Supernatural whirlwinds in the folklore of Celtic countries.
Abstract
This paper is based largely on a series of fieldwork recording I made in the breton countryside over the last few years. The interviews in breton refer in particular to my home area of trégor in the northern part of Lower Britanny, where the celtic language is still widely spoken by older people. The survival of the native idiom is this area explains why so many oral traditions have been kept alive in the people's memories. Here we deal with some of the folk beliefs associated with whirlwinds and comparable gusts of wind, recorded by myself and others in Brittany. We also relate them to similar folk beliefs about remarkable wind occurences found in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere, and explore the supernatural associations often attributed to these phenomena.