John Clare (1793-1864) came from a very poor rural family, but had a talent for verse. Most of his poetry reflects the rural life and natural world of Northamptonshire, with which he was so familiar, but he saw more than birds, flowers and trees. Frederick Martin, the poet’s first biographer in his Life of John Clare (1865), gave this account of his subject’s boyhood:
“John gradually dropped his algebra and mathematics, and began to read ghost-stories… The spare hours henceforth were devoted to studies of a very different kind, namely, fairy tales and ghost stories… There was ‘Little Red Riding-Hood,’… ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ ‘The Seven Sleepers,’ ‘Mother Shipton’… and a whole host of similar ‘sensation’ stories, printed on coarse paper, with a flaming picture on the title-page. Clare… with the natural eagerness of the young mind just awoke to its day dreams, eagerly plunged into the new realm of fancy. The effect soon made itself felt upon the ardent reader, fresh from his undigested algebraic studies. He saw ghosts and hobgoblins wherever he went, and after a time began to look upon himself as a sort of enchanted prince in a world of magic. He had no doubt whatever about the literal truth of the stories he read; the thought of their being mere pictures of the imagination not entering his mind for a moment. It was natural, therefore, that he should come to the conclusion that, as the earth had been, so it was still peopled with fairies, dwarfs, and giants, with whom it would be his fate to come into contact some time or other. So he buckled his armour tight, ready to do battle with the visible and invisible world.
Opportunity came before long. Among his regular duties… was that of fetching once a week flour from Maxey, a village some three miles north of Helpston, near the Welland river. The road to Maxey was a very lonely one, part of it a narrow footpath along the mere, and the superstition of the neighbourhood connected strange tales of horror and weird fancy with the locality. In the long days of summer, John Clare, who had to start on his errand to the mill late in the afternoon, managed to get home before dark, thus avoiding unpleasant meetings; but when the autumn came, the sun set before he left Maxey, and then the ghosts were upon him. They always attacked him half way between the two villages, in a low swampy spot, overhung by the heavy mist of the fens. Poor John battled hard, but the spirits nearly always got the upper hand. They pulled his hair, pinched his legs, twisted his nose, and played other tricks with him, until he sank to the ground in sheer exhaustion. Recovering himself after a while, the fairies then let him alone, and he staggered home… pale and trembling, and like one in a dream… he continued his weekly errands to Maxey, with the same result as before. At last, when thoroughly wearied of this repetition of supernatural terrors, he hit upon an ingenious plan for breaking the chain connecting him with the invisible world. The plan consisted in concocting, on his own part, a story of wonders; a story, however, ‘with no ghost in it.’ Now a king, and now a prince; in turn a sailor, a soldier, and a traveller in unknown lands; John himself was always the hero of his own story, and, of course, always the lucky hero. With his vast power of imagination, this calling up of a new world of bright fancies to destroy the lawless apparitions of the air had the desired effect, and the ghosts troubled John Clare no more on his way to and from the mill.”
Life of John Clare, 19-20
This wasn’t the young poet’s only supernatural encounter. By his own account, he often saw wills of the wisp and was convinced that the phenomenon was some sort of spirit. He and a friend went out one night looking for a rumoured ghost and saw several lights, bright as meteors, that danced and moved up and down, getting larger and gliding towards him like a man holding a lantern galloping on a horse. He saw these lights apparently playing together, then merging and sinking into the ground. A neighbour described seeing as many as fifteen at once, dancing reels together. Clare on another occasion saw a will of the wisp when returning from a visit to a girl he was courting:
“I saw one as if meeting me. I felt very terrified and on getting to the stile I determined to wait and see if it was a person with a lanthorn or a will o whisp. It came on steadily as if on the path way and when it got near me within a pole’s reach perhaps, as I thought, it made a sudden stop as if to listen me. I then believe[d] it was some one but it blazed out like a whisp of straw and made a cracking noise like straw burning, which soon convinced me of its visit. the luminous halo that spread from it was of a mysterious terrific hue and the enlarged size and whiteness of my own hands frit me. the rushes appeared to have grown up as large and tall as whalebone whips and the bushes seemed to be climbing the sky. every thing was extorted out of its own figure and magnified. the darkeness all round seemed to form a circular black wall and I fancied that if I took a step forward I should fall into a bottomless gulph which seemed garing all round me. so I held fast by the stile post till it departed away when I took to my heels and got home as fast as [I] could- so much for will o whisps.”
