window, cursed to remain in her monstrous form forever more. But this isn't the end of the story. Legend has it that ever after that moment, whenever a Lord of Lusignanher husband or son or grandson, on downwas going to die, Melusine would fly in circles around the tower, wailing her unearthly scream in warning, grief, or both. Supposedly the banshee-like cries of Melusine only stopped after the castle of Lusignan was torn down. Some people (me included) think the name Melusine may be a bastardization of "Mere Lusignan," or Mother of the Lusignans. There is a famous medieval painting from the Duc de Berry's Book of Hours (Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry), from the entry for March, which shows the Chateau Lusignan in the background. If you look closely, you can see what looks like a dragon flying over the tower on the right. That, apparently, was supposed to be Melusine. |
OTHER VERSIONS OF THE LEGEND: A common difficulty in researching medieval legends is seeing past the results of syncretism - when two or more different religious beliefs or tales fuse into one. It happened all the time. For example, scholars think the Irish warrior CuChulainn and the Arthurian knight Gawain might be different versions of the same figure because of several similarities in their legends. The tale of Melusine is remarkably similar to that of her mother Pressine, who is also a fairy and is exiled from Scotland because her husband (who apparently came upon her bathing in a spring!) broke a taboo he'd agreed upon when they married. So are they even two separate stories, or two versions of the same? Melusine herself has more than one accepted legend. The second most famous to her Lusignan persona is her Angevin story. It starts the sameMelusine is bathing in the spring, and along comes a nobleman, but this time he's a Count of Anjou. And for a more Christian-morality-tale twist, she's no mere fairy. This time, Melusine is the daughter of Satan. (Cue scary music). This time, they only have four childrenand the count begins to notice something strange about his wife. Even when she attends mass, she never stays through to the end. She's always gone before the breaking of the Eucharist! Suspicious, one morning at church he steps on her cloak so that she can't leave. When the priest holds up the Eucharist, she is thus forced to look upon the body of Christ, at which point her true identity emergesyou guessed it! A serpent's tail and bat wings. She flies away, taking two of her children with her but leaving two of them behind. The counts of Anjou, therefore, are said to have descended from Satan. And the Plantagenet family of England descended from the Counts of Anjou. Other noble families have claimed descent from Melusine, including the royal family of Luxembourg. In that version, it's Count Siegfried who marries the beautiful fairy woman, and she takes off only one night a monthWednesday nights. When she is discovered, she leaps out the window into the river. |
VERY INTERESTING, BUT... GODDESS? In most modern versions of the story, Melusine is a fairy. So why would I (and Maggi Sanger) write about her as a goddess? By working our way backward, chronologically. In the more modern versions of Melusine's story there are Christian overtonessince pagans don't believe in Satan (the enemy of the Christian god), then the Angevin idea of Melusine as Satan's daughter clearly was created since France was Christianized. It is likely the detail about the "deformed" children in the Lusignan version of the legend also owes its genesis to a more modern world in which anything magic is clearly suspect. In earlier versions of the story, Melusine's children may not have been ugly at all. Would the Counts of Lusignan have claimed such a matriarch if, during their own time, legend implied they came from deformed stock? So we move backward to a pagan France, to a world that believed in magic without automatically condemning it, and to the word "fairy." In many contexts, fairy simply means "magic woman," as in Morgan le Fey you'll notice that in fairy tales, the good magic users are called fairies and the evil magic users are called witches. But both words mean "powerfully magic woman," and if you go far enough back in time, the stories told about powerfully magic women were being told about goddesses. "Morgan" le Fey may herself be a derivative of the powerful Irish goddess, the Morrigan. Several other ingredients in Melusine's story identify her as divine. The most significant of these is the idea of her turning into a part snake. Snakes are an ancient goddess symbol. One of the more famous goddess statues found in Crete is the Minoan Snake Goddess, which shows a bare-breasted woman with a snake in each hand. The Aztec goddess Coatlicue is depicted wearing a skirt of snakes. Notice that in the Garden of Eden story, it's Eve whom the serpent approaches. More about this can be found in the book Goddess in the Grass: Serpentine Mythology and the Great Goddess by Linda Foubister. Other ingredients include the fact that she is usually found bathing in a spring (like Boticelli's Aphrodite and so many other water goddesses) and the setting of a taboo. Taboos used to be very old goddess. Once it was no longer safe to believe in and talk about goddesses, people demoted them to "fairy" status rather than lose their stories completely. Other sources by which to research Melusine: Alban, Gillian M.E. Melusine the Serpent Goddess in A.S. Byatt's Possession and in Mythology, 2003. Maddox, Donald and Sara Sturn-Maddox, editors. Melusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France. 1996. |
Gifts of the Goddess: So how do Melusine's powers help Maggi? I don't want to give away too much of the plot! But Melusine's story is one of betrayal by a loved man, and a woman's strength to continue beyond that betrayal, to even still fear for the man who betrayed her. It's about coming to terms with one's own power (her winged snake self). And then there's that warning scream.... |
