Post by Amelius on Feb 25, 2011 7:50:00 GMT -5
Haha, I wrote that article on Wikipedia guys
;D 
At least, I edited what was there before, and it was a mess with "slashing their wrists and bleeding into the river to appease the river gods" malarkey before I fixed it up. I'm terrible at Wiki-article writing so it's gone through other people's revisions and sanitations since I first did so, though.
The Horerczy is a particularly troublesome one, I know I'd seen it mentioned in at least one publication while searching for Alp-related stuff, but it made no mention of alps and just referred to its butterfly breath. I asked a few German friends myself, and none of them had anything to say about it either. I would have serious suspicions if not for trusting actual researchers to have done their research, as in the 2 books (one I am 100% sure and the other still escapes me) I'd read that mentioned it. Siiigh....
If I could hazard a guess, and I'm doing so with a foggy memory of what i read in a book, witches are also responsible for the horerczy and probably use it in their summoning. *shrugs* I'm still looking into this one though, so don't take my word as absolute truth! But I do know it's not an alp. Sometimes I do wonder if there isn't a little mistake identity going on with alps and their butterfly form though, there's a number of vampiric butterflies out there and the Trud, another alp "alias" is more often than not described as a butterfly that gets heavy, to the exclusion of other details. I'll try and untie this knot though!
But most of these I can answer to the best of my current knowledge, but forgive me I'm sleepy right now!
Yes indeed, alps can have children. Sometimes they use them as an excuse to be let go when they've been caught, sometimes it's an outright lie for pity, but I have heard from a few of my contacts that they can indeed have children amongst each other. Not so sure about them having kids with humans though.
Alps can be born (from other alps), be summoned/created, or return as revenants/ghosts/whatever suits the storyteller in the area
I also heard something from another German friend (Ohhh, I wish I could remember who told me and where they told me so I could get it right!) that alps could spring out of the remains of a shredded Tarnkappe. Something else also involved gems on a Tarnkappe turning into alps? I don't recall it clearly, hence I've left it out of most things for now.
I might make it clear that Germany has a very different concept of "elf" than other European folklore, as do they for dwarfs. English and Irish myths tend to portray the two as different "races" and a fair bit larger than the imps in Germany. German Dwarfs are just dark elves! And almost everything wears a hat. The thing that bothers me about D&D Kobolds is they don't wear Hodekin, which is the Kobold version of the standard issue Tarnkappe alps wear. After reading about Kobolds, they are pretty awesome in their own right, and not the lizard things that D& D turned them into
As far as I know though, Alps don't really "descend" from elfs in the traditional sense of the word, from what I can gather from garbled Babelfish translations, it's a little more like Smeagol the Hobbit turning into the evil Gollum and forsaking all that made him a hobbit. It comes off more to me that it is less evolving through generations and more the elves becoming twisted in nature as time wore on. Of course, that may just be my take on it!
Alps are so confusing because of the many ways that they come into being that it seems to contradict itself, but then again same goes for vampires. As I see it, if you're an actual alp that is like a revenant, returned from the dead after a tragedy or mistake during birth, you're now a separate creature from a human. If you're cursed, you're more like a werewolf- not fully the creature.
I don't really think there's such a thing as a pure-alp however, at the very least I have yet to hear anything to that end. sometimes alp info is a little like playing telephone with people who deliberately mess up the message to see what comes out the other end
As far as I know on witches however, when they say "create" I think it has something to do with the Tarnkappe legend I spoke of earlier. Just shooting into the dark with that one, since the witch element is rarely focused on. All I know is they often have them in their employ as nightmare revenge squads or somesuch. Whenever they've brought up witches, it was involving them using the alps and having them in their thrall, and getting after the witch simply called the dogs off so to speak.
In response to the question about dead adults, I think the implication by "dead relatives" is pretty much proof that they can come back as alps
In some tales, an alp is ghost-like in nature. I guess what counts is if it is the soul of that person returning rather than the actual body. Alps, when the person describing them bothers to go beyond animal forms and hats, are typically described as very pale and small, so I think some form of mutation isn't out of the question in this case. However, on occasion I have read some stories that had alps that were fully adult in appearance, at least enough for someone to want to marry after they were captured!
