With a name like Jenny Greenteeth, it’s not surprising that she’s a bit cranky. “You’re overreacting,” her parents said, “you’ll just end up changing it when you get married.”

Green skin. Mangy, tattered hair. Crazy eyes. Sharp teeth clogged with duckweed. Hobbies: snatching children off riverbanks; drowning snatched children; sand art.

Maybe she could talk Florida’s Skunk Ape into some sort of Green Card marriage, but otherwise…

You get the picture. Jenny Greenteeth is one of those oh-so-frequent folkloric inventions conjured up to save children from drowning, all the while saving parents from actual parenting. Fittingly, the name “Jenny Greenteeth” is also used colloquially to refer to duckweed, which can completely cover a pond’s surface, giving the illusion of solid, mossy earth. (Greenteeth is also accused of purloining wandering senior citizens. Given Britain’s spotty eldercare history, one can only assume that this aspect of Jenny’s legacy justified the “not neglecting… protecting” mentality that found England unveiling the first-ever cure for dementia – a kitchen chair in a locked closet.) While Jenny is said to haunt most of Britain’s ponds, rivers and lakes, she does have a cousin, Peg Powler, whose soul charge is the River Tees, and whose dossier – from appearance to skills to special commendations awarded – is identical to Jenny’s.

As if Britain’s waterways weren’t packed full enough with malicious murder-happy ghouls, Jenny and Peg have roommates – a pack of slimy cephalopoid gremlins knows as Grindylows. “So, what do the Grindylows do?” Well, pretty much the same thing as Jenny and Peg – assault and drown careless children. “So… why does Britain need both? Aren’t they kind of bogarting all the water monsters? No wonder America just has a metric buttload of smelly dino-serpents.” Yeah, I know. And the stupid Loveland Frog… what the hell is up him? Still, a lot of British folklore experts have suggested that the Grindylows are the real mythic Scared Straight anti-drowning constituents, while Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler actually represent lingering cultural guilt at the giant island’s human sacrifice-happy pagan past. Greenteeth and Powler, then, are ghosts of women come to seek vengeance on the offspring of the architects of a modern society built from hair and skin and blood and bones.

Granted, none of this really sounds like the Storm Hag’s M.O. – she thinks big, has a flair for the theatrical and tends towards full-on disaster rather than individual tragedy. What I conveniently didn’t mention in Monday’s post is that some versions of the Storm Hag legend refer to Lake Erie’s beastly biddy as none other than Jenny Greenteeth. Same name, new flavor. It’s understandable why this legend, originating from a British shipwreck, is associated with one of Britain’s most ubiquitous water spirits, but what about the Great Lakes suggests the presence of forces outside the eco- and meteorological?

Friday: The Great Lakes Triangle

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