The Legend of Melusina by Philippa Gregory

The Legend of Melusina by Philippa Gregory

"The story of Melusina ... came to signify for me the difficulty that women have living in a man's world – almost as if women are beings of another element ”

By Philippa Gregory, Author of The White Queen

Ondine

The story of Melusina is told in many countries, from the Celtic west of Europe to Germany and the Nordic countries; there even seems to be some Native American versions. Rewritten, she appears in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and in Hans Christian Anderson's story of the Little Mermaid (and so to Disney!) and in the legend of Undine or Ondine.

Melusine

The story is much as Elizabeth Woodville tells it in The White Queen. A girl, herself the daughter of a water fairy, meets with a knight in the forest (different families and different forests feature in different parts of Europe) and they agree to marry – but she tells him he can never visit her in her chambers on Saturday, the day she is cursed to always take the form of a serpent or a fish from the waist down.

After having children together and a happy marriage, he breaks the interdict and sees that she is not entirely human. In some versions she knows at once that he has seen her and goes away immediately. In others he pretends not to know, but the truth bursts from him when their monstrous sons kill each other. In some versions he dies without her, in others he lives on sorrowing, or she haunts the house where they were happy. 

In the rewritten versions he leaves her, preferring a mortal woman, but in one wonderful old telling her response to this is to stretch her foot through the ceiling of his wedding banquet. In Ireland, Melusina is the banshee calling over the castle to warn of a death. In France, she is one of the Dames Blanches, the White Ladies who haunt the forests and trick mortals with riddles and dances and foretell deaths by crying outside houses. In Germany she is a being of the forests as well as of water.

Melusina's roots may be even more ancient. Legends of water women and the sirens go back to Homer; drawings of mermaids are found in ancient Egypt and Assyria. Sabine Baring-Gould, the folklorist, suggested that Melusina could be a Celtic version of an even more ancient legend. She survives, even today, in the stories around springs and wells that are now designated as Christian sites. Undeterred by sanctification, she is renamed St. Melusina in Baringen, Germany, where they shake the crumbs from the Christmas Eve feast over the bushes so that Melusina may eat.

The legend was first written down in 1393 (Jean d'Arras, La Noble Hystoire de Luzignen) as part of the history of Chateau Lusignan, the house she is said to have built for her husband. She is often described as a master builder: She could erect a house in a single night with an army of fairy work people. But the buildings were always flawed, just as her children were always malformed. J. E. Cirlot (A Dictionary of Symbols) suggests she is an intuitive genius both “prophetic, constructive and wondrous, and yet at the same time is infirm and malign.”

Luxembourg Castle

Melusina's significance goes even further than this powerful folklore. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung took an interest in her role in alchemy. Here Melusina is a manifestation of Luna – the element of dark, cold, water, and spirit, and as such she makes the alchemical union with her opposite: Sol, the source of warmth and light. The union is known by alchemists as the “chymical wedding,” which signified to Jung the union of body and spirit, consciousness and unconsciousness.

I won't pretend to understand this except at a level of wonderment, but I must admit to having a sense of shock when I read the words “Luna and Sol often appear as White Queen and Red King” a year after I had finished my novel on Melusina's descendant and titled it The White Queen. The internet site goes on: “Note these colours' corresponding stages of transmutation; the symbol of this relationship is a rose.” A rose, indeed: The people called Elizabeth Woodville's grandson Arthur “the rose of England.”

“The story of Melusina ... came to signify for me the difficulty that women have living in a man's world – almost as if women are beings of another element .”

I had originally come across the Melusina myth very early in my research for The White Queen when I was looking for some element in the stories of Elizabeth, or in her parents, to inspire me or help me imagine her. The discovery that Elizabeth's mother Jacquetta traced her family back to the myth of Melusina was tremendously exciting for me and led me to research the myth and even visit the Chateau Lusignan near Poitiers, France.
  

The suggestion that I make in the novel that Jacquetta believed in her other-worldly ancestry is a likely one. Certainly she believed in witchcraft and was indeed captured, tried and found guilty of practising magic. It was said that she was caught with some little lead figures for charming, and that the marriage between her daughter and the king was brought about by his enchantment. The scenes I created of her and Elizabeth calling up mist, whistling up wind and summoning rain are all imaginary but seemed to me to be what one would do in such circumstances – especially if one thought it might work! In a world where there was little science, there was faith in magic and trust in what we would now call superstitions.

The Spying of Melusine

My re-telling of the story of Melusina throughout the novel developed as it went on and came to signify for me the difficulty that women have living in a man's world – almost as if women are beings of another element. Melusina knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew that she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then. Her husband promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

The connection between a mighty archetype and my novel has been inspiring and sometimes overwhelming. When I read of the legend of Melusina with the house that she built with its fatal flaw, and her sons who could not survive, I think of Elizabeth Woodville and the house of York, which was built but could not last, and her missing sons. While writing this novel I have found elements of history that I can research, some of fiction that I can create, and beyond both these: some deep mysteries which, if I listen, and wait – and if I am lucky – may come to me.

