Vila (fairy)
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A vila, or víla .
The vila is mostly known among
Etymology
The etymology is unclear. Possible explanations are from the verb viti "to wind" and
Folkloric accounts
According to Natalie Kononenko, the vilas are female spirits of nature, of an ambivalent relationship with humans. In fairy tales, they may act with malice towards them (killing people, destroying crops), but may also help the hero by giving him magical objects and mounts.[3] They may also show warrior-like qualities.[4]
There are three kinds, those living on land and in forests (
Vile like to ride horses or stags, they go hunting, dance in a circle dance (
In Croatian and
Vilas are also prominent in Bosniak epic poetry, it is not rare for a vila to guide warriors on their path. Or nourish and help them when they are injured. Folk tales of a vila raising the Hrnjica brothers are well known, where one brother gains his strength from the vila, and the other brother his beauty. Other folk tales mention vilas helping in the defense of towns.[5]
Vile are usually friendly to people, but they can take horrible revenge on those who insult them, disregard their orders, or approach their circle dances uninvited. Their general amiability distinguishes them from the rusalki. The folk venerated them by placing flowers, food and drink before caves where they were believed to have lived.
Within the Czech tradition, víly are almost always malicious, unless respected and avoided. They are portrayed as beautiful women with long flowing hair, who primarily live in the woods, marches, or in forest clearings. They are said to try to entrance men, who wander into their land, by their looks and beautiful voices. Víly are also said to live in groups, and are keen to dancing in circles, which was also another way of trapping people, as it was believed that if you were to start dancing with them, then you would never return home.
According to F. S. Copeland, in Slovene folklore, the vile (which she translated as 'White Ladies') are wise and benevolent beings from forests, water bodies and mountains who help women in childbirth and heroes in epic stories.[6] In another article, according to Copeland, the word was known near the Croatian border (e.g., in Bela Krajna), but also "familiar" among the Slovenes of Styria and Beyond-the-Mura.[7]
Legacy
According to ethnologist Éva Pócs, the word vila also appears in the Serbian and Croatian words vilovnjak, vilenjak, vilenica, vilaš - all referring to a type of "fairy magician", people who, as per historical and folkloric records, were given powers by the vilas ("fairies").[8]
Western European references
Dictionaries
Meyer's Konversationslexikon defines Wiles or Wilis as female vampires, the spirits of betrothed girls who die before their wedding night. According to Heine, wilis are unable to rest in their graves because they could not satisfy their passion for dancing naked, especially in town squares. They also gather on the highway at midnight to lure young men and dance them to their death. In Serbia, they were maidens cursed by God; in Bulgaria, they were known as
Literature
This legend inspired Victor Hugo to include "les wilis" in his poem "Fantômes" in Les Orientales (1828).
Heinrich Heine in his 1835 De l'Allemagne vividly describes "die Wilis" as a Slavic legend.
In
In Heather Walter's Malice duology, the vila serve as a darker counterpart to other fae, based more closely on the Irish interpretations.
Theatre and opera
The wilis appear in Adolphe Adam's Romantic ballet Giselle, first danced in Paris in 1841, as the ghosts of young girls who were betrayed by their lovers and who died before their wedding days. They dance in the forests on moonlit nights, punishing young men by dancing them to death, but must disappear at the break of dawn. These Wilis snatch away the villainous Hilarion's life-breath, and almost do the same for the hero, Albrecht, but he is saved by the love of the ghostly Giselle.
The first opera completed by Giacomo Puccini, Le Villi, makes free use of the same thematic material. It had its debut in May 1884 at the Teatro Dal Verme, Milan, and was revised for a more successful reception at the Royal Theater, Turin, that December.
In "The Vilia Song" (German: Das Vilja-Lied), from the 1905 operetta The Merry Widow (German: Die lustige Witwe) by Franz Lehár, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein (and translated by Adrian Ross), a hunter pines for Vilia, "the witch of the wood", a fairy being who causes him to fall in love with her and then vanishes.
References
- ^ Reiter, Norbert (1973). "Mythologie der alten Slaven". In Haussig, Hans Wilhelm (ed.). Wörterbuch der Mythologie (in German). Vol. 2. pp. 163–208.
- OCLC 988222089.
- ^ The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Edited by Donald Haase. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. p. 880.
- ISBN 978-0-313-33610-2.
- ^ Marjanović, Luka (1898). Hrvatske narodne pjesme, Junačke pjesme Muhamedovske (in Croatian). Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska. p. 36.
- .
- JSTOR 1256300.
- .
- .
- ISBN 0-9708442-0-4.
Further reading
- Ajdačić, Dejan (5 May 2015). "Вила љубавница у књижевности српског романтизма" [The Lover Fairy in Romantic Serbian Literature]. .
- Juric, Dorian (2010). "A Call for Functional Differentiation of the South Slavic Vila". The Journal of Indo-European Studies. 38 (1–2): 172–202. ProQuest 1095612316.
- Jurić, Dorian (2023). "Where Does the Vila Live? Returning to a Simple Question". Folklore. 134 (1): 48–72. .
- Miller, Dean (2012). "Supernatural Beings and 'Song and Dance': Celtic and Slavic Exemplars". Studia Celto-Slavica. 6: 101–112. .