A Light in the Woods - Part I

see how it glitters?

Kitsunebi (狐火), or Foxfire, from the Bakemono-tsukishi-emaki. Wikimedia Commons.

Somewhere in the hills and mountains…

“Ye see it first from the corner of yer sight. 

A pale green grin glowin’ in the breeze. 

Then it fades faster’an the moon’s light. 

Just another phantom in the trees.

An’ another fool dead in the night.” 

- Dead in the Night, by Tomayre Fosfor, an ailik-hunter of Henkara

“Will-o-the-Wisps, I’ve heard tell, meant to entice honest folk out for a walk towards doomful ways. An’ certainly there’ve been a right many fools that done followed the lights, an’ a few of em never come back, but I reckon that’s more down to being cracked foolhardy enough to go wanderin’ in the Deepwood after sundown than the light being any sort o’ malice-bearing creature.”

- Ruminations of Brent Deepwater, miller from Senkara

“The rabble are right about one thing - the lights you can see in the Deep Wood at night are phantoms, but not in the same vein as you might think. You see, the undead - more specifically, the spiritually undead - such as a ghost or a ghoul, a specter or a spirit, perhaps even a wraith, spend the entirety of their cursed existence searching for our little woodland phantoms. ‘Why are they looking?’ you ask me, but that is entirely the wrong question. 

For why does a child cry in the night when they lose sight of the warm glow of home? Why does a traveler, after long days or weeks spent on the road, drop their bags in relief as soon as they cross the threshold? And why do the refugees that flock here constantly feel like something has been left behind? 

No, the ‘why’ of it is easy - the question you want me to answer, but have not yet asked, is ‘where are they going?’”

- Lucy Pheraze, Royal Botanist at the Court of Baron de Brac, in Blegokara

“Ah yes, I have heard of these lights, or perhaps fires, in the Deepwood. They are growing more frequent, no? I only ask because I have seen something…similar in the North. Fire from the Fox, they call it, who sets the skies ablaze. But…I have also heard it called Soulfire…the burning souls of the Dead trying to find their way to the Great Expanse, beyond the crust of the mortal realm.

What was that? No, sire, I am sure that is only a myth.” 

-  Hon. Tuliko Revontulien, Diplomat from Yokaye.

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Folklore

Panellus Stipticus by Ylem. Wikimedia Commons.

Oh boy. I know I said last week that this was going to be a shorter post and less of a behemoth. Fortunately, I think I can keep that promise. Unfortunately, I’ve gone down a folkloric rabbit hole that began with a consideration to learn Finnish and Japanese so I could read some primary sources (I gave up the idea for Google translate - for now). In this week’s post, I want to talk about a very specific type of bioluminescent phenomenon known as foxfire…though we are going to be traveling far afield. 

Foxfire - also known as will-o-the-wisp, fairy fire, or chimpanzee fire (BBC video here) - most often refers to the greenish-blue glow produced by fungi consuming decaying wood, which is at the heart of folktales concerning strange lights seen in the woods, the cold fires of elves, or even the souls of the dead.¹ 

On a fun, etymological note, the term “foxfire” may be an amalgamation of the French faux (meaning false) with fire, though I have no clue if this is true or not.²

Now, in keeping with our Appalachian theme (and pulling from the eponymous book / museum), there is an account by May Justus in Foxfire Story about phosphorescent phenomena: 

“...the phosphorescence in wood is akin to this that accumulates in the slime of ponds, and then there’s a thing some of the ghost stories and the old haint stories, you know…. They’d be walking along and they’d see this mysterious ball that would bob up and down… [it was] made from the phosphorescent gases [sic] that way, and that’s where the graveyard and the stories about ghosts on battlefields, you see, it all comes from a form of decomposition…. And sometimes…when they didn’t bury their bodies too well…there’d be cracks down in the grave, you know, and the coffins weren’t very well built, and the body might as well have been dumped in the ground — maybe sometimes in the battlefields…they didn’t bury the dead very carefully, and then later on, these things that they thought were ghosts over the battlefield was nothing in the world but this phosphorescence that came from the gases [sic] from the decomposing bodies.” ³

I love - and am so creeped out by - the imagery of glowing gaseous swirls of light snaking up through cracks in the ground to dance upon the earth once more.  May Justus’ claim that decomposing bodies release gas in graveyards and in battlefields may have some veracity.

Or it may not - I am no scientist - but Appalachian folklore is rife with references to mysterious lights in graveyards and in areas of old battles. There are several other tales within Foxfire Story having to do with lights coming up over the ground in a cemetery. One, told by Allah Ramey, claims a light “as bright as any car light” was seen in a cemetery, though it was thought to be produced by “some kind of mineral in the ground, and when it got damp…it looked like a light.” ⁴

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Moving further afield and engaging in some idle speculation and rather undisciplined comparative reading, the two excerpts above seem to have more in parallel with Japanese folklore⁵ with the kitsunebi (狐火 - which, according to Google translate, literally translates to foxfire) and the onibi (鬼火, "Demon Fire") of Japanese folklore (see below for summary results of a far too detailed Wikipedia trawl) than they do with the bioluminescent phenomenon of fungal foxfire. 

