Bedroom Sprites- sleep & dreams

Wee Willie Winkie by Leslie Brooke

I’ve talked before about so-called ‘nursery sprites,’ those faeries whose primary purpose seems to be (or, at least, to have become) keeping children in order and away from harm. Parents have co-opted their fearsome natures to try to ensure that infants stay clear of rivers, ponds, pits and empty or derelict buildings.

Here, though, I’d like to discuss what might be seen as a subset of these beings. They are the faeries involved with sleep; unlike those bogies who keep children in their beds out of terror at what might lurk in the shadows or in the cupboard, these are more gentle, soothing beings. One of this family is Billy Winker, known in Lancashire and the North-West of England. He seems to be closely related to Wee Willie Winkie from over the border in Scotland. This character was first publicised widely by the Glasgow poet William Miller (1810-72). A skilled cabinet-maker, he started writing verse whilst still a youth. This was published in local newspapers and journals and prepared the way for him to publish ‘Willie Winkie’ and several other children’s’ poems between 1839 and 1843.

“Wee Willie Winkie
Rins through the toun,
Up stairs and doun stairs
In his nicht-gown,
Tirling at the window,
Crying at the lock,
“Are the weans in their bed,
For it’s now ten o’clock?”

If Willie finds a “waukrife [wakeful] laddie/ That winna fa’ asleep,” and who is keeping everyone else awake, Willie helps to comfort the exhausted parents and to help their efforts to soothe the child. The last name obviously denotes the spirit’s job (as we shall see); the ‘Willy/ Billy’ element may just be there for a harmonious effect, but there might possibly be a little more significance to it.

Illustration by Millicent Sowerby- a faery artist who, interestingly, has added wings to Willie

Billy Blind (who’s also known variously as Billy Blin, Billy Blynde or Belly Blin) is an English and Lowland Scottish household spirit, who’s related to the brownies or hobgoblins. He appears only in ballads, where he frequently gives wise advice to characters. Billy appears in several of the ballads collected together as the so-called ‘Child Ballads’:

• Gil Brenton– in which Billy Blind advises the hero that the latter’s bride (who is a virgin) is not the woman laying beside him. This false bride is, in fact, already pregnant;
• Willie’s Lady– Willie’s wife has been in labour but cannot deliver her baby because Willie’s mother, a witch, is using charms to prevent her. Billy Blind advises Willie to make a wax figure of a baby and invite his mother to the christening. In her rage, the mother demands to know how all her spells have been undone, listing them one by one and thereby enabling Willie to counteract them;
• Young Bekie– in which Billy advises Burd Isobel that Young Bekie is about to marry another bride and then helps her to travel magically so she can reach him in time; and,
• The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter– during which Billy reveals the true births of the marrying couple: they are far more noble than they knew.

Billy clearly has some sort of second sight, by which spells and deception are revealed to him. The name ‘Blind’ or ‘Blin,’ in both Scots and English, has the familiar sense of blind, sightless, but there are other, associated meanings such as ‘blink/ wink’- closing eyes for sleep (as in “forty winks”)- and ‘hidden’ or ‘secret.’ As for Billy, this can simply be a pet-form of William or, much more significantly, it can imply a person who’s a friend or companion.

I wonder, therefore, if the faery Billies are, by their names alone, to be understood as helpful and friendly individuals. Secondly, not only is sleep good for the sleeper and restful for everyone else in their household (as with those restless children)- it can be a portal to visions. As I discussed in my book Faery Mysteries, dreams can be a medium by which faeries communicate with mortals, providing them with information and counsel. It has to be said, as well, the dreams are a vehicle by which people are abducted and seduced too, so matters are not wholly benign, but sleep may, nonetheless, be a route to wealth and success. The faeries seem to be able magically to control sleep- their slumbers as well as ours- and to go further still by employing dreams as a way of contacting us across the dimensions.

‘Dancing with the Good Folk’- in Watkins ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’ Magazine

Towards the end of last year, I was invited to speak at Watkins Bookshop in central London. The talk was recorded and a transcript has just been published in issue 76 for their Mind, Body, Spirit magazine for winter 2024. It’s available on Watkins’ video channel if you’d like to pretend you were there in the basement with us- personally, I can’t bare to watch it, but that’s because I’m embarrassed hearing and watching myself! 

In the talk, I explain how I rediscovered my longstanding fascination with faeries, about eight years ago, and what motivated me to start this blog. At the core of British Fairies, I’d say, is a respect for the folklore record- and for the uniqueness of different faery traditions. Even within the British Isles, there’s a spectrum of faery customs and types, and my feeling has always been to resist straying too far beyond those physical boundaries and mixing up elements from different situations and different cultures. If we are eclectic, we risk losing the distinguishing details and forgetting the authentic native traditions, accumulated over centuries of witness experiences, instead producing a homogenised ‘international faery’ lacking roots and connections to a landscape and its population. 

