Hag

A hag is a wizened old woman, or a kind of fairy or goddess having the appearance of such a woman, often found in folklore and children's tales such as Hansel and Gretel. Hags are often seen as malevolent, but may also be one of the chosen forms of shapeshifting deities, such as the Morrígan or Badb, who are seen as neither wholly beneficent nor malevolent.

Etymology

The term appears in Middle English, and was a shortening of hægtesse, an Old English term for witch, similarly the Dutch heks and German Hexe are also shortenings, of the Middle Dutch haghetisse and Old High German hagzusa respectively. All these words derive from the Proto-Germanic *hagatusjon- which is of unknown origin, however the first element may be related to the word "hedge". As a stock character in fairy or folk tale, the hag shares characteristics with the crone, and the two words are sometimes used as if interchangeable.

Using the word "hag" to translate terms found in non-English (or non-modern English) is contentious, since use of the word is often associated with a misogynistic attitude.

Hag (album)

Hag is an album by Merle Haggard released on Capitol Records in 1971. It became his fifth album to top the Billboard country album charts. It also reached number 66 on the pop albums chart.

History

Hag was Haggard's first album with a majority of original songs in two years, following two tribute albums (to Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills) and two live albums in 1969 and 1970. While Hag spawned no #1 hits, it did include three singles that went to number 3. In his 2013 book The Running Kind, Haggard biographer David Cantwell contends that Hag is was "the most sustained and closest-to-coherent political statement of his career...The world Hag portrays on Hag is one teetering on the brink. From atop some middle-American watchtower, Merle delivers a nearly despairing state of the union." The album opens with the Ernest Tubb World War II era-hit "Soldier's Last Letter," a song that took on a new relevance in 1971 with America's continued involvement in the Vietnam War. Haggard addresses social issues plaguing the country at home, such as street violence ("Jesus Take Hold") and homelessness ("Sidewalks of Chicago"). The LP also contains some of Haggard's most delicately sung love songs, such as the melancholy "Shelly's Winter Love" and "The Farmer's Daughter." Haggard would rerecord "No Reason to Quit" for his 1983 duet album Pancho and Lefty with Willie Nelson.

Hagfish

Hagfish, the class Myxini (also known as Hyperotreti), are eel-shaped, slime-producing marine fish (occasionally called slime eels). They are the only known living animals that have a skull but no vertebral column. Along with lampreys, hagfish are jawless; they are the sister group to vertebrates, and living hagfish remain similar to hagfish from around 300 million years ago.

The classification of hagfish has been controversial. The issue is whether the hagfish is itself a degenerate type of vertebrate-fish (most closely related to lampreys), or else may represent a stage which precedes the evolution of the vertebral column (as do lancelets). The original scheme groups hagfish and lampreys together as cyclostomes (or historically, Agnatha), as the oldest surviving class of vertebrates alongside gnathostomes (the now-ubiquitous jawed vertebrates). An alternative scheme proposed that jawed vertebrates are more closely related to lampreys than to hagfish (i.e., that vertebrates include lampreys but exclude hagfish), and introduces the category craniata to group vertebrates near hagfish. Recent DNA evidence has supported the original scheme.