Deer and the faeries are inseparably connected. The animals provide the Good Folk with a valuable source of sustenance, but the association is even deeper than that; there is a magical control over them that merges into identity.
In the Scottish Highlands, the huge hag known as the cailleach bheur or cailleach-uisge, the water woman, inhabits wild places and acts as a guardian to wild animals, most particularly deer. Normally, it is considered bad luck for a hunter to see the cailleach, for a glimpse of her would mean that he would certainly catch nothing that day. Nonetheless, just occasionally, the hag might allow her deer to be hunted by favoured individuals- or she might curse a particular animal to be killed if it had offended- for example by kicking during milking. In Sir Walter Scot’s poem Alice Brand, it is the elfin king who protects the deer of the greenwood; they are “Beloved of our Elfin Queen.” Such is the affinity between the fae and deer that a fairy hunter encountered by two walkers at Corrieyairaick in Inverness-shire was seen to be able to walk through a herd without disturbing them at all.
Folklorist Joseph Campbell reported in Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland that, according to popular Highland belief, no deer is ever found dead with age, neither are its annually shed antlers ever found, because the faeries hide both the bodies and the horns, just as they use enchantments to hide their herds. The faery folk have a particular dislike for those who kill their hinds, and, if they discover those hunters in lonely places, they will torment them with elf-bolts. When a dead deer is carried home at the end of a day’s hunting, the faeries will frequently lay all their weight on the bearer’s back, until he struggles under the huge burden. An iron knife, however, being stuck in the deer’s body, will repel the faery interference and make the carcase light again. Campbell also recorded that the old faery woman (or gruagach) called the Carlin of the Red Stream, is able to restore to life any of her herd that have been hunted, provided that she can obtain a small portion of its flesh to taste.
As noted already, the cailleach keeps flocks of deer (as well as cattle and pigs) and she herds and milks the hinds on the mountains. Whilst in the summer the hag grazes her deer on the remote heights, on winter nights she can sometimes be seen driving her herd down onto the beaches of the Ross of Mull, where they can feed on the seaweed whilst other vegetation is sparse. By way of contrast, the Carlin Wife of the Spotted Hill (Cailleach Beinne Bhric Horo) has a herd which, it is said, she will not allow to descend to the beach; instead, they “love the water-cresses by the fountain high in the hills better than the black weeds of the shore.” This same cailleach is said to have sung a unique song whilst milking her hinds and, in turn, to have rewarded a bold young hunter who sang verses in praise of her: she granted him supernatural skills in pursuing deer. In Somerset in the south of England there are references to the closely related ‘Woman of Mist’ who lived on Bicknoller Hill in the western Quantock Hills. She too herded deer on the hillsides.
In some districts, such as Lochaber and Mull, deer are said to be the only form of ‘cattle’ herded by faery women (bean sith). A faery lullaby recorded by Alexander Carmichael in Carmina Gadelica is called Bainne nam fiadh (Deer’s Milk); it suggests that milk from hinds may substitute for faery mothers’ weakness in breastfeeding:
“On milk of deer I was raised,
On milk of deer I was nurtured,
On milk of deer beneath the ridge of storms,
On crest of hill and mountain.”
Carmina Gadelica, vol.2, 232
The faeries’ link with deer is more than just a matter of food and oversight. Faery women (and some witches) can transform into hinds- and Osian’s mother is said to have been a deer. Likewise, the cailleach bheur can turn into a range of animals including the deer, as well as cats and ravens. The cailleach’s shape-shifting ability is seen as well in the baobhan sith (‘hag faery’), a particularly fierce and dreadful supernatural female of the Highlands, who may appear in addition as a crow or raven or as a lovely girl in a long green dress. The gown conceals the fact that she has deer hooves instead of feet, a clear indication of her non-human nature. The baobhan sith is known for seducing and then consuming unwary men- slitting their throats, ripping out their hearts and drinking their blood. Glaistigs are also known to herd deer, to allow favoured hunters to take single beasts and to transform into female human form in which their identity may be betrayed by their deer hooves. It is very curious indeed that the deer, an animal normally characterised as timid and gentle, should be an alternative form of notoriously ferocious faery females.
The assumption of deer form is found elsewhere in British mythology. In the fourth branch of the Mabinogion, the story of Math son of Mathonwy, the brothers Gilfaethwy and his astronomer/ magician brother Gwydion are punished by their uncle Math for their joint rape of the virgin Goewin. This assault has precipitated war, so Math turns them into a breeding pair of deer for a year, then pigs, and lastly wolves. Three young are born over the three-year duration of the spell; Math uses magic to change these offspring into boys and names them: they are, respectively, Hyddwn (Stag Man), Hychddwn Hir (the Long Pig), and Bleiddwn (Wolf Man). In a related story, Amaethon, another brother of Gwydion, steals a white roebuck and a whelp from Arawn, king of the otherworld, a crime which again leads to a major conflict.
Various other marvellous deer appear in the Mabinogion. In the story of Peredur, son of Efrawc, the hero has to hunt a one-horned stag that is both very powerful and fast; a pure white stag is hunted by King Arthur in the tale of Geraint son of Erbin. Far more impressive than either of these, though, is the very long-lived Stag of Redynvre in Culhwch and Olwen, whose wise advice Arthur solicits.