Regular readers won’t be surprised to learn that I have some harsh things to say about Disney-fied, girly-fied faeries, about pink tutus, sparkly tiaras and wands. As I’ve repeatedly set out here, the faeries of British tradition can be pretty tough, selfish and cruel and I think its dishonest to that accumulated knowledge to pretend otherwise. The faeries of British tradition are not intended to be the subject of a pretty ‘fairy tales’ (although traditional fairy tales can, once again, be quite brutal and unsentimental); rather they are about adult themes for adults, because adult mortals were constantly battling and interacting with adult faeries. Faerylore is about sex, violence, theft, competition, jealousy and all those other powerful and, often, unattractive emotions and motivations that drive people (whether mortal or supernatural). Over history, the relationship between humans and faes has probably felt most like an uneasy truce, with occasional bursts of warfare and occasional fraternisation. Of course, even those intimate contacts with faeries could be perilous, for the leanan-sith and other such faery lovers tend to be fickle, possessive and dangerously addictive beings.

I was quite flattered to find that Watkins have described me in the magazine as a “folklorist, mythologist, social and cultural historian.” I quite like those labels- and they’re not inappropriate. The latter part of my talk concerns the way in which faery lore has inspired British culture- through painting, book illustrations, music, literature and more. I’ve written about these here and elsewhere quite a lot and I think that these manifestations represent one of the most important and fertile aspects of our still developing relationship with the Good Folk. Just as important as our dealings with them are what we make of them afterwards: faery-lore is an important body of literature in itself, but the other stories we tell ourselves- through songs, nursery rhymes, pictures and, even, place names– are all part of a rich and dynamic history.

‘England on Fire’: exploring the spirit of the land

Another recent birthday present, I saw this book and immediately knew that I wanted it, as it seemed to chime so well with my interests in Albion as a faery realm and the concepts of genius loci and the idea of the spirits of the land. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the text is written by Mat Osman, better known to me as the bassist in Brit pop stars Suede, but who turns out to have a literary and historical side. Osman’s brief poetic musings on aspects of English culture- stones, folklore, magic- and so on, are matched by some beautiful images selected by Stephen Ellcock.

Osman writes that “All traditions were new once, no family is truly young, England will grind every story beneath the harrow, back into the soil, and let strange wild blooms burst forth.” Over centuries we have absorbed and assimilated concepts and traditions from across the world and recreated them as something uniquely our own.

In his chapter on ‘Enchantment,’ Osman considers our faery-lore and describes the existence of two Englands, those of the mortals and of the ‘magic folk’, the latter being an “upside down England… as cruel and capricious as this world… but home to wild, whirling overthrow and dancing madness.” He writes how- “There are rare places where the two worlds meet… In madness and intoxication. In the shadow of rings of trees… In the heart of fire… But our time in the other world is short, too short, and it’s only in dreams that we ever see our true home.” I have often described these liminal places, where we may enter Faery wittingly or not. Faery rings are, of course, the commonest examples.

Yard Broom Shuck

The volume is a kind of coffee table book in a way, but with a thought provoking collection of really lovely art works that range from Richard Dadd and Samuel Palmer through to modern invocations of our mystical and magical past. I especially loved John Douglas Piper’s contemporary sculptures of East Anglian shucks or shugs made from rubbish picked up on farms. Also powerful are Dan Hillier’s prints, such as Fount (2021) which is used on the cover of the book.

Cousin of Yard Broom Shuck

The book is published by Watkins and is to be enjoyed again and again.

The Other Side, by Jennifer Higgie

For my birthday recently, I was given a copy of The Other Side- A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World by Jennifer Higgie. I’d asked for it as I’d seen it reviewed in the paper and in the shops and thought it looked interesting, as it’s concerned with the influence- or interaction- of the paranormal, supernatural, mystical and spiritual upon art.

What had especially caught my notice was the fact that Higgie had once written a novel based on the faery artist Richard Dadd, concentrating on the year he went mad and murdered his father. She’d first become aware of him when she visited the exhibition at the Royal Academy on Victorian Fairy Painting in 1997-1998 (as did I). She described feeling “an immediate kinship [to the] sixty six hallucinatory paintings and drawings from the golden age of fairy painting… I was entranced by the near-supernatural powers of observation of Richard Dadd, the wild fancies, translucent beings and benign animals who populated John Anster Fitzgerald’s canvases and the thinly veiled orgies- which masqueraded as meetings of the fairy court- of Noel Paton and Robert Huskisson.” As Higgie goes on to observe, “their Victorian audience was an adult one and painters competed to come up with visions that were ever more extreme. If a painter put wings on an image of a naked girl, then she was no longer human, and so exempt from the rules of propriety that governed representations of the so-called real world…” I have myself discussed how faery art can be a vehicle to deal with some of our own obsessions- a fact that’s coupled with the existing nature of the folklore, in which faery sexuality is powerful and forms a major point of interaction between them and mortals.

