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Tickling in folklore: the rusalka!

matt62

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Many years ago I was trying, and mostly failing, to learn Russian. One day in the language lab our tutor started talking about female water spirits known as rusalki in Russian folk tales. These creatures were said to be the spirits of unhappily deceased women or of unbaptised baby girls, who haunted rivers and lakes and could lure away unwary young men. Then our tutor casually mentioned that one of their favourite methods was to tickle their victim to death!

Needless to say, at this unexpected piece of information I sat up and took notice. I filed it away for future reference. I had not expected Slavic folklore to be that interesting.

Sure enough, the Wikipedia article on rusalki mentions the tickling as well:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka


And maybe it shows that tickling has been recognised in folk culture through the millennia as something powerful and potentially dangerous and with links to deep parts of ourselves, to do with life and death, and the erotic.

Anyone else heard of these rusalki, or does anyone know of anything similar in other cultures?
 
Oh how neat!! This is the first I've heard of tickling in folklore. :) I hope there's more out there!
 
They've been brought up here a couple of times before. Use your handy search engine.
 
I have also seen a description or two of Dryads that includes tickling.

The one that is crazy is an Inuit myth: "mahaha the tickle monster". Yes, this thing's name really is Mahaha. Its a brief piece of folklore with not a lot of information surrounding it, but t exists!
 
Ever heard of a Leshy? http://mythandlore.blogspot.com/2012/04/leshy.html?m=1

Sounds like a similar spirit from a different culture. I've seen posts from someone with a username of Leshy on here. Thought it was a good choice.

I remember reading about them when I was a kid in the "Enchanted World" series, from Time Life Books if memory serves. Great artwork in that series.
 
I have also seen a description or two of Dryads that includes tickling.

The one that is crazy is an Inuit myth: "mahaha the tickle monster". Yes, this thing's name really is Mahaha. Its a brief piece of folklore with not a lot of information surrounding it, but t exists!

That is the best fricking name for a tickle monster I've ever heard. X'D
 
Yes, I once had a relationship with a woman born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and she told me about the legend of the Rusalka once I revealed my love of being tickled. She was an enthusiastic ler, but not a skilled one.
 
Wow, I'd never heard of the Mahaha, maybe vaguely heard of the Leshy but didn't know they were into tickling too. This looks like a theme emerging in world folklore. What can it mean?!

I like the way the images of these beings seem to show them as the embodiment of sheer perilous mischievousness.
Perhaps they are somehow the incarnation of that aspect of human psychology.

Here's an image of rusalki that transfixes me. Especially the long fingers:

http://orig10.deviantart.net/0931/f/2012/195/9/0/rusalka_concept_by_vidagr-d578t92.jpg
 
Common folklore spirits here in Russia. I was always amused at how serious these tales of people tickled to death by rusalki were brought up in conversations or in poetry and literature.
Funny thing about tickling here is that it's linked to torture and death when talked about, at the same time being a playful activity everyone's involved in and understands it's fun and healthy but a little scary because of all those tales and rumours.
 
Slavs for the win!!!!

On the French forum, there is a most distinguished member of ours who goes by the name Rusalka. She is also the object of our best writer's many short stories, and has become legendary since she attended NEST 2009~
 
In Slavic folklore it's common to have some crazy nymphs who like to do mischeveous stuff: like dancing with men until they die of exhaustion or in some version tickle them to death. Rusalka is just one of the examples.
 
Yes, Rusalka is definitely most famous for her ability to tickle men to death. They are especially dangerous in the short summer nights, then they come out of rivers’ water to frolic in the nearby meadows. If you happen to meet them, they will ask you first to tell the herb, and if you choose it wrong - parsley instead of sagebrush - you are doomed, otherwise they let you go.

Less known is her land counterpart – Poludnitcia – a female spirit of the scorching midday sun, the summer fields’ guard in the shape of a blonde belle with blue eyes, who punishes whose peasants who dare to work through the very heat instead of having some rest in the shade – she can strike their uncovered heads, make rustic girls participate in a dancing contest with her to exhausting, but she is also prone to tickle.

