Summoning Faeries- spells and practices

‘Good Morning‘ by Estella Canziani

In a much earlier post on summoning spells, I examined some of the methods that have been used to bring fairies before you.  During my researches, I’ve come across a few more, which are presented here now.

Broadly, there seem to be two ways in which it is possible to summon fairies into your presence.  One involves the use of a crystal ball and the conjuring of the faery with the correct words; the other exploits the faeries’ own magic or glamour to override their invisibility and expose them to our view.

Crystal Balls

The first method was the one adopted by many magicians and seers, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when efforts to contact spirits of different kinds by these means seem to have been at their peak.  One of the leading English practitioners was William Lilly, who describes some of the methods used in his History of His Life and Times.  He tells us that he knew two skilled seers.  One was a woman called Sara Skelhorn who practiced in the Gray’s Inn Road in London.  She contacted beings she described as angels through her crystal ball and gained information from them.  In fact, Sara seems to have been rather too good at this.  Late in her life, she complained to Lilly how the angels wouldn’t go away, but followed her around her house until she was weary of their presence.

The other conjurer he knew was a woman called Ellen Evans, who summoned up the fairy queen using her ball and a summoning spell, that began “O Micol! O Micol! Regina pigmeorum veni…”  (Micol, come, queen of the pygmies [fairies]).  This line is evidently the start of a much longer invocation, and I have discussed before the sorts of lengthy charm that was usually required.  You’ll also note that it seemed necessary to invoke the faes in Latin; I’ve examined the question of fairy language several times before- and there’s little basis for thinking they spoke as the Romans did- but Latin as a learned language seemed very suitable for these charms at the time.

Here’s an example summoning ritual from Percy’s Reliques (III, 263).  It’s titled “an excellent way to get a fayrie.” :

“First, get a broad square christall or Venice glasse, in length and breadth three inches. Then lay that glasse or christall in the blood of a white henne, three Wednesdayes or three Fridayes. Then take it out and wash it with holy aqua [water], and fumigate it. Then take three hazle sticks, or wands, of an yeare groth ; pill [peel] them fayre and white ; and make them soe longe as you write the spiritt’s name, or fayrie’s name, which you call three times on every stick being made flatt on one side. Then bury them under some hill, whereat you suppose fayries haunt, the Wednesday before you call her: and the Friday followinge take them uppe and call her at eight, or three, or ten of the clocke, which be good planetts and houres for that turne ; but when you call be in cleane life and turne thy face towards the East, and when you have her bind her in that stone and glasse”

At this point Lilly goes on to warn readers that the spirits won’t appear for everyone.  They prefer people of “strict diet and upright life,” which is what he means by his reference to “cleane life:” a ritual cleansing in advance is recommended.  Moreover, even if they do appear, it will often transpire that the magician is not suited to the experience.  As Lilly says, even those of undaunted character and firm resolution can be astonished and trembling “nor can many endure their glorious aspects.”  However much you may desire to see the faery queen, therefore, the reality may be overwhelming.

Glamour

The second way to see fairies is to use their magic against them.  A seventeenth century spell book in the Bodleian library in Oxford contains a variety of faery related spells, including ‘To call Oberon into a crystal stone’ but the one I wish to discuss is called ‘Experimentum optimum verissimum for the fairies.”  It sets out a lengthy and complex procedure, which I reproduce for you here:

“In the night before the newe moone, or the same night, or the night after the newe moone, or els the night before the full moone, the night of the full, or the night after the full moone, goe to the house where the fairies mayds doe use and provide you a fayre and cleane buckett, or payle cleane washt, with cleere water therein and sett yt by the chimney syde or where fyre is made, and having a fayre newe towel or one cleane washt by, and so departe till the morning; then be thou the first that shall come to the buckett or water before the sonne ryse, and take yt to the light, that you find upon the water a whyte ryme, like rawe milk or grease, take yt by with a silver spoone, and put yt into a cleane sawcer; then the next night following come to the same house agayne before 11 of the clocke at night, making a good fire with sweet woods and sett upon the table a newe towel or one cleane washt and upon yt 3 fyne loaves of new mangett [fine wheat bread], 3 newe knyves with whyte haftes and a newe cuppe fulle of newe ale, then sett your selfe downe by the fyre in a chaire with your face towards the table and anonynt your eyes with the same creame or oyle aforesaid.  Then you shall see come by you thre fayre maydes, and as they passe by they will obey you with becking their heads to you, and like as they doe to you, so doe you to them, but saye nothing.  Suffer the first, whatsoever she be, to passe, for she is malignant, but to the second or third as you like best reache forth your hand and pluck her to you, and with fewe words aske her when she will apoynt a place to meete you the next morning for to assoyle such questions as you will demand of her; and then, yf she will graunt you, suffer her to depart and goe to her companye till the houre appointed, but misse her not at the tyme and place; then will the other, in the mean tyme whyle you are talking with her, goe to the table and eat of that ys ther, then will they depart from you, and as they obey you, doe you the like to them saying nothinge, but letting them depart quyetlye.  Then when youre houre is come to meete, say to her your mynde, for then will she come alone.  Then covenant with her for all matters convenient for your purpose and she wilbe always with you, of this assure yourselfe for it is proved, ffinis [the end].”

The process is reasonably straightforward, as you will have seen.  You will need to have acquired some fresh fine loaves, some new ale, some clean buckets filled with clean water and clean towels, but none of these items ought to be too hard to come by.  The tricky part is knowing whether a house is one “where the fairies mayds doe use,” in other words, a place that is frequented by female fairies on a regular basis.  Provided that you’re sure you’ve correctly identified the place, everything else will apparently fall into place like clockwork.

How does this ritual work?  Well, as fairy expert Katharine Briggs explained, the unspoken assumption lying behind it is as follows: overnight the fairies will enter the house to wash themselves and their children in the fresh water.  As I’ve described before, fairy babies are anointed with an ointment that gives them their second sight and powers of glamour and (it seems) reinforces their immortal fairy nature.  Some of this salve will, it seems, be washed off during the ablutions and it is this that forms the rime on the surface of the bucket.  You then simply lift it off with your silver spoon and you have acquired the key to faery.