Higgie’s interest in faeries immediately interested me. The book also discusses the work of Ithell Colquhoun (an artist who, as Higgie records, “had seen fairies since she was a child) and Estella Canziani, whose Piper of Dreams I have discussed before. This picture is, as she says, “charming in its own way, [but] is a vastly diluted version of the wild imaginings that fairy painting at its best was capable of.” Other artists, like Fitzgerald, “pictured fairies as complex and as potentially malevolent to humans; for them, the nightmare was as rich with potential as the dream. Canziani’s player, by contrast, is predicated on reassurance…” This reflects when it was first exhibited- 1915; against the background of war on the western front, the painting “gently posits a psychic space that was desperately needed… It’s a safe image- but its popularity surely betrays a widespread desire to be elsewhere.”

It was the book’s mentions of faery art that drew me to it in the first place, but- as the title suggests- it is much more than that. It’s concerned with a large number of female artists (mainly of whom were entirely new to me) who have created work that tries to depict other dimensions and states of consciousness. It will repay re-readings and is a pointer to many further explorations.

What humans want from faeries…?

Some years ago, whilst studying for an MA, I surveyed the search terms that brought visitors to the British Fairies blog as a guide to what I should focus on writing about. I decided recently to repeat that analysis, curious to see what seven years of stats might tell me about our relationship to the fae.

Hundreds of words and phrases have, naturally, been used in web searches to bring browsers to the site. For example, on 93 occasions individuals searched for terms related to faery language, words or names. On another 61 occasions, the person was interested in the seelie and unseelie courts. Far out in front of all search terms, however, was the question of faery sex. Searches for terms like ‘sexuality,’ ‘nude,’ ‘naked,’ ‘erotic,’ ‘seductive,’ ‘lover’ and (even) “spanking fairies” were used, in a total of 352 searches. This then, is what the majority of people seem to want to know about faeries: what they look like with no clothes on, how they have sex together and if they have sex with humans. I’d like to stress here that the search for ‘spanking’ would have elicited no results from this blog…

Nevertheless, these quite startling results reveal an age-old trait in human nature. Faeries have always been associated with sexuality, from the incubi and succubi of the Middle Ages, through the predatory faery women of Arthurian romance to our modern day AI generated fantasies of pneumatic faery maids with pink hair and pointed ears. It is particularly in modern artistic depictions that these attitudes are most regularly seen. The faery maids of Pre-Raphaelite and other Victorian paintings exuded a hypnotic, fatal and sometimes tragic allure; during the twentieth century, though, we witnessed the curious parallel emergence of, on the one hand, the anodyne Flower Fairies and, on the other, an increasingly sexualised vision of the faery female that developed from Arthur Rackham through Brian Froud, Alan Lee and Peter Blake to the proliferation of sexy elvish males and females that may be discovered on Deviant Art and elsewhere.

Whether demonic, angelic or anime inspired, a deep desire of (mainly male?) humans is- and has been- to encounter other-worldly lovers. The hope, I guess, is that you’ll experience transcendent passions- although (as readers may well know) the reality recorded by folklore has often been harsher. The sex can be insatiable, but it eventually becomes vampiric and draining for the human partner- as seen with the classic leanan-sith and lhiannan shee. The supernatural lover may bring material benefits and unearthly powers to the partnership, but sooner or later the union breaks down, as the husbands of the Welsh lake women and of mermaids know only too well. They return to their kin, taking their valuable dowries with them and abandoning their mortal families. Mermen, meanwhile, seem to be every bit as sexist and predatory as human males, enjoying a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” kind of relationship before disappearing to unreachable safety beneath the waves.

Despite the many traditional reports of selfish and cruel treatment by faery beings, humans can’t seem to resist the attraction of a relationship with a supernatural lover. This is obviously most informative about our own natures: wishful thinking encourages us to think that we can change the non-mortal partner; hope springs eternal that previous experience won’t be repeated (against all the contra-indications), and desire blinds us to the warning signs.

Popular Views of Faeries in Victorian and Edwardian Times

I’ve often written about popular representations of faeries, and how they may shape our perceptions and expectations. Postal communications were extremely popular, cheap (and fast) in Victorian and Edwardian England and were a major medium by which people became familiar with art of various types. Cards might bear reproductions of famous ‘old masters,’ they might feature an engraving of the latest sensation from the Royal Academy (a new painting by Millais for instance) or they might offer ‘popular art’. One of the major publishers of postcards and greetings cards was Raphael Tuck, and it’s informative to look at how they chose to depict supernatural beings for sale to a mass market. It seems very clear from many of these designs that the assumption was that these cards would be bought by or for children.

