Arthur Rackham, The Dimchurch Flit, from Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill
Last week I stayed up late to be interviewed for the US programme the Paracast. I’ve reproduced below the details of the programme, which is now available on the link provided. We had a wide ranging discussion covering a huge number of topics- the physical nature of faeries, their relationship to the Christian church and religion, their temperament and interactions with humans (such as changeling activity and abductions) and, their connection to UFOs…
“Gene Steinberg and co-host Tim Swartz explore the myths, legends and possible reality of fairies with author/blogger John Kruse. who has been fascinated by such lore since his early twenties. In mid-2016 he set up the WordPress blog “British Fairies” and started intensive fairy research and writing. In 2017 his themed examination of fairy-lore, British Fairies, was published by Green Magic Publishing. His next book, Faery was published by Llewellyn Worldwide in April 2020 and Beyond Faery, a companion volume on mermaids, hobgoblins and other faery beasts appeared in November that year. As of this interview, he was working on several other books on faery and he’s published articles in various magazines, including Magical Times, Witches and Pagans, The Wild Hunt and Faerie Mag. And one more thing: Are such tales similar to reports of UFOs and UFO abductions?”
As I’ve often said in previous postings, faeries can display a very high- even an inflexible- moral sense and can be outraged if their principles and standards are breached. Generally, we are aware of these rules because they are imposed upon us humans, even if we’re unaware of them- or of the fact that we might have breached them.
What I want to consider here is what happens to faeries when they break their own laws. In the Dell of Eathie in the Scottish Highlands there is said to be a faery prison. This is where their offenders are detained, confined inside the cliffs during the daytime but allowed out on moonless nights, when they may go to a nearby mill to grind their grain. No dancing is permitted when they’re abroad, making the prisoners very bitter. Humans unlucky enough to encounter them on such nights are very likely to be abducted. The deprivation of such free-spirited beings as faeries of their liberty must be felt as a harsh punishment, even though the gaol itself sounds something like an ‘open prison’ in human terms.
How do individual faes end up in jail? We have some information on their laws. A man called Gruffydd who visited the branch of the Welsh tylwyth teg known as Plant Rhys Dwfen (the children of Rhys the deep), was told about the code that protected their island home from human incursions. Abhorrence of treachery was deeply ingrained in their characters, as was a devotion to their people: Rhys had commanded them to “honour our parents and ancestors, to love our wives without looking at those of our neighbours and to do the best for our children and grandchildren,” he was told.
Elidyr & the Golden Ball
Another Welsh account, that of Elidyr and the Golden Ball, underlined these beliefs. The boy Elidyr reported that the subterranean people he visited “never took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies. As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities and inconstancies. They had no religious worship being only, it seems, strict lovers and reverers of truth.” In due course, Elidyr’s mother encouraged him to steal some faery gold for her. Playing with the faery king’s son, the mortal child stole the golden ball they were throwing and ran off. He was pursued by the faeries and dropped the ball in fear. They picked it up “spitting at and deriding the boy” (for his falseness, thievery and greed). He was never able to find his way into Faery again.
Lies and larceny very evidently appal the Good Folk. This is confirmed by a report from Shetland of a trow boy who was often sighted by the islanders, wandering alone and dejected. He had stolen a silver spoon from another of his kind- and had been ejected from his community. This is probably an even harsher sanction than imprisonment, but may be quite commonly used. The Manx poem Y Phynnoddereedescribes one of the Little People of the island who was also expelled from “the elfin coterie” because he had fallen in love with a mortal girl, rather than one of his own. Presumably this might be understood as another type of treachery. See the appendix of my Manx Faeries (Green Magic, 2021) for the full text of the poem.
There’s an intriguing line right at the end of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck appears in the last scene and tells the audience:
“I am sent with broom before/ To sweep the dust behind the door.”
