Robert's Raves

Villians On Parade
by Robert Rodriguez

Darksied, Cruella de Ville, Apocalypse, Voltura, Dormamu, Butch Cavendish, Hannibal Lechter, Calvera, Michael Mires, Jubal Usher, Ming the Merciless, Dr. Satan, El Lobo, the Borg, the Legion of Doom, El Lobo, Professor Mortis and the League of Murdered Men, General Woundwart, Sauron of Mordor, the Apache Kid, El Nino, Thanos, the Scorpion, the Lodge of the Links.

nyone familiar with comic books, television, the cinema, old–time radio, or the world of contemporary general fiction will no doubt recognize the above rogues gallery as representing some of the finest, or worst, depending upon one’s point of view, examples of the general realm of individuals or groups who grandly represent the world of wicked behavior, malevolence to the nth degree, or villainy extraordinare. In Haiti there is a proverb which says, "for every drum there is a drummer," or, to put it another way, for every hero, champion of the oppressed, and proponent of truth, justice and the American way, there is someone out there ready to conquer the world, take over the universe or rain down Chaos upon us all without remorse or apology. As with actual history, popular culture, and the world of printed literature, the world of folklore and traditional tales is populated with some of the nastiest villains to be found on this or any other side of a good story. While not so grand or all–encompassing in their designs, these villainous folk of traditional tales nonetheless do not take any back seats to their more contemporary universe–conquering brethren. What follows is a glimpse into their world of dark deeds, malevolent activities, and wickedness that should please even the staunchest adherents of this dark fraternity.

Serial killers did not begin with Jack the Ripper, Bell Gunnes, the Boston Strangler, or any number of homicidal maniacs or killing machines often seen on such popular television offerings as Millenium, X-Files, or The Sentinel. There is, for example, the demonic figure known as the Elfin Knight who attempts to court and seduce the heroine of a well–known ballad in the Anglo–American tradition. He persuades her to run away with him, and only after they have arrived at a lonely spot, are his true intentions made clear; he has done in six other young maidens and she is to be the unlucky seventh. Through a clever stratagem, she manages to drown him instead, saying to him as he sees his end coming, "six pretty maidens have you drowned here, the seventh has drowned thee." According to the late A. L. Lloyd in his Folksongs of England, the ballad is known not only throughout Britain and North America, but all across Europe, from Scandinavia, through Germany and Central Europe, through the Balkans, as far east as Siberia. The tale has even entered the lore of the Mongol and Turkic peoples of Central Asia.

Perhaps the most famous serial killer in folklore, however, is the individual known by several names: Bluebeard, Mr. Fox, Renardine. In one form or another, Mr. Fox is found from the British Isles to various locales in America, from Vermont to Virginia, the Ozarks, and in countries as diverse as France, Finland, and Hungary. In China numerous legends are told about the fox changeling who takes a wife, only to dispatch her quickly for disobeying one of his injunctions, usually involving some command not to open a certain door, look into a certain room, or unlock a personal chest. In the English tale, the heroine Mary’s brothers cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces after she unmasks him through a dream sequence, while in the Ozark version, Polly uses a riddle play to do the same, after which he is hanged. In this version, however, Polly paid a price, for afterwards, she lived quietly at home, attended only a few dances and remained unmarried the remainder of her days. Villainy may be vanquished, but often at heavy price.

Lest anyone think that female villains cannot be as nasty as their male counterparts, think again. From one of the Three Sorrows of Irish storytelling comes the tale of "The Children of Lir," who are turned into swans by their wicked stepmother Aife. For her wickedness Aife’s own father turns her into a demon of the air, sometimes described as a fiercesome crow or crane, wandering the night skies forever in payment for her crime. There is also the very malevolent sorceress in the English ballad, Willie’s Lady, who is most annoyed at her son’s choice of a new bride. She puts a gruesome spell upon the poor lass so that she lies in labor for seven years without giving birth. Only Willie’s cleverness in finding a counter–spell allowed the young lady to finally end her pregnancy and foil the sinister plot.