Faeries & Elves

Established artists were often employed to design cards. Hence we find a Christmas elf carrying mistletoe by Mabel Lucie Atwell (head of page) and a set of three cards by prolific faery painter Agnes Richardson which very much play up the cute, cuddly side of the faeries’ (presumed) nature- see the girlie faeries and bunnies below. Richardson also supplied Tuck with some Christmas faeries in fetching furry onesies (1923)- or fluttering naked in the snow in 1925 (see below). Two tiny, naked winged beings helped to celebrate Easter with a little girl in 1917 and, on a birthday card from the ‘Once Upon a Time’ series, issued in 1930, the faes teach a little girl to tell the time with dandelion clocks (see above). We also find the faes playing ping-pong across a toadstool in 1903 and, in a set of cards from 1909, symbolising the four seasons as painfully cute little girls.

Fred Spurgin in 1942 carried the big-eyed little cutie theme to a distressingly saccharine conclusion with a set of six cards plainly designed for lovers’ messages during war time. There was doubtless demand for them, but… A stark contrast is a set of faery Valentine cards from 1902, which give the impression that the images are in 3D relief on the background, rather like Wedgwood ware. The messages are, naturally, sentimental, but nowhere near as mawkish as those written for Spurgin’s images.

Flower Fairies

A series of six cards issued in 1902 aspired for something rather more aesthetic, matching ‘fairy ladies’ with quotations from poets such as Rossetti, Swinburne, William Morris, Goethe and others. These were evidently designed for a more adult audience- those who liked to consider themselves cultured too. Similar were some other ‘flower fairies’ issued in the same year- tall women seen with blossoms. Another set of four cards, issued in 1911, paired young faery girls in transparent gowns with flowers to celebrate Easter (see below). Small girl faeries were also matched with bowls of flowers, butterflies and birds by the obscure American commercial artist, Ellen Hattie Clapsaddle (1865-1934), for a set of cards bearing sentimental messages to loved ones in a set from 1902.

Sexy Sprites

Things got rather saucier (and arguably more authentic in folklore terms) in a set of six very striking cards designed by Alice Marshall from 1924. The faery females illustrated may be tiny, but they know what they want… There was a good deal of cavorting going on in the countryside in this series- plus the appearance of a small faun (or Pan)- some might say a sure sign of wantonness, despite the otherwise bland and conventional settings

Needless to observe, probably, but the Faery depicted on these postcards is very far from the perilous and cruel place known from British tradition. The worst accusations that might be levelled against them is that the faeries get a bit randy or a bit maudlin from time to time.

Brownies

There are brownies, but not as we know them. In the ‘Brownie Family’ set of 1909 they are seen celebrating Christmas- shopping, admiring the tree, hanging up their stockings, opening presents, singing carols and eating Christmas pudding. The hitherto unknown ‘Easter Brownies’ cultivate the flowers and bring seasonal greetings. The explicit link between faery kind and human religious festivals made obvious commercial sense for Raphael Tuck and other such companies, but makes a nonsense of the traditional antipathy of faeries for all things linked to the Christian faith.

Gnomes

I have described before how ‘gnome‘ is an invented word, unknown before the sixteenth century, but one which has steadily come to parallel or displace the older term ‘dwarf.’ In the British Isles, though, dwarves are absent. Hence, Germanic influence had plainly prevailed in the Christmas cards featuring gnomes that were offered for sale in 1903-1904; note in the example above that the gnomes are enjoying themselves in the proximity of an illuminated church. Although they were not a native British species, the Scandinavian nisse and tomte appeared on our cards, perhaps slightly mystifying the English public- not least when the little man was depicted painting a pig (?) with Irish shamrocks. This seems to be some even stranger hybrid of the gnome and the lucky Irish leprechaun.

It may be the case that the continental influences that began to dilute and confuse British traditions derive as much from these cards as from, say, Perrault’s fairy tales, the work of the Grimm brothers, or Thomas Keightley’s comprehensive study of the Fairy Mythology across Europe and the wider world. Firms like Raphael Tuck had much of their engraving and printing work undertaken by German suppliers before the First World War and this connection may help to explain some of the German gnomes and Swedish tomten.

Mermaids

Three cards published by Tuck in 1908 illustrated mermaids in very typical poses- lying or sitting on rocks admiring their shells and jewels, interacting with other wildlife, or playing music. Probably the most interesting feature of these depictions is the artist’s decision to give the mermaids two scaled legs, rather than a single fish tail. A 1904 series, illustrating scenes from Wagner’s Ring Cycle, also made the Rhine Maidens into two legged mermaids.

A card from 1933, part of a series ‘Fun at the Seaside’ went for a more conventional mermaid, with a single tail- in this case, a merchild meeting some human infants playing on the beach.

In Conclusion

Evidently, these cards cannot be relied upon as any sort of guide to British faery traditions. They are, however, highly instructive as to the process of change in popular views of the faes. As I have discussed in other posts, books like Peter Pan and The Water Babies, and designs such as Cicely Mary Barker’s ‘Flower Fairies‘ were very powerful in shaping the modern image of the faery. These postcards drew upon, and reinforced, those trends- and, of course, they were often seen and absorbed by children from a young age.

