Mythical creatures of Greece and Europe
Griffins, sirens, selkies and Baba Yaga: what the oldest texts and folk collections say about each creature, how its picture changed, and where it turns up in heraldry.
Test yourself: Mythical creatures of Greece and Europe quiz
Greek monsters
- MinotaurThe bull-headed man of Greek myth: the son of Queen Pasiphae of Crete and a bull, shut in the Labyrinth that Daedalus built, and killed there by Theseus.
- CentaurA creature of Greek myth with a man’s head, arms and chest on a horse’s body, best known from the centaurs’ drunken fight with the Lapiths and from Cheiron, the wise centaur who taught Achilles.
- ChimeraThe fire-breathing monster of Lycia in Greek myth, a lion in front, a goat in the middle and a serpent behind, killed by Bellerophon riding Pegasus.
- HydraThe many-headed water serpent of the marshes of Lerna in Greek myth, which grew two heads for every one cut off and was killed by Heracles as one of his labours.
- HarpyIn Greek myth, the snatchers: storm winds that carried people off, later pictured as foul birds with women’s faces who stole the food of the blind king Phineus.
- SirenThe singers of the Odyssey whose song drew sailors to their deaths, painted by the Greeks as birds with women’s heads and later merged with the mermaid.
- PegasusThe winged horse of Greek myth, born from the neck of Medusa when Perseus beheaded her, tamed by Bellerophon and later the steed of the Muses and a common charge in heraldry.
Beasts of the bestiaries and heraldry
- GriffinA creature with the head, wings and fore-claws of an eagle and the body of a lion: in Greek writers the guardian of gold in the far north, and in heraldry one of the commonest beasts, standing for strength and vigilance.
- PhoenixThe bird of classical legend that lives for centuries, one at a time, and is reborn from its own death; in Christian writing a figure of the resurrection, and in heraldry a bird rising from flames.
- UnicornA horse-like beast with a single horn on its forehead, described by Greek and Roman writers as an untameable animal of India, made a figure of Christ and purity in the Middle Ages, and the national animal of Scotland’s royal arms.
- ManticoreA man-eating beast of ancient report with a lion’s body, a man’s face with three rows of teeth, and a tail with a scorpion’s sting; in heraldry the mantiger.
- Basilisk and cockatriceThe “little king” of serpents, which ancient and medieval writers said could kill with its breath or its look, and the cockatrice, its medieval double, a two-legged dragon with a cock’s head.
- WyvernA winged dragon with only two legs, a creature of heraldry: in English arms the two-legged wyvern and the four-legged dragon are different beasts.
Scottish and Irish folklore
- SelkieIn the folklore of Orkney, Shetland and the Scottish islands, a seal that can take off its skin and live on land as a man or woman, and must return to the sea if it finds the skin again.
- KelpieIn Scottish folklore, a water spirit in the shape of a horse that lures travellers onto its back and carries them into its pool to drown.
- BansheeIn Irish folklore, a woman of the fairies whose wailing at night is heard before a death in one of the old families.
- ChangelingIn the folklore of Ireland, Germany and the Slavic lands, a fairy child, or a bewitched stand-in, left in the cradle when the fairies steal a human baby.
Slavic folklore
- Baba YagaThe witch of Russian and Slavic fairy tales, who lives in the forest in a hut on hen’s legs, rides through the air in a mortar steered with a pestle, and eats people, but sometimes helps the hero.
- LeshyThe forest spirit of Russian and Slavic folklore, an old man of the woods who can grow as tall as the trees or as small as the grass, guards the forest and its animals, and leads travellers astray.
- RusalkaA water spirit of Slavic folklore, the soul of a drowned girl or an unbaptized child, who lives in lakes and rivers, sits in the trees at the start of summer, and lures people into the water.
About mythical creatures of Greece and Europe
Griffins, sirens, selkies and Baba Yaga: each page here starts from the oldest text we could read about the creature, whether a Greek poem, a Roman natural history, a medieval bestiary or a folk tale taken down from a storyteller, then follows how its picture changed and where it went on to appear. Many became something their first tellers would not recognise. Homer’s Sirens are voices singing in a meadow; Greek artists painted them as birds with women’s heads, and a medieval bestiary gave them a fish’s tail. The phoenix of Herodotus and Ovid dies quietly in a nest of spices, and only in the bestiaries does it burn.
Greek monsters
The Minotaur, the centaurs, the Chimera, the Hydra, the Harpies, the Sirens and Pegasus come from Homer, Hesiod, Apollodorus and Ovid. Hesiod makes several of them one family: Cerberus, the Hydra of Lerna and the fire-breathing Chimera. Medusa, from whose neck Pegasus sprang, has her own page among the Greek gods.
Bestiary beasts and heraldry
Pliny counted griffins and sirens among his “fabulous birds” and was not sure the phoenix existed. The bestiaries of the Middle Ages kept them all and read them as lessons: in the Aberdeen Bestiary the phoenix rising from its ashes is a figure of Christ. Heralds then put them on shields. The griffin appears on an English seal of 1167, and the unicorn, the wyvern, the cockatrice, the phoenix and the manticore followed.
Scotland and Ireland
The selkie and the kelpie come from the collections of Scottish island and Highland belief made by J. G. Campbell and Walter Gregor; the banshee and the changeling from the Irish collections of Thomas Crofton Croker, Lady Wilde and W. B. Yeats.
Slavic folklore
Baba Yaga, the leshy and the rusalka come from the Russian tales and songs gathered by Alexander Afanasyev, read here in the translations of W. R. S. Ralston and Leonard Magnus. The pages treat them as figures of folk belief.
What is not here
Cerberus, the hound of Hades, is described on the Hades page. Sea serpents, lake monsters and modern sightings are in Cryptids and folklore creatures. The creatures of China and Japan, including the Chinese bird that English also calls a phoenix, belong to collections of their own, and creatures from living Native American traditions are not treated here as monsters.
Sources
- The Odyssey of Homer (tr. Butcher and Lang), Homer, The Odyssey, translated by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang (1879), Project Gutenberg eBook #1728, Project Gutenberg, Book XII
- Siren (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Siren”, online edition (archived copy), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
- Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (John Vinycomb, 1906), John Vinycomb, Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art, with Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), Project Gutenberg, The Mermaid or Siren, p. 247; Griffin or Gryphon, p. 147
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books VIII–XV (tr. Henry T. Riley), Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Henry T. Riley (1851), Project Gutenberg eBook #26073, Project Gutenberg, Book XV
- Herodotus, Histories 2.73 (tr. A. D. Godley), Herodotus, The Histories, translated by A. D. Godley (1920), 2.73, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, 2.73
- Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 55r (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 55r, “The Phoenix”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Of the phoenix
- Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 55v (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 55v, “Phoenix, cont.”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Phoenix, continued
- Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Theogony, lines 270–332
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 10.70 (tr. Bostock and Riley), Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855), book X, chapter 70, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Book X, chapter 70
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 10.2 (tr. Bostock and Riley), Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855), book X, chapter 2, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Book X, chapter 2
- Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (J. G. Campbell, 1900), John Gregorson Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, Collected Entirely from Oral Sources (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1900), Project Gutenberg, Preface and The Water-Horse
- Russian Folk-Tales (A. N. Afanasyev, tr. Leonard A. Magnus, 1915), A. N. Afanas’ev, Russian Folk-Tales, translated from the Russian by Leonard A. Magnus (London: Kegan Paul, 1915), Project Gutenberg, Introduction
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research