The Hungry Grass

[My Good Babushka]

In Irish mythology, hungry grass (also known as fairy grass) is a patch of cursed grass. Anyone walking on it was doomed to perpetual and insatiable hunger. If a body was being ferried to a burial ground and momentarily set down to rest en route, that patch of grass would become cursed.
Alternately, a patch of ground would become cursed if it were over an unshriven corpse, one that had not received absolution before death.
Sometimes it was detached entirely from funerary custom and thought to have been planted by fairies.



This is an 8" x 10" original painting. Acrylic on acid free paper, illustrating one conception of the Hungry Grass mythology. The cursed victim stands on the back of a skeleton, unfurling from the skull is a banner announcing "Esurio" which is Latin for "to hunger". The victim claws at a cloud of imagined various victuals in a work inspired by medieval illumination and children's story book illustration. It's humorous and a bit creepy, I hope.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. So, that is how people develop Prader-Willi Syndrome! Interesting.

"... Characteristic of PWS is "low muscle tone, short stature, incomplete sexual development, cognitive disabilities, problem behaviors, and a chronic feeling of hunger that can lead to excessive eating and life-threatening obesity..."

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prader-Willi_syndrome

[My Good Babushka]

2. Oh, I've seen that illness

It is really, really heartbreaking.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. Yes, very debilitating. Did not mean to make light of it by any means. Just that your

myth and illustration reminded me of it, is all.

Since that illustration has your User Name on it, I assume it is another one of yours.

[My Good Babushka]

4. Yes, I like to research weird folk lore

and then make art about it. It's my thing.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. very cool thing you have going.