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)
I was recently invited to speak at London’s respected esoteric bookshop, Atlantis, and during our discussion, one participant asked the difference between boggarts and poltergeists. I had to think hard about this, to put it into words, and I thought it was worth sharing my conclusions.
Poltergeists are generally defined as noisy- usually mischievous- ghosts which are held to be responsible for unexplained noises (such as rappings) or that move furniture and throw objects such as crockery around inside a house; sometimes they are responsible for stones being thrown outside. They have traditionally been described as troublesome spirits who haunt a particular person- instead of a specific location. References to poltergeists are international and became more common from the early seventeenth century. Psychic investigators from the later nineteenth century onwards established that there generally seems to be a single human agent responsible for or connected with all the disturbance, whose removal will terminate the phenomenon. This may be a person with a physical or mental abnormality, or it may just be a pubescent child in a heightened emotional and physical state. No clear motivation seems to exist for the phenomena (unless, with the aforementioned adolescents, it is connected to an teenaged desire to be the centre of attention).
Regular readers will immediately see the contrast with the boggart. The latter is a being who’s tied to a specific location and family; even more importantly, the boggart has a personality and character- they’re more than just a source of nuisance noise (although they can certainly cause it). They speak, the interact, they undertake household chores; they can come almost to be a part of a family. In short, they’re not just a ghost in the house.
The majority of boggarts are unfriendly and unpleasant beings. The more malicious of these creatures will attempt to pull people down into their underground lairs, as with the Boggarts of Hellen Pot and Hurtle Pot near Chapel-le-Dale, in Yorkshire. At the Bee Hole area of Burnley there used to be a boggart who lurked in wait for solitary people. It was said to have once killed a woman there and then to have hung up her skin on a rose bush. The boggart at Horbury near Wakefield also attacks the unwary but most seem to be more likely simply to alarm travellers. For instance, at Bunting Nook, in Norton outside Sheffield, a boggart haunts the place where three roads meet and has been a particular terror to children passing by there. In fact, even the helpful boggarts we’re about to discuss might spend their leisure time elsewhere, scaring innocent travellers. There was a tradition that boggarts would disguise themselves as stones on moorland tracks, deliberately to trip up passers-by. Animals, especially horses, can see them better than people can and often when they rear up unexpectedly it’s because they have ‘taken the boggart’- they’ve spotted one, even if it doesn’t look like a boggart to the human observer. Another trick of the beings was to shrink to the size of a flea and then to scare horses by speaking inside their ears. It will be noted that all these beings are, as it were, ‘wild.’ They live independently of humans outside in the countryside, interacting with people when they choose. In this respect, they seem to be very clearly differentiated from poltergeists.
The foregoing examples notwithstanding, not all boggarts are bad, by any means. Some will take up residence in and around people’s homes or farms and will undertake the labouring roles usually performed by brownies and hobs. They can work for free for humans and, by doing so, make them rich. The helpful boggart at Hackensall Hall near Fleetwood in Lancashire assumed the shape of a horse, it was said, solely so that it could enjoy a warm stable and a hot pie at night. However, unlike the hobs, most labouring boggarts do not seem to have expected any sort of recompense at all for their gratuitous labours; in fact, it’s said that thanking or acknowledging the boggart is just what you shouldn’t do.
Boggarts may appear looking like large horses and, in that disguise, will work well for farmers and hauliers if they are well-used by them. If they are mistreated or neglected though, they will complain- loudly. They can be touchy, too. At Levenshulme in Lancashire a boggart helped out an elderly farmer with his reaping and gleaning but the pair fell out when the man half-seriously questioned whether the boggart had tired out his best horses whilst getting in the harvest overnight. In consequence of these careless words, the crop ended up back in the fields and the peevish boggart refused to perform any more tasks about the farm. Even so, he carried on doing the household chores until he overheard a neighbour asking the farmer whether he missed the boggart’s help with the farm work. The man confessed he did- and invoked a blessing upon him. With a shriek, the boggart abandoned the farm entirely.
Unfortunately, it is most common for boggarts to combine both desirable and alienating qualities. It’s in this guise that they probably most approach the poltergeist. The boggart of Syke Lumb farm near Blackburn was known as a very hard worker when he was content- he would milk the cows, bring in the hay, fodder the cattle, harness the horses, load carts, and stack harvested crops. However, when he was irritated by some casual remark or unintended insult, he would smash the cream jugs and prevent the butter churning, interfere with livestock- such as setting them loose (or even driving them to the woods)- make it impossible to get hay out of the stack, upset loaded carts and pull off bed clothes and drag hapless sleepers down the stairs.
The boggart resident in the farm at Boggart Hole Clough, near Manchester, had even fewer redeeming qualities than that at Syke Lumb. He undertook small domestic tasks, such as churning and scouring pots and pans, and he could be very merry, playing with the children and joining in the laughter and jollity at Christmas. Nonetheless, his interminable pranks were very wearing- he’d put buckets up chimneys and would crack table legs. He’d scare the domestic servants and worry the farmhands, frighten the children and drive everyone to bed early to avoid him. He became more and more presumptuous, snatching the children’s bread and butter out of their hands and interfering with their porridge, milk, and other food- for example, putting spiders in the buttermilk and cinders in the bread. In the same manner, the sole occupation of the boggart at Greenside seemed to be disturbing the people in the house he shared with them: he would drum on an oak chest, shake the bed hangings and drag off the sheets during the night. These japes were unquestionably trying, but they were not intended malevolently. As said at the start, the essential difference with the poltergeist seems to be that these nuisance boggarts have a personality and a reason for the things they do, rather than being more purely a psychic process. These examples also highlight the fact that the boggart is very much of denizen of the north of England- especially Lancashire- as against the international nature of the poltergeist noted earlier.
