In Wales, the equivalent of the English brownie, or lowland Scottish broonie, is the bwbach (plural, bwbachod). This is a word that has a supernatural dimension, but its meaning can also encompass the senses of ‘baby,’ ‘puppet’ and ‘scarecrow.’ This range of meaning must indicate that these familiar figures were not of great stature, yet they combined scary and otherworldly aspects. Certainly, John Dee in the 1580s defined a bwbach as “a boo that young children do fear.”
The bwbachod live and work on farms and are most noted for their robust and old-fashioned characters: it’s said that they most hate “Methodists and total abstainers.” They seem to have been widespread across the west of Wales in former times, if the naming of places is anything to go by. Examples run from Anglesey (Ynys Mon)- which has Nant y Bwbach (Brownie Valley) at Llanrhyddlad and Lon Bwbach (Brownie Lane) at Llanddyfnan- and thence southwards through Bryn y Bwbach (Brownie Hill) at Llandecwyn near Trawsfynydd and Twll y Bwbach (Brownie Hole) near Dolgellau as far south as Crug y Bwbach (Brownie’s Barrow) in Carmarthenshire and Gerrig y Bwbach (Brownie’s Stones) at Pentre-ty-gwyn near Ystradgynlais, to the south-west of the Brecon Beacons.
Wirt Sikes in British Goblins told two stories about bwbachs. The first is set in Merionethshire, near Dolgellau, and is a standard “we’re flitting” tale. The second is placed in south-western Wales, in Cardiganshire. Sikes summarises the creature as a “good-natured goblin which does good turns for the tidy Welsh maid who wins its favour by a certain course of behaviour recommended by long tradition. The maid, having swept the kitchen, makes a good fire the last thing at night, and having put the churn, filled with cream, on the whitened hearth, with a basin of fresh cream on the hob, goes to bed to await the event. In the morning she finds (if she is in luck) that the Bwbach has emptied the basin of cream, and plied the churn-dasher so well that the maid has but to give a thump or two to bring the butter in a great lump.”
As for Sike’s Cardiganshire bwbach, he objected to a Baptist preacher staying in the house he served. This man “was much fonder of prayers than of good ale.” Taking exception to this sober piety, the bwbach therefore continually harassed the preacher, pulling away his stool or causing disturbance and clamour during his prayers. The bwbach finally drove the Baptist off by shapeshifting and giving him a terrible fright as he was crossing a field. The minister was reading his hymn-book as he walked on, when a sudden fear seized him. On looking round, he saw the mirror image of himself- in the same clothes and with the same hymn-book; he fainted, and decided to leave the house the next day. On mounting his horse the following morning, the grinning bwbach jumped up onto the saddle behind the preacher, and the horse instantly set off like lightning with eyes like balls of fire.
More generally, the tylwyth teg were considered to have a brownie-like role in Welsh farmhouse kitchens. An short article published in The Welshman magazine in July 1905 noted that, some decades earlier, it had been common practice in Montgomeryshire kitchens to cut a cross into the top of loaves before they were placed in the oven. This was done out of respect to the fair family, who were known to clean and sweep the hearth whilst the family slept. In addition, the cross may have been intended as a charm to protect the bread. In Carmarthenshire, burning an old shoe for good luck when baking was common. If the dough did not rise properly, but presented a stringy appearance, the baker would complain that “Mae bara yn robin” (the bread’s in ribbons) and would sacrifice an old slipper to propitiate the faery folk who were playing tricks with the oven.
In Wales, as across the rest of Britain, the presence of a domestic faery can be a distinctly mixed blessing. If you’re in his favour, you’ll prosper; if you unwittingly upset him, life at home can become trying- if not miserable…
Mab as the famous faery queen first comes to our attention in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet of 1599; she is described as very small- and very mischievous: “That very Mab that… bakes the Elflocks in foule sluttish haires” (Act 1, scene 4); she also does the same to horses’ manes. Several writers used her name in the succeeding decades, although I think it would be mistaken to suppose that she was invented by Shakespeare and then copied by other poets and playwrights, for example by Michael Drayton in Nymphidia (1627), Thomas Randolph in Amyntas (1632) or in several poems by Ben Jonson, Milton and Robert Herrick. Just like the Puck of Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare was taking a figure already familiar to audiences and expanding their character.
In addition to her hair plaiting, the English Queen Mab seems to be a typical faery in her other behaviours- if we accept that John Brand’s note, in his Observations on Popular Antiquities that “In Warwickshire, Mab-led, (pronounced Mob-led) signifies being led astray by a Will o’ the Wisp [i.e. pixy-led].” Shakespeare also made use in Hamlet of the obscure word “mobled” which could be the same as Brand’s “mab-led”- although there are other interpretations of this word (Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2).
Joshua Poole’s 1657 poem, English Parnassus, offered a further long description of Mab, the “mistress fairy.” She engaged in a great deal of typical conduct: she nightly robbed dairies, could help or hinder the churning, would pinch untidy maids who didn’t clean the house- or would reward those who did their duties well; she also liked to steal children, replacing them with ladles.
All in all, Poole’s Mab is the ‘standard’ British faery, on top of which come these striking lines- Mab, he wrote, “Trains forth midwives in their slumber/ With five, the holes to number/ And then leads them from their boroughs/ Thorough pondes and water furrowes.” Here we have pixy-leading combined with midwifery and (it would appear) a rather obscene joke that seems very much akin to Mercutio’s description of her as:
“… the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage.”
Mab is involved (it seems) in sex, conception and childbirth- or, at least, with bringing erotic dreams.
In summary, the Mab of seventeenth century literature enjoyed stolen fruit and dairy products; she was amorous and she was a midwife- although this was perhaps only in a metaphorical sense only for she was linked with dreams by several writers. Confirmation of this role as an engenderer of fantasy rather than deliverer of real babies may come from other folklore sources. Readers may well recall that one of the regular contacts between humans and Faery tends to be when mortal midwives are called on to assist faery women in labour- apparently because none of their own kind have the obstetric skills. The 1598 interrogation of Aberdeen man, Andro Man (who was suspected of sorcery), mentioned that he had first encountered the (unnamed) Queen of Elphen some sixty years earlier, when he was just a boy and on the occasion that she had visited his mother’s house to be “delivered of a bairn.” This strongly indicates that the queen needed Man’s mother’s help with the birth. All the indications are that faery queens, like other faery females, are a lot better at conceiving infants than bearing them.