According to the ballad makers, Alison Gross was the ugliest witch in the north country, but she was also well endowed with monetary assets. She took out her fury upon one hapless knight who spurned her advances by turning him into a loathsome serpent wound about a tree for seven years. He might still be there if not for the timely arrival of the Faerie Queen who, being in a kindly mode, transformed him back into his human shape. The Faerie Queen certainly was more charitable in this instance than in her confrontation with Lady Janet when she had taken Janet’s love, Tamlin, to the Faerie realm and Janet had lifted the spell which bound him to the Faerie Queen. In her anger at being thwarted, the Queen vowed to turn Tamlin into a tree, pluck out his eyes, replacing them with eyes of wood, and relieve him of his heart. And then there was the lady, name never given, in the Brothers Grimm tale, "The Juniper Tree," who decapitated her stepson, dismembered his corpse, and served it to her husband for dinner as a savory stew. For her deeds, a heavy millstone fell upon her head and crushed her to death.

And as if human female villains are not enough, there are female protagonists of the nether–world who are as numerous as the very places from which they come. From the yara of Brazil to the ghula who inhabit the Arabian deserts, from the Raussalka of Ukraine and the vampire–like Bryluka of Russia to the grisly Japanese phantom known as No–pair–a–bow, they take true delight in seeking out male mortals, seducing them, and draining them of their life essence to feed their insatiable greed and their eternal need for revenge upon the race of mortal beings to redress wrongs and injuries, real or otherwise, they believe have been done to them. From the Hispanic southwest come a host of terrible tales about a female figure known as Donna Sebastiana, La Rayna de la Muerte, queen of death, who roams the night in her death cart, collecting souls on their long journey to eternity. In some of the tales told about her, she is described as a phantom of the night, incessantly seeking out proud men in order to humble them and feed off their vanity. One version says she was once a mortal woman, who, spurned by a lover, made an unholy pact with El Diablo to serve him forever if he would give her life after death in order to revenge herself upon all men who might fall into her clutches. If you hear the sound of her cart being dragged across the rocky stony ground of northern New Mexico, it means frightful doom is at hand.

Animal villains may not be out to conquer the universe, but their wicked and malevolent deeds nonetheless may be stark in their own way. In Mexico they tell grisly tales of how Tlacuahe, the opossum, caused coyote to perish by drowning him in a deep well from which he could not escape. In India, they tell how two wicked jackals caused strife and enmity between two friends, a lion and a bull, a tale which has come down to us in the form of one of the world’s great pieces of literature, the collection of fables known as the Pancha–tantra. Among the Yoruba of western Nigeria, countless stories are told about the nefarious tortoise known as Ajapa, whose very name among the people of Nigeria is synonymous with knavery of the highest order. To satisfy his own desires, he may betray friends, relations, or even strangers; no mischief is beyond his ability to accomplish if it brings him gain of any sort. He once humiliated a princess by falsely accusing her of theft, even though it did cause her to regain the use at her voice, after she had been mute all her life. He caused the death of an elephant in order to propitiate a royal sacrifice to ensure a good harvest. But among all the animals in folklore, perhaps there is no greater example of villainous behavior than that of the king of malevolence among animal kind: the fox. He is known by many names across the world: Tio Zoro in Mexico, Cilawaia to the Tamana of Tierra Del Feugo, Mikko in Finland, Renard in France, Little Fox in Ukraine, and Kutsunae in Japan, If the devil is the prince of liars and mischief–makers, the fox must share this dubious honor. Deception, cunning, insidious behavior of a truly black quality, the fox has been celebrated in song and story through the centuries and around the world. He may steal fish from a poor farmer, cause the bear to lose his tail in the winter ice, slaughter countless domestic animals, betray friend and foe alike, and always triumph in the end. Even the mighty lion fears the fox, as evidenced by the fact that, after all of Renard’s misdeeds, he still manages to become prime minister to the mighty forest monarch, confounding all his enemies in end. It is no accident that the wicked Mr. Fox, the English Bluebeard, is also known as Renardine.