It’s when domestic boggarts turn wholly against their former masters that the real problems arise and life can become miserable, if not intolerable. It’s been suggested that an angry boggart is in fact little different from the modern idea of a poltergeist and there are indeed many similarities- except for the clear motivation and sense of grievance of the former. In West Yorkshire some homes were so notorious for the trouble caused by the vexed household sprite that they came to be known as ‘boggart houses’- quite a few of these can still be found, for example at Midgeley, Luddenden, Brighouse, Elland and Leeds. Some ‘boggart chairs’ are also known, stones on which the boggarts would sit outside these houses. Misbehaving boggarts seems to have caused such a nuisance in West Yorkshire that the little town of Yeadon took desperate measures- the ‘town book’ records payments expended on boggart catchers.
Curiously, the same methods can be used to get rid of nuisance boggarts and poltergeist. Both can be laid, or exorcised, as I’ve described in an earlier post and in my book, Beyond Faery
Before concluding this posting, I should, however, recognise that the Reverend Robert Kirk differs from my opinion on the differentiation between the fae and poltergeists. In the Secret Commonwealth he stated that “the invisible wights which haunt houses seem rather to be some of our subterranean inhabitants (which appear to men of the second sight) than evil psirits or devils; because, though they throw great stones, pieces of earth and wood at the inhabitants, they hurt them not at all as if they acted not maliciously, like devils at all, but in sport, like buffoons and drolls.” (A Succint Accompt of My Lord Tarbott’s Relations, section 8).
Although I’ve had the film sitting on Amazon Prime since the start of the year, I’ve only just got round to watching The Green Knight– and then only because I was given it as a DVD (yes, indeed) for my birthday last month. Anyway, it’s a good film- if strange- and though only bears a remote relationship to the original poem on which it’s based.
Having watched the film, I went back to my copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (as the Middle English poem is called today). This I bought second hand back in about 1985, when it cost me all of 25p. My version is the 1976 reprint of the Penguin Classics edition, originally retailing at the handsome price of 50p in those days.
I’m not sure I had read it again since I first bought it, but the story of Sir Gawain has had a special resonance with me since the late ’70s, primarily because of the 1973 film version of the story that I saw on TV at some point a few years after it was released. That impressed me hugely, because it created a magical, mystical atmosphere that- I have to say- was not so pronounced in the 2021 film with Dev Patel.
For me, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is very evidently a faery text. We start, of course, with the knight himself, whose colour alone seems enough to scream out not just his supernatural but his fae nature. The knights of King Arthur’s court certainly call him that when he appears before them at New Year: “a phantom from Fairyland the folk there deemed him” (for fantoum and fayryȝe þe folk þere hit demed).
The Green Knight presents a challenge- to receive a blow with an axe from any present, on the understanding that he will be able to return that blow a year later. Gawain accepts the wager and chops off the knight’s head. That ought to be the end of that deal, except that the knight calmly picks up his head and declares that he’ll see Gawain at the Green Chapel next New Year. Then he vanishes and “What place he departed to no person there knew.” Not only does this “unearthly being” magically survive a fatal blow but- just like a faery- he disappears into thin air.
Gawain is renowned for his knightly and Christian virtues. He has made a promise and he must keep his word. Therefore, the following December he sets out to find the mysterious Green Chapel. The poem is written in a north western dialect of Middle English and Gawain’s journey takes him through the north west of England, around the Wirral, the Mersey, Cheshire and Lancashire and thereabouts. He wanders day after day through rocky landscapes, past groves of oak, hazel and hawthorn (three magical and faery trees) searching for the unknown chapel. Lost in an icy landscape, he finds a castle which takes him in and gives him shelter. Better still, it turns out he is very near to his destination and can stay with the household celebrating until the very morning of New Year’s Day.
His host is the affable Sir Bertilak. He goes out hunting everyday, striking another bargain with Gawain: Bertilak will give him whatever he’s caught during the day in return for whatever Gawain wins that day in the castle. This is a second test, because Bertilak’s wife three times tries to seduce him, although all that’s exchanged are a hug and a kiss. These he passes on to Bertilak, not naming the lady but implying she’s a lady in waiting. However, at his last meeting with the lord’s wife, she gives him a magic belt to protect him from the Green Knight’s axe. Gawain accepts this- because he’s afraid- and conceals it from Bertilak, because it would give away its source. He therefore breaks his word.
On New Year’s Day Gawain rides to the Chapel. It is “a smooth faced barrow on a slope beside a stream… All hollow it was within” (A balȝ berȝ bi a bonke þe brymme bysyde… And al watz holȝ inwith.” For regular readers, this will look unavoidably like a faery knoll, a sithean as they’d call it in the Highlands. The Green Knight, as a faery, is bound to be connected to such a site. He aims three strokes of the axe at Gawain; the first two do not touch him; the third lightly nicks his neck. This reflects his encounters with the wife: twice Gawain politely refused her but a third time he did not act entirely properly nor openly.
Then, the Green Knight is revealed as being Bertilak- and his wife, we discover, is actually Morgan le Fay who used her magic powers to create the illusion of the knight beheaded and then revived. Her motivation seems to be her longstanding feud with her brother Arthur and his court, and a wish to expose and humiliate his most noble and honourable knight. Gawain, though, maintained his virtue. This test completed, the knight vanishes again- “To wherever he would elsewhere,” another example of nhis mysterious glamour.
In fact, it seems as though Morgan the Goddess (Morgne þe goddes), as the poem terms her, is actually present in the castle in two forms: temptress and scourge. She is the young and sexy seductress and she’s also an ‘old crone’ perhaps representing all the power and wisdom that she learned from Merlin. Elsewhere in the Arthurian romances, Morgan builds a chapel from which none who have been unfaithful in love may escape. The punishment of untrue lovers is a faery trait that I’ve discussed before.
