In Mythology and Literature
In the Finnish Kalevala, Väinämöinen creates a kantele (string instrument) from the jawbone of the pike.
Russian mythology holds that the pike is one of several forms assumed by evil water spirits called vodyanoy, and a ravenous mythical pike is traditionally blamed for decimating the fish population in the Sheksna River. Russian fairy tales, on the other hand, also tell about an old wise pike that can fulfil wishes of the one who catches it, if its catcher releases it back into its habitat.
In the beginning of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's book, Monday Begins on Saturday, a wise centuries-old pike appears in the story when main character Sasha arrives at Baba Yaga's house in Solovets.
In the 10th episode of Monarch of the Glen series 3, Hector MacDonald fights a pike that has infiltrated his loch and has eaten all the fish.
In the book Redwall, Cluny the Scourge has only one eye, the other having been lost to a pike who was then killed by Cluny.
Read more about this topic: Esox
Famous quotes containing the words mythology and/or literature:
“The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)