Haha, sorry that half of this is "I think so, no, but yes! But no sometimes" I'll try and get back to you on this with a clearer mind. I try not to let my opinion of alps get in the way of what I've found out and have yet to find out
;D 
At least, I edited what was there before, and it was a mess with "slashing their wrists and bleeding into the river to appease the river gods" malarkey before I fixed it up. I'm terrible at Wiki-article writing so it's gone through other people's revisions and sanitations since I first did so, though.
The Horerczy is a particularly troublesome one, I know I'd seen it mentioned in at least one publication while searching for Alp-related stuff, but it made no mention of alps and just referred to its butterfly breath. I asked a few German friends myself, and none of them had anything to say about it either. I would have serious suspicions if not for trusting actual researchers to have done their research, as in the 2 books (one I am 100% sure and the other still escapes me) I'd read that mentioned it. Siiigh....
If I could hazard a guess, and I'm doing so with a foggy memory of what i read in a book, witches are also responsible for the horerczy and probably use it in their summoning. *shrugs* I'm still looking into this one though, so don't take my word as absolute truth! But I do know it's not an alp. Sometimes I do wonder if there isn't a little mistake identity going on with alps and their butterfly form though, there's a number of vampiric butterflies out there and the Trud, another alp "alias" is more often than not described as a butterfly that gets heavy, to the exclusion of other details. I'll try and untie this knot though!
But most of these I can answer to the best of my current knowledge, but forgive me I'm sleepy right now!
Yes indeed, alps can have children. Sometimes they use them as an excuse to be let go when they've been caught, sometimes it's an outright lie for pity, but I have heard from a few of my contacts that they can indeed have children amongst each other. Not so sure about them having kids with humans though.
Alps can be born (from other alps), be summoned/created, or return as revenants/ghosts/whatever suits the storyteller in the area
I also heard something from another German friend (Ohhh, I wish I could remember who told me and where they told me so I could get it right!) that alps could spring out of the remains of a shredded Tarnkappe. Something else also involved gems on a Tarnkappe turning into alps? I don't recall it clearly, hence I've left it out of most things for now.
I might make it clear that Germany has a very different concept of "elf" than other European folklore, as do they for dwarfs. English and Irish myths tend to portray the two as different "races" and a fair bit larger than the imps in Germany. German Dwarfs are just dark elves! And almost everything wears a hat. The thing that bothers me about D&D Kobolds is they don't wear Hodekin, which is the Kobold version of the standard issue Tarnkappe alps wear. After reading about Kobolds, they are pretty awesome in their own right, and not the lizard things that D& D turned them into
As far as I know though, Alps don't really "descend" from elfs in the traditional sense of the word, from what I can gather from garbled Babelfish translations, it's a little more like Smeagol the Hobbit turning into the evil Gollum and forsaking all that made him a hobbit. It comes off more to me that it is less evolving through generations and more the elves becoming twisted in nature as time wore on. Of course, that may just be my take on it!
Alps are so confusing because of the many ways that they come into being that it seems to contradict itself, but then again same goes for vampires. As I see it, if you're an actual alp that is like a revenant, returned from the dead after a tragedy or mistake during birth, you're now a separate creature from a human. If you're cursed, you're more like a werewolf- not fully the creature.
I don't really think there's such a thing as a pure-alp however, at the very least I have yet to hear anything to that end. sometimes alp info is a little like playing telephone with people who deliberately mess up the message to see what comes out the other end
As far as I know on witches however, when they say "create" I think it has something to do with the Tarnkappe legend I spoke of earlier. Just shooting into the dark with that one, since the witch element is rarely focused on. All I know is they often have them in their employ as nightmare revenge squads or somesuch. Whenever they've brought up witches, it was involving them using the alps and having them in their thrall, and getting after the witch simply called the dogs off so to speak.
In response to the question about dead adults, I think the implication by "dead relatives" is pretty much proof that they can come back as alps
In some tales, an alp is ghost-like in nature. I guess what counts is if it is the soul of that person returning rather than the actual body. Alps, when the person describing them bothers to go beyond animal forms and hats, are typically described as very pale and small, so I think some form of mutation isn't out of the question in this case. However, on occasion I have read some stories that had alps that were fully adult in appearance, at least enough for someone to want to marry after they were captured!Haha, sorry that half of this is "I think so, no, but yes! But no sometimes" I'll try and get back to you on this with a clearer mind. I try not to let my opinion of alps get in the way of what I've found out and have yet to find out