There are, in truth, many layers to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, many themes and subtexts. I’ve just highlighted the aspects of most direct interest to this blog. As for the 2021 film, it’s well worth seeing; it’s its own story, with its own plot and denouement, different from the fourteenth century poem.
We are very familiar with Queen Mab and Titania but, beyond that, named female faeries seem to be rather rare: we know of the weavers Habetrot and Scantlie Mab, whilst figures like the gyre-carlin, Nicnevin and the various Highland hags bear labels rather than personal names.
Here are a few lesser known individuals who are still worthy of our attention. In Samuel Harsnet’s puritan tract of 1603, A Declaration of Popish Impostures (the full title of which is the rather splendid ‘A declaration of egregious popish impostures to with-draw the harts of her Maiesties subjects from their allegeance, and from the truth of Christian religion professed in England, under the pretence of casting out devils. Practised by Edmunds, alias Weston a Jesuit, and divers Romish priestes his wicked associates. Where-unto are annexed the copies of the confessions, and examinations of the parties themselves, which were pretended to be possessed, and dispossessed, taken upon oath before her Majesties commissioners, for causes ecclesiasticall’) the author describes the customary offerings made in the sixteenth century to domestic faeries like the brownie and the hob:
“And if that the bowle of curds & creame were not duly set out for Robin good-fellow, the Frier, & Sisse the dairy-maide, to meete at hinch pinch, and laugh not, when the good wife was a bed, why then, either the pottage was burnt the next day in the pot, or the cheese would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat [vat] would never have good head.”
Harsnet 134
Elsewhere in his book Harsnet uses the name Sisse (short for Cicely) as a generic term for a female servant, alongside John and Hob to denote farm labourers, but his usage in connection with Robin Goodfellow and ‘the Frier’- that is, Friar Rush, an ‘abbey lubber’ who haunts wine cellars- makes it clear we are discussing a faery rather than a mortal here. As for ‘hinch-pinch,’ it was a Christmas game a bit like hide and seek, except involving concealed objects. The seekers would be told they were freezing, cold, warm or burning depending on their proximity to the hidden item.
We learn about more female faes in the early seventeenth century booklet Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests. After recounting Robin’s llife, the faeries dance for a while to entertain him, after which “they left [off] and sat downe upon the grasse; and to requite Robin Good-fellowes kindnesse, they promised to tell to him all the exploits that they were accustomed to doe : Robin thanked them and listned to them, and one begun to tell his trickes in this manner.”
[Robin is introduced first to four male faeries, named– in typical fanciful and alliterative fashion- Pinch, Pach, Gull and Grim. Then the female faeries introduce themselves and their activities]-
“The trickes of the women fayries told by Sib.
To walke nightly, as do the men fayries, we use not; but now and then we goe together, and at good huswives fires we warme and dresse our fayry children. If wee find cleane water and cleane towels, wee leave them money, either in their basons or in their shooes; but if wee find no cleane water in their houses, we wash our children in their pottage, milke or beere, or what-ere we finde: for the sluts that leave not such things fitting, wee wash their faces and hands with a gilded childs clout, or els carry them to some river, and ducke them over head and eares.
We often use to dwell in some great hill, and from thence we doe lend money to any poore man, or woman that hath need; but if they bring it not againe at the day appointed, we doe not only punish them with pinching, but also in their goods, so that they never thrive till they have payd us.
Tib and I the chiefest are, And for all things doe take care. Licke is cooke and dresseth meate, And fetcheth all things that we eat: Lull is nurse and tends the cradle, And the babes doth dresse and swadle. This little fellow, cald Tom Thumb, That is no bigger then a plumb, He is the porter to our gate, For he doth let all in thereat, And makes us merry with his play, And merrily wo spend the day.
Shee having spoken, Tom Thumb stood up on tip-toe, and shewed himselfe, saying, My actions all in volumes two are wrote, The least of which will never be forgot. He had no sooner ended his two lines, but a shepheard (that was watching in the field all night) blew up a bag-pipe: this so frighted Tom, that he could not tell what to doe for the present time. The fayries seeing Tom Thumbe in such a feare, punisht the shepheard with his pipes losse, so that the shepherds pipe presently brake in his hand, to his great amazement. Hereat did Robin Good-fellow laugh, ho, ho, hoh! Morning beeing come, they all hasted to Fayry Land, where I thinke they yet remaine.”
The female faeries have fanciful and suggestive names just like the males- Licke, Lull, Tib and Sib- although the last of these may well echo Sisse the dairy maid. They engage in the typical activities of their kind, visiting houses- which they expect to have been made ready for their arrival- and either rewarding or punishing the housewife accordingly. They live under a hill, as we might expect, but the moneylending business run from there is a very unexpected aspect of their economy. They act out of charity, yet they impose stiff conditions upon those needy individuals they help. This ‘kindly capitalism’ smacks of loan-sharking, it has to be said, and reminds us (yet again) that the faeries aren’t to be messed with. A deal’s a deal, however much the purpose of the loan was to alleviate poverty.
In previous posts I have alluded to folklore reports that the faeries have a distinctive smell (perhaps not always agreeable to humans) which distinguishes and identifies them- or their recent presence at a place (see the discussions in my books on The Faery Lifecycleand Manx Faeries.)
It’s only fair to add, though, that this process works both ways. There are two stories from the Isle of Man which illustrate this. Firstly, a man who was walking from Peel to Surby across the mountains came across a fine house where he was offered lodging for the night. However, soon after his arrival he was told he would have to be hidden because some faery visitors had arrived. His concealment notwithstanding, his presence inside a barrel was easily exposed by their sensitive noses. As soon as he’d been found, the house and all the company evaporated, leaving the man sitting alone on the moor in the sunshine.