In fact, as a noun ‘mab’ is an English word that can be traced back to the late Middle Ages. Its basic sense is ‘slattern’ or promiscuous woman. For example, it was used in this insulting sense in the 1568 play, A Newe Comedie of Jacob and Esau, “Come out thou mother Mab; out, olde rotten witche… thou old hag” (Act 5, scene 6). One hundred and thirty years later, the word retained the same negative connotations: for example, “Mabs are Slatterns” is cited by John Ray, amongst ‘A List of North Country Words’ in his Collection of English Words (1691, 46). As we’ve already seen, Shakespeare’s Mab is also associated with sexual activity. The possibly related verb ‘to mab’ means to dress untidily. This suggestion of a dirty, dishevelled look could tie in with the elf-locks mentioned by Shakespeare, as well as relating to a wider reputation for faery women having rather wild hair.
Then again, a ‘mop’ was a ‘fool’ or ‘simpleton’ and in this sense was related to a little child or baby; it could signify a ‘worthless person’ and, also, a doll (the terms ‘moppet’ and ‘mopsy’ are probably related here). As for the sense of ‘fool,’ the words ‘mope’ (to be dejected and a dejected person) and ‘mob,’ with the sense of a grotesque grimace or grin, may all feed into this meaning. None, of course, are especially regal or complimentary.
Another suggestion about the origins of Queen Mab I have seen points out that quean in the earlier English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries meant an ‘impudent or ill-behaved girl, a jade, a hussy.’ On this basis, the name is not so much a royal title as a phrase with the rough sense of ‘harlot hag.’ This is feasible etymologically, but it strikes me as highly unlikely otherwise. As we know very well, British people were nervous of their faery neighbours and constantly sought to appease them, using oblique labels such as ‘Good Neighbours’ and ‘Good Folk.’ In the context of this caution, anything as forthright as ‘harlot hag’ sounds to me pretty improbable.
Shakespeare’s Mab; mezzotint by William Say after Alfred Edward Chalon (1827)
Alternatively, the name may perhaps derive from a shortened form of the female personal name Mabel. This has been traced by some authorities from the Irish word meave, meaning joy, although it is more probably a version of the Latin amabilis, lovable, which also gave us Annabel. Whilst the diminutive forms of Mabel can be Mab or Mabs, some doubt whether this gave us Queen Mab but point instead to another Irish source- the goddess Meadhbh, whose name later evolved to produce the name Meave (joy) that was just mentioned.
Whilst you can quite easily see how an Irish goddess and queen of the sidhe might become a British faery queen, there still seems, to me, to be a major problem. The Meadhbh/ Mab connection makes some instinctive sense, but how it would have come about is another matter entirely. Britain and Ireland are, of course, neighbouring islands, but English and Scottish settlement of Ireland didn’t really start in earnest until the late sixteenth century, so its hard to see how the Irish language and Irish mythology had enough time (or opportunity) to make such an impression on English that, by 1599, Mab was the faery queen for Shakespeare and- very obviously- his audiences, who had to understand what he was saying. Irish myths didn’t really have much of a circulation in Britain until much, much later- during the time of the ‘Celtic Twilight’ thanks to W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. The same, for that matter, is true with the Welsh stories of the Mabinogion (see below), which only began to reach English readers in the same period in the late nineteenth century. In addition, the Irish Meadhbh is pronounced something like ‘mave’ (to rhyme with ‘wave’), which creates a further difficulty of explaining how it might have turned into ‘Mab’ amongst English speakers.
A possible link in the chain of transmission of the personality of Meadhbh could be via Wales, which as a country sharing Celtic roots with Ireland might rightly be expected to have myths in common. Faery expert Katherine Briggs- amongst others- pointed to a divine being called Mabb as the Welsh equivalent of Meadhbh and the most likely source of Mab in English tradition. She gives no authority for this statement- nor do any of those who seem to repeat her idea subsequently- and I have yet to come across any early British text or legend from which this name might derive. All the more recent references to Mabb as a Welsh goddess and as one of a triad of Celtic/ Cymric female deities seem to derive from this brief mention (or speculation?) by Briggs, from those who’ve repeated it (and I’ve been guilty here), and, lastly, from works of pure fiction or fantasy.
I’ve been unable to find any trace of an ancient British goddess called Mab/ Mabb or similar. There is Modron, who is mother of Mabon; they are, literally, Mother and her Son, and she is very likely to have descended from a more ancient mother deity, the Dea Matrona, about whom we’ll have some more to say shortly.
Partly, too, Briggs may have had in mind a few lines in Wirt Sikes’ British Goblins, in which he states that Queen Mab is wife of faery king Gwyn ap Nudd and, as such, queen of the elves (ellyllon). Mab is not otherwise identified as Gwyn’s wife, who is named as Creiddylad in the story of Culhwch ac Olwen in the Mabinogion. Another suggested derivation for the queen’s associations with childbirth, and her name’s connotations of childishness, is the Welsh noun ‘mab,’ which is an element in the name of the story collection, the Mabinogion. However, this word has the meaning of ‘boy’ or ‘son;’ the problem with this is the obvious one of the switch of gender. The Welsh for daughter/ girl is ‘merch,’ so there seems little justification for tracing Mab back to Wales on this basis. I’ll add too that Manx folklore- so far as I am aware- lacks an equivalent female individual who might suggest a wider distribution of this figure- even though the Manx language is much closer to Irish than Welsh is.
Katharine Briggs also noted a mention of Mab in a seventeenth century manuscript (Sloane MS 1727) which is held by the British Library. This text is a magical treatise which mentions several spirits (or faeries) grouped together as the “treasures of the earth” and named individually as “Florella, Mical, Tytan [and] Mabb, lady to the queene.” This Mab is plainly not a queen herself but a servant to the monarch, who could well be aforementioned Mical; she’s described as “regina pigmeorum” (queen of the pygmies- that is, the faeries) elsewhere in the manuscript. At the same time, ‘Tytan’ could be the person made famous by Shakespeare as Titania. We need to exercise caution here, though, and wonder whether Shakespeare’s faery names may have influenced this later magical text rather than it being an independent confirmation of the existence of these faery beings. The Shakespearean scholar White Latham Minor pointed out in her 1930 study of Elizabethan Fairies that all the names of faery kings and queens found in Tudor and Stuart verse and plays are drawn from classical or legendary sources and not from British folklore.
