Faeries & human clothing- what’s the problem?

Images by Erle Ferroniere

We know that faeries wear clothes. So distinctive in fact are these garments- or, at least- their colours, that they can be used as a short-hand or euphemistic term to refer to the faeries themselves. Hence, all around Britain, communities refer to their Good Neighbours as the ‘green coats’ or the ‘green gowns,’ or some similar label.

Clothing of some description, therefore, is normal and unremarkable- although certain beings, most typically hobs, boggarts and brownies, are frequently encountered in a naked state. This usually seems to be because they’re so hairy that other coverings are simply unnecessary.

Consider these two cases,though. A little girl from Chudleigh on Dartmoor who was abducted by the pixies and was missing for several days. Despite all the search parties organised by her family, there was no sign of her, until a couple of local youths went to a spot very near her home, and found her sitting on her own, in good health, playing contentedly, but stripped of all her clothes. The only explanation the family could find was that the pixies had taken her as a playmate for a time, had looked after her, yet had felt that they could not tolerate what she was wearing.

A second incident from Argyllshire is especially interesting in this context. This time an adult, a man’s wife, was abducted by the local faeries. Over a period of two months she kept returning nightly to her home to tidy the house and to care for their children, although the husband never saw her. Eventually, one day, he was walking in a wood when he heard her voice calling his name. She was hidden in a hazel bush, saying that she wanted to come home but couldn’t because she had no clothes to wear. He had to bring her a garment so that she could be freed and could return to her family. Once again, the faes had taken away what she’d been wearing when she was kidnapped- and it appears that part of the reason was that the items represented some continuing link to her ‘old’ life.

Many readers will know that the domestic faeries- the brownies, boggarts, lobs and hobs that I mentioned just now- will act as devoted and untiring workers, happily undertaking all manner of laborious tasks– until they are offered clothes. This act of kindness and pity (on the part of the human) will be viewed as a gross insult by the faery and they will depart forever.

The grounds for taking such exception vary. Sometimes it’s not the clothes themselves that cause offence, but the fabric (they’re offered linen instead of wool, usually). Far more regularly, it’s the whole idea of being asked to wear human garments that is so objectionable. There appear to be several reasons why this is such an unforgivable affront. We know from the response of one Manx fynoderee that wearing mortal clothes would make him ill. This is a good reason for rejecting them, but it’s not mentioned in any of the other accounts from mainland Britain.

Possibly what’s offensive is the implication that the natural nakedness of the brownie ought to be covered up- that it’s shameful. We do hear, though, that clothes aren’t completely absent, but they are rags. Maybe here, too, the implicit criticism is cause of the upset.

Another suggestion (that I made before in 2020’s Faery) is that- for the intended faery recipient- the symbolism of the gift of clothes is a subjection to human mastery. The brownie- farmer relationship is very clearly one involving a sort of commercial transaction- work’s done in return for food and shelter- but the provision of clothes apparently oversteps the limits by formally making the brownie a servant of the human, or (even) incorporates the faery much more formally into the human household. Some loss of independence and identity looks to be involved- hence the strength of the adverse reaction to the offer.

These suggestions notwithstanding, and given the cases involving humans that I’ve mentioned, the stronger possibility would appear to be that the very fact that the clothes are human is the source of the problem. They may carry their own ‘glamour’ with them, a quality that offends the faeries, or inhibits their own magic or- conceivably- has some physical effect on them, as with the fynoderee. Whatever it is, wearing human clothing represents too strong an association with the mortal world and, as such, it has to be severed in the case of captives by stripping them or, for the faeries, it has to be avoided. For humans, we might even, perhaps, think of the process of being denuded as a sort of ‘rebirth’ into their new lives in Faery.

See my Manx faeries for a complete description of the fynoderee and its habits.

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Witches & Faeries

Luis Ricardo Falero, The Witch, 1882

Several years ago I looked at the links between faeries and witches. Additionally, I have often used evidence from Scottish witch trials to understand how our predecessors perceived and interacted with faeries in early modern times. I return to the subject today with a particular focus on the parallels between them.

Incantation, Ludovic Alleaume

There are many aspects of the nature and powers claimed for witches that are identical to those traditionally allocated to the faeries- for example:

• they can both make themselves invisible;
• they can hear the words that people are speaking even when they are distant;
• they can both shapeshift (though witches prefer to appear as hares, whereas faeries tend to favour goat or bird form);
• they each steal milk from cattle in the fields (though the witches may do this by shapeshifting into the form of hedgehogs);
• they like dancing in groups;
• they can’t cross running water;
• they frequently use their magic powers to exact revenge on mortals, by tormenting them or their livestock- or by killing them. In the case of the latter, the animal’s death will resemble that of beasts killed by elf-shot;
• they can fly;
• they have healing powers, learning the use of herbs and (curiously) how to undo the malign actions of others of their kind;
• they can see into the future;
• they ride horses and animals at night; and,
• they are often kept away by the same sorts of charm.

