The Nixie
“With the least possible cuts I want to make a new and neat image. I like to create surreal and undefinable images to offer the viewer his own interpretation. I prefer to display an atmosphere or mood instead of a definite story; mostly tinted with a nostalgic feeling due to the old material I prefer to use.” Cecily Grant
The Nixie, Nixy, Nix, Näcken, Nicor, Nøkk, or Nøkken
*The Nixie: Nix (singular: Neck; feminine: Nixie) shape-shifting water spirits who dwell in quiet rivers. From early German folklore, the Nixie is infamous for singing enchanted songs to lure human prey to watery deaths.
The trees rattle in a feverish dream but wake to stillness by the walking presence of The Nixie*. They are watching her intently but also looking after her. The sun has already begun to set revealing the rivers reflections of glassy distortions that paint their flow. The Nixies feet are callused yet gentle. She amours a velvet red dress, with lace forming delicately around the cuffs, and on top of her golden fair hair she wears a white hat. A hat which spirals up into two points which is met by a circle where a heart shape stone hangs. And from the top hangs scarf like cloth, which drapes lightly against her shoulders. Her face is sombre, with an almost concerned expression. But this is her home, you are entering her house with green for the walls, brown for the floor, and shifting blues for the ceiling.
The Nixies Monologue.
The Nixie drifts through a series of murmurs, hums and cold silences. The cycle continues for what could be the passage of 12 clouds overhead. She refrains from conversation. Her distant manner does not lock eyes with you, if they were to meet they’d only go through you. Despite the peculiar atmosphere she emantes, she bewitches one into a deep state of fascination and utter absorption. Unsure of what dream-like reality you have scumbled into, a childish curiosity overcomes you to not break the moment of magic. A voice begins to emerge from the wind, the Nixie begins to speak…
“…Oh fellow soul, I reach you through water to land. I can walk, and talk - and talk I will. Talk not of bores, aliments and incessant labels. Free me, free me oh free me! Woman nor man, often merely human, I am one. Alias! my peace be met by flowing water, with currents so promising and tempting. I’ll excuse its white froth n’ sulphur, It’s going somewhere after all. Come lay, float, paddle I don’t mind! Join the parade current, I’ll sing the patter to forgive your flesh for water and I’ll be yours. What a curious soul to watch and listen to me. How did we meet again? Come join if you please, to the riverbed and be.”
Clearly hurt, the Nixie finds solace in the water’s peace, where she can simply be nothing at all. Free. Yet still perilously temping the innocent and unknowing, is she menacing a trap?
Woman of Myth
A personal analysis of the Nixie by Cecily Grant
The Valerie Solanas of folklore; the Nixie.
(Nixie: From early German and Scandinavian folklore the Nixie is a fresh and saltwater creature, who dwell in quiet rivers ready to sing their song to lure people into a fatal watery end)
I argue that the Nixie is an early example of a feminist radical. In the stories the Nixie is said to have lured mostly men, through deception (and an essence of flirtation) into doom. We are presented with a solitary woman, cast from performing their motherly duty in the kingdom of care and affection, instead appearing to be performing cruel deathly spells. The sexist nature of early folklore most likely had to cast a woman alone, therefore angry, to drag people down behind her locks and hips. But I’d like to look at the myth as a water spirit to represent an abundance of emotions, imagining to almost physically swim through the tears, reaching dry land to experience rage, and letting energy turn red, allowing to experience all that has been unjust to form revenge.