Scantlie Mab by John D Batten, from Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, 1894
In our search for evidence about the heredity and character of the English Queen Mab, it’s also worthwhile recalling the faery character Scantlie Mab, who’s known in lowland Scotland. She’s a companion of another female figure, Habetrot, and both are involved in overseeing the process of spinning. As craft workers, neither seem in the least bit regal. This particular Mab’s name is found in an area where Scots was spoken, something which may indicate that the ‘Mab’ element is very much a product of Anglo-Saxon culture rather than Gaelic/ Cymric. As for the nickname’s meaning, this is unclear. It appears to derive from ‘scant,’ which has the same sense in Scots as it does in English. Quite what it implies is another matter, even so: is this Mab very thin compared to Habetrot, or is she very small- or, at least, smaller than her companion? It might indicate she’s tiny- a unique feature of Shakespeare’s Mab- but not necessarily, and it might be the case that the name reflects some aspect of her story that is now completely lost to us. Indeed, our information is (it has to be said!) scant, and other than her being Habetrot’s sidekick, this Mab is little more than a name.
‘Clooties’ on trees at Madron well
However, the conjunction in Queen Mab of certain qualities- of sexuality and (rather more tentatively) of maternity- put me in mind of one Welsh pseudonym for the faeries- the Bendith y Mamau or ‘The Mothers’ Blessings.’ The ‘blessings’ part of this name is a clearly hopeful attempt to win the favour of the tylwyth teg; the reference to them as mamau/ mothers, meanwhile, underlines their feminine aspects and, it has been argued, connects us back to Roman and Iron Age British times, and the cult of the three Deae Matres or Mother Goddesses. That these could be an ancient vision of the Welsh faeries- and perhaps an ancestor of Mab- is a possibility.
I was recently rereading the 1952 poem Anathemata by the artist and poet David Jones (1895-1974), who was very proud of his Welsh heritage, and it was his mentions of the Mamau that set me thinking about this entire subject. He regarded them as a form of British naiad, or water spirit, as in the lines from Anathemata in which he mentioned the “shining mamau of the Usk” and later listed a series of different aquatic nymphs: “the lady of the ffynnon [spring]… fays del lac, the donnas of the llyn, the triad-matres, the barley-tressed mamau and the grey-eyed nymphae at the dry ffynnonau…” Entwining Latin, Greek and Arthurian legends with British folklore, Jones underlined the deep associations between female spirits and water. In England, these beings are commonly malign and dangerous (creatures such as Jenny Greenteeth and Nelly Longarms) and, as such, they are unlikely models for, or relatives of, Queen Mab, but the Welsh lake maidens (the gwragedd annwn) are far more comparable. I could also mention the Cornish ‘wishing well’ at Madron, just north of Penzance. The name has a clear link with those Deae Matres, or matronly goddesses, and, although the figure to whom the spring is dedicated was later dressed up as an early British saint, she was pretty clearly a water spirit of the type that Jones imagined. The site is still an active place of pagan magic, whilst the chapel is in ruins. If, as Katherine Briggs claimed, Queen Mab descended from a Welsh Mabb, then perhaps she has very deep roots indeed in the British landscape and psyche.
One last derivation remains to be mentioned. W. P. Reeves, of Kenyon College, Ohio, writing in volume 17 of Modern Language Notes in 1902, (rightly, I think) rejected the Irish derivation of the name of Mab from Meadhbh as phonologically “highly questionable” (in addition to the marked differences in the personalities of the two characters). However, he did observe that a medieval French faery lady, Dame Abonde (earlier Habundia) was a more likely source for Mab, both chronologically as well (possibly) linguistically, in that ‘Mab’ could be a contraction of the name. I feel there’s as much of a problem deriving Mab from Dame Abonde as there is from Meadhbh, but Reeves’ speculation demonstrates how far we are from really understanding this obscure but intriguing figure. Plenty of derivations have been proposed, but all of them have their drawbacks. My inclination is to believe she’s a very British being, untainted by outside influences, but my best efforts have failed so far to prove that!
The faery realm has always shown an ambivalent attitude towards human goods and human progress, as a variety of examples culled from the oral records of tobar an dualchais will demonstrate.
On the one hand, there are those faery beings who happily co-exist alongside us, the brownies, hobs and boggarts that share our homes and food and undertake our work. A good illustration is found in a description of a Scottish ‘broonie’ from near Montrose that threshed grain and would turn the mill wheel if there was no water in the leat. The broonie would also grind meal and guard the mill building at night on behalf of the farmer. Using human tools and technology and spending extended time in man-made structures in close proximity to people is plainly not an issue for such beings and reminds us that, whilst many faeries are secretive and elusive, some enjoy a far more tolerant, if not symbiotic, relationship with their human neighbours.
By way of contrast, mills were often the focus of other faery beings’ antagonism- especially, it seems on Shetland. At Otterswick on the island of Yell, the fearsome njugl lived in the burn and haunted the mill. This creature is a monster something like a giant and terrifying horse; it will appear to people as a fine pony but, should they mount it, will carry them off a bank into deep water where they drown. Such was the fear engendered by the Yell njugl that people would only go in pairs to the mill. A man who went alone to Queyon mill was killed by the beast: during the violent struggle between the pair, the upper parts of the building were demolished and the victim’s body was found thrown into the lower chamber where the mill wheel turned.
The Njugl and the Mill by Davy Cooper
Staying on the Shetland islands, the local faery folk- the trows- manifest a highly ambiguous attitude towards human activity. At Catfirth, the local trows lived in four knowes, or hills, but the construction of a linen mill in the eighteenth century caused noise and nuisance to them and some started to move away. The factory soon closed (perhaps because the trows had blighted it) but a century later a quarry opened close by and the entire trowie population was driven out by the disturbance caused by the excavations- as well as their steady encroachment on the knowes. Similar accounts of the effects of industry and transport are told in the Scottish Highlands and on the Isle of Man as well.
Water mills elicited more contradictory reactions. On the one hand, the trows seemed to dislike them just as much as the njugl. At Garth, on the mainland of Shetland, the local trowie folk would jam the mills at night by catching hold of the “tirl”- the hub of the wheel to which the vanes were attached. The cure was for the miller to “take some fire in a pair of tongs” (a piece of burning peat) and to let that float down the mill race. The trows couldn’t abide human-made fire in this context (though they would, perversely, steal burning embers from our hearths when their own fires went out) and they would be forced release the wheel.