Act V, scene II
The couplet might appear to be about tidying up after the wedding celebrations that have just taken place (although even then it might seem a little strange) but there’s more to it than that. That this is the case is demonstrated by a line from the early seventeenth century pamphlet Robin Goodfellow- His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests. Pinch the fairy is speaking, making reference to a facet of the faery character with which many readers will be familiar: their love of a clean and tidy house. If Pinch finds house maids-
“in their bed snorting and sleeping, and their houses lying as cleane as a nasty doggs kennell; in one corner bones, in another egg-shells, behind the doore a heap of dust, the dishes under feet, and the cat in the cubbord: all these sluttish trickes I doe reward with blue legges, and blue armes.”
We understand very well that humans will be punished for infractions of the faeries’ strict code of morals and etiquette- and that exacting standards of cleanliness can be imposed. Why then is Puck sweeping the dust behind the door, instead of brushing it into a pan and throwing it out? It’s very hard to puzzle out: the traditional role of Robin Goodfellow was to do chores at night in return for bread and a bowl of milk. Reginald Scot in the Discoverie of Witchcraft depicts him “grinding of the malt or mustard and sweeping the house at midnight…” (1584, Book IV, c.10). In fact, as the poet and playwright Ben Jonson knew very well, in popular imagery Robin was recognisable for the very fact that he carried a broom and a candle. These items were symbols of the friendly household sprite:
“that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery while they are at hot cockles”
Ben Jonson, Love Restored, 1612
Puck would kindly do the work so that the domestic servants could have some time off to enjoy themselves playing games. What’s he up to in Midsummer Night’s Dream? One possible explanation is that it’s a coarse euphemism: the newly weds are in their beds, the bridegrooms (as it were) ‘sweeping with their brooms.’
A folktale from Mull might possibly give us another explanation for Puck’s rather negligent cleaning. A woman suspected that her child had been taken by the faeries and a changeling left behind. She sought advice from a local wise woman, who advised that she wear a rowan necklace and lay St John’s Wort across her eyes when she was in bed at night, as this would give her the second sight and enable her to see what was happening in her cottage. She did this and was awoken by the sound of some faery women outside, calling out to items in the house to be let in. Because the fire was properly banked up, a turf couldn’t help; because the thread had been taken off the spindle of the spinning wheel, that couldn’t help, but the mother had left a plate out unwashed. This was enchanted and released the latch so the faeries could get inside. Perhaps this is the answer therefore: a poorly done job of tidying up leaves us vulnerable to the faeries’ powers (see Swire, Inner Hebrides, 148).
St Thomas a Becket church, Pucklechurch, Gloucestershire
A new subject for this blog is the way in which the faeries are linked to the names the British have given to places in their landscape. Many of these date back to early medieval times (Anglo-Saxon) and indicate once more the very longstanding faery associations with the land.
Whilst quite a few of these names relate to prominent features like hills, streams and pools, many refer to much smaller, less significant and, even, transitory locations. A large proportion of these are field names- used in the past but highly vulnerable to changes of land-use; the consolidation of fields or their conversion to intensive arable have, over the last century, done away with the need to identify various small pastures, meadows and such like. Valuable place name evidence has therefore been lost.
Subtle landscape features were also labelled in the past by those intimately acquainted with the area they lived in and used, and these highly local names may also be forgotten over the generations: Poflet, in Devon, for example, describes a dip down to a stream which Puck frequented; in late Tudor times there was a Hop Gap at Methley in the West Riding of Yorkshire- a space in a fence where you might meet Hob. Such localised names are very vulnerable to being lost.
Faeries, pixies & elves
I’ll start by looking at the names including the element ‘fairy.’ These are, in fact, quite rare and are mostly of rather recent origin, the majority only apparently dating from Victorian times (making you suspect that the choice of the name could have been more literary or romantic than any reflection of local superstition). As readers may be aware, this late usage is probably to be expected in any event, in that ‘fairy’ is a word derived from French and a relative late comer to the English language. Confirmed fae origins may be found for Fairy Yard, a field at Ashton on Mersey in Cheshire, the Fairy Close and Hill at Wragby in West Yorkshire and Fairy Cross, at Trent in Dorset. As the English Place Name Survey remarks of these, they seem to denote places renowned for being haunted by faeries.