John Clare by Himself, 1996, Appendix 9
The young writer commemorated these nocturnal adventures in a poem, Will o’Wisp:
“I’ve seen the midnight morris-dance of hell
On the black moors while thicker darkness fell,
Like dancing lamps or bounding balls of fire,
Now in and out, now up and down, now higher,
As though an unseen horseman in his flight
Flew swinging up and down a lamp alight;
Then fixed, as though it feared its end to meet,
It shone as lamps shine in a stilly street;
Then all at once it shot and danced anew,
Till mixed with darkness out of sight it grew.
The simple shepherd under fear’s eclipse
Views the dread omens of these will-o’-wisps
And thinks them haunting spirits of the earth
That shine where midnight murders had their birth;
With souls of midnight and with heads of fire
To him they shine, and bound o’er moor and mire,
Blazing like burning, crackling previous hit wisps of straw;
He sees and hears them, then with sudden awe
He pictures thieves with lanthorn light in hand,
That in lone spots for murder waiting stand.
Upon the meadow bridge’s very wall
He sees a lanthorn stand, and pictures all
The muttered voices that derange his ears;
And when more near the spot, his sickening fears
See the imagined lanthorn, light and all,
Without a plash into the water fall,
And in one moment on his stifled sight
It blanks his hopes and sets his terrors right.
For furlongs off it simmers up and down,
A will-o’-wisp; and breathless to the town
He hastes, and hardly dares to catch his breath,
Existing like a doubt of life or death
Until the sight of houses cools his fears
And fireside voices greet his happy ears.
And then he rubs his hands beside his fire,
And quakes, and tells how over moor and mire
The jack-o’-lanthorn with his burning tails
Had like to led him; and he bites his nails
With very fear to think out how the blaze
Had like to cheat him into dangerous ways:
How that he thought he heard some people stand
As likely thieves with lanthorn in their hand,
When in a moment- yet he heard no fall-
Down went the lanthorn from the arches’ wall
Into the flood; and on that brig alone
How his heart seemed as growing into stone.”
As for the faeries proper, many of Clare’s references in his poems use the word in one of its sense that was well-established in the nineteenth century- of denoting something small, delicate, pretty and (often times) feminine. So, for example, in House (or Window) Flies, they are said to “look like things of mind, or fairies” (because they are tiny and insubstantial). The same can be said of other small animals, such as the bird the land-rail (described in Summer Moods) and insects more generally (called “fairy folk” in Insects). We hear too about the “fairy sunshine” in The Sycamore, “fairy visions” evoked by the Morning Wind, that the Vanities of Life are nothing but a “fairy lure”- just as hopes change like summer clouds and “fairy phantasies.” The patterns of light shimmering on the bed of a stream are “fairy pictures” (The Shepherd Boy) and, most tragically, his long-lost love Mary Lee was a “fairy rose” (Death of Beauty). Clare’s verse Fairy Things is essentially just a lengthy catalogue of such sights.
We do learn more about substantive faery belief in the nineteenth century East Midlands as well. There are quite frequent references to faery rings in Clare’s verse and to the function of mushrooms, which are termed “fairy bowers” in Decay. In The Milkmaid “fairy rings o’ darker hue” are noted in the sward of the pastures and their “fresher greens” appear in The Approach of Spring. The Cress Gatherer is described at her work:
“The long wet pasture grass she dabbles through,
Where sprout the mushrooms in the fairy-ring,
Which night’s black mystery to perfection brings.”
Stanza 27 of the Village Minstrel also describes how the attentive countryside walker might have-
“mark’d the curious stained rings,
Though seemly nothing in another’s eye,
And bending o’er them thought them wondrous things,
Where nurses’ night-fays circling dances hie,
And set the cock to watch the morning’s eye;
Light soon betrays ’em where their routs have been,
Their printing foot-marks leave a magic dye,
The grass grows gloomy in a darker green,
And look for years to come, and still the place is seen.”
Two poems published in Clare’s collection The Rural Muse start to look beyond these valuable, but essentially botanical, descriptions of the rings, which were a common phenomenon at the time, to their causes. Thus, The Fairy Rings “shine black, fresh and round,” as if a gypsy fire had burned there the previous night, but the visitor can discover the true source of the marks if s/he should “stoop to see/ Their little footmarks in each circling stain.”
We also discover that, on Midsummer’s Eve, the faeries will venture forth from their haunts:
“Here’s the old fairey rings by this dark thickets side
Where the owl rests in fear & the foxes abide
Where fairys dance round them more still than a sigh
Yet the shepherd when late hears the noise passing by-
& o’er his snug fire in his cottage at night
Hell talk till the candle turns blue with affright
Of the pranks that they play & the sports they pursue
& the mischief when vexed that they venture to do
How they steal into barns & fall thrashing the corn
Till the cock on the dunghill gins sounding his horn
Then all in an instant fly silent away
With an ear in their hands & so many are they
That the old startled farmer with anguish & awe
When he comes in the morning finds nothing but straw
& why shouldn’t we of our troubles take leave
& with nature make merry at midsummer’s eve.”