Conversely, however, the trows appreciated mills as places where they could assemble in the warm and dry at night (in fact, the nocturnal occupation of mills and barns is something that’s seen all over the British Isles). Typically, of course, the wheels and grindstones were not in operation at these hours and the buildings could be enjoyed unmolested. However, if late working humans were encountered, it frequently provoked the trows’ displeasure: people have been assaulted and even murdered in such circumstances. The injustice of the trows objecting to people’s right to use their own premises will be obvious, but it is typical of their contrary faery nature, whereby they regarded all human possessions and property as fair game for their own use and acquisition.
In short, the faeries will often appreciate the benefits of human industry, but this is always on their terms and seldom accommodates any recognition of the toil and resources invested in producing the goods or facilities they enjoy. Whilst brownies may exist in symbiosis with us, it must be admitted that other faery tribes often seem to be rather more parasitic- and inflexibly intolerant.
I have recently been rereading The Anathemata by the writer and artist David Jones (1895-1974). This is a long poem, first published in 1952, that resembles Eliot’s Wasteland for its challenging content- it’s packed with allusions to religion, mythology, nautical terminology and other subjects that demanded foot notes from Jones to comprehend. One of these intrigued me: he twice used the term Faëry and, on the second occasion, explained what he meant: he was referring to both the Faroe Islands and “the idea that the Welsh Otherworld (annwfyn) is to be associated with these islands” (‘The Lady of the Pool,’ page 136)
This was a new and surprising concept for me. The Føroyar (in Norse/ Faroese, the ‘sheep islands’) may, perhaps, have been rendered Faery in medieval English (ig [prounced eey] is the Anglo-Saxon for island, certainly) and this could start to explain how a confusion or romantic interpretation of the name might arise. The clear problem, of course, with this is that the Welsh would have been speaking Welsh and would not obviously mix up an Old or Middle English placename with a word derived from medieval French (fae/ faerie).
Jones seems to have picked up this hint about the faery Faroes from a book published in Welsh in 1932- Mabinogi Cymru by Timothy Lewis. This study of the Mabinogion examines the story of Pwyll, Prince of Annwn, and Lewis proposes that the similarity between the English pronunciation of the words Faerie and Faroe led to confusion amongst Welsh speakers and the belief that Pwyll was, in fact, lord of these far off North Atlantic lands rather than of the Welsh underground faeryland. Accordingly, the title of the poem Preiddeu Annwn by the bard Taliesin does not mean ‘The Harrying of Hell’ but rather ‘The Harrying of the Sheep Flocks of the Faroes’- a very Viking sort of scenario stripped of all supernatural mystery. Lewis also suggested that the name Pwyll represents an attempt to render a Norse name for Welsh speakers, making clear the underappreciated role of Vikings in Welsh history (see review in the Journal of English & German Philology, July 1933, no.32(3), 404-405).
Timothy Lewis’ radical ideas have not stood the test of time, and it is perhaps telling that even the 1933 reviewer was guarded in his reactions, reserving judgment until a follow-up volume on another story on the Mabinogion was published, but for the meantime congratulating Lewis on shaking up Welsh scholarship and encouraging settled ideas to be re-evaluated. Lewis’ entry in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography describes how, during the 1920s, he “began to go his own way,” with the result that “his perspective in much of his work [was] unacceptable to scholars of Welsh.” Instead of mythological sources for the stories of Arthur and the Mabinogi, he found purely historical explanations and, as a result, “his theses were mocked by some scholars and were totally ignored by others.”
There is definitely an attraction in pushing faeryland offshore and to a relatively inaccessible distance: it makes it more mysterious and alien, but it has to be said that the Welsh already did this, with the notion of hidden or sinking islands off the coast, whether in the Irish Sea or the Bristol Channel. These ‘green islands’ could often only be reached by a secret tunnel or by a person in possession of a magical piece of turf that enabled them to see through the glamour that concealed them. Islets like this were protected by the waves, just like the Faroes, but they weren’t so impossibly far way that no human ever reached them; a few, lucky or clever individuals managed it, and brought stories back to the mainland.
What is striking, though, is how in Welsh folk belief Faery is never that very far away. The tantalising thing about faeryland is that it is so close; the tylwyth teg live in neighbourly proximity to us- under our feet, beneath our hills, in a dimension parallel to our own. Faery can be reached through a hole in a riverbank, by walking into a cave, by discovering the entrance into a burial mound or concealed beneath a hillfort or standing stone, by finding a passageway leading beneath a lake or by descending a mysterious staircase that’s revealed beneath a dolmen or in a mountain side. The same is the case in the rest of Britain as well: Faerie is to be reached under hillocks, through caves, by tunnels in cliff faces and- even- under our own homes. Faery dwellings under lakes are not known outside Wales, although in the Scottish Highlands at least one kelpie lives in a house under a loch and the crodh sith and crodh mara, the faery and sea cattle, are known to emerge out of the water to graze on the land- and then to be recalled by their owners beneath the waves. This strongly implies that some of the sith folk live under the sea (as do other faery beasts such as the each uisge).
In Wales- and across the British Isles- proximity is key to the regular interactions between the faeries and mortals. They have sharp hearing, but they are still near enough to eavesdrop on our every conversation (as the story of the Coraniaid reveals); they live nearby so that human midwives can readily be called upon to help at births; some live right beneath our own homes so that our activities can disturb them, whilst others actually shares our houses (the pwca and bwbach or Welsh brownie); they are close enough for people to go out to watch their dances at night and, of course, to fall for faery partners.
What is particularly compelling about the British faery is this sense that they are near to us at all times- that they live everywhere and are readily accessible if we but know where to look and how to reveal them. I have written about them being ‘spirits of the land’- but we might also describe that as partners on the land, having lived alongside the mortal population for millennia. Timothy Lewis’ ideas about the Welsh Faeryland being a remote but very physical place therefore dissipate much of the mythic power and supernatural intrigue that we associate with the tylwyth teg and their relatives.
I’d like here to talk about an obscure but important subject- how faeries protect their privacy from prying humans. They’re happy enough to enter our homes and to make free with our possessions and supplies, but they’re fiercely defensive when it comes to their own properties. If humans obtain access to Faery, it’s almost certainly because they’ve been permitted it for a purpose.
