Maski'-k'su, the Penobscot toad woman, a small woman clothed in green moss with a cedar bark belt, seen from a canoe on a Maine river after ice-out

Maski’-k’su (Toad Woman)

Also Known As: Maski’ksu, Toad Creature, Toad Woman
Region/Culture: Penobscot, Maine, North America
Mythos: Abenaki Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: A small female woods spirit clothed in moss, who takes children and cannot help but harm them.
Mythical Attributes: Clothing of green moss sheets belted with a strip of cedar bark; the ability to appear in the form of a partridge; a nursing touch that brings a sleep with no waking.
Role in Mythos: One of the beings of the Penobscot wilderness recorded by Frank Speck, and part of a cluster of lonely female forest spirits who call to men and children from beyond the firelight.
Relation to Humans: She lingers near camps where there are children and cries for their company. Her intentions are described as good; the harm she does is involuntary.

She is about two and a half feet tall, very dark skinned, and dressed in sheets of green moss belted with a strip of cedar bark. John Mitchell and his father saw one of these little women from a canoe, not long after the ice went out, sitting on a grassy place along the shore and humming quietly to herself. That is the whole of the sighting as it was told to the anthropologist Frank Speck in the 1910s and published by him in 1935. There is no chase, no confrontation, and no escape. Two men paddled past a small woman singing to herself on a riverbank, and remembered it.

Her name is Maski’-k’su, which Speck renders “toad creature, smelly,” and which he notes is also translated as “tempting eyes toward women.” She belongs to the Penobscot, the Wabanaki people of the Penobscot River valley in what is now Maine, and she appears in Speck’s catalogue of the supernatural creatures of the wilderness — a list of eighteen beings that includes under-water dwarfs, cannibal giants, a frog large enough to drink a river dry, and the small clay-modelling river people called the Wanageméswak.

What she wants is children. Speck’s description is short enough to quote almost whole: she is “a seducer of men and children,” she “lingers near camps where children are, and cries for child companionship,” and “should a child go to her she nurses and fondles it, but, though her intentions are good, an involuntary baleful influence soothes it into a sleep from which there is no awakening.” She is also said to appear in the form of a partridge.

That single sentence is doing something more unusual than it first appears. This is not a monster that eats children, and it is not a trickster that steals them for spite. Speck is explicit that she means no harm at all. The child dies because being held by her is fatal, in the way that cold is fatal — not as a punishment, and not as a plan. The horror in the story is that her longing and her lethality are the same gesture. She is lonely, she picks the child up, and the child does not wake.

She is not alone in that. Speck records her alongside two other female forest beings, and the resemblance between them is close enough that he remarks on it himself. Skwak”temus, the swamp woman, is “clad only in moss, with long flowing moss-hair covering her form,” and is heard moaning in lonely stretches of forest. Pskégdemus — whom Speck says is evidently the same being — “constantly longs for men and children” and wails near camps to draw hunters away; a man who pities her never comes back, and a man who merely commiserates with her never wants to marry. Read together, the three are variations on one figure: a woman made of moss and grief, somewhere out past the edge of the light, calling.

The partridge detail is easy to skip past and worth holding onto. A partridge flushing from cover is one of the loudest, most startling things in a northern forest, and a drumming male is a sound that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A being who is a woman crying for children and also a bird that explodes out of the undergrowth is a being built out of exactly what a person actually experiences walking in those woods.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Maski’-k’su?

Maski’-k’su is a small female woods spirit of Penobscot tradition, recorded by the anthropologist Frank G. Speck in “Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs” (1935). Her name is translated as “toad creature, smelly,” and she is described as clothed in green moss with a belt of cedar bark, lingering near camps and crying for the company of children.

Is Maski’-k’su dangerous?

She is lethal but not malicious, which is the unusual part. Speck states plainly that her intentions are good, and that the harm is an “involuntary baleful influence”: a child she nurses and fondles falls into a sleep from which there is no awakening. She does not hunt, threaten or bargain.

Why is she called a toad?

The Penobscot name itself carries the sense of a toad and of a smell; Speck gives it as “toad creature, smelly.” No source describes her as physically toad-shaped. The sighting Speck records describes a woman about two and a half feet tall with very dark skin, so the toad in the name appears to be a matter of category and character rather than of literal appearance.

What other forms does she take?

Speck records one: she “is said also to appear in the form of a partridge.”

How is she related to the Swamp Woman?

She is a separate entry in Speck’s catalogue, but a closely related one. Skwak”temus, the swamp woman, and Pskégdemus are both moss-clad female beings who cry in the forest and long for human company, and Speck notes that those two are evidently the same being. Maski’-k’su shares the moss clothing and the longing for children, but has her own name, her own nursing motif and her own partridge form.

Was she known outside the Penobscot?

The attestation we can verify is Penobscot and comes through a single ethnographic source. Related lonely-woman and moss-clad forest spirits appear elsewhere in Wabanaki tradition, but claims that tie this specific name to other peoples should be treated with caution.