Nang Tani

Also Known As: Phi Tani, Phrai Tani, นางตานี; “Lady of the Tani”
Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Thai Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: A banana-tree spirit who stays hidden in the clump by day, shows herself on full-moon nights, gives alms to monks, and turns on men who have wronged women.
Role in Mythos: She is the tutelary spirit of the wild kluai tani banana, one of the nang mai or ladies of the wood, who blesses the reverent and punishes the cruel within the ground her clump occupies.
Relation to Humans: Villagers tie coloured cloth around her banana trunks and leave sweets, incense, and flowers to keep her favour and avoid felling her tree. She is mostly gentle and even generous, but she is feared by dishonest and abusive men, who are the ones she is said to harm.

The wild banana grows where no one planted it, along the ditches at the edge of the rice fields and out at the margins of the village where the houses stop. On the night of the full moon its broad leaves hang still even when the air is moving everywhere else. That stillness is the first thing people notice. The second is a young woman standing among the trunks in a green wrap, her skin the pale green of an unripe leaf and her lips the deep red of a ripe ivy gourd, her long black hair loose down her back. Her feet do not quite touch the ground.

This is Nang Tani, the lady of the tani banana, one of the nang mai, the ladies of the wood who live inside certain trees in Thailand. Her sister spirit Nang Takian keeps to the reds and browns of hardwood; Nang Tani wears green, the colour of the plant she belongs to. That plant is the kluai tani, a wild banana that carries seeds and bears no fruit worth eating. Farmers do not plant it and will not let it stand in the yard around a house, though its leaves are still cut to wrap sweets and its flower goes into old remedies. It comes up on its own at the roadside and the field’s edge, and where a clump of it grows untouched for years, people begin to say that someone is living there.

Where she comes from, the stories do not agree. In the most common telling she is the spirit of a young woman who died badly, often one betrayed or abandoned by a man, who settled into the banana clump instead of moving on. In another she is less a returning ghost than the resident soul of the tree itself, the banana’s own presence wearing a face, and was never human at all. The two ideas sit side by side without much trouble. In practice she is treated as both at once, a dead woman with a grievance and a green growing thing that must not be cut.

Most nights nothing happens. She stays inside the tree and the clump is only a clump. On the nights she does come out, the encounters people repeat are oddly gentle. A monk walking out before dawn to collect alms finds a young woman waiting by the bananas who steps forward, sets food in his bowl, and is gone by the time he lifts his head to give thanks. More often than not she is a giver rather than a taker, and that is part of why she is loved rather than only feared.

Her anger, when it comes, has a target. Nang Tani is dangerous to men, and above all to men who have used women badly: the seducer who leaves, the liar, the husband who beats his wife. Such a man who blunders into her clump at the wrong hour may not come out of it. She was one of those women once. The banana grove is where the account is settled, and the settling is quiet.

Because of this she is courted rather than merely avoided. A clump known to be hers wears a length of coloured satin knotted around a trunk, sometimes several, and at the base people leave incense, flowers, garlands, and small sweets. To cut such a tree, or clear the ground it stands on, is asking for misfortune, and the careful thing is to make an offering first and explain oneself. This shades into a wider Thai Buddhist practice in which a monk may ordain a tree outright, winding it in saffron robe-cloth so that felling it becomes an offence against the robe. The spirit and the religion end up guarding the same trunk from opposite sides.

Her modern face owes a great deal to the cinema. Phraya Anuman Rajadhon, the first Thai scholar to study the country’s village ghosts in earnest, observed that most Thai people carry an image of these spirits that came not from the old spoken tales but from the films that dramatized them, and Nang Tani is a clear example. The green costume, the glamorous pallor, the red mouth, the hovering feet, the lower body that trails off into a wisp of the trunk in some retellings: much of this belongs to a 1967 hit and the horror pictures and comics that came after it. What the older belief holds to is plainer and stranger, a presence in the banana clump, felt before it is seen, that is female and easily slighted and owed respect.

Her power is the power of a place. Inside her clump she is at home and hard to refuse, able to appear and vanish, to feed a monk or to close over a cruel man like still water. Outside it she is much smaller. She does not range across the district or chase anyone over open ground, and her reach ends more or less where the banana leaves end. She can be bought off with cloth and sweets and a few soft words, which cannot be said of every angry ghost. And she carries the weakness of anything rooted, her life tangled up with the plant, so that a person willing to swallow the bad luck can still put a blade to it. The cloth tied around the trunk is there, in the end, to make sure no one does.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Nang Tani?

Nang Tani is a female tree spirit of Thai folklore who lives in clumps of wild banana trees, one of a class of tree spirits called nang mai, the “ladies of the wood.” She appears as a beautiful young woman in green with a greenish complexion, red lips, and long black hair, most often on full-moon nights.

Where does Nang Tani live?

Nang Tani lives in the wild kluai tani banana (Musa), a seed-bearing variety whose fruit is not edible and which is not cultivated in gardens. These clumps grow on their own at the outskirts of villages, along roadsides, and at the edges of fields, away from houses, which is where she is said to appear.

Is Nang Tani good or evil?

Nang Tani is mostly benevolent and gentle, and is even said to give food as alms to passing Buddhist monks. She becomes dangerous mainly to men who have wronged women, such as unfaithful or abusive men, whom she is believed to harm if they enter her banana clump.

Why do people tie coloured cloth around banana trees in Thailand?

People tie lengths of coloured satin or silk cloth around banana trunks to honour and appease Nang Tani, and they leave offerings of incense, flowers, and sweets at the base. Cutting down a tree from a clump she inhabits is considered a bad omen, so the cloth marks the tree as hers and asks for her goodwill.

What kind of banana tree is Nang Tani associated with?

Nang Tani is associated specifically with the kluai tani, a wild banana that bears seeds and inedible fruit rather than a cultivated eating variety. Because of its link to the spirit, people avoid growing it near their homes, though its leaves are still used to wrap sweets and its flower in traditional medicine.