Secondly, a very grubby fisherman from Port Erin was forcibly washed by the faeries. Whilst it’s true that he’d seen them swinging on the gorse, dressed in their red caps and red and green clothes, this punishment was evidently about something more than his intrusion on their privacy, and I think it’s reasonable to infer that they objected to his odour as much as to the fact that he’d trespassed on their pastimes.
These two incidents are, I believe, unique in faerylore, but they’re not alone in wider folklore. Most readers will, I’m sure, be familiar with the rhyme from Jack and the Beanstalk “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” In this fairy tale, it’s a giant speaking, but the origin of the phrase seems to have been rather different. In Shakespeare’s King Lear Edgar, pretending to be mad, chants:
“Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still ‘Fie, foh, and fum I smell the blood of a British man.”
King Lear, Act III, scene 4
Thomas Moran, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, 1859
This line doesn’t seem to have been Shakespeare’s invention either, because it appears in the ballad of Child Rowland and Burd Ellen.
“With ‘fi, fi, fo, and fum! I smell the blood of a Christian man! Be he dead, be he living, wi’ my brand I’ll clash his harns [brains] frae his harn-pan!”
This time, though, the lines are spoken by the King of Elfland, whom Rowland also calls ‘Bogle of Hell,’ before fighting and killing him, so that he can release members of his family from fae captivity. These are Ellen, his sister, who was carried off to Faery by its monarch, as well as their two brothers, who went to rescue her but were defeated by the elf king. The Warlock Merlin had advised the three brothers that they should kill every person they met with after entering the land of Faery, and that, in addition, they should neither eat nor drink of what was offered to them in that country, whatever their hunger or thirst might be; for if they tasted or touched food in Elfland, they would remain in the power of the elves, and would never see Middle Earth again. We’ve looked at this taboo before. In this story, only the youth Child Rowland had the strength of character to obey these instructions to the letter.
Behind this ballad lay a now-lost folk tale, which also inspired John Milton’s poem Comus and George Peele’s 1595 play The Old Wive’s Tale, in which the faery knight Huanebango exclaims “Fee, fa, fum/ Here is the Englishman!”
As we’ve seen, the sensitivity of the faeries to the humans’ smell is also linked to a rather vampiric interest in their blood. In fact, this isn’t wholly unknown amongst the more beastly and deadly faeries, such as the ‘mere maid‘ or water sprite in the Scottish story of Lorntie. Riding by a lake, Lorntie sees a woman floundering and apparently drowning in the water. He dashes to save her, but fortunately his squire sees the trap and holds him back. In a rage, the maiden declares:
“Lorntie, Lorntie, were it not for your man, I’d have got your heart’s blood, skirling in my pan.”
To conclude- some unwelcome news: not only may we smell a bit to the faeries- but we might be quite tasty too…
During a recent talk I gave on my latest book, Faery Mysteries, at the Atlantis bookshop in London, one attendee enquired if faeries were ever known to follow individuals around. On the spot, I could think of just one example of this happening, but subsequently a range of other stalking faes occurred to me and it seemed worthwhile sharing these.
My first example concerns a witch’s ‘imp’ or familiar which, as I’ve mentioned previously, appears to be form of faery. A rag and bone man at Horseheath in Cambridgeshire was asked by a local witch where he was going. He told her to mind her own business and went on his way. After travelling about about half a mile, however, he realised that he was being followed by one of her imp-mice, which was running along behind him in the hedgerow. He gave chase, but the faster he ran, the imp would gain speed and stay ahead of him until they got back to the witch’s home.
The same area of Eastern England is especially well known for its ‘black dogs’- apparitions of faery beasts. It is very common for these creatures to appear at night and to pursue lonely travellers- typically following them along a limited stretch of roadway before vanishing. At Geldeston, in Norfolk, a black dog was known to prowl which was sometimes as large as a horse, with fiery eyes and foaming jaws. It would follow travellers along the highway leading towards Bungay, growling fiercely if you tried to turn back and occasionally dragging a victim along by their clothes. The ‘shuck’ of Methwold on the eastern edge of the Fens is another good example of the behaviour I’m describing here. It would never emerge fully from the shadows of the road side, so that a lonely late-night traveller would only ever be aware of a shape whose red luminous eyes glowed in the dark. The shuck would walk softly when the pedestrian walked, and would stop if she or he stopped. This unpleasant sense of being tracked slowly overwhelmed the victim until they were trembling and almost paralysed. Then they would make a precipitous flight- with the shuck loping steadily along behind.
A hound as a big as a cow, with yellow eyes and lolling tongue, is reported to haunt Godley Green in Cheshire. It pads along beside walkers, howling and emitting a sound of chains, but it is quite insubstantial. If you try to touch or strike it, your blow will pass right through it, unimpeded.
In Wales, the spectral hound is called the gwyllgi, also known as the ‘dog of darkness’ or the ‘hound of twilight’ and it typically haunts lonely highways, appearing to those walking alone late at night. Either the mastiff will appear in a road, blocking the way, baring its teeth and barking fearsomely, or it may walk beside a traveller for a distance. The gwyllgi can paralyse travellers with the gaze of its blazing eyes; quite often these dogs will then turn into large bodies of fire.
Generally, the only apparent purpose of these creatures is to terrify pedestrians, but some have a prophetic or warning function. In the 1970s a woman living at Buxton in Norfolk was walking past the church when the clock struck four. A large black dog appeared beside her, which she tried to pat, but it almost immediately vanished again. A few days later, she learned that her brother had died at exactly that moment. It should be added too that the beasts aren’t always awful companions. During the Second World War a young airman met the large black dog that was often seen at Swanton Morley in Norfolk, and reported a great sense of friendliness as it ran beside him as he cycled along, quite at odds with most witnesses’ reports.