All that remains is to wish you good luck- and to remind you to read other postings discussing some of the potential downsides of any encounter.  For a discussion of the summoning faeries for sexual purposes, see my Love and Sex in Faeryland, 2021 (Amazon/ Kindle)

Naked fairies- nudity in fairyland

In a book published in 2017, American art historian Susan Casteras contributed a chapter on Victorian fairy painting.  She perceptively remarked how nudity, which is very far from being an inherent element in folklore, became something that the Victorians chose to exaggerate in their visions of fairyland.  Many paintings of the period, she rightly observed,  were all about “flaunting nudity for its own sake rather than as a supposedly accurate transcription of faery lore.”  (S. Casteras, ‘Winged Fantasies: Constructions of Childhood, Adolescence and Sexuality in Victorian Fairy Painting’ in Marilyn Brown, Picturing Children, 2017, c.8, 127-8)

John Simmons, A Fairy on a Leaf

Looking at John Simmons’ painting above, you cannot help but agree with the second part of Casteras’ comment- although Simmons was a particular offender, producing a number of ‘pin-up’ canvases.  What about the folklore evidence, though?  Victorian pictures- and more recently the work of Alan Lee, Brian Froud and Peter Blake– have habituated us to the idea of a Faery full of frolicking nudes, but how traditional is this?

The honest answer has to be that there’s very little sign of nudity in the older accounts of Faery.  In my post on fairy abductions of children, I mentioned the story of a girl who temporarily went missing in Devon.  A game keeper and his wife living at Chudleigh, on Dartmoor, had two children, and one morning the eldest girl went out to play while her mother dressed her baby sister. In due course, the parents realised that the older child had disappeared and several days of frantic and fruitless searching followed. Eventually, after hope had nearly been lost, the girl was found quite near to her home, completely undressed and without her clothes, but well and happy, not at all starved, and playing contentedly with her toes. The pixies were supposed to have stolen the child, but to have cared for her and returned her.

Now, this girl was a human infant and there may have been several reasons why the pixies might have taken off all her clothes.  They may have objected to human things; they may have thought a ‘natural’ state was healthier and preferable.  Whatever the exact explanation, it’s one of the few instances where there’s a suggestion that nudity might be the normal condition in Faery.

A calendar illustration by Mabel Rollins Harris

The other evidence is all qualified in one way or another. Mermaids don’t have clothes, but that’s for very obvious reasons.  Men are forever falling in love at first sight with these creatures, but you may well suspect that coming across a uninhibited and naked female is a pretty strong draw in any case.

Some fairies don’t ‘need’ clothes at all because they’re naturally very hairy: the brownies, hobgoblins and the Manx fynoderee are all examples of these.  Their shaggy pelts were covering enough.  It’s almost always this kind of faery that is the subject of a story in which a reward of clothes for services rendered alienates the helpful being.  Typically, a brownie or boggart with work faithfully on a farm, threshing grain, carrying hay and tending the livestock, all for very little reward except some bread and milk left out ta night.  After a while, the curiosity of the farmer overcomes good sense and the creature’s labours are spied upon.  It’s seen to be (at the very best), dressed in tattered rags and (at the worst) completely naked.  Pity is taken and new clothes are made in recognition of its hardwork, but all that’s achieved is to offend the fae, who recites a short verse- and leaves forever.

Lastly, the only other definite example of bare fairy flesh is one I’ve discussed several times previously and one in which ulterior motives are very important.  In the medieval romance of Sir Launval, the young knight is summoned into the presence of the fairy lady, Tryamour.  She’s found in a pavilion in a forest, relaxing on a couch on a hot summer’s day.

“For hete her clothes down sche dede/ Almest to her gerdyl stede,/ Than lay sche uncovert; Sche was as whyt as lylye yn May, / Or snow that sneweth yn wynterys day, / He segh never non so pert.””

“because of the heat, she’d undone her dress nearly to her waist; she lay uncovered; she was as white as a lily in May, or snow falling on a winter’s day; he’d never seen anyone so pert.”

Tryamour’s plan is to seduce Launval and, plainly, lying there topless and available is a pretty good scheme for winning his attention.  It’s not normal behaviour in Faery, though, anymore than it is on the earth surface.  Most of the accounts we have of the appearance of fairies describe their clothes– their style and their colour; we are not told that they are provocatively naked.

Nude fairies, therefore, seem to be a Victorian obsession; they are the soft porn of their day.  As has been described before, it was acceptable to display bare breasts in art, but only so long as it was justifiable and/ or distant from the present day.  Painting classical nymphs, oriental harems and fairyland let artists get away with it.  they seized the opportunity- regardless of the fact that the folklore provided almost no basis for this.

Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’- faery lore and art

Arthur Rackham, Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti’s poem, Goblin Market, which was published in 1862, is primarily a work of literary genius.  Its rich, intoxicating language and hypnotic rhythm and refrains carry the reader along irresistibly.  It is a long poem, too long to reproduce in full here, but I provide a link to the whole text and cite here the first few lines:

“Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:

Apples and quinces,

Lemons and oranges,

Plump unpeck’d cherries,

Melons and raspberries,

Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries;

All ripe together

In summer weather,

Morns that pass by,

Fair eves that fly;

Come buy, come buy:

Our grapes fresh from the vine,

Pomegranates full and fine,

Dates and sharp bullaces,

Rare pears and greengages,

Damsons and bilberries,

Taste them and try:

Currants and gooseberries,

Bright-fire-like barberries,

Figs to fill your mouth,

Citrons from the South,

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;

Come buy, come buy.”

Amelia Bowerly

The plot of the poem is quite easily summarised.  Two young sisters live together, supporting themselves by farming a smallholding.  Where their parents or relatives are, we never learn; the two girls are self-sufficient and independent.

Every evening the goblin men pass near their cottage, crying out their wares in tempting tones.  Sensible sister Lizzie knows that the goblins must be ignored; her sister Laura is weak and wants to taste the fruit.  She is reminded by Lizzie of the fate of Jeanie, who partook of the fairy food and then faded away and died, but she succumbs to their temptations and meets the goblins with their juicy, perfumed fruit- melons, cherries, pears and grapes.

Frank Adams

However, once Laura has tasted the forbidden fruit, she cannot hear or see the goblin men again, and she begins to pine away just like Jeanie.  Lizzie realises there is only one way to save her sister: she goes one evening to meet the goblins, pays for their fruit but refuses to eat it.  In anger they smear her face with the juice, trying to get her to give in and taste it, but she is resolute and, by defying them, manages to drive the goblins off.

Lizzie returns home and her sister is able to lick the juice of her face.  Now, though, she finds it bitter, the goblin spell is broken and she is saved.

Laura & Lizzie by Hilda Koe (active 1895-1901)

What I’d like to do now is to pick out a handful of the more authentic fairy themes that run through Rossetti’s verse.  As I’ve said, the author was not concerned with producing a folklore document, so these elements are not prominent, but they are there, not wholly overwhelmed by her message of Christian self-sacrifice and familial love.

Firstly, there’s the central concept of the fairy temptation and its damaging impact upon the victim.  Rossetti handles this in a unique manner, with the faes becoming invisible and inaudible once they have seduced a human soul, but the idea of seeking to capture our spirits and the profound physical and psychological toll that faery contact can take will be familiar to many readers by now.  Once Laura has tasted faery food and faery pleasures, she cannot rest easy in this world: she longs to return to fairyland, but finds herself cruelly excluded.  She is left ‘elf-addled,’ weeping, wasting away, her hair becoming thin and grey.