Deer have other supernatural aspects. It has been reported that in Breadalbane, in the central Highlands, the belief once was that ghosts could appear as various beasts, including dogs, cattle and- of course- deer. In England, for example at Levens Hall in Westmorland, white deer were supposed to have been tied to the fortune of the house, the killing of one guaranteeing misfortune for the residents.
As a final confirmation of the deep-rooted supernatural and mythological status of deer in the British Isles, we may note the annual horn-dance that takes place at Abbot’s Bromley in Staffordshire. The antlers used in this day-long ceremony (or maybe ritual) are actually from reindeer and date back to around the Norman Conquest- two remarkable and quite inexplicable facts. In describing the dance, the recently released book Weird Walk notes that across Europe there was a tradition of dressing up as deer or cattle, something that early medieval churchmen recognised as pagan magic and sought to outlaw. It looks as though it somehow survived at Abbot’s Bromley, even today connecting us with those hags and stags…
British Fairies 
Another very insightful piece, John. How strange that deer should be its subject matter the day after I get to see one! I should explain that where I go fishing, the deer are heard ‘barking’ in the evening rather than seen, as, being of the miniature muntjac variety, they are very shy and timid. They are not exactly like the herds of fallow deer you see wandering around in Richmond Park. Usually, they see me long before I see them. This time, however, I spied one grazing in someone’s garden. Since my eyesight is not brilliant, I sought confirmation from fellow walkers to make sure it was not someone’s pet goat I was looking at. Because of their inherent shyness, I have long thought of such sightings as having special significance without really knowing the lore behind it. So, thanks for enlightening me.
Of course, the Gallo-Celtic horned god, Cernunnos, is often depicted with antlers on his head and is frequently linked with Herne the Hunter, Pan, Silvanus, and associated, perhaps, with the role played by the Horned God in the Wicca Religion.
My interest in him stems from the time I was taken via dream to a sacred grove by my ‘little friends’ and reminded by them of the ritual associated with that place. They had taken me there at least once before. I remember proudly declaring the protocol required. As I did so, my impression (an impression within an impression) was that high up in the sky above us sat this being as a sort of genius loci. I could barely make him out, so high was he, so low to the ground was I (pixies are not tall!), but I felt that he had hooves for feet and horns on his head.
Phil
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Deer have always been venerated in the forested regions of Europe. After all, they’re large and have a magnificent silhouette. In Germanic areas, the deer was considered the king of the beasts before people learned about the existence of lions. Kings and warriors were compared to deer, as were gods. In fact, Old Norse “dyr” and the Old English cognate “deor” were used to refer to all wild beasts and not just deer. The Old English poem Deor takes the form of a lament from one of the warriors caught up in the eternal time loop of the Battle of the Heodenings, who is named Deor (Snorri places the battle in the Orkneys, but anthropologists favor placing it on Hiddensee, which literally means “Hedin/Heoden’s island”, and Widsith cites the main characters as both being active in Germany). The Finns and Sami were both connected with reindeer, and in Scandinavian lore, they were also regarded as a sort of “wild man”, and connected with Jotunns, who were giants or nature spirits. In fact, some literature places Jotunheim itself in Finland. Deer are fairy cattle, but the trolls of Scandinavia take it a step further. Not only do they herd deer, but foxes are troll sheep and bears are troll hogs and wolves are troll horses.
The French Charmuezelle is a shapeshifting deer fairy. The Hungarians immigrated to Europe chasing a magical white deer.
In Asia too, the deer has a special place. In China, the beast of benevolence, the Qilin, was originally a sort of deer before gaining draconic traits and then being identified with the giraffe (the Qilin has scales, the giraffe has “scales”; the Qilin has fleshy nubs on its horns, the giraffe has nubs on its horns; the Qilin is a herbivore, the giraffe is a herbivore, etc). The sika deer is held to be the embodiment of the wilderness in China and Japan, and later became a sign of divinity, as part of self-cultivation and achieving immortality included leaving the artificial society of mankind and returning to nature. Moose, however, were seen as fierce creatures that would kill tigers, leopards, and water serpents just for the sake of a challenge. An episode from Journey to the West has a moose star spirit (the Chinese constellations, or lunar mansions, were represented by animal divinities) kill and eat a rhino demon when the Monkey King asks him for help.
In the United States, European legends of enchanted damsels and local Native American beliefs about deer have fused to create the legend of Virginia Dare as a white doe. Virginia was the first English baby born in the New World. Legend has it that during the collapse of Roanoke, her father Ananias died and her mother remarried a Croatan chief. When Virginia grew up, she was admired by all the young men of her tribe for her long golden hair. She chose a brave hunter as her husband, but one of her rejected suitors was a powerful medical man who turned her into a deer on the eve of her wedding. She gained a reputation as the deer that could never be caught, and many hunters chased this rare white doe. Her beloved acquired an arrow that would break the curse and tracked her, but just as he shot her with the magic arrow, another hunter shot her with a silver arrow. She returned to her human form and died, but her body disappeared and her spirit returned to the form of a doe, which has ever since haunted and protected North Carolina.
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