These shared magical powers must give us pause for consideration. Why have witches been endowed with so many of the abilities to cast ‘glamour‘ traditionally possessed by faeries?

The English literature professor and historian Diane Purkiss (author of a very valuable book on faeries, Troublesome Things) has also written on The Witch in History (1996). She observed how often faeries became involved in the confessions of accused Scottish witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and she argued that “fairy beliefs [were] converted into witch beliefs, even though this often led to incredible and improbable statements.” Faery beliefs and folk tales were, she suggests “reused” in confessions and depositions given by the accused individuals. This was done to meet the demands of inquisitors, who insisted on hearing something from their victims. Producing these accounts satisfied the authorities and- crucially probably- it stopped the torture. However, it also had the effect of weaving witch and faery belief together, so that information previously only associated with faeries became interchangeable with ideas about witches. The consequence of the so-called ‘witch craze,’ therefore, has been to confuse and dilute faerylore, meaning that subsequent generations gain the impression that there’s no essential difference between witches and faeries and, diminishing the formerly unique status of many faery powers.

The crossover between witches and faeries is especially interesting in respect of the matter of witches’ familiars (or ‘imps’), a subject to which I’ll return in the very near future.

Eugene Grasset, Three Women & Wolves

‘The Testimony of Tradition’- some thoughts on British faerylore

Bayliss, Almost into Fairyland

Carl Jung observed that “”The most important thing is not the understanding and interpretation of fantasies, but always the experiencing of them.”

The Testimony of Tradition is a book, published in 1890 by David MacRitchie. The main argument of the text is that fairies can be ‘explained’ as memories of previous populations of the British Isles (called the Lapps and the Picts in the book). They were, allegedly, a smaller and more primitive people, who were pushed to the margins of the habitable land by the incoming iron-using Celts. They were recalled as a short statured, stone tool using folk, who lived in underground shelters and caves and who lurked on the margins of later settlers’ civilisations, stealing food at night. The book’s theory had considerable impact at the time (witness several tales about ‘pygmy’ Turanians by Arthur Machen) but it is now rejected; there is simply no evidence at all that Stone Age people were any shorter than modern humans nor any less capable of adapting to new technologies.

However, the scientific fashion of providing rational explanations for faery phenomena is one that has persisted. One example might be diagnosing the ‘symptoms’ of changelings as evidence that these reports of faery substituted children were, in fact, various instances of mental and physical disability or of developmental diseases. One individual reviewing my 2020 book Faery expressed disappointment that I hadn’t dealt with such arguments (which are laid out in detail in Peter Narvaez’ book The Good People). As I said in my response to that comment on Goodreads, the reason I hadn’t covered the subject was that I viewed these medical explanations as human attempts to classify faery phenomena and, as such, they had no place in the text I was trying to write.

Recently, I have undertaken a number of radio and magazine interviews to promote my 2021 books British Pixies and Manx Faeries. Interviewers inevitably asked whether or not “I’m a believer.” My response was always this: for the best part of a thousand years (at least) people have had faery encounters and have recorded a fairly consistent account of the nature of faery folk across Britain. My inclination is to take those reports seriously; rather than describe them or (even) explain them away as folk science, the approach I’ve taken in my posts here and in my books has been to say this: these people knew what they saw, what they dealt with- and we should pay them the respect of taking them seriously. Generation and after generation of our ancestors have had these experiences (and people still are, as the Fairy Census shows), so either they’re all deluded or there’s something behind it, supported by a wealth of tradition.

In 1853, Charles Dickens wrote that “In a utilitarian age, it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy Tales should be respected.” That’s been my approach for the last six years- to treat faerylore seriously, examining it not as a subject fit only for children but as the experience of adults, accumulated over centuries. It’s worth adding,too, that the last century and a half (or so) has sought to add additional layers to British tradition- Rosicrucian and Theosophical ideas of nature spirits, devas and the like. Much of this, in my view, is not founded on the evidence of authentic British accounts and is, quite often, little different from imaginative fiction. Overall, I’ve tried to be pretty purist about these matters, concentrating on the evidence of the British Isles alone for the simple reason that Ireland, France, Denmark and so on are different countries with different traditions. Mixing them all together into a generic ‘faery’ figure again disrespects a millennium of separate cultural development and experience and (I’d argue) disrespects the faery folk themselves. I’m sure they’d disagree that they’re all the same…

So, there we are, a sort of mission statement. In any case, whatever we might think about them and their existence, faeries have been incredibly influential upon our culture for hundreds and hundreds of years. Whether in poetry, fiction, art or music, they have shaped and fired our imaginations- reason enough alone to write about them.

So, to conclude, I’d say that, whilst academics write about folklore in order to explain the strange beliefs of people in the past, what I’m trying to do here is to write ‘faerylore,’ explaining to you how the faeries are. We might call it a sort of faery anthropology. What this blog’s about is how faeries behave and how faery society operates.