Warwick Goble

Lizzie goes to confront the goblins- and because she refuses to sit and eat with them, she is maltreated:

“They trod and hustled her,

Elbow’d and jostled her,

Claw’d with their nails,

Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,

Tore her gown and soil’d her stocking,

Twitch’d her hair out by the roots,

Stamp’d upon her tender feet…

One may lead a horse to water,

Twenty cannot make him drink.

Though the goblins cuff’d and caught her,

Coax’d and fought her,

Bullied and besought her,

Scratch’d her, pinch’d her black as ink,

Kick’d and knock’d her,

Maul’d and mock’d her,

Lizzie utter’d not a word;”

This vicious treatment is very typically faery: they like to get their way; they like to have the upper hand over humans and, when they do not, they will often punish us physically, with pinches, slaps and scratches.  As I’ve described in my recent book, Fayerie, Tudor and Elizabethan verse is full of this rough handling of neglectful servants or ungrateful housewives.  It’s also important to stress how much the faes may be enraged by those who insult or offend them.  This isn’t just a matter of being rude, but of failing to comply with their rigid rules on conduct.  By refusing to eat, and so resisting their charms,  Lizzie is violating fundamental (if unspoken) assumptions about human/ faery relations.  Their reaction is predictable.

Hilda Hechle

One last apparent strand in the poem, which modern critics don’t avoid, is what seems to be a strong undercurrent of lesbian incest between Lizzie and Laura.  For example, Rossetti describes them asleep in their humble home:

“Golden head by golden head,

Like two pigeons in one nest

Folded in each other’s wings,

They lay down in their curtain’d bed:

Like two blossoms on one stem,

Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,

Like two wands of ivory

Tipp’d with gold for awful kings.

Moon and stars gaz’d in at them,

Wind sang to them lullaby,

Lumbering owls forbore to fly,

Not a bat flapp’d to and fro

Round their rest:

Cheek to cheek and breast to breast

Lock’d together in one nest.”

If nothing else, these lines bring out the sister solidarity of the pair- their self-contained and self sufficient nature living without family or other evident links within their community.   This status outside of the rest of human society is very important to Rossetti’s plot: it leaves Laura and Lizzie acutely vulnerable to the charms of the goblin men.  Recently, I have been reading Simon Young’s collection of some of the fairy stories of North Cornish writer Enys Tregarthen (Enys Tregarthen’s Folklore Tales: A Selection, ed. Young, 2017).  What is especially noticeable about many of these is how they start by telling us that the main character is a spinster or widow, living isolated on the moors or cliffs.  The solitary situation of these women makes them more likely to be contacted by piskies- more open to communication with them.  It’s the same in Rossetti’s work: the sisters have to fend for themselves.

Returning to the plot, there is a second and climactic moment in the poem when Lizzie returns, besmeared with juice from the fruit, and cries out to her sister:

“Did you miss me?

Come and kiss me.

Never mind my bruises,

Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,

Goblin pulp and goblin dew.

Eat me, drink me, love me;

Laura, make much of me…”

Contemporary audiences find it hard to avoid reading something sexual into these highly carnal and luxurious words, although I suspect that upright church-going Rossetti would have been shocked by such imputations.  Nevertheless, the sexual nature of Faery is something I’ve often described, so such a theme is entirely appropriate.  The whole poem is sensuous, not to say sensual, and concentrates upon bodily pleasure and yielding to the senses as a way of submitting to the faery thrall.  To add to this, Laura buys the fruit from the goblins with a lock of her golden hair because she has no money.  That physical, personal contribution reminds us of the bargains often made between fairies and humans- sex- a part of the physical self- exchanged for power and knowledge.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Summary

Goblin Market is not really about goblins, or the world of the supernatural, but it has some interesting aspects- over and above being an extremely accomplished poem.  You can read more about fairy cruelty, faery rules of conduct and the effect of faery contact upon humankind in my recent book, Faery.  For another exploration of the poem, see Neil Rushton’s blog, Dead but Dreaming.

I have previously examined John Keat’s La Belle Dame sans Merci and discussed the fairy works of other authors such as Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, Maurice Hewlett and Algernon Blackwood.

Mixed Race Faery Families

I have written several times about the sexual allure of fairies and about sexual relationships between fairies and humans.  Inevitably, many of these unions will result in children and in this posting I examine the evidence on mixed race families and the fate of their offspring.

Hybrid Children

Renowned fairy expert Katharine Briggs observed in her book The Fairies in Tradition and Literature that fairies “are apparently near enough in kind to mate with humans- closer in fact than a horse is to an ass, for many human families to claim fairy ancestry” (p.95). Mixed race families are entirely possible and there seems neither doubt nor surprise about this in the folklore.  When we learn about human-faery offspring, it is generally because there has been some problem in the relationship.  Of course, our view of these matters is skewed, as we usually only hear about cases where partnerships went wrong- not those matches where the couple ‘live happily ever after.’  We very occasionally get glimpses of these: human girls are quite often abducted to become fairy brides and every now and then we catch sight of them later on.  For example, in the Welsh story of Eilian, she is met again by the woman she worked for when the latter is called out as midwife to the fairy hill- only to discover that it is her former farm maid who is the mother brought to child bed.

Fairy Family Life

Admitting that we only tend to see the failed matches, what can we say about fairy parenting?  Probably the fairest conclusion is that fairies are just as good, and as bad, as husbands, wives and parents as humans.

Andro Man of Aberdeen was tried for witchcraft in 1598. He disclosed to the court a decades long relationship with the fairy queen.  Over a period of thirty years, he said, he had enjoyed regular sexual contact with her and the couple had had “diverse bairnis” whom he’d since visited in fairyland/ elphame.  These children were brought up by the mother, but at the same time Man was not entirely absent from their lives.

A reversal of this arrangement is seen with Katharine Jonesdochter of Shetland, tried for witchcraft in 1616.  She confessed to a forty-year affair with a fairy man whom she called ‘the bowman.’  He first came to her when she was a teenager (a “young lass” as she described herself) and they had a child together.  A relative recalled that she had seen “ane little creatour in hir awin hus amongst hir awin bairns quhom she callit the bowmanes bairn.”  In this case the child stayed with the (human) mother and the (fairy) father was seen once or twice a year- at Halloween and on Holy Cross Day (September 14^th)- when he visited her for sex.

Both these cases seem to say more about gender roles in human and fairy society than they do about defaults or qualities of fairy-kind as mothers and fathers.  There is, of course, no reason to assume that males are any less loving toward their spouses and children than females.  For example, in the ballad Leesom Brand, the eponymous hero’s fairy wife and baby both die during child birth, but he is able to find magical means to revive them.