Chikanobu Toyohara, Foxfires, 1898. Triptych depicts Yaegaki-hime carrying the helmet of the warrior Shingen as she dances amidst magical foxfires.  Wikimedia Commons.

You see, kitsunebi are said to be dancing flames in the air that only appear at night - they flicker in and out numbering between ten and several hundred in a line, burning with red, orange, or blue flames. Kitsunebi are usually either caused by the breath of kitsune (foxes), kitsune striking with their tails to light a fire, or kitsune carrying around a glowing ball - not sure about that last one. Kitsune using withered trees on the ground to make fires (sound familiar?) AND that kitsune also make fire using human skulls and horse bones, but that fire glows blue. 

In a similar vein of mysterious lights that “bob up and down”, Onibi are spirits born from human and animal corpses that glow blue (usually, they can also glow red or yellow) at night and appear after rain or in damp areas. Sometimes only one or two appear, and sometimes as many as 30 appear and burn together. Even though they look like balls of blue fire, they give off no heat. 

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Based on comparisons of accounts in Foxfire with descriptions found on Wikipedia of kitsunebi and onibi, I wonder if the infamous Brown Mountain Lights - as-yet unexplained luminescent phenomenon floating around Brown Mountain in North Carolina - are a similar phenomenon to onibi or the Justus’ phosphorescent ghost lights, especially given accounts of a battle fought between the Cherokee and the Catawba at Brown Mountain (I was unable to find an original account from the Cherokee nation, so please accept this reference instead).

Now let’s turn our attention northward to wrap up, to the realm of the aurora borealis, where we find an interesting tidbit from Finnish folklore concerning the origin of the aurora. The tulikko (or tulikettu) is a mythical fox (the name quite literally means ‘fire fox’⁶) and is it runs along, the tulikko’s

“flaming tail whips crystals of snow into the sky and the fur scratches the trees, setting the skies on fire.”⁷

Again, I cannot help but be struck by the curious similarity between the kitsune striking its tail to produce fire, and the tulikko’s flaming tail⁸ - perhaps a shared myth of some sort, though I am hesitant to read too much into it as the association of foxes and fire pops up in many different cultures, including Apache, Cherokee, Chinese, and even in modern American subculture - for the Pokemon fans out there, your Vulpix is a fire type that eventually evolves into Ninetails (which, incidentally, is based off of East Asian folk beliefs of nine-tailed foxes).

Leaping back to Finnish folklore to bring us home, I leave you with a final etymological tidbit: the Finnish word for the Northern Lights, revontulet⁹, comes from the bounding run of the tulikko and can be literally translated to “fox fires”, referring to lights of the Aurora that the tulikko leaves behind as it ignites the sky.

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That’s all I have time for today - this is the first part of a two part post, as I went a little heavy on the research and ran out of time to fully dive into the Inspiration (I am still digesting the various cross overs and connections). In the meantime, enjoy the recording at the top of this post of the imagined quotes I came up with, and let me know what you think about ghost lights in the night in the comments section below.

Keep on shining.

N

1. I did find, in one curious paper here, a reference to Aristotle noting a “cold fire” light - though I have not been able to track down where Aristotle made this observation, and the same goes for the Pliny the Elder citation. Non-sequitur, but Pliny the Elder also happens to be a great beer!

2. Biologist, The Masked. “Foxfire and Bioluminescent Fungi.” WXPR. WXPR, August 31, 2020. https://www.wxpr.org/natural-resources/2020-08-31/foxfire-and-bioluminescent-fungi.

3. May Justus, “Chapter 3: Legends,” in Foxfire Story: Oral Tradition in Southern Appalachia (Anchor, 2020), pp. 45-46, 45.

4. Allah Ramey, “Chapter 3: Legends,” in Foxfire Story: Oral Tradition in Southern Appalachia (Anchor, 2020), pp. 46-47.

5. I only mention these here as befits the curious - I plan on doing a MUCH deeper dive into Japanese folklore in the fall of 2023.

6. “Tulikettu.” Wiktionary. Accessed February 13, 2023. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tulikettu#Finnish.

7. “Dark Side of the Auroras – Meanings & Myths: Visit Finnish Lapland.” House of Lapland, May 31, 2022. https://www.lapland.fi/visit/only-in-lapland/lapland-northern-lights-myths-auroras/#:~:text=The%20sparkling%20tail%20of%20the,rich%20and%20famous%20beyond%20belief.

8. An interesting aside that I found is that fox fur can accumulate static electricity, which produces light and a shock in dry air - perhaps an origin of the belief? Also, here is a fascinating webpage translated from Finnish using the estimable services of Google Translate - enjoy.

9. “Revontulet.” Wiktionary. Accessed February 13, 2023. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/revontulet#Finnish.