For more on the role of art in shaping our ideas, see my Fairy Art of the Twentieth Century and The Modern Fairy Faith.

No Earthly Sounds- Faery Music, Song & Verse

In a previous book, I examined how Faery had effected human music from classical to rock and pop; in this new book I focus on the music of the faeries themselves, pulling together the many scattered materials on their music and song to try to provide a comprehensive statement as to why the faeries sing and play instruments- and what exactly those tunes sound like.

Many people, over hundreds of years, have heard faery music- and they continue to do so today. Often (predictably) it accompanies the faeries’ dancing, but song is the accompaniment for much of their everyday activity as well, such as the different stages of cloth making. They also seem to have a tradition of purely orchestral and choral music- and it is often this haunting sound that has the most profound impact upon human witnesses. Men and women have often been drawn into faery dances by the captivating sound of their reels and jigs; the almost unearthly and indescribable nature of their other compositions can create an trance-like or spellbound effect upon us- the listeners are rooted to the spot, rather than being lured in to faery rings. Instead of being abducted physically, perhaps they are ‘taken’ spiritually, unable to forget the sounds that reached them from another dimension.

One notable feature of the experiences with faery music across the British Isles is the difference in the degree of interaction that takes place from region to region. In England, the music is certainly heard- and this is often combined with the witness seeing the accompanying dancing or revelries, or even joining in with those. However, that’s as far as it goes. In Wales, Scotland, and on the Isle of Man, musicians will go into faery hills to participate in these events; they may learn their amazing musical abilities from the faeries- or receive from them a special instrument- or, at the least, they may overhear a faery tune and learn it. Why this should not be a feature of English contacts is unclear.

Music is a conduit for direct communication with the faery realm. Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, author of The Peat Fire Flame- Folk Tales & Traditions of the Highlands & Islands (1937, c.2) stated that the Highland faeries played both the bagpipes and (much less commonly) the Celtic harp or clarsach. He knew several people who had heard faery harping and had been able to recall fragments of the melodies they had heard and he even set down several bars of a tune relayed to him by a Miss Annie Johnstone of Castlebay, on Barra. This is just one of several dozen tunes (at least) which are reputed to have entered the human repertory from a faery origin.

Music can connect our Middle Earth and Faery in several ways. Whilst the faeries most commonly played their music inside their knolls (into which they would lure people and musicians) they sometimes used human homes for their celebrations. A story from Winnington Rig in Teviotdale indicates what a nuisance this could turn out to be. The faeries were generally helpful around the house, but one morning they decided to play the bagpipes in the kitchen. This was too much for the human inhabitants to cope with and they rushed downstairs and chased the faery musicians up the chimney. In revenge, the faeries made the farm pigs and donkeys squeal and bray all day- and chased them around inside the house for good measure.

As we know, striking the right balance with the faeries can always be tricky: a Manx cottager who had similar faery parties in his kitchen wisely decided to join in. He went downstairs, but instead of confronting them and complaining, he asked to join the dancing. After a few lively reels he was able to go to bed and sleep soundly through the remainder of the celebrations- for which the faeries respected his good humour- and never troubled him again.

Faery tunes and songs are a fascinating subject and remain to this day one of the commonest points of contact between us. No Earthly Sounds- Faery Music, Song & Verse is available as an e-book and paperback from Amazon/ KDP.

The Modern Fairy Faith

I’ve recently published this new book through Amazon/ KDP. Although only just available, it’s been substantially written and completed for four years or so. I started writing it back in 2017, not long after I finished work on my British Fairies (Green Magic, 2017), but subsequent faery projects relegated the text to an overlooked folder on my laptop and I forgot about it.

Rather than the book sitting on my machine, taking up disc space, I thought it might as well be published for anyone interested to read. Its background was the sense I got, as I read up on the subject for this blog and for that first book, that there was a gulf between what the sources of traditional folklore had to say about faeries in Britain and what many contemporary writers said. I wanted to understand how that seeming disparity had arisen.

Although folklore has never been hermetically sealed against external ideas, from late Victorian times onwards a lot of ‘elite’ and literary ideas started to influence accounts of the British faery, many of them not traditional to these islands. Some were made up (Paracelsus‘ gnomes, for example), some came from other traditions (Hindu devas and Germanic dwarves are good instances). Literature, in all its forms, seems to have had a notable impact: mass education made books more accessible and new sources started to shape a wider public perception of faeries- J M Barrie‘s Tinker Bell, Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies and, more recently, Tolkien and his elves. The flower fairies are an excellent example of this: pictures and rhymes devised for small children seem almost to be mistaken now for another authentic faery source. Hand in hand with this has gone the increased miniaturisation and feminisation of faery kind, so that they are widely viewed as being kindly, winged girls, not at all like the contrary and dangerous creatures of British folklore that I describe in my Darker Side of Faery.