Amelia Bowerley

All the same, an exception may have to be made for merfolk.  The folklore record indicates that they are very often wanting in basic familial instincts and make very poor parents indeed.  In the ballad of the Selkie of Sule Skerry, the selkie father has first of all made a woman pregnant and abandoned her; then he returns grudgingly upon hearing her complaints and gives her gold to ‘buy’ the child from her (what he calls a ‘nurse-fee’)- taking the boy away to raise him as a selkie in the sea.

In many stories, a mermaid is the parent as the result of being captured by a human male on the shore.  He has managed to find, and withhold from her, the seal skin or tail that she has shed temporarily, thereby preventing her from rejoining her people.  The mermaid is forced to become her captor’s wife and children inevitably follow over the succeeding years.  Eventually, one of those infants comes across the seal skin hidden somewhere on the farm and mentions the discovery to the mother- who without hesitation leaves immediately to return to the sea.

Whether male or female, therefore, merfolk generally set a poor example as parents.  The best that can be said for most mermaids is that they were akin to captives and unwilling partners, which may excuse (a little) their readiness to abandon their children.

There are, though, a couple of stories that are happy exceptions to this rather poor record.   The famous mermaid of Zennor took a human husband who (unusually) went to live with her beneath the sea.  We know the marriage appeared to thrive because, several years later, the skipper of a boat was hailed by the mermaid complaining that his anchor was blocking the door to her home, preventing her returning to her husband and their offspring or, in some accounts, preventing her taking her children to church.  From Orkney, we hear of Johnny Croy who managed to secure a mermaid wife by snatching her precious golden comb.  To win it back, she struck a bargain with him- that she would live with him on his farm for seven years and that he would then go with her to visit her family beneath the waves.  They had seven children together, and the entire family disappeared forever under the sea when the initial seven years were up.  The family bonds in these two cases seem strong and lasting, with the human husband prepared to give up his home and society in order to stay with his supernatural wife and children.

The Welsh lake maidens, the gwragedd annwn, also have a reputation for abandoning their husbands and families, although in these cases they would excuse themselves and blame the husbands for what happened.  They are wooed in conventional manner by the human males and consent freely to marriage, but conditions or taboos are always imposed which- just as predictably- are violated in time by their husbands.  These mothers are driven away from their families, therefore, they are not fleeing like the mermaids.

Fairy Inheritance

As we might expect, having fairy parents or ancestors does have some benefits for the children.

John Rhys quotes in his Celtic Folklore from William Williams’ Observations on the Snowdon Mountains, of 1802, in which he discusses:

“A race of people inhabiting the districts about the foot of Snowdon, were formerly distinguished and known by the nickname of Pellings, which is not yet extinct. There are several persons and even families who are reputed to be descended from these people …. These children and their descendants, they say, were called Pellings, a word corrupted from their [faery] mother’s name, Penelope… there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the Pellings. The best blood in my own veins is this fairy’s.” (Rhys, vol.1, p.48, citing Williams pp.37-40)

Rhys also mentions several times people living in the Pennant Valley in North Wales who are noted for their very good looks- flax yellow hair and pale blue eyes- which are said to be derived from a fairy ancestor called Bella (vol.1, pp.96, 106, 108, 220 & 223; vol.2 p.668)

As well as physical charms, fairy parents can bestow significant gifts upon their part-human offspring.  The faery wife of Llyn y Fan Fach is a typical Welsh ‘lake maiden’ who is driven off by her husband’s violation of her taboos.  Nonetheless, she keeps in regular contact with her three sons, teaching them marvellous healing skills so that they become the famous physicians of Myddfai.  In the Tudor Ballad of Robin Goodfellow, Robin is the son of Oberon, fathered upon a maid to whom he took a fancy.  The father provides materially for his son’s upbringing (although he is absent) and, when the boy reaches his teens, Oberon comes to him and reveals his true nature and magical powers:

“King Oberon layes a scrole by him,

that he might understand

Whose sonne he was, and how hee’d grant

whatever he did demand:

To any forme that he did please

himselfe he would translate;

And how one day hee’d send for him

to see his fairy state.”

Finally, the offspring of matches with merfolk are generally readily identifiable.  There are accounts from the Scottish islands of children conceived with human fathers who have webs between their fingers and toes.  One mermaid mother tried to trim these away but they regrew repeatedly until a horny crust developed- a feature that is still be seen amongst some island people today and which can limit the manual tasks they can undertake.

Further Reading

I discuss other aspects of fairy families, childcare and healing in my recently published book, Faery (Llewellyn Worldwide).  See too the discussion in my Faery Lifecycle, a complete study of faery anatomy and physiology.

Faeries and Water- healing and diagnosis

Hester Margetson

I have written before about fresh and marine water spirits and about the connections between the faeries and rivers and wells; in this post I want to pull together various scattered strands and highlight the magical power that seems to link faeries and water.

Healing Properties

Water is very often seen being used for its ability to heal disease inflicted by or associated with the faeries.  As I have described previously, water that runs in a southerly direction- whether that’s a river or stream or the outflow from a spring or well- is deemed to be especially effective in curing sickness.  It may have to be collected in silence and it may be used to a patient or that person’s shirts or blouse, but it was regularly prescribed by Scottish witchcraft suspects- presumably because of its perceived efficacy.

As well as treating faery inflicted disease, water also could have a role in diagnosing the cause of a person’s infirmity.   Katharine Craigie, who was tried on Orkney in 1640, had told a sick man that she could discover whether he was afflicted by “ane hill spirit, a kirk spirit or a water spirit,” which are probably different types of trow.  She did this by placing three stones in the household’s fire all day; these were then left under the house’s threshold overnight and, in the morning, were dropped separately into a bucket of water. The stone that “chirned and chirled” when it was dropped in the water indicated that a kirk spirit (probably a trow living in a nearby church yard) was the cause of the malady.  Craigie used this technique to diagnose affliction by a hill spirit in a second case and, in 1617, Orkney woman Katharine Caray had diagnosed a sea spirit in the same manner.  James Knarstoun, another Orkney healer, in 1633 also used three stones for the same purpose.  He brought one from the shoreline, one from a hill (surely a fairy knoll) and one from a kirk yard and promised that, once the spirit was revealed, it could be “called home again.”

Isobell Strauthaquinn was tried for witchcraft in 1597.  Her mother had learned her healing skills from her fairy lover.  Amongst the techniques she seems to have passed on to Isobell was curing people with water in which the bones of the dead had been washed.