Finally, we turn to more conventionally humanoid faeries, the faery lovers called lhiannan shee on the Isle of Man and leannan sith in Scotland. These females can become attached to an individual and almost impossible to shake off. Here are a few examples.
A man lived in Surby, on the Isle of Man, with his wife, who one evening was away from home. He went out to meet her at the time he expected her to be returning across the fields. Instead, he met a faery woman whom he thought it was his wife, and spoke to her. This contact created a link which meant that she followed him for long time afterwards. In another Manx case, a man called Mickleby met a faery woman at a dance. When the dancing was over, she followed Mickleby home and haunted him ever after. He went abroad, hoping to leave her behind, but she followed him wherever he went- over sea and land. It was widely supposed he must have kissed her, and it was that contact that gave her the power to haunt him, and to go across the ocean with him.
We should note the fact here that crossing water in these cases doesn’t seem to be a problem for the faery lover. A man from Barra called Lachlann had a fairy lover who used to visit him nightly, to the point that he was becoming exhausted by her and was beginning to fear her affection. He decided to flee to Canada to escape her, but she quickly found out, and could be heard lamenting by women milking the cattle at evening on the meadows. Nonetheless, when Lachlann reached Nova Scotia, he found the fairy had followed him there (Evans Wentz, Fairy Faith, 112).
Although we generally reserve the word ‘haunt’ for ghosts and suchlike spirits, it will be clear that for some faeries and faery beings the verb is entirely appropriate- along with the sensations of fear and alarm that go with that.
On a recent trip to Cornwall, I took the chance to visit two faery wells in the far west of the county.
The first well is called Venton Bebibell, a name that is a much degraded version of the original Cornish, Fenten Byghan Bobel– the well of the little people (I have often used the phrase pobel vean in postings on Cornish faeries; this is a slightly more modern version of the same term). This well is on the Penwith moors near to famous Men an Tol holed stone. Men an Tol, however, is very easy to find, a straight walk down a very wide, clear track. It took us three attempts to locate the little people’s well (perhaps a case of being pixie-led), so- in case any readers are inspired to follow me- I’ll try to give a better description.
If you follow the track past the turn to Men an Tol, you’ll pass the inscribed stone Men Scryfa on your left a little while later. The track then descends to a green grassy space where several bridle ways meet. If you proceed straight ahead, up a rather narrower path, you’ll get to the Nine Maidens stone circle (well worth a visit). However, at the grassy space there’s a very clear grassy path running north-south , coming down from the distinctive Carn Galver. This crosses the route you’ve been following at a nice new metal gate. Go through the gate and follow the wide path across the sward. You’ll see three quite large hawthorn bushes, each standing alone and each separated by several tens of metres (or yards). When you’re level with the third, turn left off the wide path and follow a much narrower trail through the bracken to the thorn. When you’re there, you’ll see ahead of you, at the foot of the slope, an old wooden gate through a Cornish hedge. Go down and through this gate. The path here seems to vanish entirely (my mistake the first time I searched). It doesn’t- turn right and follow a much fainter way through the bracken towards a small, rather stunted and (possibly) dead hawthorn. The well is very well concealed just to the right of this bush, down in a dip beside the hedge wall.
When we visited the spring was almost dry, given the long dry summer we’d had, but the site is distinctively marked with stone laid around the basin. Someone had left a purple quartz crystal as an offering, just to confirm that we were in the right place. The old tradition was that children would visit on Easter day to ‘baptise’ or dip their dolls in the water. It’s recently been revived and you can watch a video on YouTube. The person leading this pilgrimage is Cornish author Cheryl Straffon, who’s written a very handy guide to Cornish wells (Fentynyow Kernow).
Fairy Well
The second well is the ‘Fairy Well’ at Carbis Bay, on the north-east coast of Penwith just a mile or two east of St Ives. This is much easier to find. Turn off the main A3074 St Ives to Lelant road in Carbis Bay at Porthrepta Road. This descends pretty steeply towards the beach; turn right into Headland Road and head to the end. Here, a footpath goes straight ahead along the cliff top; ignore this. Instead, there is a steep path and steps on the left, heading down between some houses. Follow this, which will bring you out by the railway line. You cross the line on foot (no bridge- take care!) and, through the gate on the other side, turn immediately right. Some steep steps lead down to a muddy path that clings to the sharply inclining slope of the cliffs. Follow this for about a quarter of a mile until a rather less well marked path turns off to the left. Some steps show you you’re going the right way, as you head down precipitously through hazel trees (these seemed meaningful to me, given their link in Irish myth to the gift of wisdom and prophecy, received at a spring). At the end of the path, right on the cliff edge, there is a square, rock cut basin, full of water. There’s no mistaking you’ve arrived. It’s a wishing well, as demonstrated by the small offerings scattered around. In addition, the view is impressive, over a huge and little visited beach.
Whilst in Cornwall, we also revisited two other ‘holy’ wells. The first, at Madron, just outside Penzance, is notable for the clooties, the strips of cloth that are tied to trees around the spring to represent wishes or requests made. This compares to the practice seen on Doon Hill at Aberfoyle.
at Madron
The second well was at Carn Euny. This is a very impressive site. It’s a low hill, topped by a huge natural carn of outcropping boulders. There’s an Iron Age village, the remains of a medieval chapel and its silted up well- and the older and far more atmospheric ‘holy well.’ This was full of flowing water and was surrounded (significantly in my mind) by elders and hawthorn trees. It’s always memorable to visit.
See too the records of my earlier trips to the ‘fairy well’ at Sennen and to Sancreed well.
at Carn Euny
For more on faeries, wells and water, see my Faery (Llewellyn, 2020) and Faeries and the Natural World (Green Magic, 2022).