What set me on this course of speculation was coming across a couple of striking cases from the Scottish Highlands that I recently read. An account from Montrose tells how a woman who was travelling slept overnight in a hayloft on a farm in Glen Lyon. During the hours of darkness, a brownie came into the barn in order to “shuffle corn” (winnow the grain) and both the woman and her companion felt themselves grow stiff, so that they could neither move nor speak. They remained frozen as long as the brownie was in the loft. The witness also recorded that the same had happened to her brother when he was sheltering in a barn one night. A very similar account was given by a fourteen year old girl who was employed as a labourer on another Highland farm. This feature of faery magic nature was almost entirely new to me, but it set me thinking. I have read a couple of accounts of people being ‘frozen’ when in the presence of trows in Shetland, and I also recalled reading an account of a man pixy-led for five hours in a wood in North Devon, who was left almost paralysed and unable to walk. He started to crawl out of the wood and it was only falling into a stream that he was revived, his senses were restored- so that he realised where he was- and he was able to escape. This would seem to be an incident related the Highland brownie cases, in which physical disablement is used as a way of dealing with an unwelcome presence.
We are, of course, familiar with the idea of ‘glamour‘- the use of illusion to conceal Faery and faery kind from our gaze. Individual faeries may shape-shift or make themselves invisible, but their use of illusion needn’t take a very sophisticated form- mist or low cloud and drizzle are enough to hide their activities from prying eyes. The human ability to see through this cloak- ‘second sight‘ as we term it- is something often acquired by accident later in life and is a breach of faery security against which they’re always on guard. Many readers will be familiar with the huge body of stories concerning midwives and wet nurses who, in being employed to deliver or care for faery babies, accidentally give themselves the power to see through faery glamour. Typically, this happens by touching an eye with ointment that had been supplied to anoint the faery infant. The faery response is to blind the offending eye- which may be a matter of simply touching or blowing upon it to dispel the second sight- or it may be a violent, physical blinding. A new example I have discovered expands this concept. A girl had been lured into a sithean, a faery hill, where she was set to work baking bread from a never-ending supply of flour. This is a very common theme and the main point of the story is how she manages to find out how to make the flour diminish so that she can complete the task and leave the knoll. However, in a version from the isle of Harris, there is an extra detail at the end. The girl managed to get home after a fortnight and then, on the following Sunday, went to church as normal. Unexpectedly, the faeries appeared at the service and ‘blew on her so that she never saw them again.’ This rather abbreviated conclusion is very revealing: her presence under the hill has imparted the second sight- merely living and eating with the faeries has enabled her to see them. Because, against their expectations, she managed to escape, they have been left with a problem- a person in the human community who will be able to detect their every movement- so they come to the church (very strange in itself) and blow on her eyes to correct this.
The faeries can affect our memories too. For example, a woman from Llangynwyd in South Wales one day heard singing outside her cottage. She was drawn to a faery dance in the next field and, when she entered the circle, forgot her home and family entirely. Although she left the dance after what she thought had been ten minutes, she found she’d been away ten years. The inability to remember works both ways, naturally: a Welsh man rescued from a faery dance after a year (although he considered it only to have been five minutes) was unable to say who it was he had been dancing with. In another case, that of Iago ap Dewi from Llanllawddog, near Carmarthen, he was lost for seven years in a dance and never spoke on his return of what he’d seen or done during his absence. It is not a complete wiping of the memory though, for as one Welsh writer has remarked- “it is very strange that everyone who has returned seems to forget completely what he has seen and heard, beyond the merry life they enjoy.” The faeries preserve confidentiality- other than permitting the recollection that life with them was good. This may be done as a way of luring in other hapless victims or- perhaps even more importantly- of making the human who visited Faery pine for the lost joys to such a degree that they eventually abandon their earthly lives and return ‘under the hill.’
During in December 2022, I wrote a post on the traces of faery belief that are preserved in English placenames. I now want to extend that study over the border, into Wales. Back in 1969, the scholar of Welsh language and literature Melville Richards (1910-73) wrote a chapter in a volume, Studies in Folk Life, on ‘The Supernatural in Welsh Place Names.’ This was a list of local names that were derived from various words denoting faeries, devils and witches. Richards did the hard work of cataloguing the names from many sources and provided a comprehensive list- with their earliest documentary sources- but he did not venture to analyse any further the evidence he’d assembled . Here, I’d like to give a brief outline of his catalogue, but also to see what (if anything) the names tell us about the habits and habitats of the Fair Family in Wales.
The faery names breakdown into three groups- those connected with the ellyllon (the ‘elves’), the pwcaor bwci (the ‘puck’ or hobgoblin) and the bwbach– the bugbear, sprite or bogey. The last name appears in various forms- bwba, bwbach and also the closely related bwgan– and I have grouped these together so as to get a better feel for the way this term was applied.
What emerges is this: the bwbach and his relatives were most often found (six examples) in association with human dwellings- being linked to placename elements such as ty (house), llety (homestead) and the grander sounding cwrt (court). There were also occurrences linked with woods and trees (just four), holes in the ground (four) and highways (three). What comes out, though, is the particular association of this sprite with humans and human activities (we might add to this list Odyn y Bwbach in Abergele, which was a kiln named after the bugbear). For all his scary qualities, the bogey obviously liked being in human company.
As for the elves, they seem to have been regarded as more outdoor types of being. Common place names include bryn (hill, of which there are five examples), nant (valley, with three instances) and pant (a hollow, two cases). Fields and rocky outcrops were also named after the ellyllon, underlining their attachment to wild country. The association with hills is noticeable and may very well reflect the likelihood of an ellyll living under one- just as those two hollows (rather like the twll– ‘holes’- named after the bwgan and the bwci) may indicate the location of entrances to the ellyllon‘s subterranean homes.
Lastly, the pwca and bwci are especially notable for their link with human habitations- there are thirteen such places, including seven examples of Ty’r Pwca (Puck’s House) in Richards’ list as well as a plas (mansion) and a lluest (a bothy). The remaining scatter of names relates to natural features, though, such as fields and different water sources- a spring and a pool. As I described previously for England, the pucks and hobgoblins very regularly got linked with dwellings, as did the cognate family of boggarts. All the same, it’s only fair to observe that the places where we live and which we frequent in the course of our daily activities are- by definition- always going to be the ones where we most often came across our Good Neighbours.
To close, I’ll merely add that both the photos shown here are from estate agent websites- so if you’d like to live in a Welsh property with a faery related name- now’s your chance!
The oral folklore of the Highlands tells us a good deal about the nature of changelings– the so-called leanabh sithe, who were also called tacharan or bodach sith.
