Almanac – Malsum
July 12th, 2012Honestly, that Eric – always running off to conventions without me! Next time I’ll sneak into his trunk with my pet monkey. That’ll show him.
Anyway, while he’s at Connecticon this weekend, I’ll be handling today’s Almanac update in the Mythic Beings chapter of People. As some of you predicted, our entry focuses on Malsum, a manitou that Snow-by-Night instinctively fears.
What I want to know is where all the happy manitou are. Can our next Almanac update have the manitou of rainbows, or maybe the manitou of group hugs?
Funny. When I read about Malsum and Glooscap, I was thinking in Loki and Baldur. As Loki, Malsum seems a trickster,wicked, shapeshifter, fratricide type God (maybe he could be too a spirit of fire, giving another reason to Snow to fear him and his offspring).
Funny. Despite my liking for myths, I didn´t know anything about Malsum before reading it in your strip and googling a bit. Thanks.
The tale of Malsum appears in The Algonquin Legends of New England by Charles Leland (1884). There is some debate as to its authenticity. It is likely that the story of Malsum was not an original native legend, but influenced by the preachings of Christian missionaries (probably French Jesuits). The native storytellers took the tale of Cain and Abel and transformed it into the tale of Malsum and Glooscap which fit into the larger body of native legends. Regardless of its origin, the myth works for my purposes so the tale exists in Everique, as does Malsum.