A lot of the apparent ‘fairy’ place-names actually come from other words such as ‘ferry’ or ‘fair.’ Too ready an interpretation without tracing back the name to its origins can often produce misleading results. The writer Jabez Allies, in his Roman and Saxon Antiquities and Folklore of Worcestershire, of 1856, was rather guilty of this. His pride in his home county and its rich traditions encouraged him to find faery names everywhere: he enumerated thirty parishes where there are places named after Puck, for instance, and another twenty-six in which the goblin Hob is commemorated. Sadly, modern scholarship is not so generous in its attributions.
Interestingly, names incorporating the element ‘pixie’ are equally rare. The rectory at Durweston in Dorset is recorded as being named Pexy’s Hole, the hollow haunted or frequented by pixies, in 1584. There are other examples, but these are first recorded at a later date. As with the more recent ‘fairy’ names, these suggest a conscious choice of label rather than a traditional significance.
Names that include the Anglo-Saxon aelf, ‘elf,’ are also surprisingly absent. We find that, in 1285, Eldon Hill in Derbyshire was recorded as Elvedon, the elves’ hill. Alfin Hall at Agbrigg in the West Riding of Yorkshire speaks for itself. The lost Alvehou at Tetney in Lincolnshire and Alveleg at Crich in Derbyshire were the elves’ mound and clearing respectively. The ‘alvysch thornys’- the ‘elves’ thorn trees’ are recorded in 1319 as a field name at Milton Abbas in Dorset. Perhaps the most interesting is Elva Hill, near to Setmurthy in Cumbria. In 1488 the place was called Elf How; it’s the site of a circle of fifteen stones, which were probably the retaining wall for a cairn or burial chamber.
The church & hall, Shuckburgh, Warwickshire
Goblins
There is a sort of goblin now called the ‘shuck’ or ‘shock’ (from the Anglo-Saxon scucca) and its presence is marked in at least sixteen names, denoting woods, streams, hills and marshes, from the east of England up to Cheshire. Outliers include Shobrooke in Devon and Shucklow Warren in Buckinghamshire.
Hob is another good example of the potential pitfalls in ascribing faery origins, as many names are more likely to derive from the personal name Hobbe than from the supernatural being. Nonetheless, at least eighteen genuine ‘Hob’ names can be identified, concentrated in the north of England and often related to natural features, such as hills, fields and- in one case- stones, the Hobb Stones at Tankersley in South Yorkshire. Other names concentrated in the north of England are boggart and boggle, applied to fields and woods in West Yorkshire, Cheshire and Westmoreland. A particular boggart known in the north was ‘Old Skrat,’ and he is named in at least nine places, mainly woods and hills.
Skrat Haigh Wood, Barnsley, South Yorkshire
Puck
The other goblin name with clear Anglo-Saxon roots is ‘Puck,’ from the Old English puca. This name is the most common faery toponym in England, being found in at least fifty-three places, of which a third are in Gloucestershire and over seventy per cent in the South and South West of England. About a quarter of these names are associated with pits or holes, alongside a scatter of hills, streams, pools, moors and woods.
Boggart House, Esholt, near Bradford (from the estate agent’s details…)
What’s especially interesting to me is how certain names are noticeably linked to human structures. Eleven per cent of the ‘hob’ place-names are linked with houses and farms; 22% are lanes. In the case of ‘puck’ place-names, the figures break down as follows: 17% applied to buildings (examples include Puckscroft in Surrey and Puckrup and Puckham, both in Gloucestershire) and 17% to roadways, paths and so on (for instance, Puckstye, Sussex, Puckpath, Gloucestershire, Pockford, Surrey and, in Warwickshire, Powke Lane and Poukelone). Whilst it’s fairly easy to imagine that a certain lane might get its name because it was a lonely, dark place where you might run into a goblin at night, the dwellings, barns and sheds named after him are much less expected.