Hester Margetson

What’s puzzling and contradictory in all this is the fact that very often the healer’s abilities derived from the fairies in the first place.  In Perth in 1623 three women, Isobel Haldane, Janet Trall and Margaret Hormscleugh, were all accused of witchcraft.  They had healed using south running water and all three claimed to have started their careers as healers after visiting the fairies in their hills and, through this, being endowed with their medical knowledge.  Also in Perth, in 1640, a man called John Gothray was presented before the Presbytery for his use of charms to heal townspeople.  He too claimed to have been abducted by the fairies when he was younger and, since then, to have been visited monthly by his changeling brother (who’d been stolen when he was barely one month old), who taught him how to make medicines using various herbs mixed with water from a local spring.

Diagnostic properties

In Gothray’s case, the spring water seemed to have unique healing properties. Many such sites were known across Britain.  Often, too, the water was in some way able to predict the outcome of the illness.  Near Fodderty in Ross and Cromarty, there was a well called Tom na domhnuich; its water would be collected before sunrise and the patient bathed in it, if it then looked clear they would recover- if brown, they would die.  In 1839 we have a record of a woman going there to collect water for her sickly child.  She had the fascinating experience of seeing a “creature with glaring eyes” diving into the well (some sort of black dog or bogle apparition, apparently).  She decided to collect the water anyway and, after washing her child, it fell soundly asleep- something which was unusual and looked hopeful for its recovery.  Sadly, it then died.  The water in the same well might also predict death or recovery by the way it turned- clockwise for health, anti-clockwise for death.

At the well of Kirkholme, the rising of the water indicated recovery; at Muntluck if the water was low, it was a bad sign and if you drank from one Dumfries well and then vomited, recovery was impossible.

James Knarstoun, the Orkney healer, was able to determine what was afflicting Patrick Hobie’s daughter using water collected from St Mary’s Well on the island.  It had to be fetched only between midnight and cockcrow- for, as is well known, with the coming of dawn the fairies’ power weakens and they have to flee the earth surface.

Recovering Children

Wells have another curious link with faeries.  At Sùl na bà near Nigg, in Ross and Cromarty, there was a spring where local people would leave changeling children overnight, along with gifts for the fairies.  The hope was that these would be accepted as sufficient to persuade the faes to restore the stolen child by the next morning.  A number of such sites were once recognised- some springs, but others fairy hills and the like.

Seeing Faeries

Lastly, water could be instrumental in helping you to see the fairies.  As I have mentioned before, it was customary in many parts of the country to leave out water for the faes to wash in overnight.  In the Bodleian Library in Oxford there is a seventeenth century spell book containing various magical charms to summon fairies.  One involves a lengthy ritual focused around collecting faery washing water.  Performed around the time of a new moon, clean water was set out by a clean hearth with a clean towel.  By the morning a white rime or grease would be seen on the water which was removed with a silver spoon.  This grease was then to be used the next evening to anoint your eyes before sitting up all night before a table set out with fresh bread and ale.  Fairies would come to eat the food and the watcher would be able to see them because of the grease on their eyes.  Fairy expert Katharine Briggs explains that this must work because the fairies will have washed their children and, in so doing, will have washed from them some of the special ointment with which they’re anointed to give them the faery second sight.

Further Reading

See my recently released book, Faery, for more discussion of the links between the faes and water. For more on faery medicine, see my Faery Lifecycle, 2021:

Fairy Rings- in folklore and popular art

Hester Margetson, Welcome to Fairyland

In this post I return once again to the subject of fairy rings.  I add a little more factual and folklore information to what I’ve written before and then turn to consider how popular twentieth century art has chosen to represent rings.

Margaret Tarrant

Fungi & Fairies

The origins of fairy rings were extensively debated in the late eighteenth century.  The Gentleman’s Magazine, for a decade from 1788, carried an exchange of correspondence in which readers described and theorised about these curious features in their landscape.  Charles Broughton, writing in 1788, remarked upon the semi-circular marks that appeared consistently in his pasture land.  They had a base of about four yards, he reported, and were half a yard thick (across their width).  Another writer (‘JM’) in 1790 described the circles that appeared in the meadow-land near his home.  They were 6-8 inches broad with a diameter of six to twelve feet and were covered in champignon mushrooms.  He noted that the land hadn’t been ploughed for 19 years and that the cattle were turned in annually to eat the aftermath (the stubble left after cutting the hay). Another letter from 1792 remarked upon the many large fairy rings to be seen in the meadows between Islington and Canonbury, north of London.  The present day inhabitant of the capital will smile wryly over this, as the area is now overlain by Georgian squares and terraces, built not too long after the letter was written.

Both the writers just named ascribed the rings to mushrooms, but subsequent correspondents blamed the effect of horse dung, moles, lightning and, even, the Ancient Britons, who had dug defensive trenches on the sites.  What we can tell, certainly, is that these very noticeable features in the landscape excited public interest and speculation because they were so common and so distinctive.

Mabel Lucie Attwell, Fairy Changeling

Folklore

The learned gentlemen musing on the formation of the rings all dismissed the fairies as a cause, naturally.  Nonetheless, for generations it had been well-known that the Good Folk were in fact the makers of the marks.  In Devon it was said to be the hoof-marks of ponies that the fairies rode round and round in circles at night that made the circles;  generally though, across Britain, it was the action of dancing feet that was blamed.  For instance, Evans-Wentz (Fairy Faith p.181) was told about a spot near St Just in the far west of Cornwall, called Sea-View Green, where the piskies could regularly be seen dancing on moonlit nights, looking like little children dressed in red cloaks.  Another witness told Evans Wentz that the piskies preferred to ‘play’ in marshy locations and that these round places were locally called ‘pisky beds’ (p.184).

The rings were dangerous places, that was for sure.  Dew should not be gathered from them (as was sometimes done to improve the complexion) and the faes would counteract any magical quality it possessed anyway.  Anyone who stepped accidentally into a ring could be abducted by the fairies.  Great fear about this danger was instilled by parents into children, who retained the dread into their own adult years (see, for example, Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, p.103 for just such a warning from an old Glamorganshire man and also Evans Wentz, Fairy Faith, p.91).  The rings might be a place to which a person was ‘pixy-led’ and then trapped, as was recounted in the story of Einion ac Olwen (Evans Wentz p.161).  The same story notes the distinctiveness of ring too: “a hollow place surrounded by rushes where he saw a number of round rings.”

Margaret Tarrant, Midsummer Eve

Twentieth Century Popular Art

The consensus was that, for many reasons, fairy rings were perilous places.  The best thing was to avoid and respect them.  However, a child would never have learned that serious lesson from the pictures aimed at them in the early twentieth century.  The illustrators of children’s books, as well as printed ephemera such as postcards and greetings cards, all used toadstools as a convenient signifier of the presence of magical beings in their scenes and treated fairy rings- and their occupants- as benign and friendly beings, who only wished to play and dance with children.  Many of the most significant faery artists of the period, such as Margaret Tarrant, Hester Margetson and Ida Rentoul Outhwaite,  propagated this simpler and happier version of Faery.  The Good Folk themselves were reduced to girly winged fairies in dresses and cheeky pixies/ elves in pointed hats and almost all the complexity, peril and moral ambiguity of traditional faery lore was effaced.  Their pictures (and the whole race of flower fairies) remain attractive art even today, but as a guide to folk belief they are misleading.

