Barreldriver
06-11-2012, 12:04 AM
Creating this thread so we can share some troll folk tales from our respective cultures.
Where I grew up in the Northern parts of the Mountain District of Middle Tennessee we had some overlap in folklore with some peoples of Kentucky and West Virginia as well as our eastern neighbors in East Tennessee. Among the tales that I can remember (most forgotten with time) was troll tales.
From my understanding our troll tales differ a bit from those of Scandinavia in that the trolls don't always start out as such/ain't always a distinct species of mythical creature if that's the right wording.
There's legends of troll masks where wandering lost fools (like in the Jack Tales) get drawn in by suspicious characters, usually a miser or witch, who force fits a troll mask onto the victim thus transforming them into a troll, from then on they must prowl through the night, never to be seen in daylight, acting as the fetchers, eyes and ears of their masters.
Then we've got our trolls that start out as such, they usually live deep in the woods and are often associated with the Injuns we drove away, there was a small outfit of mountain where I grew up where one could supposedly look long enough up the top and see a Nettle Carrier troll (named after the now long gone Nettle Carrier Indians) who would snatch your young in the night to make a stew for its witch master.
The physical descriptions of our trolls are rather mild, they aren't giants but slightly larger than normal humans, have plenty of warts, green/grey skin, "Satanic eyes", snaggleteeth, fatty tumors, and joint deformations. The first thing that comes to my mind is an arthritic Incredible Hulk. :p
To avoid trolls one doesn't cross certain streams/creeks past sunset (marking a superstitious territory boundary between the uninhabited evil regions and the inhabited/good regions). To drive them off the ole jest is that harmonica music drives trolls away.
Where I grew up in the Northern parts of the Mountain District of Middle Tennessee we had some overlap in folklore with some peoples of Kentucky and West Virginia as well as our eastern neighbors in East Tennessee. Among the tales that I can remember (most forgotten with time) was troll tales.
From my understanding our troll tales differ a bit from those of Scandinavia in that the trolls don't always start out as such/ain't always a distinct species of mythical creature if that's the right wording.
There's legends of troll masks where wandering lost fools (like in the Jack Tales) get drawn in by suspicious characters, usually a miser or witch, who force fits a troll mask onto the victim thus transforming them into a troll, from then on they must prowl through the night, never to be seen in daylight, acting as the fetchers, eyes and ears of their masters.
Then we've got our trolls that start out as such, they usually live deep in the woods and are often associated with the Injuns we drove away, there was a small outfit of mountain where I grew up where one could supposedly look long enough up the top and see a Nettle Carrier troll (named after the now long gone Nettle Carrier Indians) who would snatch your young in the night to make a stew for its witch master.
The physical descriptions of our trolls are rather mild, they aren't giants but slightly larger than normal humans, have plenty of warts, green/grey skin, "Satanic eyes", snaggleteeth, fatty tumors, and joint deformations. The first thing that comes to my mind is an arthritic Incredible Hulk. :p
To avoid trolls one doesn't cross certain streams/creeks past sunset (marking a superstitious territory boundary between the uninhabited evil regions and the inhabited/good regions). To drive them off the ole jest is that harmonica music drives trolls away.