I cite here a text called The Fairies Song, an anonymous verse that comes from Arthur Clifford’s Tixall Poetry collection of 1813 and which dates to the reign of Charles I. It was reprinted in 1851 in the Book of English Song. The verse is fascinating for its generally malign view of faerie kind. Conceded, they dance lightly- as we might expect the dainty little modern faery to do, but thereafter matters go awry. They stir up bad weather, raise floods and revel in the tempest, exulting in the fact that “what frights others is our joy.” They visit human kind disguised, having shapeshifted into various forms, and cheerfully cause illness and pain amongst us.
“We dance on hills above the wind, And leave our footsteps there behind. Which shall to after ages last, When all our dancing days are past.
Sometimes we dance upon the shore, To whistling winds and seas that roar, Then we make the wind to blow. And set the seas a-dancing too.
The thunder’s noise is our delight, Jind lightnings make us day by night ; And in the air we dance on high. To the loud music of the sky.
About the moon we make a ring, And falling stars we wanton fling, Like squibs and rockets, for a toy. While what frights others is our joy
But when we ‘d hunt away our cares. We boldly mount the galloping spheres And riding so from east to west. We chase each nimble zodiac beast.
Thus, giddy grown, we make our beds. With thick black clouds to rest our heads, And flood the earth with our dark showers. That did but sprinkle these our bowers.
Thus, having done with orbs and sky, Those mighty spaces vast and high, Then down we come and take the shapes, Sometimes of cats, sometimes of apes.
Next turn’d to mites in cheese, forsooth, We get into some hollow tooth ; Wherein, as in a Christmas hall, We frisk and dance, the devil and all.
Then we change our wily features, Into yet far smaller creatures. And dance in joints of gouty toes. To painful tunes of groans and woes.”
What intrigues me here is the faeries’ responsibility for disease. Readers may very well be familiar with the fact that the faes will often wound or kill livestock with their arrows, the so-called elf-bolts, which are used in order to steal the beasts from mortal farmers so that the faeries can consume them or their dairy products. You might also recall my description of how paralysis can be used as a form of sanction against humans who have displeased their good neighbours. This verse nonetheless seems to indicate that our more day to day ailments and aches and pains are down to supernatural intervention as well- be it as a cruel prank or, possibly, because that’s just part of what the faeries do.
There’s some basis for this supposition. I suspect the anonymous Stuart poet was elaborating from an idea that was very standard at the time. ‘Feyry’ (and the like) was a term for certain forms of ill-health that inexplicably might befall people. In Scotland consumption (tuberculosis) was thought to be inflicted by the faeries as a cover for abducting the victim’s spirit. The sudden illness then explained as being ‘faery struck’ bequeathed us the ‘stroke’ known to medicine today. Hives and skin blisters were caused by a blast of faery breath, and skin discolourations and unexplained bruising were ‘fairy nips’ and enlargement of the spleen was called ‘elf cake.’
If the faeries are indeed responsible for all these maladies- major and minor- it makes a great deal more sense why an anonymous parson of Warlingham in Surrey made a collection of “certain medicines… taught to him by the fayries” in the early seventeenth century, about contemporary with our song. Toothache was cured (on the faes’ advice) by mixing wheatmeal with spurge to produce a dough which was then put into the cavity in the painful tooth. Spurge (euphorbia) produces a latex-like sap that is highly irritant, so it would undoubtedly have some effect on your tooth- possibly unpleasant- and certainly the polar opposite of the modern tooth fairy.
On several previous occasions I’ve mentioned how the pixies can control the weather as a means of playing tricks upon travellers: they will make fogs and mists descend so as to get hapless individuals lost, even in small areas very well known to them, such as familiar spots which are very close indeed to their own homes. The pixies also use fogs for concealment- as in one story where they were spotted conducting a battle in such conditions- and bad weather can be associated with their displeasure- as in the case of a man discovered trying to steal their buried treasure on Trencrom Hill near St Ives.
In Wales, the tylwyth teg are known too to prefer misty, drizzly weather as suitable conditions to conduct their business of stealing people’s livestock or as cover for luring away their children. Something very similar is found amongst the trows at the other end of Britain. Once, on the mainland of Orkney, a youngster very unwisely went out during a snowstorm. After a while, the child returned, completely dry- despite the blizzard- but an imbecile. People were convinced that this change was the work of the fairies: this conclusion seems understandable given the fact that the weather hadn’t soaked or frozen the child, but it looked very much as if his/her soul had been seized by the trow folk, leaving a living stock behind.
In fact, when we survey the evidence, the use and manipulation of weather by faery beings is far wider spread that just the South West of England and Wales or the very northern tip of the British Isles. Supernaturally influenced weather events are reported across the British Isles.
‘Many Weathers Apart’
Like the Welsh tylwyth teg, the little folk of the Isle of Man are generally to be seen enveloped in cloud or mountain fog; what’s more, they bring storms and waves along the coast. As well as controlling the weather when they wish to, they are acutely attuned to its changes; hence, it’s said by islanders that, if you see the faeries’ boats out at sea it’s a sign of one of two things: either that a good catch may be found in that location- or it’s a warning to human fishermen put in, because it presages a storm. The appearance inland of the bean-nighelike faery known as the little red washer woman is always a sign of bad weather approaching. At Peel Castle some resident “big fairies” used to be seen on the ramparts. If they were there shouting with men’s voices when the town’s fishing boats were putting out to sea, this would be taken as a sign of imminent bad weather and the boats would sail straight back to the quay.