Breakfast with the faeries

Children and Faery- a dangerous liaison?

It’s widely- and wrongly- assumed by the majority of people that faeries are a subject fit only- and, in fact, intended only- for children. This prejudice has grown up over the last two centuries but- as regular readers of this blog will know very well- it is utterly misleading. When the inhabitants of the British Isles first became aware of their supernatural neighbours, they understood very well how dangerous they could be. Given all my postings over the last six years, I need hardly underline or repeat this- sex, violence, theft and kidnapping are fairly typical of the state of affairs between humans and faeries. The mistrust and mistreatment goes both ways, but clearly magical opponents have got some advantages in such a struggle. I published a book last year titled The Darker Side of Faery, purely to remind ourselves of the true nature of our Good Neighbours. They can be benign and helpful- if they want to- and if they receive the respect that’s due to them. Equally, my 2020 book, Beyond Faery, dealt with the variety of faery beasts that exist: many of these, if has to be recognised, have no good side at all.

Still, today you’d think that faeries are all pink wings, tiaras, wands and fluttering niceness. They’re small, they’re harmless, and when little girls dress up to look like them, they show us what faeries really look like. Don’t be fooled. This is a sales exercise by the Victorians. They created a market for lavish story books for children, and faery tales (in both the wide and narrow senses of that term) were popular material- illustrated with bright, colourful and appealing illustrations. Faery tales started by being moral instruction, but have steadily degenerated into the flower faeries and other such airy-fairy niceness. Faeries aren’t nice- and we shouldn’t fool ourselves that they are.

We can watch the process happening, though. Take, for example, Ochil Fairy Tales, published in 1912 by R. Menzies Fergusson. We do see the darker side of faery- a miller’s wife kidnapped, a man detained for a year in a dance under a knowe, food stolen and three unbelievers punished by the faeries for refusing to pay them the common courtesy of accepting the fact of their existence- but there are also three stories in which the faes take good and/or beautiful children into Faery and entertain them, just because they seem to like human infants so much. In the stories of Ochil Rose, Archie Ogilvie and Little Angus the little ones are shown wonders, honoured and treated- and are then returned safe and sound to their families. These barely seem to be the same faeries as those that mistreat two men because they’re drunkards, molest a witch or abduct a skilled pipe player for ever because they feel the need of his skills at dancing. Looking beyond the content of the Ochil Tales, these are definitely not the same faeries who substitute babies for changelings or who kidnap infants to perform their menial chores for them. Fergusson seems to want to have the best of both both worlds: faeries who are friendly and kind- and faeries who are difficult, if not dangerous, neighbours.

Perhaps most perverse of all is the fact that Fergusson prefaces his book with the poem The Wee Folk by the journalist and folklorist Donald Alexander Mackenzie (1873-1936). This verse, which is taken from Mackenzie’s 1909 collection, Elves and Heroes, is a fine description of the contrary qualities of the little folk as we understand them, but one stanza is especially notable:

“O never wrong the wee folk-
The red folk and green,
Nor name them on the Fridays,
Or at Hallowe’en;
The helpless and unwary then
And bairns they lure away-
The fierce folk, the angry folk, the folk that steal and slay.”

Perhaps Fergusson was moved to borrow the poem because of the generally upbeat tone of Mackenzie’s Preface to his book of verse, which perhaps reinforced Fergusson’s own more positive view of the sith. Mackenzie stated (apparently addressing his book to a girl, a Miss Yule of Tarradale) that:

“it is evident from Highland folk-tales that the fairies were oftener the friends than the foes of mankind. When men and women were lured to their dwellings they rarely suffered injury; indeed, the fairies appeared to have taken pleasure in their company. To such as they favoured they imparted the
secrets of their skill in the arts of piping, of sword-making, etc. At sowing time or harvest they were at the service of human friends. On the needy they took pity. They never failed in a promise; they never forgot an act of kindness, which they invariably rewarded seven-fold. Against those who wronged them they took speedy vengeance.”

The statements here are true- we’ve only recently considered the ‘Robin Hood‘ tendency amongst faeries and I’ve written before about faery gifts of money or skills. They are generous, but they’re more often harsh. I’ve discussed before the particular vulnerability of children to being abducted by faeries- whether it’s as playmates or as slaves. I think it’s notable that the trows of Orkney and Shetland are reported to appear mostly to children under the age of ten (see Narvaez, The Good People, 131). I don’t think we should suppose that this is the result of any friendliness or affection towards infants- nor should we get too transported by notions of the innocence of childhood opening the eyes to other dimensions. I reluctantly suspect that the trows may be revealing themselves to the age group they’re most likely to abduct.

Although the Ochil Fairy Tales is aimed at a junior readership, Fergusson seemed unable to suppress the entire truth. Faeries are fascinating- but they’re not child’s play. They can certainly be kind- but they can also be nasty. This salutary fact should never be hidden.