Although we have relatively few boggle and boggart names, 12% of these apply to roads and 12% too to houses. This is especially interesting, as there is a strong tradition in West Yorkshire of ‘boggart houses,’ buildings that are renowned for being haunted by a spirit. The reasons for so many places like Pit House, in Dorset (Puck House originally), Hob Cote in Keighley and Puck Shipton (Puck’s sheep shed) in Wiltshire seem to be twofold: either they were specifically inhabited by such a spirit or they had been built on a spot that was already very strongly associated with sightings of one of the goblins. Either way, it’s remarkable evidence of people living alongside their Good Neighbours over hundreds and hundreds of years.
Summary
Overall, faery derived names are scattered quite evenly across England. They primarily (but not exclusively) relate to landscape features and give us an impression of a land as widely settled by the Good Folk as by humans. Our Good Neighbours were just that- living in the countryside in close proximity to their mortal kin- and sometimes residing far more familiarly than that, sharing a house or co-habiting in a farm.
This posting is adapted from part of a chapter in my new book, The Spirits of the Land- Faeries and the Soul of Britain (2022)- available as a paperback and e-book through Amazon.
I’ve just visited the British Library to look at several folklore books by Scottish writer Otta Swire. Her 1964 publication on the Inner Hebrides and their legends included a fascinating little account of faery life in the western isles of Scotland.
A girl from Skye was kidnapped by the Little People at the age of nine. Because she was an orphan, no-one in the community sadly made any particular effort to get her back again and, as a result, she stayed for many years ‘under the hill.’ Because of this, when she did finally return to her human home, she had a very good knowledge of the faery lifestyle and, as well, had learned useful skills from them.
What can we learn from her account? It’s a fantastic snapshot of all aspects of daily life inside a sithean (a hill or burial mound). Firstly, we’re told that the faery society was a matriarchy. Women were regarded as better than men, in terms of both wisdom and skills, and they therefore ran the community, under the overall control of a queen. The men, meanwhile, did all the physical work.
Perhaps predictably, the faeries relied on natural materials for most of their goods. There was next to no metal in the faery hill, other than an old, broken iron pot which they seemed to have salvaged after it broke and its human owner threw it out. Certainly, there wasn’t gold or silver (unlike some reports of abundant hidden faery treasure). Horn and seashells provided their plates and cups; unworked pieces of tree trunk served as furniture and they slept on bundles of heather.
As for diet, the sith folk ate herbs and drank honey. Deer provided their milk, cream and butter, although in its absence milk from sea mammals such as seals and whales could be used- though this had a far less agreeable taste. They would gather eggs, fish and shellfish to supplement this diet and they could always steal from humans (and did).
The Highland faeries’ bread was made from silver weed. This plant, called brisgein in Gaelic, is often regarded as a typically faery food, but in fact it was also eaten by the human population as well. Related to the rose, it grows all year round on rough grassland and sand dunes and was therefore always available if crops failed. The flavour and texture of the leaves aren’t especially pleasant, but the roots are valued because of their starch content. Baked or boiled, they have a nutty flavour and they can be ground up for flour as well. The roots aren’t thick and a lot need to be gathered to make a meal; this was why humans treated brisgein as a food of last resort. As for the faery folk- well, the women would just get the men to pick it anyway…
Fascinatingly, some drinks were made from herbs and gave the drinkers strength, sleep or dreams. The faery queen herself had a power of second sight so that she knew what was happening in other places. We’ve already encountered these sorts of prophetic powers.
Wild lint, nettles and bog cotton supplied the materials for clothing. Stone and shells made their knives and the spines from stingrays tipped their spears (the use of flint tips for arrows- the so-called ‘elf bolts‘- has been discussed before). The faeries were able to speak to animals and, presumably as a result of this, they were very good at raising livestock. They could not, however, cultivate crops.
When the human girl returned home, she had acquired the faery abilities with herds and she became very successful rearing flocks of sheep. This made her an attractive marriage prospect in the village society of her time- which was good, perhaps, because her feminist upbringing made many people on the island (men especially of course) regard her as ‘uppity’ and rather too self-possessed…
An Sithean Mor– the ‘Big Faery Hill’ in Wester Ross (not Westeros)
British Fairies 