It was these contradictions and complexities of evolving imagery that surprised and fascinated me and which I wanted to explore and explain for myself. The Modern Fairy Faith is available now as an e-book and paperback.

Faery Hats- power and style

In a previous post, I discussed some of the magical aspects of headwear in Faery. I’m returning to the subject now, with a slightly wider perspective on faeries and their hats.

It’s a common perception today that faeries are likely to be seen wearing hats- and often peculiar looking ones at that. I’ll come to this in more detail shortly, but in preparing this posting I went back to some of the older sources of information to see what they had to say on the subject. It was certainly accepted in previous centuries that the fae would be seen in some kind of hat, cap or bonnet, but that was a great deal less remarkable to people given that headwear was the norm. You’re far less likely to say “oh, he was wearing a hat” if absolutely everyone in your world has their head covered. The result is that some of the statements are fairly prosaic. For example, one Welsh woman who spoke to Evans Wentz said that the tylwyth teg had been seen around the Pentre Ifan cromlech in Ceredigion and that they were small, like children, and wearing red caps (Fairy Faith, 155). Likewise, in McGregor’s Peat Fire Flame there are reports of sith folk from the Highlands in “green broad rimmed hats” or a “red bonnet” (pages 14 & 78); the faeries whose departure from this Middle Earth was seen in Hugh Miller’s Old Red Sandstone sported red caps, and Wirt Sikes mentioned other members of the tylwyth teg in red caps with feathers or “red tripled caps” (British Goblins, 83 & 132). The latter is interesting because of the apparent elaborateness of the items; I’m not sure exactly what’s implied here, but evidently we’re dealing with something that’s a bit unusual when contrasted to day to day human head gear. There’s also a mention of a faery in a cap of gorse blossom (pages 79 & 81); I can’t help but suspect some romanticising influence here, part of the Victorian trend to miniaturise and prettify faery-kind.

In Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, by John Gregorson Campbell, we have some very interesting statements of sith headwear- under the heading ‘Fairy Dresses’ he tells the reader that:

“The Fairies, both Celtic and Teutonic, are dressed in green. In Skye, however, though Fairy women, as elsewhere, are always dressed in that colour, the men wear clothes of any colour like their human neighbours. They are frequently called daoine beaga ruadh, “little red men,” from their clothes having the appearance of being dyed with the lichen called crotal, a common colour of men’s clothes, in the North Hebrides. The coats of Fairy women are shaggy, or ruffled (caiteineach), and their caps curiously fitted or wrinkled. The men are said, but not commonly, to have blue bonnets, and in the song to the murdered Elfin lover, the Elf is said to have a hat bearing ‘a smell of honied apples.’ This is perhaps the only Highland instance of a hat, which is a prominent object in the Teutonic superstition, being ascribed to the Fairies.”

Superstitions (1900), 14

Campbell highlights the notable ‘fanciness’ of the female faes caps, connecting us to those tripled caps in Wales. His mention of the scented hat is fascinating- as well as being unique. He suggests that headwear is unusual in the Highlands, but McGregor has already contradicted this and, in fact, Campbell goes on to do so himself later, when he describes a rather odd faery girl who calls at a human house near to Kinloch Teagus:

“The stranger was dressed in green, and wore a cap bearing the appearance of the king’s hood of a sheep (currachd an righ caorach). The housewife said the family were at the shielings with the cattle, and there was no food in the house; there was not even a drink of milk. The visitor then asked to be allowed to make brose [porridge] of the dye, and received permission to do what she liked with it. She was asked where she stayed, and she said, ‘in this same neighbourhood.’ She drank off the compost [compote], rushed away, throwing three somersaults, and disappeared.”

Superstitions, 103

This sith lass is remarkable for several reasons: for her gymnastics, her taste for soup made of clothes’ dye- and her hat. The description compares it to the bags made from the second stomach of a sheep; in other words, it appears to be made of leather and is (I’m inferring) quite close-fitting.

Lastly, a few lines from the play Fuimus Troes by Jasper Fisher (1633):

“Fairies small,
Two foot tall,
With caps red
On their head,
Danse around
On the ground.”

Fuimus Troes, act 1 scene 5

Thomas Keightley remarked in his Fairy Mythology (page 342) that this was the earliest mention of this distinctive faery item of clothing that he had found.

So far, so good. On the whole, I think we can say that the faeries were known to wear hats, just like everyone else did, and these were by and large just like everyone else’s- if, perhaps, a little old fashioned, as in the “high crowned hats” being worn by the crowd at the faery market on the Blackdown Hills in Somerset. The colours (red and green) may have been distinctively fae, and a few were a bit fancy, but that was it. Only subsequently, going into the twentieth century, did artists, and (as a result) the public, expect to see something more elaborate and unusual.

