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Old Belief
← Para
Figure built from a ball of grey yarn wound onto wooden sticks, standing on spindle legs on a workbench by a window, a bowl and whittled sticks beside it. A para, the milk-stealing familiar of Finnish belief.

the made body

This is the thing itself and not its ingredients: yarn wound onto sticks, a spindle for a leg, and nothing in it that was not already in the house. It was made at a table like this one, by someone who lived there.

Basis: The recorded construction of the familiar · AI-generated

About the Para

A creature somebody built: yarn, wood and a spindle, brought to life to steal milk from the neighbours and bring it home.

  • Finnish Literature Society, Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot (SKVR) (1908)The oral record, including the charms and the accusations attached to milk failures.
  • Martti Haavio, Suomalainen mytologia (1967)The standard synthesis, which places the para among the household beings and the wealth-bringing familiars.

Read the full Para entry →

More of this creature

Large hooped wooden tub filled to the rim with milk standing on a stone floor, its round lid set aside on a stool and pails beside it. A churn full of milk a para is said to have carried home.the churn that fills itself →Ball of grey yarn, a turned wooden spindle and two bound wooden sticks lying on a pale workbench with a wisp of straw behind them. The materials a para is built from.yarn wood and a spindle →Empty wooden milking pail hanging from a chain in a dim byre, a milking stool on the strawed floor beside it and the stall beyond it dark and empty. The dry cow a para is blamed for.the cow that gave nothing →

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