And so is their forest fellow – Leshiy. Well, they all seem to have a thing about tickling (I wonder, if they tickle each other when there is no human to practice on), and perhaps must have been registered on TMF long ago. I don’t know why half of the Slavic spirits are more or less ticklephiles.

There can be an explanation, that those stories were basically told children by their parents in order to prevent them from swimming in the deep water, developing a sunstroke or be lost in the wood. If there was a bogey eating one’s heart or sucking out one’s brain, the children would be frightened too much, but the fear of to be tickled simply deters little ones from dangerous behavior at a river bank or in a dense forest.

The other reason can be purely metaphysical – Rusalka can simply discern this way the living ones, since laughter is a sign of life. One North-American Indian legend tells that one man once entered the land of the dead, and all the spirits puzzled who he was. “Let’s tickle him,” one of them finally said, “and we’ll find out if he is dead, as we are, or a living one”.

Perhaps Rusalka tickles the peculiar way that any living creature will inevitably respond, so there is no option to be not ticklish in her hands. Being an undead spirit of a young woman who had drown, she can appear to be partly blind back in this world, so she needs to tickle humans, her former fellows, to recognize them, or she is simply attracted to life itself, not having her own.

That’s all, folks (and please forgive all my mistakes, since I’m not a native speaker).
 
Ickis, nevermind apologizing for your writing! I enjoyed reading it as someone who loves interpreting mythology. A very interesting contribution to the discussion of tickling folklore, thank you!
 
Well, I can provide you yet another piece of folklore – the modern one.
Have you ever heard any frightening mystic story involving tickling? I mean a kind of the ghost of an old house spooky tale, suitable for a slumber party or a scout camp, when it’s dark and the lights are off, to scare the pants off your mates. Here in Russia there is one, originated from the schoolchildren subculture of last decades, – a genuine tickling horror story. So make yourself comfortable and listen:

The Green Fingers

One girl was doing her homework alone in her room. Suddenly she felt that the back of her T-shirt was pulled slightly. The girl glanced around, but didn’t notice anything. She thought she only fancied it, and went on studying.

But soon her collar was tweaked again, and something touched the nape of her neck. The girl startled and turned back, but there was nobody behind her. She stood up and opened the door. Her parents were chattering in the kitchen, and her brother was watching TV. It was obvious the boy had been engrossed in the show and his chips for a long time.

So the girl returned to her table and took up the exercise book yet again. Soon someone drew her T-shirt neck back once more. This time she was prepared for it, so she tossed her hand behind and gripped something. It was a green finger caught in her fist. The finger wriggled, struggling to break loose, while the staggered girl clenched it with all her strength.

All of the sudden the door slammed shut as by its own. The girl looked up and saw four more green fingers moving in the air. They nimbly locked the door, so nobody could come in and help her now. The girl was utterly terrified. She yelled at the green fingers not to come any close, but they were slowly approaching her. She screamed and released the fifth finger free.

Now with all green fingers clustered together they pounced on the girl and started to tickle her all over. The girl had been squealing and laughing so insanely, that there was a fuss in the entire house. Her parents finally broke down the door and entered her room. They saw that the fingers of their daughter’s right hand were all green for some reason. With those her fingers she was tickling herself, while desperately repulsing her own attacking hand by her other arm. The parents had to restrain the loony girl and called for a doctor.

In the hospital all the medics decided she’d simply gone mad. As her hand had been washed clean and no longer green, she calmed down and woke up perfectly normal next morning. But that night a boy was found dead in another ward. He had tickled himself to death, and his right hand’s fingers were all green...

Nobody could catch those green fingers, and they are still roaming around, looking for their next victim, so one night they could come for you...

Are you scared?
 
Terrifying story that is :)
Great translation, Ickis.
(I've seen it only in native language before)
 
Thanks for that story, Ickis. Interesting that Tickletherapist, another Moscow resident, says that he is also familiar with it, so it sounds as if it is quite widespread. I would be interested if you or he have any more information about the source of the story. For example, do you think it dates as far back as the Soviet era, or is it more recent?