Margaret Tarrant, Do you believe in fairies?

Further Reading

See my recently released book, Faery, for more discussion of fairy rings and other fairy places.  For more on the art of Faery, see my book Fairy Art of the Twentieth Century

Tarrant, Alice’s Fairy Dream

Hester Margetson

Hester Margetson

 

‘Animated mushrooms’ by Hilda Miller

Beryl Craig (one of a series of very similar images)

Florence Mary Anderson, Uninvited Guest

Grace Jones, Fairy Dance, c.1920

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

Rosa Petherick, Goblins

And lastly, a cigarette card from W D and H O Wills’ Cigarettes:

 

For more on faery rings and the faeries’ interactions with nature, see my book Faeries and the Natural World (2021):

Nightmares and fairies

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

There is a little explored link between fairies and nightmares, an association expressed very well in one of the most famous fairy texts, Mercutio’s description of fairy queen Mab in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  She is (as Shelley crowned her in his poem Queen Mab) the queen of dreams, both good and bad:

 “This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

that presses them and learns them first to bear,

making them women of good carriage.” (Act I, scene 4)

It’s pretty evident here that Shakespeare sees Mab as having a sexual function.  She educates- and maybe even seduces- virgin girls, teaching them how to perform in bed.  That bearing, or carriage, is not about deportment but about receiving a lover lying on top.

In this passage, Mab is called a ‘hag,’ and to be ‘hag-ridden’ was to suffer nightmares. ‘The hagge’ was imagined as a hideous witch who sat on a sleeper’s stomach, causing bad dreams.  The notion of compression was a very early one, as we see from the South English Legendary of about 1300:

“Þe luþere gostes …deriez men in heore slep… And ofte huy ouer-liggez [men], and men cleopiet þe niȝt-mare.”

“The evil ghosts harm men in their sleep and often lie on top of them, which people call ‘the night-mare.’”

There’s a supernatural cause here, but not a fairy one.  However, by the early seventeenth century the fae nature of the affliction was established.  For example, in the Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow, one of Robin’s companions, Gull the Fairy, explains how:

“Many times I get on men and women and so lie on their stomachs that I cause them great pain; for which they call me by the name of Hagge and Nightmare.”

The victim’s experience is described in The Holly Bush of 1646:

“the nightmare hath prest,

With that weight on their breast,

No returnes of their breath can pass.”

The sixteenth century Scots poem, My Heart is High Above, likewise conveys some sense of how the experience feels: “Then languor on me lies, like Morpheus the mair.”  Devon poet, Robert Herrick, in his poem, The Hag, also described the sensation of a being riding the sleeper:

“The Hag is astride,

This night for to ride;

The Devill and shee together:”

In their 1621 play Thierry and Theodoret, playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher emphasise the unpleasant and exhausting nature of the experience:

“goblins ride me in my sleep to jelly.” (I, 2)

However, the sensation he depicted also has something of pixy-leading about it, as well as reminding us of the stories of fairies actually riding human victims at night for want of an available horse:

“A Thorn or a Burr She takes for a Spurre:

With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,

Through Brakes and through Bryars,

O’re Ditches, and Mires,

She followes the Spirit that guides now.”

Miles Johnston

In these versions, the pressure and shortness of breath are associated with fear rather than sexual activity and arousal, but there was great confusion between the two aspects of the nightmare.  We see this in William Sampson’s 1636 play The Vow Breaker- or the Fair Maid of Clifton in Nottinghamshire, when Ursula remarks to Anne:

“you us’d to say Hobgoblins, Fairies and the like were nothing but our own affrightments and yea, oh my Cuz, I once dreamed of a young batchelor and was ridden with a Nightmare.”

Here we elide seamlessly from fairies to nightmares to sexual fantasy within a single sentence.  In Drayton’s Nymphidia the sensual nature of the sensation is addressed more explicitly:

“And Mab, his merry queen, by night,

Bestrides young folk that lie up-right,

(in older times the mare that hight.)”

In both passages, the poets’ bawdiness is barely concealed.  Ursula being ridden by her lusty young batchelor and the ‘up-right’ wet-dreamers of Drayton are almost solely concerned with erotic dreams rather than horror.  This sexual aspect of the nightmare is underlined by Edward Topsell in his Historie of Serpents, where he mentions “The spirits of the night, called Incubi and Succubi, or else Night-mares.” (p.173)  These two spirits were believed to be supernatural lovers who came to men and women during the night.

The Victorian magazine, Once A Week, in 1867 carried a feature on Devonshire pixies, which informed its readers that they had control over sleeper’s fantasies: “Some may bring nightmares and others sweet dreams.”  Perhaps this isn’t so surprising, given that the pixies of the South West can control the weather and use their powers of glamour to change landmarks and ‘pixy-lead’ victims.

The intertwining of faeries and good and bad dreams is highlighted lastly in Cartwright’s play of 1635, The Ordinary, in which Moth prays that:

“St Francis and St Benedict,

Blesse this house from wicked wight,

From the Nightmare and the Goblin,

That is hight Goodfellow Robin…” (Act III, scene 1)

Here it is Robin Goodfellow himself, otherwise known as Puck, who takes on the role of the wicked wight who brings bad dreams and disturbed sleep.

The word ‘mare’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon mære/ mæra, and derives from a verb meaning ‘to crush.’  In modern English it has fallen together with the word for a female horse (Anglo-Saxon mere).  The words have entirely separate origins, although the sense of riding presumably encouraged them to be mixed up.  It seems this confusion worked in several directions: for instance, in 1696 John Aubrey in his Miscellanies described precautions taken to “prevent the Night-Mare (viz.) the Hag from riding their Horses.”  Fairies are known for taking horses from stables and riding them at night and Aubrey (or perhaps country people he spoke to) understandably, but mistakenly, expanded the term for a fairy dream to cover another well-known fairy activity.

Further Reading

In more recent times, fairies have come to be associated with much sweeter dreams- as in Rose Fyleman’s verse Fairy Lullaby for a Mortal which imagines the faes bringing dreams and brushing away darkness with their “soft, soft wings.”  These literary and nursery visions of gentle and benign Faery are a long way from earlier perceptions.

See my recently released book, Faery, for more discussion of Queen Mab and see my Fayerie for more on her role in Tudor and Jacobean verse.

Lob the Luddite?

