Faeries and True Love- some remarks

The remarkable geological formation know as Brimham Rocks, near Ripon in the Yorkshire Dales, is the site of a curious faery incident:

“Edwin and Julia were madly in love with each other but Julia’s father was implacably opposed to their relationship. Finally, when Edwin asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage., her father forbade the pair to see each other ever again. Facing this cruel separation, and unable to contemplate the prospect of life without each other, they decided to leap off Brimham Rocks and so be united forever. The couple jumped hand in hand to their certain deaths from the precipice now called Lovers’ Leap but, by some miracle, instead of plummeting to the ground, they floated gently down. Some said that the fairy who lived among the rocks had witnessed their misery and, knowing they could be happy if only they were allowed to marry, had spared them. Discovering what she’d planned, Julia’s father had to reconcile himself with her love and at last consented to their wedding. The pair lived happily ever after (of course).”

This faery intervention in human love is, in many respects, quite at odds with the common conduct of British faeries. Just within the same county of Yorkshire, they will regularly be found demonstrating their more typical behaviours: often this is indifference to humankind- faeries seen dancing on (or in) hills and inside faery rings at night (for instance at Fairy Cross Plain, Fryupdale, Danby); sometimes, though, there is active hostility. This may be triggered by the actions of a person, such as the man who stole a golden goblet from a faery dance at Willy Howe, East Yorkshire, and was pursued by an angry horde until he was able to leap over a stream. On other occasions, the faery being is (it seems) preternaturally antagonistic towards people, as with the boggart known as Jeanie o’ Biggersdale, who haunted Mulgrave Woods north of Whitby, and who would pursue and kill any travellers who dared to risk passing through her domain.

The Hob Holes, Runswick, by Stephen McCulloch, geograph,.org,uk

From time to time, faery folk will act benignly towards us mortals, but they generally have to be asked to do this: the hobthrush of Runswick Bay, North Yorkshire, could cure whooping cough (if requested correctly to do so by parents). The same hob could also lure the unwary into his ‘Boggle Hole’ on the shore so that they drowned when the tide came back in. The least one might expect from such creatures was a nasty fright (as at the Hob’s Hole near Sandsend) or the experience of being led in circles until you were utterly lost (as at Elbolton Hill, near Threshfield North Yorks).

So, to return to Edwin and Julia at Lover’s Leap, why would the faery haunting the rocks (the ‘spirit of the place’ perhaps) wish to intervene in a human romance? This kind of behaviour seems more like what we’d expect of a faery godmother in a fairy tale or Disney film than the conduct we can more reasonably find amongst the distinctly tough and non-sentimental British faery clans. There are, of course, faery lovers (though not so much in Yorkshire) but their intervention with human partners is quite different from what we’re discussing here. In a much earlier post, however, I noted some evidence that faeries do (at least from time to time) intervene to punish unfaithful lovers and- by implication- promote true love. Why might this happen?

My guess is that interventions like these take place because there’s something in it for the faery folk. Stable partnerships and households in the human world are, arguably, in the faeries’ favour. Given their propensity for entering human homes to benefit from warmth, food and hot water, my suspicion is that encouraging happy families is, really, an expression of faery self interest. Edwin and Julia lived happily ever after in their human home- and the faeries could then raid their larder at night, enjoy the products of their dairy and, generally, make free with their goods, on the basis that “what’s thine is mine and what’s mine is mine.” This may be excessively unromantic and unsentimental, but it makes the most sense within the wider context of faery conduct and morals.