I've never heard of modern children's stories or urban myths in the West with a tickling theme, but perhaps there are some...Or maybe it has taken hold more in Russia for some reason...
 
The story dated back to the 70-s or 80-s. You can find a whole bunch of such short horror tales on the Net, but this is the only one involves tickling. I wouldn’t call this tale the most popular one, but once I heard my cousin mention a slightly different version of this plot, when she was a schoolgirl, so the tale is well known to some degree.

Their style and language pattern reveals that it is indeed a genuine children folklore – horror stories that schoolkids invented and re-told to each other, while adults were simply unaware of this spreading subculture. None of the parents could remember something similar back in the 50-s or 60-s, the time of their childhood, but it flourished later on among next generation, and when kids grew old and got access to the Net, the tales were finally written down – dozens of them – truly modern folklore, right from subconscious fears.
 
Thanks Ickis. I wonder if it is a coincidence that a tickling theme emerges in that story, or perhaps Russian youngsters are subconsciously more aware of the theme because of the old tales of rusalki, etc, so they are more likely than Western children to tell such a story...
 
It seems there is no connection. The tickling theme of old folklore characters is almost forgotten now, so I had to look it up in the Wikipedia, and the modern spooky tale is unique – others are totally vanilla.

I’m pretty sure that Slavic folklore spirits cannot be the only one with such habit, and there must be other tickling-prone creatures in other cultures all other the world.
 
I found the following story recently in "The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings". I suppose it could qualify as folklore, since supernatural tales have been told persistently in all cultures and throughout history. And I don't quite dare to open a thread called "Tickling and the Supernatural" because of the scornful annoyance I can see it causing some of our more literal-minded readers. I quote from the book:

The "News of the World" [a now-defunct British tabloid newspaper]ran a story in November 1983 that "the ghost of a naughty knight is causing chaos at the Knight's Lodge Inn on the outskirts of Corby in Northamptonshire". The apparition was lifting ladies' skirts, tickling the tops of their legs and pinching their bottoms. The owners had called in psychic investigator Jean Cooksley, who spent several nights on the premises and reported, "I've seen him and he's a big robust chap - a cavalier who carries an ostrich feather with him. He uses the feather to lift the ladies' skirts and tickle them. He must have been a real Casanova when he was alive."

An example of the 17th-century fashion for hat feathers being put to creative use.

Another kind of spirit that appears repeatedly in world folklore, and still turns up in contemporary reports of the paranormal, is the incubus, a male spirit or demon that seduces women in the night, or the succubus, the female equivalent who is a nocturnal danger to men. The sexual advances of these beings are often described in very physical terms - here is an example from the same book: "I could feel his hands all over me...running up and down my thigh...My body seemed to be alive with hands. And then tongues...I couldn't see his face but he was all over me, crushing me..." etc, etc.

Now it always seems to me that there must be an incubus/succubus report somewhere in the literature where the demon lover tickles the victim. But I have never found any references to it. I live in hope.
 
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I found the following story recently in "The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings". I suppose it could qualify as folklore, since supernatural tales have been told persistently in all cultures and throughout history. And I don't quite dare to open a thread called "Tickling and the Supernatural" because of the scornful annoyance I can see it causing some of our more literal-minded readers. I quote from the book:

The "News of the World" [a now-defunct British tabloid newspaper]ran a story in November 1983 that "the ghost of a naughty knight is causing chaos at the Knight's Lodge Inn on the outskirts of Corby in Northamptonshire". The apparition was lifting ladies' skirts, tickling the tops of their legs and pinching their bottoms. The owners had called in psychic investigator Jean Cooksley, who spent several nights on the premises and reported, "I've seen him and he's a big robust chap - a cavalier who carries an ostrich feather with him. He uses the feather to lift the ladies' skirts and tickle them. He must have been a real Casanova when he was alive."

An example of the 17th-century fashion for hat feathers being put to creative use.

