Anjana

At midnight on the first night of spring, the anjanas climb to the high pastures of the Cantabrian mountains, join hands, and dance in a ring until dawn. At the centre of the circle sits a heap of roses. When the light comes they scatter the flowers along the mountain paths, and any walker who later finds one with petals of green, blue, purple or gold will be happy until the day of their death. One tradition places the gathering at Fuente Dé, beneath the great limestone wall at the head of the Liébana valley, where the fairies trade news of the year and keep their sisterhood strong. Then they go back to work.

The anjanas are the good fairies of Cantabria, on Spain’s green northern coast, and no other being in the region’s folklore stars in so many stories. The name grew out of jana, a medieval word for women who worked magic, and in the valleys along the Asturian border, where the legends cluster thickest, they answer to other names besides: insanas, xinsanes, ijianas. The folklorist Manuel Llano, who walked those western valleys collecting stories in the early twentieth century, found them at every hearth. Their relatives stretch across the whole Iberian north, from the xanas of Asturias and the janas of León to the lamias of the Basque Country, and some hear an older echo further off, in the lamias of Greece.

From a distance an anjana could pass for a young woman of unusual beauty. Up close the scale is wrong. The stories disagree on how wrong: half a metre tall in the most common telling, barely a hand’s height in others. Her skin is very white, her eyes slanted and calm, black or blue or green depending on the teller and bright as stars in all of them. Her hair falls in long braids, jet black or gold, threaded with coloured silk ribbons and crowned with wild flowers. She wears a long white tunic and over it a cape of sky blue worked with gold thread, exchanged for a black one when winter comes. Many accounts give her wings, thin and nearly transparent; some give her none at all. Most agree on a mark on her forehead, shaped like a cross or a star, and nearly all agree on the scent. An anjana smells wonderful, so strongly that lost travellers have followed the fragrance out of the trees before ever seeing her.

Her voice is sweet to the point of music, and she loves to sing, though the repertoire is short. They know only two songs, one joyful and one very sad, and dawn or dusk is the best hour to catch either. In her hand she carries a staff of wicker or hawthorn, crowned with a star of wood or of pure light, that shines a different colour every day of the week. The staff does most of the work: its light guides night travellers, its touch quiets a frightened or wounded animal, and a knock on the ground brings a new spring welling up through dry earth. For everything else there is the flask she carries, holding a medicine that cures any illness in people or in beasts.

An anjana makes her home in a cave near running water, beside a river, a pool or a spring, and fits it out like a palace, with floors of gold and walls of silver and wild flowers planted and tended at the mouth. The treasure heaped inside is not for her. It goes to the needy, or it waits as bait in tests of human character, granted to the honest and withheld from the grasping. On mild afternoons she walks the forest paths and rests on the banks of streams, talking with the water, which is said to run livelier and clearer for the conversation.

Her errands follow a steady pattern. She rewards the generous, leaving gifts at the doors of kind households in the dark. She punishes the selfish, and the punishment is shrewdly chosen: hives and a maddening itch. To learn who deserves which, anjanas put on the shape of old women and walk the villages, watching how people treat a bent stranger at the door. They help the poor, the grieving, lovers kept apart, and anyone lost in the woods, and on the night of January 5, once every four years in most tellings and yearly in a few districts, they come down from their caves with toys and sweets for the children of poor families. Cantabrians kept rhymes for calling them, verses asking the anjana of compassion to ease the heart, and she answers if the asker is good. If not, not.

All of this is one half of a war. Cantabrian mythology runs on a single axis, with the anjanas at one end and the ojáncanos at the other, one-eyed giants of huge strength, tangled beards and ferocious temper whose purpose is ruin. Where the giant has passed, the anjanas arrive after: trees wrenched out by the roots are set upright and replanted, hurt animals are gathered and touched with the staff, buried springs are knocked open again. They cannot always prevent the harm. They can almost always mend it. Their priorities in the work are firm and a little humbling, animals first, people second.

Where they came from depends on which layer of the tradition is cut into. The older stories make them spirits of the trees, caretakers of the forests they live in. A later version, with the fingerprints of Christianity all over it, says they are beings sent down from heaven to do good on earth for four hundred years, after which they return to the sky and never come back. The writer Juan Carlos Cabria has argued for a deeper root beneath both: a mother goddess of the Iron Age Cantabrians, a power of forests and rivers slowly whittled down across the centuries into a crowd of small kind fairies haunting exactly the places where the goddess was once worshipped. The theory cannot be proven. It fits suspiciously well.

Their powers run wide: healing, invisibility, the speech of animals, and a shapeshifter’s freedom to become any person, animal, plant or object, which is how they do their judging unseen. The limits are stranger than the strengths. An anjana lives about four centuries, feeds on honey and wild fruit, and is bound the whole time by her own goodness, obliged to answer worthy askers and to mend whatever the giants break. And one door is closed to her absolutely. If she marries a human man, her beauty and youth fall away and she becomes an old woman, the very shape she once borrowed as a disguise, this time for good.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Anjana?

An Anjana is a benevolent fairy from Cantabrian mythology in northern Spain. Anjanas protect forests, animals, and people, rewarding kindness and punishing selfishness, and they serve as the good counterforce to the cruel one-eyed giant Ojáncanu.

What does an Anjana look like?

An Anjana looks like a tiny, beautiful woman, around half a metre tall in most accounts, with pale skin, serene slanted eyes, and long black or golden braids decorated with silk ribbons and wildflowers. She wears a white tunic with a sky-blue cape, often has nearly transparent wings, and carries a staff topped with a star that shines a different colour each day of the week.

What is the enemy of the Anjanas?

The enemy of the Anjanas is the Ojáncanu, a destructive one-eyed giant of Cantabrian mythology. Anjanas repair the damage the Ojáncanu causes by replanting uprooted trees, healing injured animals, and protecting people from his rampages.

What powers do Anjanas have?

Anjanas can heal any illness with a magical flask of medicine, turn invisible, understand the language of animals, and shapeshift into any person, animal, plant, or object. Their star-tipped staff guides lost travellers with its light, calms frightened animals at a touch, and makes new springs flow when struck against the ground.

Do Anjanas bring gifts to children?

Yes. On the night of January 5, the eve of Three Kings Day, Anjanas leave their caves to bring toys and sweets to the children of poor families, traditionally once every four years, though in some parts of Cantabria the visit is said to happen every year. They also leave gifts at the doors of kind people during their ordinary village rounds.

Related Entries

Ojáncanu, Cantabrian Mythology, Trenti, Cuelebre, Ramidreju, Sirenuca, Xana, Lamiak, Mari, Basajaun, Aatxe, Aloja, Enchanted Moura, Duende, Lamia