‘A fairy came in a chariot,’ Kate Cameron

We’re inclined to imagine fairies as pastoral beings, wandering freely in flowery meadows.  A large part of this imagery comes from Shakespeare and other Renaissance British poets, who wrote so much about Colin, Chloris and nymphs…  At the same time, as we’ve seen in previous postings, there is evidence in opposition to this, showing them to be active farmers as well as being builders, miners and metalworkers.

Confusingly, though, the faes are at the very same time reputed to flee human agricultural and manufacturing activity.  There’s a widespread rhyme in Scotland to the effect that:

“Where the scythe cuts and the sock (plough) rives,

Hae done wi’ fairies and bee-bykes.”

This couplet indicates that intensive arable repels the fays, something confirmed by an account from Menstrie, in Clackmannanshire, which blamed modern agrarian methods and commercial enterprise: the fairies fled “stone fences, cotton mills and the copse destroying plough.”

Crop raising hasn’t been the only source of faery discontent, however.  Evans Wentz in the 1900s heard in Scotland that the Highland clearances also drove off the sith.  Highlander John Dunbar of Invereen told him that “no one sees them now because every place on this parish where they used to appear has been put into sheep and deer and grouse and shooting.”  A vision of them fighting with sheep was seen, in fact, as a premonition of what was the follow (Evans Wentz, Fairy Faith, 94).

Moreover, it’s not just the growing of food to which the faeries object, apparently, but processing the produce too.  For example, on the Isle of Man, when the steam flour mill was built at Colby, the local fairies gave up their former haunts.  Early one morning they were seen climbing up into the mists and solitude of the mountain glens, with their household goods piled high on their backs and lamenting loudly.

Helen Jacobs

And yet- the faeries have been known regularly to use human water mills to grind their own flour.  There is even a story from Cleitinn, outside Pitlochry, that suggests that the local fairies were operating their own mill there.  If you left a sack of grain there in the evening, by the next morning it would have been ground for you, with a small amount of meal retained as a fee.

Steam powered mills have  reportedly scared off the Manx faes.  Likewise, the railways: describing the island for his Practical Guide of 1874, Henry Irwin Jenkinson wrote:

“Now there are railways, and the island is overrun with tourists every summer, the last haunts of the good people will be invaded and they will have to move elsewhere.” (p.75).

The fear of modern mechanised transport expelling the supernatural residents from a neighbourhood had in fact been expressed as early as the 1840s, when a correspondent of Notes and Queries had worried that railway engines would drive fairies far away from “Merry England.”  It’s said too that Glenshee in Perthshire was once full of fairies, but the arrival of steam whistles (whether on locomotives or factories is not clear) drove them away.

Yet, we also have a bizarre and contrary story from the south of the Isle of Man.  A local man reported sighting fairies operating a railway- before the first track had even been laid, which was as late as 1873:

“He was often telling the people about the railway line, more than twenty years before anyone thought about it. He was seeing the fairies very often practising on it in the moonlight, and he could point out where the line was to be, as he was seeing fairy trains going along so often… “

This vision seems to be a manifestation of the fairies’ power to see the future and their tendency to convey that knowledge to us by acting it out.  Even so, it is a little odd that they should want to pass this information in this manner, if they objected so vehemently to the outcome.

Furthermore, the involvement of the fays with mechanical transport is a trend that has begun to emerge distinctly in more recent reports of sightings.  Obviously, the fairies have no need of modern technology, but they seem to like to appear with it, all the same.  Most famous is the ‘Wollaton incident’ in Nottingham in 1979 when a number of little men were seen driving around a park in hovering cars.  Some girls in Cornwall in the 1940s woke one night and saw a small gnome-like man driving a tiny red car in circles outside their house.  In 1929 two young children in Hertford witnessed a fairy flying a biplane over their garden (see Janet Bord, Fairies, pp.73-76).

As well as motor vehicles, there appears to be a developing fairy fascination with machinery.  Marjorie Johnson records cases of fairies drawn to type-writers and sewing machines, as well as an incident when some ‘leprechauns’ diagnosed a fault in a bus engine (Seeing Fairies pp.101 & 322-2).

It is easy to fall back on the excuse that the fairies are ‘contrary’ and that they can demonstrate diametrically opposed traits at the same time, but we probably have to do better at explaining the evidence than this.

We know that the fairies are generally secretive people, and part of their response to industrialisation must be born of an aversion to the encroaching spread of human influence.  We know too of them fleeing any manifestation of the noise and clamour of the human world.  This began early, with a dislike of church bells (for which stories come from Exmoor and Worcestershire), so a desire to escape modern mechanical noise is entirely predictable.  For instance, the glaistig of Glen Duror was already a solitary being but, it was reported, she quit the area entirely once steamers appeared on Loch Linnhe and blasting started in the new quartz quarry.  In the same vein, when the mill at Kiondroghad on the Isle of Man was run overnight one time, the fays threw a broom at the millers in warning. They may have disliked the noise- but they might just as well have been objecting to what they regarded as their rightful evening use of the mill being disturbed.

Conclusions

Faeries aren’t against manufacture or cultivation as such, therefore.  To some degree, double standards are probably at work, with activities disliked when humans perform them which would have raised no complaint if the faeries had been involved.  Their interests and their convenience are always their first considerations.  Be that as it may- the fairies are curious and they are prepared to move with the times: they will adopt human innovations if it suits or amuses them.  In general, though, they appear to prefer less intensive modes of production- more handicraft as against mass manufacture, more traditional forms of cultivation as against mechanised farming.  We might venture to say that they are more likely to be organic and low impact in their approach- something that fuels the conception of them being ‘eco-guardians’- a subject to which we’ll return.

 

 

Fairy Nature in the Celtic Countries

One of the staple texts for many of us interested in faery lore is Evans Wentz’ 1911 Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.  I have often cited from it in my postings, because it contains a wealth of interviews, carried out during the first decade of the last century, with elderly country people who were still close to fairy traditions.

Recently, I was referred back to this valuable book by something else I had been reading and reread a section I’d not examined so closely before.  A Welsh informant, John Jones, a bard from Ynys Mon (Anglesey), described the tylwyth teg as “a kind of spirit race from a spirit world.”  This phrase struck me and set me searching for all the views on the ‘Nature of Fairies’ that Evans Wentz had collected.

What I summarise here are the opinions of over four dozen individuals whom Evans Wentz interviewed when preparing his book.  I have included here only the witnesses from Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man and Cornwall, in line with my ‘British Fairies’ focus.  What emerges are differences between the different ‘Celtic’ nations, as well as various common ideas.  Almost everyone agreed that the fairies were a type of spirit, but beliefs as to their exact nature differed across Britain.  There were also some religious and ‘learned’ interpretations that were encountered everywhere in the British Isles.  I’ll deal with these briefly first.