Two features really identified them for the non-human beings they were. The first was their looks. Whilst with glamour they could assume the appearance of a normal baby, it doesn’t seem that they could sustain this for long periods. So it was that, in the absence of the human parents, changelings would often relax and let their true natures show- they would appear as bearded old men and/ or they would have skills that a mere baby could never have acquired: they could speak or were able to play the bagpipes, to make a whistle out of straws or to beat out a tune on the tongs. Not uncommonly, they had a taste for whisky too.
Often, the changeling child was a fractious or disabled individual. It was said that the faery habit was to replace an imperfect child of their own kind with a perfect human baby- and that they would go to great lengths to find the ideal substitute. On other occasions, though, it looks as though the changeling really was an old faery man in disguise- palmed off onto the humans to look after (a sort of free care home for faeries). The wailing baby that never ceased crying is a very common feature of folk accounts, wearing the household down with its incessant grizzling. In one story such an interloper is referred to as a ‘banshee;’ to what extent this relates to its moans, or whether the intention is to imply that we are actually dealing with a faery female (which would be very rare) is not clear.
If it wasn’t crying, the impostor child might be eating prodigious amounts of food- and yet never growing or getting more healthy. In fact, it was frequently the case that the changeling was entirely bed-bound- unable to stand, walk or work- and passed many years (even a couple of decades) alternately eating and crying.
Some changelings looked like what they were. From Stornoway, for example, we hear of a baby with “old skin,” an indication that it was not a newborn child at all. Certainly, when they had been exposed for what they were, changelings seldom bothered to conceal their true natures. Many would become violent, cursing and threatening the human households that had been harbouring them (perhaps understandably, given that they are losing a very comfortable existence), but one case from Blairgowrie suggests that the “rude words” and bad language to which some accounts refer may in fact cover something rather more adult. This latter changeling, as he was driven out, declared that he wished “he’d known his mother better.” This may just be a lament at being cast out so soon, but I suspect that, given that the faery was actually on old man, what he was suggesting here was a good deal coarser and more sexual. If we understand that the impostor has probably been breast-fed, we can guess what he was implying.
Several times, changelings are referred to as ‘dwarves,’ indicating very plainly that diminutive size was an indicator of faery status. For example, the MacKillop family of Berneray was reported to have a changeling in their ancestry as the explanation for the persistence of dwarfism in the clan. Interestingly, in light of what will be discussed in the next paragraph, this genetic trait could have been eliminated had the mother of the stolen child been prepared to leave impostor infant outside overnight. However, she took pity on the baby and kept it, bringing the child up as her own. Another family suffered such a substitution twice, but they too chose to raise the infants as their own and enjoyed prosperity as long as the ‘dwarves’ lived under their roof. When, eventually, they both died, the family lost its wealth and subsequently had to emigrate to America.
The point of expelling the changeling is to get the original baby back. Usually this is done by subjecting the faery to unpleasant, if not hazardous conditions: dung, fire and iron often come into this; sometimes the creature is thrown off a cliff or bridge or is exposed on the seashore. Unsurprisingly, sometimes it dies. From time to time, this exposure makes clear the close link between the changeling and the local faeries. In several cases, the baby is placed on the side of the faery hill, the sithean. This is not just leaving the infant out in the elements, it is placing it within sight and sound of its own people so that they cannot ignore its abandoned plight. The Stornoway changeling mentioned previously was ‘cured’ by digging two graves on a knoll and placing the infant between them. One was for ‘the dead,’ the other for the ‘living.’ The baby was left to its own devices and rolled into the hole for the living, after which the story states “its skin was soon healed.” Bearing in mind the location of this ritual, this seems to me not an appeal to faery healing skills but a rather a challenge to take back their kin and restore the human child.
My recent research into Scottish oral sources of faerylore have impressed upon me once again what a wide range of reports there are about the sizes of supernatural beings. The conclusion we have to draw from these seems to be that different ‘species’ can be quite different physically- something that is found across Britain, in fact.
I’ll start with the sith (or sitheach– plural sithechean), the faeries proper. They were consistently described as tiny and light– to the extent that they could dance on the tips of reeds and heather. One sighting, from Reay in Caithness, described them as small people dressed in green- so that they looked like bottles- who emerged from a knoll at sunset. As many as two to three hundred appeared, covering the hillside. Another report suggests they may be even smaller: a girl called Essie Stewart saw a faery at Betty Hill in Sutherland whom she first mistook for a chocolate wrapper- he was only six inches tall, dressed in red with a white beard to his knees.
There are several accounts from the areas of Strathpeffer and Assynt, in the far north of the Highlands, in which the faeries are recorded as being “little people with very dark skin.” These were often spotted in groups, which could be quite intimidating to lone humans. Interestingly, a man called Geordie was once surrounded by a gang of them, all dressed in rags. His companion advised him to give them tobacco to get them to go away, an indication that they were regarded somewhat as importuning beggars- a nuisance more than a threat, perhaps. The overall description of the beings in this crowd was that they were about half the size of the average human- but otherwise looked exactly like us. This sort of stature, comparable to an older child, may be found across Britain.
Changelings– those faeries who are swapped for human babies- are usually described as being like small old men, about the size of the stolen infant, but far, far older. However, a couple of reports curiously describe them as being considerably bigger. One reported from Islay was seven feet tall whilst another appeared as a baby to the parents but, in their absence, was seen as a grown man by the family’s maid servant. What’s more, he would undertake work around the small holding, commensurate with his size and strength.
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, The Introduction
Other faery beings seem by their nature to be more akin to humans in stature. It was said of the bean-sithe (banshee) and the faery washerwoman (bean nighe) that they were of mortal height and, as such, could easily be mistaken for individuals with whom a person was familiar. This seems to have occurred quite often- and to have led to the faery being revealed as a non-human being. Men frequently grabbed girls they thought they knew, only to find that they were “as light as down,” “as soft as wool” and/ or they had no bones. Other distinguishing deformities might include a tail or the absence of nostrils. Various other classes of faery female known in the Scottish Highlands- the gruagach, glaistig, loireag and the caointeach– all closely resemble human women; the same is the case with water horses (each uisge) and kelpies, which can appear as men or women, often using their physical charms to get close to a person whom they then murder or abduct. These beings can change size though- a kelpie encountered in the river Dee near Aberdeen appeared at first as a normal looking- if dark- man, but as he tried to lure a traveller boy across to the other side of the river, he grew taller and taller and was revealed to have cloven hooved feet concealed beneath the water.