There are some villains whose deeds are so reprehensible and monstrous, even for members of this dark fraternity, that only a special and terrible retribution can be the appropriate response. The miserly folk of Hamelin discovered this to their ruin. When they failed to pay the strange piper what they had promised after he rid the town of the plague of rats, they were punished by having their children taken away, all save one boy who was unable to follow the others because he was lame. There was once a legendary and infamous pirate named Dahul, Arabic for "the forgotten one." He once took as a partner no less a personage than the devil himself. In an argument with Old Scratch, Dahul struck him over the head and threw him overboard. Among his other black deeds, Dahul sadistically tortured a priest, and burned alive the children of a Spanish captain he had captured in one of his raids. For his wickedness he is doomed to wander the seas forever, never seeing land, driven before the storm winds, commanding a giant ship of the damned, with no water or food, possessing no hope, taking on all the drowned souls he can locate till the end of time. And then there is the tale of the wicked ninth century Polish tyrant, King Popiel, who ruled with from his ancient capital at Kruszwica with his even more wicked queen, the German princess Ortrude. At her instigation, he lured twelve of his relatives into a trap, invited them to a banquet, and then had them poisoned. For this dastardly deed, Popiel was devoured, along with Ortrude, by an army of mice who emerged from nearby Lake Goplo, invaded the castle, and dispatched the two rulers with gruesome speed. The same fate befell the evil Bishop Hatto of Mainz, who once lured several hundred hungry folk into a barn filled with grain, and then had his attendants burn it down for his amusement, saying that their shrieks for mercy reminded him of the sound of mice. Retiring to a tower that he had ordered built to store his ill-gotten treasure, Hatto never witnessed the next sunrise, as he too was devoured by a horde of mice. In a traditional ballad from England, a certain gentleman, who loved hunting above all other activities, once cursed God and all his heavenly host when a local cleric berated him for not attending Sunday services, instead preparing his hounds for a day of hunting. The devil heard his blasphemous oath to hunt even if he had to ride to hell itself, and taking the form of a black fox, he led the huntsman on a merry chase. The huntsman must perpetually pursue his hellish quarry until the end of time, never to run the game to earth, never to know peace or eternal salvation, never resting, always fleeing before the anger of oncoming storms.

Of necessity, I have omitted much from this perusal of the countless villains and wicked folk to be found in the vast array of stories and legends from world folklore and literature. I have said little, for example, of the lore of the Devil. There is so much in tradition about Hell’s ruler that Old Nick deserves an entire piece to himself. Nor have I mentioned certain villains who have entered folklore through actual historical events, and still populate the tales and legends of many folk, such as the cycle of Burker tales still told among Scottish Traveller folk to this day, tales which still frighten Traveller children into obeying parental warnings against acting improperly.
And thus we end where we began, wondering who are the real villains in this tired, old world of ours. Villains have been with us in folklore and popular culture since time immemorial. They may be as old and traditional as Koschei the Deathless, Ravanna the demon king, Balor of the evil eye, Chulyen the crow, or as modern as Skullface, Norman Bates, Darth Vader, or the Red Skull, but their face is the same, and their evil, malevolent characters have frightened, terrorized, and secretly thrilled audiences down the ages. We hissed and booed them out loud during the age of the classic serial cliffhangers, and secretly cheered them in our hearts. In whatever form it takes, villainy will always be with us, for it never truly dies, as both the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu and Wayland Smith know all too well.

As requested by many readers, Robert has provided a series of bibliographic notes, giving sources for some of the more intriguing and lesser known tales mentioned in this article. Unfortunately, we do not have space to run these notes here, but we will be happy to send them to any readers who would like them. Just send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope with a note asking for Robert’s notes on villains.

—published in WIP Summer 1998

Back to top.