I’ve analysed the more modern reports of faery headgear from a variety of sources: Seeing Fairies by Marjorie Johnson, the fairy Census, Janet Bord’s Fairies, and the post-war writings of Conan Doyle and Geoffrey Hodson. This gives us, altogether, nearly five hundred cases to consider. Amongst the cases excluding the Census, hats were worn in about 30% of the encounters. They were typically red or green and over a third of these caps were described as ‘pointed’ or perhaps ‘conical.’ The much more recent Census reported far fewer hat wearing faes (only about 6% of the total) but once again, where headgear was worn, in about a third of cases it was pointy.

What seems to emerge is a perception, or expectation, that faeries will appear dressed in ‘gnome’ hats. As I’ve said, my suspicion is that this is a product of the work of artists like John Anster Fitzgerald, Arthur Rackham and Heath Robinson (see above), and as such has its roots in artistic conventions rather than in folklore.

This isn’t to dismiss hats as fantasy, though. The faeries wore them at a time when this was the norm, but their choice of headwear wasn’t purely utilitarian- just to keep the head warm and dry. As I’ve described before, hats have a much more important, magical function in faery society. Professor John Rhys described the cap that a mermaid needed to live beneath the surface of the sea (Celtic Folklore, vol.1, 118 & 124); Wirt Sikes referred, rather more figuratively I think, to the cap of oblivion or invisibility that fell upon a human taken into a dance within a faery ring (British Goblins, 70 & 83). Nevertheless, such items of headwear are known to British tradition: a story from Annandale in lowland Scotland tells of a man who was invited to a faery wedding. He was given a cap to wear during the wedding feast and found himself surrounded by people dressed in green- until he took the hat off, at which point he was instantly alone in his own barn. Conversely, it’s said in the North Riding of Yorkshire that the faeries have retreated up the dales away from human habitation. They will return from time to time to dance in their old gathering places, but they are never seen unless they take their caps off…

A story from the Ochill Hills describes how the faeries were able to put on a magic cap and then fly through the air; human children holding the faeries’ hands would be able to travel with them. An account from Arisaig, near Lochaber, relates how a cap received by a woman from the local faeries could cure illnesses if worn by the patient. Most intriguingly, Campbell recorded how the water horse of the Scottish Highlands, the each uisge, could be subdued and controlled using either a shackle around its neck or a cap on its head (Superstitions, 204 & 207). Evidently, therefore, magical headgear can be used by faeries and against faeries.

I’ll conclude with three further Scottish examples. The first is from Skye and concerns the deadly power over a man that the possessor of his bonnet may have. The hag known as the Cailleach a’ Chrathaich would steal a man’s bonnet and then wear a hole in it so as to kill him (I’ve mentioned this before in respect of both hags and bauchans). Bonnets, however, could have powers that might be turned against the faeries. In Teviotdale in the Lowlands, there were wise women (called “skilly auld wives’ in the vicinity) who could advise on defences against assaults by the faeries. A mother with her newborn child might, for instance, be protected against abduction by having her husband’s blue bonnet with her at all times. A sickly cow could be cured by striking it with a blue bonnet. The exact significance of it being blue is a mystery to me: although it might be noted that blue was a very rare colour amongst the hats and caps worn by faeries, according to the records.

Lastly, a renowned way of recovering an item or person from the faeries was to throw your bonnet towards them and to declare “This is yours, that’s mine” (‘Is leatsa so, is leamsa sin‘ in Gaelic). If this is done, the faeries have no choice but to make the exchange (see examples in Keightley 392 or Campbell 25). As Campbell says, a knife or mole-hill earth may also be used, but these are all magical substances in the fae universe. The power of the bonnet may have something to do with its wider symbolism of power and authority.

‘Albion’: discovering the faery realm of Britain

William Blake, The Emanation of the Giant Albion

“All things begin and in in Albion’s Ancient, Druid, Rocky Shore” (William Blake)

Albion is an archaic name for Britain, favoured by poet William Blake and others of a similarly literary, mystical or antiquarian taste.  It is such an ancient name that its origins are a little uncertain.  Many scholars believe that the word derives from a root related to the Gaulish albio, meaning ‘the world,’ or, more literally, the ‘land above ground in the light.’  In a related sense, therefore, it gave rise to Latin albus, ‘white,’ as in ‘albumen’ (egg-white) or ‘album.’  The word also is the source of Alp, as in the mountain range; one sense of this name seems to be the ‘white mountains covered in snow, the peaks illuminated by the sun.’

In Britain languages related to Gaulish, Welsh and Gaelic, produced similar words.  In Gaelic, alp meant a height or eminence, giving rise to albainn (hilly land) and thence to the modern Gaelic for Scotland, Alba.  It’s often presumed that Albion is derived from this.  Meanwhile, in Welsh alp denotes a craggy rock or eminence.  Another derivative of that original albio was the Old Welsh elbid, modern Welsh elfydd, the primary meaning of which is world, land or region.  In England we have a trace of this word in the West Yorkshire placename, Sherburn in Elmet, the last vestige of a native British polity called Elfed that survived several centuries within the Anglian kingdom of Deira (Northumbria).