These similarities in size are necessary, needless to say, where humans and faeries become lovers and have children together. Faery-human offspring are very likely to show signs of their mixed ancestry. A story from the Hebridean island of Berneray tells of a local dwarf who was reported to be the son of a faery father and mortal mother. Even as an adult, he would play with the local children and one of their favourite games was to roll him down a very high and very steep hill. Perilous as this might sound, the dwarf said it could never harm him- he might fall one hundred feet and remain uninjured: the benefits of a supernatural ancestry.
Parity of size applies with selkies and mermaids too- on the whole. Mermaids have regularly been taken as wives because, once their tail has been removed, they’re the same as us. Likewise with selkie women without their skins- or with the selkie males who come ashore to seduce human females. The resulting children are of normal size- although they may have some features that reveal their hybrid nature, such as bodily hair, webbed fingers or flipper-like limbs. Mermaids are not always lovely naked maidens though: one seen up close in a sea cave near Aberdeen turned out to have seaweed hair, scales and a mouth full of teeth like a shark’s. What’s more, with her tail, she was nine feet long.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, La Belle Dame sans Merci, 1855
Faery partners have been desired by many people over the centuries, but all the experience indicates that the disadvantages and risks may outweigh the benefits- as Scottish oral records amply demonstrate.
The leannan sith– the faery lover, who might be a faery woman (bean sithe) or perhaps a bean nighe (the supernatural washerwoman), could prove to be a very demanding lover. The laird of Howbeg on South Uist is reputed to have picked up a woman when he was walking one night; he kept her for some time, doubtless enjoying himself with her, but then indicated she could leave if she wanted. Instead, she told him he’d have to meet her whenever she wanted. Thereafter, the laird found that she would be waiting for him outside his house every time he wanted to go out. Eventually, he tried escaping her by emigrating to the USA but she followed him and, in time killed him- a not uncommon fate for such men. Two features of this story will be seen again and again in other reports: the man who has to see the faery woman nightly for between six months and three years and who is followed across the Atlantic by her when he tries to flee. The only way for a man to be rid of such a lover, often, is through protective magic- for example by carrying an elf-arrow or having oats, or oatcakes, in his pockets.
This clingy nature could have its compensations, such as the faery woman who woke a man in his bed one night, knocking on his window and calling in her lovely voice; she promised never to be far from him, undertaking chores around the croft and ensuring he was never in want. Another story from Kintail tells how Donald Duilleag lived very happily with a faery woman for many years. Whenever he was away from home, selling his cattle, she would give him her plaid as magical protection from harm.
Unsurprisingly, faery lovers could be jealous, as in one case when a man jilted his supernatural partner to marry a human woman. The wife became pregnant, but the birth was delayed, and the man reluctantly sought out his former lover to ask for help, because he knew she had the healing skills common to faerykind. He lied to her that it was his nanny goat that had gone over term, but she was not fooled. Near to where they spoke, she could see that the goat was grazing contentedly in a pen full of pearlwort (mothan)- a faery herb with many curative powers. Knowing that the goat was in perfect health, the bean sithe gave her erstwhile lover a cloth belt to put around his wife’s waist to help accelerate delivery. Fortunately, he wisely tested it first: he tied it around a stone, which the cloth belt split in two. Warned of his ex-lover’s malign intent, the man instead picked some mothan for his wife and the baby was soon safely born.
Inevitably, human partners (and not uncommonly other family members too) could take exception to a faery lover. Several versions are told about a man called Luran whose wife was being pestered by a faery male called Iaras. The husband resolved to catch the supernatural suitor in the act and so stayed at home one day instead of going out to his work. He disguised himself with his wife’s shawl and sat at her spinning wheel. When the faery sex pest arrived, thinking the husband to be absent, he had a nasty shock in finding a burly and angry man who chased him away. Worse still, aggrieved human brothers have often killed their sisters’ faery lovers (and faery relatives have been known to do the same to humans).
In any case, as we know from many stories of mermaid and selkie wives, these supernatural partners seldom stay for long. Usually trapped by concealing their shed tails or skins, the mer-wives eventually find them again- tragically often through accidental discovery by their own children- after which the lure of the sea is too much and they depart instantly. In some cases, though, the wife is reported to have appeared offshore every night, calling to her husband until he can bear it no longer and abandons his terrestrial life and his family to join her beneath the waves. In another reported case with a less disastrous outcome, the mermaid wife returned daily when her husband was out of the house to care for their children, look after the home and milk the cow.
Faery lovers are seldom to be fully trusted though, as a story from the island of Berneray reveals. A girl had fallen in love with a boy she’d met on a hillock- a location should have immediately made alarm bells ring. A traveller woman luckily gave her some wise advice: if the boy asked for a lock of her hair, she should give him a plait made from cow’s tail. Sure enough, he requested a token of her love and a reminder of her when they were apart and, as advised, she gave him some cow hair. That night, the family cow started jumping around in the farm yard and then bolted for the sithean, never to be seen again…
As these oral testimonies make clear, amorous entanglements with faerykind are perilous- if enticing. The risks include the loss of happiness, freedom and even life. At first, of course, these dangers are seldom apparent, but in time the true costs of these relationships emerge.
After recently discussing the ‘hollow hills‘ of British faerylore, I want to shift my attention definitively north to examine the knowes and knolls of Scottish tradition. My source here is the collection of recorded interviews to be found on the website Tobar an Dualchais(‘A Kist o’ Riches’ in Scots).
Knowe is the term used on Shetland to denote faery hills (often with the ‘k’ distinctly pronounced). They are best known as a source of music, frequently heard by lone travellers at night. A man walking home past the Fairy Mound beside Gloup Voe on Yell saw tiny beings, like dolls, dancing on the tips of the reeds growing on the knowe, and heard a different tune for each dance they performed. He was a fiddler and was able to remember one of the tunes and play it the next morning. Other tunes learned in this manner include the ‘Trowie Reel,’ ‘Shaldman Shaw’ and, most appropriately- ‘Da Peerie Hoose Inunder Da Hill’ (The Little House Under the Hill).
Humans often learned faery/ trowie tunes at knowes, but they were also regularly invited into those hills to provide the entertainment for the dancers. The problem then was to get away. One man from Collafirth on Shetland was trapped in the Thieves’ Knowe, playing for days until the food ran low. He managed to persuade the trows that, if they came with him to his house, they could fetch butter and a fat animal and carry on their feasting. Of course, as soon as he got near home he called for help and his family and workers ran out and caught the trows before a cow could be taken.