Another kind of spirit that appears repeatedly in world folklore, and still turns up in contemporary reports of the paranormal, is the incubus, a male spirit or demon that seduces women in the night, or the succubus, the female equivalent who is a nocturnal danger to men. The sexual advances of these beings are often described in very physical terms - here is an example from the same book: "I could feel his hands all over me...running up and down my thigh...My body seemed to be alive with hands. And then tongues...I couldn't see his face but he was all over me, crushing me...etc, etc.

Now it always seems to me that there must be an incubus/succubus report somewhere in the literature where the demon lover tickles the victim. But I have never found any references to it. I live in hope.

Actually I think you (or someone else) should open a Tickling and the Supernatural thread. Seems like a very worthy topic to me, especially considering that a lot of our community's authors write fantasy themed stories, me included.

Thanks a lot for this account, it is great "fetish fuel" :goodjob:
 
I'm Polish and in polish, and more generally in slavic, folklore we have constantly tropes like tickling or dancing to death. That kind of playful activities turned into cause of death.
 
A witch from the Russian Far North

The Mansi people, an indigenous ethnic group in Siberia, have a legend mentioned in one Soviet book that I’ve read long ago when I was in sixth grade (actually, they gave me it at school as the summer reading. The book had long been lost, but I’ve just found it online):



Once upon a time, there was a young woman. She was very good at many handicrafts, but most skillfully she weaved threads from tendons. She never felt tired, and worked until late at night.

‘Please, dear, don’t weave tendons at night!’ the older women told her.

‘But why?’ she wondered.

‘No, you can't do that. There’s Tanvarpekva. She’s an evil old woman. If you stay up late, she’ll come to you, and she’ll tickle you to death.’

But the girl didn’t listen to them, and kept twisting the tendons during the day, and rolling them at night.

One night, when everyone was already asleep, a dog squealed as if someone stung it. Then the door creaked open, and in the flow of icy air Tanvarpekva walked into the room. She was holding a silver bowl in her hands. There were tendons in the bowl, and they were canine tendons. She just tore them off from the husky’s neck, so that’s why the dogs were squealing.

She sat down next to the young craftswoman, and said:

‘Hello, girl, hello! How agile you are! Wanna bet on whose bowl gets filled up with tendons first? If yours, then you’ll take the bowl made of solid silver. If mine gets filled up first, I’ll tickle you. And I’m gonna tickle you so hard that your liver will pop out.’

‘Sit down, please! I’ll bring you something to eat,’ the girl said. She went to the barn and brought some tasty dried fish. ‘Help yourself to some fish, please, it’s delicious!’ Then the girl ran out of the house again. In the corner of the barn, she found an empty birch-bark basket, and rushed towards the forest. And there, outside the village, next to the tallest cedar tree, was the Tanvarpekva’s yurt. The girl lit the basket, threw it under the tree, and dashed back to her home, calling out to Tanvarpekva: ‘A fire broke out in your yurt! Your yurt is on fire!’

So Tanvarpekva ran like a deer. The girl threw the dog’s tendons away, washed the silver bowl and put it on the table. She then quickly put out the rushlight, smeared her face with fish oil and lay down on the bunk among the sleeping people.

Very soon Tanvarpekwa came again, and started to look for the girl, feeling all the sleeping people’s faces. When she came to the girl, she felt her face and tickled her. The girl nearly screamed with tickling, but she used her last strength to hold back. The old woman touched her face again, it was slippery, and didn’t seem like that girl’s face. She went to other people, and kept searching among them. The people were moaning, and sighing in their sleep, sobbing. And once again, the old witch came to the girl, feeling and tickling her one more time. But the young woman was silent, and didn’t utter a sound.

‘Perhaps it was a forest spirit who has protected you,’ Tanvarpekva sighed, ‘You’ve proved to be dodgier and more cunning than me. Just you wait, girl, if you keep weaving tendons at night, I’ll still tickle you to death.’

For the rest of the night, the young craftswoman slept badly, having nightmares and tossing around. The next morning, she got up before everyone else, and lit a fire in the fire pit. She took the silver bowl from the table and showed it to the people.

‘Look!’ she said, ’Here is a bowl. It’s Tanvarpekva’s silver bowl. She came over last night, and she has tickled me for I stayed up late.’
 

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