Melusine ~ The Other Story

Throughout the series we have heard about Melusine - the water goddess who Elizabeth is descended from - but what about  the other version of Melusine's story: The Devil's Consort.

In an age when the world believed in magic; tales of elves, goblins, witches, and fairies, a count of Anjou returned from a distant journey with a strange woman whom he had married on his travels. His people referred to her as "the dark princess of the forest." To those who had never left home before, anyone or anything that came into their midst from 'beyond,' as it were, came from the forest -they simply didn't know that a whole world lay beyond the Angevin forests, or that there was more than just forests out there.

Her name was Mesuline. She was evidently a princess, and very beautiful. Her skin very dark, making her

most likely of middle eastern origin. They were married several years and she bore him four sons.

She was quiet and dutiful, but there was much that was odd about her: she had no relatives or friends, she refused to be seen by her husband on Saturdays, she never went to church, and when asked to go she always made some excuse why she couldn't attend. The reasoning behind her behavior had less to do with possessing demonic powers and more to do with the idea that she was most probably Jewish or Islamic with regard to her religion.

She was more probably Islamic rather than Jewish, in that the people already understood what the Jews were like and, while they would have been critical of her, they would not have found her ways particularly strange.It was Islam that was new and completely foreign to them. The Christians believed that Islam came from the Devil, and the Muslims in turn believed that Christianity was of the Devil -everbody had everybody else pegged as coming straight from Hell. So, rumors began to circulate about Mesuline, that she might be a witch.

It seemed she simply practiced a different religion and  her behavior alienated not only the Count, but also his people who grew increasingly suspicious of her, whispering that she was a sorceress and claiming she had bewitched the Count (reminds you of Elizabeth and Edward). Although he loved her, the Count had to do something about her; no king would allow his throne to be threatened over the likes of a woman, even his own wife. He tried telling her she must attend Mass, even if only to show the people that she was not a witch, but she refused. The Count's advisors urged him to do something and in the end persuaded him that she must go, one way or the other. Reluctently, he finally agreed.

One Sunday the Count instructed four of his knights to stay close by him when he literally forced her and her sons into the royal chapel and locked the door to prevent them from slipping out. Why the chapel? Because there were stained glass windows that no one could see through. It was important that people see them go in, but necessary that no one see what was to happen inside. There were only the knights, the count, Mesuline, his sons, and the priest who said Mass in attendance. When they emerged after Mass, there were only the knights, the Count, the priest, and the two youngest sons -Mesuline and the two older boys had vanished.

Of course, the Count had to come up with an explanation as to what happened to the three of them, as they were never to be seen on Earth ever again. So, his advisers concocted the following:

Just as the Mass began she attempted to leave, but the knights trod on the hem of her robe to detain her. As the priest raised the Host above his head she uttered a scream, wrenched apart the fastening of her cloak to escape from it, and still shrieking flew out of the window. She was Melusine, daughter of Satan, and no evil spirit, as it is well known, can look upon the Body of Christ. In her flight she dragged the two elder children with her; but the two younger ones remained.

Is this true or did something else happen that Count wanted to cover up? Did she escape with sons by a secret tunnel or did the Count have her killed?

Whatever the reason, the Plantagenets said they were descended from the devil's brood. Were they just jesting. It would make a lot of sense if they were; they were a .... emm ... what's the word I am looking for .... bloody.

Henry II, the first Plantagenet King, had Thomas Beckett murdered at the alter of Canterbury Cathedral. He reportedly said "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest." Did he mean to have him killed? Probably if he is the descendant of the devil which he said he was.

Henry's son, John I, was a terrible King. He raised taxes, had people executed; he was not liked or loved by the people. It was like he was the devil.

Lets go to the 15th century. It was Richard Duke of York who gave his family the name Plantagant. Before the Royal family was not given a "family name" but Richard thought it was time to give his descendants. Plantagenet was from Geoffrey V who had been given the nickname Plantegenest (or Plante Genest) because his emblem may have been the common broom, (planta genista in medieval Latin).

I could go on about the Cousins' War; cousin against cousin, brother against brother, father against son. Guess who was involved; yes the , the Devil's brood. The people believed the it was an act of God when York took the throne; but in my opinion there was nothing holy or godly about it, it was just evil. Some of the men fighting were boys as young as 12 or 13. So could it possibly be a God's work?

Richard III is said to have killed his nephews and poisoned his wife. He was awful, but it l;east we know that side of him from Shakespreare's Plays. He was called The Devil.

Beheading of Anne Boleyn 19th May 1536

Lets not forget the Tudors, who were descended from the Plantagenets, were a gruesome bunch. Henry VIII took six wives; divorced two and beheaded two, and he had a lot of executed. His daughter Mary was as bad; burning protestants at the stake for not reverting back to the catholic church.

Their blood still runs in our current Royal Family's blood. Now you know the two sides of the Melusine story; the House of Luxembourg and the House of Plantagenet. Which one do you prefer?