Others found it harder to get away. A fiddler at Garth was lured into a knowe- the door of which stood open- to play for another wedding. He played every tune he knew before he was finally allowed to go home, thinking he’d been away two or three days. His wife complained he’d actually been gone a week. A well-known storyteller from Arisdale on Yell was recognised by a trowie boy and was invited to join his family for supper and to swap stories. There were two notable features of his visit: the first was that his visit, which he thought lasted a few hours, actually went on for eight days. The second was his manner of entry and exit from the knowe: the boy told him to stand on the ‘roof’ of the house (the top of the hill), and he would instantly be down inside the kitchen, whereas to leave he walked up some stairs, the roof opened above him and he was able to depart. Far less happy was a man who’d been out fishing one night at Sandness and who, on his way home, saw light from a knowe and was able to enter and join a dance. The roof closed over him and it was only one hundred (earth) years later that he walked out again. Finding all his family long gone, the bereft man died almost instantly.
Spending time with the trows can be perilous, although they probably don’t intend any such consequences. They are known to treat guests with kindness and generosity, one such being George Irvine of Dunrossness on Fair Isle. He suffered from learning difficulties, but was well-treated by the trows after he entered their ‘realm’ through a door in a knowe. He was allowed to return home again and George was canny enough to know that he should say very little about what he had seen and heard during his time ‘unner da hill.’ George vouchsafed that the trows ate with silver spoons and ladles, but he refused to say more- even when subjected to threats- and, most especially, he kept the secret of the trows’ berry wine.
The Hollanders’ Knowe, near Lerwick, Shetland
On the mainland, the knowes are called knolls, but the same phenomena are associated with them. Lights may be seen at night and music heard. These often entice people in, but although the visitors scarcely feel time passing, for everyone they’ve left behind it will be a different matter- maybe a year, sometimes decades or centuries. This means that, when they finally emerge, the disappeared may find that their children have grown up and have become parents- or even grandparents- themselves, or that their former home is now nothing but ruins and all their family and friends are long dead. Frequently, the revenant will crumble to dust upon their return.
The sith of the mainland particularly distinguish themselves from the trows by the fact that they often seem to take people to work for them as prisoners. Girls and women are commonly taken to bake or to spin wool and often can only escape through trickery. Usually, the sith folk are predictably disgruntled by this, but sometimes the enterprising escapee is rewarded- one girl was told that she and all her descendants would benefit from being hard workers; in another case, the girl was offered a wish before she left- and chose to be a good worker (an interesting confirmation of her status in life and her sense of its realties). A related belief was that those who entered a knoll would be able to learn a skill whilst they were there; this was typically the mastery of spinning or piping and not uncommonly ‘fools’ (i.e. those with learning difficulties like George Irvine) were often helped out in this way by the sith. A variant is for the visitor to be offered three wishes- although generally such stories end badly because the humans prove to be greedy or stupid and make bad or disastrous choices.
Access to knolls resembles that on Shetland- doors (which are made of stone) will be seen open and light shining out, but in mainland Scotland we hear far more about tricks to stop the doors closing again and trapping the human visitor. Metal– knives, nails or plough shares- are good ways of counteracting faery magic. Equally, stealing the faery magic- learning the spell that works the door- is another way to get in and was used by Luran to sneak into a knoll and steal a silver cup whilst the sith folk slept.
It’s reported that all sitheans are open on Halloween and that people may enter and leave freely without the fear of being trapped. The other age-old allure which may mean the sith folk permit humans to enter is sex: according to a story from North Uist, the knowe at Paiblesgarry, which is reputed to have sixteen rooms within, was once seen open. A man who looked in saw the faery queen inside and felt encouraged to join her. He wasn’t mistaken: she wanted him to father a child with her.
In opposition to these stories are those few in which the faeries seem to actively discourage human curiosity, seemingly to preserve their privacy. Some girls from Arisaig in Lochaber were tending cows at a sheiling when they saw the nearby sithean was open, with light pouring out and the sounds of music and dancing audible. They left the cattle to get a closer look, but a faery woman appeared shouting “Crodh anns a’choirce” (‘The cows are in the corn’) so the girls ran back, only to find the cattle lying exactly where they’d left them. In the meantime, of course, the sithean had closed. In another case, from Montrose, a boy was out alone on the moors, playing his fiddle. He was suddenly surrounded by a group of small people who wanted him to go away. As a bribe, they said they’d make him the best fiddle player in the world- an offer he couldn’t refuse (of course, this story might be more to do with how bad his playing was before the faeries intervened, rather than their secretive nature!).
My previous posting on barrows discussed the links between faery hills and the dead and this same linkage is present in several Scottish stories. At Finnister, on Shetland, the knowe was locally avoided at night because it was reputed to be a ‘spooky place.’ Powerful confirmation of this came from the fact that grazing livestock would always move away from it before sunset. The source of this reputation and aura may be hinted at on the island of Grimsay, North Uist, where a faery knoll was often seen illuminated at night and at which dairymaids would pour out a little milk every morning. Subsequently, an old burial ground (in other words, I think, a prehistoric interment) was excavated beneath the hill, explaining for many locals why it has been treated with cautious respect in the past. A story from South Uist combines this theme of death with the differential passage of time. A group of men saw a sithean lit up and went to the door, from where they could see a dance in progress. They put iron in the doorway and entered for a while. After some dancing, the group decided to leave and removed the iron as they departed, so that the door closed. Only then did they realise one of the party had been left behind. They waited and watched until the hill opened again, but by then their friend was dead- they could see his bare skeleton lying within.
There is a traffic between the human world and Faery which we don’t fully understand. As is well-known, people taken by the faeries frequently appear to us to have died. In the story of another musician, from the Shetland island of Fetlar, a woman out collecting peats from her stack had collapsed and died. Some months later, a local fiddler was out walking because he had arranged to play sat a wedding the next day. He was stopped on the road by a stranger and asked to play at a wedding taking place that very night. He agreed, but was shocked to see that the bride at the dance was the deceased woman…
Far more eerie are two other Hebridean tales. A mute boy was left outside a faery knoll by his mother to see if the sith folk might cure him. When she returned the next morning, she found the child singing and talking- but her joy was almost instantly crushed when she looked at him closely and saw that, voluble as he was, he also looked dead. On the island of Berneray, North Uist, a local man was one day seen by two others lying in the shelter of a faery knoll. They later learned that the man had died at just about that time. These two accounts link us back to the clear association made in The Secret Commonwealth by the Reverend Robert Kirk between mounds and the spirits of the dead. Once again, there is a deeply established connection between these hillocks and other dimensions and states of being.
British Fairies 