Another Manx being, the dooiney-oie or ‘night caller,’ performs the same function to the various faeries of the island. If his dismal howls of ‘Hoa! Hoa!’ are heard during a winter’s night along the coast, it’s a sure sign that storms are approaching across the Irish Sea. Because of his warnings, the Manx people have regularly avoided considerable loss: fishermen have been able to get in their nets, lines and pots and farmers have learned that it’s time to drive their flocks to shelter.
The black and scary ‘Big Buggane’ who lived in caves on South Barrule and Snaefell mountains was generally seen at night when there was a storm approaching, acting as a warning to islanders. The buggane that lived in Towl Buggane (the Buggane’s Hole) at Gob-ny-Scuit would shout a warning before stormy weather, enabling local farmers to get in their harvests in time. He was just as likely, though, to give these warnings when no storms were due, just to tease the locals. Islanders have learned to accept that for all the help they can receive, there’s always a chance of being the hapless victims of a faery prank.
Fir gorm
Supernatural predictions of bad weather can be found all over Britain. Fishermen would pull for shore if they heard the so-called ‘Seven Whistlers’ pass over, knowing that a storm would be approaching. These spirit beings are related to the Wild Hunt or to the Gabriel Ratchets, the eerie heavenly hounds, and the sound they make has been compared to birds- or to children wailing.
At Sennen Cove, in the far west of Cornwall, the ‘hooper’ is known for the whooping noise it makes. In otherwise fine weather a dense fog bank will sometimes be seen to settle on the reef of rocks that lies just outside the harbour, cutting the quay off from the open sea, and at night a dull light may be seen inside the cloud, accompanied by the hooper’s cries. The reason for the hooper’s arrival is, it seems, to act as a warning against storms coming in from the Atlantic. If you ignore the augury and head out to sea regardless, you are very likely never to be seen again.
In the east of England, the black dog apparition known as ‘Old Shuck’ runs along a well-established route every evening at twilight. Its terrifying appearance predicts storms. On the island of Guernsey, a white hare was only seen in stormy weather. The Welsh cyhyraeth– the groaning spirit- makes a “doleful, dreadful noise in the night,” disturbing people’s sleep with a sound that resembles the groans of the dying. Her cry precedes various misfortunes, such as bad weather on the coast.
Lastly, the ‘Long Coastguardsman’ of Mundesley in Norfolk appears at midnight on cloudy nights and will walk along a stretch of the coast, singing and laughing in the wind whenever a storm is raging. Unlike the previous spirits, though, the Coastguardsman seems to mark and to revel in bad weather, rather forewarning of it. Nevertheless, we can see that his close association with wind and tempest is highly typical of faery-kind.
Mermaids are keenly aware of climatic conditions- as we might expect from such sea dwellers. For example, there was one who was often to be seen sitting on a rock at Careg Ina near New Quay in West Wales. One day she got tangled in some fishing nets and was hauled in by a boat’s crew. She begged for release and, when this was granted, she warned them of an impending storm and told them to seek immediate shelter. They did so, and survived, but many other boats out that day were caught and sunk. A very similar tale comes from Pen Cemmes in Pembrokeshire, except that in this version the fisherman captor is promised ‘three shouts’ in his time of greatest need as his reward for releasing the mermaid. What this meant was revealed some time later, rather than immediately. One calm, hot day the mermaid appeared to the man out at sea and told him to make for harbour forthwith. He did so- and survived- but eighteen other men drowned in a sudden storm which unexpectedly blew up.
Sometimes, this kind of help is given freely and without prior obligation. For example, some Manx fishermen were once in their boats off Spanish Head when the sky started to darken. A mermaid rose above the waves and instructed them to “shiaull er thalloo” (‘sail to land’). Those who did were saved; those who didn’t take her advice lost their tackle or, even, their lives. It’s also said that if a Manx merman heard to whistle, a storm is brewing and it’s time for any fishermen at sea to haul in their nets and to make for the shore. In this case, the whistling doesn’t appear to be meant as any sort of gratuitous warning, it’s just a merfolk response to the change in the weather they’ve detected (perhaps even being a sign to their own kind) but humans can benefit from paying attention.
In fact, amongst fishing communities around Britain the mere appearance of the sea folk is taken as a portent of storms and death; as a result, when some fishermen from Brevig on Barra saw a mermaid two miles offshore they immediately turned around and headed back to harbour- as it transpired, not a moment too soon, as a terrible storm arose which nearly sank them anyway.
‘You Take The Weather With You’
As well as sensing and warning of bad conditions, these various sea-folk can be the direct cause of troubled waters. The fir gorm, the blue men who live in the stretch of sea called the Minch, between Skye and the mainland, are what make the seas there restless. The channel is only calm if they are either asleep or floating at their ease on the water’s surface; if they are seen sporting in the water off Rudha Hunish Head, a violent storm is sure to be due.
The cailleach muileartach, the dark blue hag of the sea, calls up storms along the Scottish coast. In the Firth of Cromarty, the weather is under the control of Gentle Annie or Annis, another hag with a blue-black face. She is renowned for her treachery, as days may start fine and calm, encouraging fishing boats to put out to sea, but then violent gales might sweep in from the north-east. Inland, the mountain hag called the cailleach bheur sends terrible tempests, called ‘cailleach weather’ or ‘wolf-storms.’
Tristram Bird & the mermaid
The merfolk can, like the Cornish pixies, stir up evil weather if they want to punish a specific person who’s earned their dislike. There’s a very rare account of some Scottish mermaids taking a human baby and leaving a changeling. Unlike the typically thin and poorly faery changelings, this substitute was a healthy and very beautiful child who grew up into a lovely young woman. In due course, this beauty, called Selina, attracted the attention of a cynical soldier who first seduced and then abandoned her. Heartbroken by her mistreatment, Selina pined way and died. Her mermaid family exacted a terrible vengeance upon the soldier and those who had encouraged him in his dalliance: the seducer was in turn seduced by a mermaid and a huge storm engulfed and destroyed his friends’ homes.