To summarise at this point, then, Albion carries the meaning of both ‘mountains’ and ‘white.’  Accordingly, therefore, some have argued that Britain was called Albion because of the distinctive white cliffs of Dover.  This seems to me to be a very parochial, southeast of England interpretation, which assumes that all invaders or travellers arrived on either the Calais to Dover or Dieppe to Newhaven ferries (or their prehistoric equivalents, at least!).  I have to say I think that the appearance of fifty miles or so of Kent and Sussex limestone coastline is a weak basis for naming a whole island.  Consider, for example, all the people who didn’t arrive that way: Julius Caesar landed between Walmer and Pegwell Bay in Kent, where the coastline is very low and marshy; the Angles and the Vikings didn’t enter Britain in the south east at all and, lastly, William the Conqueror and the Normans arrived at Pevensey, once again well away from any cliffs.  Secondly, if Albion instead denotes snowy mountains rather than chalky cliffs, would you really name the whole of Britain after landscape features of Wales in the far west or the far north of the Scottish Highlands?  I can readily accept this idea in relation to Alba/ Scotland, but it seems more improbable as a suitable label for the entire country.  In short, therefore- is there another explanation?

Faery Names

At this point, let me apparently diverge from our subject.  As some readers will have noticed, both Gaelic and Welsh lack words equivalent to English ‘faery’ and ‘elf.’  Instead, euphemisms are employed; the sith of Gaelic means either ‘the people of peace’ or, more likely, ‘the people of the hills.’  Welsh too, as I recently described, is full of circumlocutions to describe the fae folk, the least of which seems to be ellyll, which is a word related to arall (other) and having the sense of ‘one of the others.’ This seems to be a perfect acknowledgment of the faery presence living alongside- or in parallel to- the human community. 

This is the present linguistic situation- and perhaps it was the case a millennium ago as well.  In fact, the previously mentioned Welsh word elfydd, derived from albio, has several meanings.  William Owen Pughe’s 1832 Dictionary of the Welsh Language states that, as well as ‘country,’ elfydd can mean ‘elf’ and ‘element’ (we might even be inclined to read ‘elemental’).  It can also signify a person who is your peer or is similar to you. 

We should also consider the source of the English word ‘elf,’ Anglo-Saxon aelf, Old High German alb or alp.  In 1828 Thomas Keightley stated in the Fairy Mythology that “of the origin of the word alf, nothing satisfactory is to be found.  Some think it is akin to Latin albus, white; others to Alpes, alps, mountains” (p.65). 

One hundred and fifty years after Keightley, the linguist Julius Pokorny recognised the doubts still extant as to the correct derivation of Albion and ‘alps;’ thus, did the Welsh elfydd denote a sunlit land or chalk cliffs, and did any of these names derive from ‘white’ or perhaps from a much older non-Indo-European term?  There was more certainty, though, that German alb (elf) could be traced back to an older Indo-European albhos, ‘white’ or ‘glittering,’ which is suggestive perhaps of a white and insubstantial or nebulous figure (the typical pale ghost perhaps).  A connection has also been proposed with a Sanskrit word rbhu, which means ‘ingenious’ (interestingly, one Welsh euphemism for ‘the others’ was elod, the ‘intelligences’).  Pokorny also pointed out the Latin albus (white) could also include the sense of ‘fortunate,’ which makes me think again of all those flattering euphemisms, especially bendith ei mamau (their mothers’ blessings).  The cross-over and confusion with the words relating to hills will be obvious.

Faery Albion

All these linguistic links are fascinating but, ultimately (most particularly for those of us who aren’t specialists in Indo-European philology) frustratingly inconclusive. So (at the risk of going all Robert Graves on you) here’s my proposal that tries to cut through the doubt: Albion is, in fact, the ‘Land of the Elves.’  It is the land of those beings who are like us (and yet other), who are often white of skin, hair and eyes, or of dress, as in many Welsh sources, or like the many ‘White Ladies’ of wider British tradition.  Equally, Albion might be regarded as the land of those who dwell inside the hills- the ‘alp-folk’ if you like.  I’ve argued before for the role of the faeries as the soul of Britain and the spirit of its land; this present proposal merely complements that perception. Albion is the ancient name that states, explicitly, this is the faes’ own realm.

This vision of Albion is- of course- far from unique. Many artists have shared it in the past and it is still alive and meaningful today: see, for example, Peter Knight and Sue Wallace’s book Albion Dreamtime- Re-enchanting the Isle of Dragons (2019) or Ruth Thomas’ Albion Imperilled- A Fairy-tale for Grownups (2019).