Waythe (Scrye Mythology)

Among the Scrye peoples, Waythe (pronounced wayth; "death" or "to die") is the personification of death, serving as the protector of the dead, the keeper of their spirit, and a guide in Xabyss ("Hell" or "Netherworld"). He is portrayed as a winged angelic young man who appears before the living at the moment of death, and assists the souls as they cross the threshold to the spirit world.

A rarely alluded figure, he has appeared only in three canonical texts and one of the epigraphs to the Khyal Cycle, a work of the Una Ilek. He is also mentioned in a footnote in one of the works of Laias the Elder in the 1300s AD. Some of the Scrye believe that he has more than one form (a melnee), each of them linked with a specific type of death. One of the only instances in which Waythe actually appears in person is in the story of an individual named Morsan the Black, whose death is described in both the Khyal Cycle and the Laias' Prophecies. Waythe appears to the tribal leader to explain his visions of death and the afterlife and to ask Morsan to allow his spirit to enter the afterlife without fear. Morsan agrees and the two spirits meet.

Later versions of Waythe in the Khyal Cycle refer to him by name rather than by his role as the one who sees the death of others. In the earliest known version, dated to around 500 BC, he is called Pemthe. In a later revision, the name of the figure has been changed to Thaymeenor (Thammeen, meaning "guide"). The text is not clear on the name change, which may be the result of confusion over Thammeenor's exact title as the "one who sees the deaths".

In art

Numerous pieces of artwork, both ancient and modern, have depicted Waythe in some form. The earliest dated example is a 4th-century BC relief discovered in Skaus Spela in the Northern Isles which shows a winged figure with a raven's head (identified as Waythe in later research) sitting beside a boat. A 9th-century AD Scrye poem, The Vision of Deirdre, refers to both Waythe and Saek ("Sadness") in the story of Deirdre's suicide. They appear to him in human form and teach him the "mysteries of peace". Waythe was also depicted in the 7th-century Orkneyinga saga and other religious sources as the carrier of tribal leader Einher the Wolf-Man, whose death was recorded in the sagas. In these stories, which are transcribed both through texts and modern (1600s-present) art portray Waythe as a solemn youth with "long, very straight raven-black hair, attired in a garb of blacks rimmed in golds that hung on his thin frame. His massive fluttering wings seemed rather to have been painted in, and not worn as a natural attribute of the body."