Informed Opinion

A number of widely respected and accepted theories have explained fairy origins for several centuries.  Inevitably, they were repeated to Evans Wentz.

The Christian church proved surprisingly accommodating to fairy belief: in fact, one minister in Montgomeryshire suggested that “God allowed them to appear in times of great ignorance to convince people of the existence of an invisible world.” (p.146)

The idea that the fairies were the fallen angels trapped between heaven and hell when their gates were closed following Lucifer’s rebellion was a popular explanation mentioned to Evans Wentz by over half a dozen of his interviewees.  Another religious theory, that is often found in sources, was recounted to him by an elderly woman in Carmarthen: she understood that the fairies were members of a very large family that had been hidden from Jesus once when he visited their mother.  Because she had been ashamed that she had twenty children, and had concealed some of them, he turned them into fairies and they were never seen by her again (p.153).

John Davies of Ballasalla on Man, a herb doctor and seer, meanwhile told Wentz that the fairies were “the lost souls of the people who died before the flood.”  Summarising Davies’ evidence, Wentz said he was sure that his interlocutor’s visions were genuine, but that “whatever he may have seen has been very much coloured in interpretation by his devout knowledge of the Christian bible, and by his social environment.” (p.123)

Scientific explanations were also offered, reflecting the latest thinking of the period.  A couple of informants mentioned the theory of MacRitchie that fairies were memories of pygmy former races inhabiting Britain; another couple of the more middle class and better-read contacts described them as ‘astral’ beings, borrowing from contemporary Theosophy and Spiritualism.

Frances Tolmie, native of Skye, had this to say to Wentz on these sorts of ideas, though.  She believed the fairy faith was very ancient but that “With the loss of Gaelic in our times came the loss of folk-ideals.  The classical and English influences combined had a killing effect, so that the instinctive religious feeling which used to be among our people when they kept alive the fairy traditions is dead.  We have intellectually constructed creeds and doctrines which take its place.” (p.99)

Miss Tolmie was evidently pessimistic as well as very wise, but there was still plenty of traditional information to gather.

Scotland

The general view in Scotland was that the sith are a tribe or race of spirits, who can appear to us in the likeness of men and women (p.105).  However, a clear distinction was made between the fairies living under the hills and those who are numbered amongst the aerial host or sluagh.  As Marian MacLean of Barra stated, “they are both spirits of the dead and other spirits not the dead.” (p.109) The sluagh comprises the souls or ghosts of the dead; the sith living under the knolls are spirits of another kind.  This is very clear and Sir Walter Scott seemed to say something very similar.  He recorded a story of a woman who was abducted and conveyed underground (“to secret recesses”) where she recognised someone ‘who had been mortal but had been trapped’ (by eating the food there).  Evidently this individual is not exactly, dead, nor fully living any longer (Scott, The Lady of the Lake, pp.107-111).

For Scottish witnesses, this dichotomy raised further questions: as I’ve described in a post on the fairy host, people are often snatched up by the sluagh or may enter a fairy hill and join a dance.  How, physically, did this work?  John MacNeil of Barra stated firmly “when they took people they took body and soul together.”  Murdoch MacLean, who lived on the same island, seemed to agree “the fairies had a mighty power of enchanting natural people, and could transform the physical body in some way.”  Humans, as corporeal beings, may enter a spirit world, but it needs magic to do so.  (pp.102 & 113)

Wales

It was agreed in Wales that fairies were a spirit race with human characteristics, who might be seen by some people, but not by others, and who might appear or disappear at will.

The Reverend Josiah Jones of Machynlleth described the tylwyth teg as “living beings halfway between something material and spiritual.”  Mr D. Davies-Williams of Montgomery said they were “a real race of invisible or spiritual beings living in an invisible world of their own.” (p.145) The Reverend T. M. Morgan, of Newhcurch near Carmarthen, also stated that they “live in some invisible world to which children on dying might go to be rewarded or punished, according to their behaviour on this earth.” We have to note the reverend gentleman’s rather unorthodox notion of heaven, here. (p.150)

Louis Foster Edwards of Harlech also tried to define Faery: “The world in which they lived was a world quite unlike ours, and mortals taken to it by them were changed in nature.” ( my italics; p.144) They were visitors only to our world, having no homes here, said David Williams JP of Carmarthen.  He also stated that the tylwyth teg were “aerial beings [who] could fly and move about in the air at will.  They were a special order of creation.”

This was the nature of the tylwyth teg; as for their origins, Wentz’ Welsh informants believed that they might be the spirits of virtuous Druids or the ghosts of prehistoric races. (pp.147 & 148)

Isle of Man

The spiritual nature of the ‘Little People’ (the mooinjer veggey) was accepted by Wentz’ Manx informants.  They were perhaps ghosts or the spirits of dead people; one witness termed them ‘Middle World Men,’ who weren’t good enough for heaven or bad enough for hell. This concept of ‘intermediate’ status closely echoes one of the reports from Wales (pp.117 & 124).

Cornwall

In Cornwall, too, the spiritual nature of the pixies was affirmed repeatedly to Evans Wentz.  There were several ideas as to their origins.  They were, perhaps, the souls of the ancient inhabitants of the land (pp.169 & 176), much as was proposed to him in Wales.  They may have been ghosts or the dead returned (pp.172 & 179); they may also have been the souls of children who were still-born (p.183).

Rather like in Wales, there was also evidence of the idea that the pixies did not really belong in our world.  John Guy, a fisherman from Sennen, recalled how his mother had said “they are a sort of people wandering about the world with no home or habitation.”  In the same vein, John Male of Delabole described them as “a race of little people who live out in the fields.” (pp.182 & 184).

Summary

 A number of important points emerge from this overview of the witnesses’ evidence.  It was widely understood throughout Britain that Faery was a separate and materially different place, or state, of being; it was seen to be a different dimension, as we might say today.

The major variation upon this was Scotland, as we’ve seen.  This ambivalence can, in fact, be detected as far back as the seventeenth century.  In various witch trials we hear the fairies described as- for example- the “earthles king and earthles quene” (Janet Anderson, Stirling, 1621) or “unearthlische creatures” or “uneardlie wights” (Stephen Maltman, Gargunnock, 1628).  Yet, at the same time, other accused persons could claim to have had bodily experiences such as “going with the farie twyse” (Marable Couper, Orkney, 1628) and the sexual relationships I have described before.

Following from the perception of fairies as beings of another world, people struggled to understand how contact with faery affected humans.  We have examined the risks of eating fairy food: how exactly was a physical being affected by the consumption of spirit sustenance?  It is clear that people who are taken by the fairies will experience some kind of transformation, at least temporarily; proximity to spirits and their spirit world can, however, have longer lasting effects, as I have described several times, which are both psychological as well as physiological.