A Padstow man called Tristram Bird one day came across a mermaid when he was out with his gun hunting seals. She was seated on a rock, combing her hair and looking as alluring as mermaids can; he instantly desired her and asked her to marry him. She rejected his proposal with mockery. Bird’s pride was injured and he threatened to shoot her, to which she replied that he’d be sorry if he did. He fired at her anyway- and soon regretted his action. She cursed the town’s harbour and, sure enough, within a very short while a storm blew up- and a sandbar blocked all access from the quayside to the sea- disastrous for a fishing village. Similar, albeit involuntary, is the fact that the shooting of a selkie at sea will precipitate dire consequences: a storm will arise as soon as the selkie’s blood mixes with the sea water.
We often think of faery-kind as being intimately connected with the environment and the evidence of their sensitivity to and control over the weather certainly confirm this relationship.
As Mercutio described in his famous speech in Romeo and Juliet, Queen Mab would bring to lovers dreams of those they adored- and perhaps prognostications of future spouses. John Anster Fitzgerald shows such a scene in his painting below. I’ve described before how Mab might also physically appear to young men and women in their beds and seduce them; however here I’m more interested in how the faeries might use dreams as a means of contact and seduction.
A Scottish shepherd once heard faery pipes playing and felt compelled to try to track down the source of the sound. He followed the music for weeks, months, seasons, living on whatever he could forage along the way- berries and roots. In time he ceased to hear the music, but he had arrived on a shore where a boat was pulled up on the beach, so he climbed aboard and sailed wherever it took him. In due course the shepherd reached an island where a green man with bagpipes met him and invited him to join the sith folk and to accept the love of a faery girl who had seen the mortal man one day when he was tending his flocks and had fallen for him. Unwisely (perhaps) the shepherd fled this offer, and struggled back home over many months. He married a local woman and settled down, but the sith woman never gave him rest: he used to wander in his dreams ever after.
Although, as Fleetwood Mac said in Dreams, “Women, they will come and they will go,” this frequently tends not to be the case with faery lovers. I have described before how the Scottish leannan sith and Manx lhiannan shee can physically haunt the human males they batten upon, albeit frequently they are invisible to everyone else. As the tale of the shepherd demonstrates, a tangible presence isn’t required.
I’ve also described before how Queen Mab can come as a type of succubus to ride young lovers at night. We assume she physically manifests to the young men and women she seduces, but it could just be a very vivid erotic dream that they experience. It’s notable as well how in several folklore accounts faery lovers appear beside the human’s bed, suggesting that the ‘dream-lover’ is actually quite a common form of contact.
The first instance I’ll describe seems to be a fairly straightforward example of dream communication. A man from Caernarfonshire discovered a mermaid on the seashore. They became friendly and she encouraged his interest by bringing him treasure from under the sea. Then, she visited him as he slept in his bed at night and told him to meet her the next day. When he did, the mermaid was present in human form, wearing a dress, and apparently willing to come on to the land and live with him. Eventually they married and had children together.
In a second example, from the Isle of Man, a man from Derbyhaven called Mickleby was picked up by a shee woman at a dance he stumbled across when walking home one night. Thereafter, he was never able to shake her off; she would appear beside his bed at night. This sounds like a physical appearance in the room with him and, without question, what had led him to be tied to her in this way was very corporeal. After dancing with her, Mickleby had wiped the sweat from his face on part of her dress and it seems that this ‘exchange’ of bodily fluids had tied the pair together. What’s more, he could only get rid of this lhiannan shee by throwing an unbleached linen sheet over the two of them, something which appears to indicate that the ‘marital’ bed somehow formed a key to their link, with a suggestion that clean sheets came between them whereas soiled ones formed part of their bond.
John Anster Fitzgerald, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of.
However, in other cases, sleep or dreams seem to make humans highly vulnerable to faery contact. A herdsman from Tiree fell asleep one warm summer afternoon on a small hill. He was rudely woken by a violent slap on his ear. On rubbing his eyes and looking up, he saw a woman in a green dress, the most beautiful female he had ever seen, walking away from him. She headed westward and he followed her for some distance, until she suddenly vanished. This woman was plainly a faery- judging by her dress and by her travel towards the west, known as the faery direction in the Highlands. The slap she gave him could have been punishment for sleeping on what must have been a sithean, a faery hill, but there was clearly more to it than that, even though the story is abruptly curtailed.
Considering the fate of a male from Iona, we might judge that the Tiree herdsman was actually very lucky just to have received a slap. Thinking that it was dawn, the Iona man got up early one morning and went out fishing. After catching some fish, he realised that bright light of a full moon had fooled him into thinking it was day, so he decided to return home. On the way, he sat down to rest on a hillock and fell asleep. He was awakened by a tugging at the fishing rod, which was still in his hand. The rod was being pulled one way and the fish he’d caught another. Next, he heard the sound of a woman weeping. He suspected she was a faery and tried to get away from her but she caught him and thrashed him soundly. Then, every night after that, he was compelled to meet her and could never again escape her.
In these accounts, the fact that the victim falls asleep seems more than just incidental or superfluous detail. Rather, it appears to be a central element in the entrapment by the faery lover. Perhaps sleep is a time when a person is vulnerable, when it is possible for faeries to use dreams to pass into the mortal world and to make contact. Without question, the fact that humankind was particularly at risk during the hours of darkness and sleep was widely understood; the collection of Scottish Gaelic prayers and verses known as the Carmina Gadelica contains numerous charms invoking the protection of the trinity and the saints overnight. Closely comparable is a charm explicitly defending homes at night against faeries from the Isle of Man, which calls on St Columb to protect “each window and each door/ And every hole admitting moonlight.”
British Fairies 