The diminutive size of the faeries- as well as their mischievous nocturnal exploits, are captured perfectly- and memorably- in the verse on ‘January’ from The Shepherd’s Calendar:
“And how the other tiny things
Will leave their moonlight meadow-rings.
And, unperceived, through key-holes creep.
When all around have sunk to sleep.
To feast on what the cotter leaves,
Mice are not reckoned greater thieves.
They take away, as well as eat.
And still the housewife’s eye they cheat.
In spite of all the folks that swarm
In cottage small and larger farm;
They through each key-hole pop and pop,
like wasps into a grocer’s shop.
With all the things that they can win
From chance to put their plunder in;
As shells of walnuts, split in two
By crows, who with the kernels flew;
Or acorn-cups, by stock-doves plucked,
Or egg-shells by a cuckoo sucked;
With broad leaves of the sycamore
They clothe their stolen dainties o’er:
And when in cellar they regale.
Bring hazel-nuts to hold their ale;
With bung-holes bored by squirrels well,
To get the kernel from the shell;
Or maggots a way out to win.
When all is gone that grew within;
And be the key-holes eer so high.
Rush poles a ladder’s help supply.
Where soft the climbers fearless tread.
On spindles made of spiders’ thread.
And foul, or fair, or dark the night.
Their wild-fire lamps are burning bright:
For which full many a daring crime
Is acted in the summer-time;
When glow-worm found in lanes remote
Is murdered for its shining coat.
And pot in flowers, that nature weaves
With hollow shapes and silken leaves.
Such as the Canterbury bell.
Serving for lamp or lantern well;
Or, following with unwearied watch
The flight of one they cannot match,
As silence sliveth upon sleep.
Or thieves hy dozing watch-dogs creep.
They steal from Jack-a-Lantern’s tails
A light, whose guidance never fails
To aid them in the darkest night
And guide their plundering steps aright.
Racing away in printless tracks,
Some, housed on beetles’ glossy backs.
Go whisking on- and others hie
As fast as loaded moths can fly:
Some urge, the morning cock to shun.
The hardest gallop mice can run.
In chariots, lolling at their ease.
Made of whateer their fancies please;
Things that in childhood’s memory dwell
Scooped crow-pot-stone, or cockle-shell,
With wheels at hand of mallow seeds.
Where childish sport was stringing beads;
And thus equipped, they softly pass
Like shadow on the summer-grass.
And glide away in troops together
Just as the Spring-wind drives a feather.
As light as happy dreams they creep.
Nor break the feeblest link of sleep:
A midge, if in their road a bed,
Feds not the wheels run oer his head.
But sleeps till sunrise calls him up,
Unconscious of the passing troop…”
Lastly, in verses 8 and 9 of The Village Minstrel we learn of other, more benign, faery habits:
“And tales of fairy-land he lov’d to hear,
Those mites of human forms, like skimming bees,
That fly and flirt about but every-where;
The mystic tribes of night’s unnerving breeze,
That through a lock-hole even creep with ease:
The freaks and stories of this elfin crew,
Ah, Lubin gloried in such things as these;
How they rewarded industry he knew,
And how the restless slut was pinched black and blue.How ancient dames a fairy’s anger fear’d,
From gossip’s stories Lubin often heard;
How they on every night the hearth-stone clear’d,
And ‘gainst their visits all things neat prepar’d,
As fays nought more than cleanliness regard;
When in the morn they never fail’d to share
Or gold or silver as their meet reward,
Dropt in the water superstition’s care
To make the charm succeed had cautious placed there.”
In fact, so strong was Clare’s belief in the faery presence that, in his two poems on Faery Rings, he treats his assuredness of their existence as “Bible [or Scripture] truths.” Clare’s home village was Helpston, in north west Huntingdonshire near to Peterborough. It is a part of England that, today, is very largely free of recorded faery traditions. Over the border in Northamptonshire there is a record of the ‘Redman’ of Rockingham Castle and, south in Bedfordshire, as recently as January 1967, a seven school boys saw a small man in blue, with a beard and a tall hat, who vanished twice in a puff of smoke and was associated with babbling voices. Otherwise, very little folklore seems to have been recorded, making Clare’s evidence all the more valuable to us (over and above the literary value of his verse).
British Fairies 