Fairy Women from the Portuguese Book of Lineages of Count Dom Pedro
We are extremely pleased to announce that pre-orders are now open for the first title in the Papaveria Press Fairylore Series. This series, which has been in development since 2020, brings to life the classic texts of fairy mythology and folklore along with new work from scholars, authors, and independent researchers who share our deep love and respect for fairies as they manifest in poetry, politics, history, literature, and in the world.
The series begins with Fairy Women from the Portuguese Book of Lineages of Count Dom Pedro: Politics, Mysticism and Magic by José Leitão, a short monograph on the origins and influence of two Melusine-like narratives originating in Iberia in the fourteenth century: that of the Biscayan Lady Goat-Foot and the Galician Lady Marinha.
These stories, found in written form for the first time in a medieval book of lineages, can be understood as legitimizing narratives, meant to strengthen local power in times of regal or ecclesiastic encroachment. Though disseminated in circles entirely distinct from those of the more common fairy and fairy-like figures of the Iberian mythical folk pantheon, they are still complex repositories of local traditions and notions of land-based authority, whose ancestry can be traced to the pre-Indo-European age of Northern Iberia.
Along with an exploration of their medieval written origin, this work tracks these fairy women across the centuries, evidencing how these narratives become the models for other fairy and supernatural genealogies, and are eventually brought into the contemporary period through a variety of mediums, such as nineteenth-century Romantic short stories and poetry, twentieth-century mistico-nationalistic writings, and formal academic inquiry. Throughout these mediums, such fairy women gradually carve their own space in the Ibero-American imaginary, coming to not only feature in common legend collections, juvenile literature, and pop-culture, but also, and much more interestingly, are formally introduced into occult and esoteric practice as grimoire spirits within the tradition of the Iberian Books of Saint Cyprian.
Following an introduction to the tales of Lady Goat-Foot and Lady Marinha, Fairy Women from the Portuguese Book of Lineages of Count Dom Pedro offers, for the first time, an English language translation of both the Lady Goat-Foot and Lady Marinha narratives in their original fourteenth-century form.
With this, what is intended is to present a new group of names and fairy genealogies to further enrich the international court of Fairy Queens, Wives, Mistresses, and Lovers – the creators and destroyers of male power and authority.
Our hardcover collectors’ edition will be as you see in the photo, with a printed paper cover, foiled on front, back, and spine, with printed endsheets, endbands, and ribbon marker to match. The Fairylore Series, while intended for collectors, will also be made available in paperback and epub editions, as with all Hadean Press titles.
This project as a whole is very dear to us, and we hope you will love it as much as we do.