“I get around”- some oddities of faery travel

I’ve posted several times on faery motion and movement, such as their use of whirlwinds; here I want to look at ways they may be transported by other beings. Although, these days, we tend to assume that faeries fly everywhere, there’s no trace of wings or of fluttering flight in the traditional records. They can, magically, ‘teleport‘ themselves from place to place or enchant items to carry them, it’s perfectly true, but most of the time they get around in very prosaic ways: on their own two feet, or on something else’s four feet.

It’s pretty well known that the faes ride horses (just as the surrounding human population would have done in times past) and these animals are always described as being proportionate to their size. If they’re the size of children, they’ll be mounted on ponies; if they’re seen smaller, the steeds might be as big as greyhounds. Just like humans, too, the faeries will use their horses for all suitable activities: they go out on their annual ‘rades’ in processions of horses, but they’ll also hunt on them, exactly as would human gentry and nobles. The horses are reputed to be very swift (“as fast as the wind”) and to be highly prized, being richly caparisoned when they are taken out.

Jean Baptiste Monge

Needless to say, it’s often easier to make use of someone else’s animals- that way you don’t have to stable or feed them, and it is widely known that faeries do just this, taking horses from farmer’s stables at night and riding them until they’re worn out. This process is frequently accompanied by the knotting of the horses’ manes and tails, at least some of this done ostensibly to provide the diminutive riders with reins and stirrups. These are necessary not just because the riders are often so much tinier than their mounts, but because they like to drive the horses at frenetic pace across the fields and moors. These exertions leave the horses exhausted and covered in a foam of sweat, much to the dismay of their human owners.

So far, so familiar, but it doesn’t stop there. If horses aren’t available, other four-legged beasts will do. On the Isle of Anglesey it was reported that the local tylwyth teg rode donkeys or (to be exact) they gave a mortal man one to ride when he travelled with them; this might, conceivably, have been some sort of joke or put down on their part: they got well-bred steeds and he got a bad tempered ass. Very definitely proportionate to the smaller breed of fae, in Nithsdale in southern Scotland the elves were reported to ride on cats. One assumes they used magic to control their mounts. On Shetland, the trows rode the farmers’ cows. When the cattle were released into the pastures in Spring, if any of them were found to be weak- or collapsed, frothing at the mouth- it was known to be because the trows had been riding it.

Erle Ferronniere, Fee au chat noir

Unlikely as cats sound, they are at least four legged. However, as we know, even two legged victims will do and there are reports from around the Britain Isles of unfortunate human victims being saddled and mounted to act as steeds for faeries overnight. Usually they are forced to carry riders around, although there is one report of a man taken and used as a cart horse in one Scottish sithean. According to the poem, Montgomerie’s Flyting of Polwarth, some of the Scottish elves were known to ride other two legged creatures: “Sum saidlit ane scho aip all grathit into green” (some saddled a she-ape, all clad in green).

Modern fantasy art shows faes riding birds and other wildlife. Pretty as these images are, and despite the fact that we are attracted to them because they emphasise the unity of the faeries with their environment, there is not very much traditional support for the idea. As we’ve just seen, we hear of the elves riding apes, but they must be few and far between in any part of Britain; it’s also reported that the Highland hag, the cailleach bheur, and her follower rides on wolves and swine. The Gyre Carling, another name for the faery queen in Fife, was also said to ride a pig: in one poem she “schup her on ane sow and is her gaitis gane” (she settled herself on a sow and went her ways). Making use of more common mammals and fowls is not reported.

Erle Ferroniere

Much of this suggests that the faeries are stuck in a pre-modern world- often our view of them. We like to romanticise their pre-industrial, rural aspects, whereas the evidence indicates that they move with the times just as their human neighbours do. Faery industry is known- dyeing and milling (for which see my How Things Work in Faery) but more pertinently, contemporary reports indicate that they will use cars, buses and aeroplanes to get around (see Marjorie Johnson’s Seeing Fairies for such sightings). Humans no longer need to employ horse power, although they will use them for special occasions and special purposes; the same would seem to be true of the faes.

An amended and expanded version of this post now forms a chapter in my Faery Mysteries (Green Magic Publishing, 2022).

Fairy sports

Pixie playthings, Molly Brett

We are familiar with the idea of fairies feasting and dancing, but they have other pastimes too which can make them seem very human indeed.

Hurling

In both Cornwall and (most frequently) in Ireland, huge hurling matches have been sighted, with hosts of players on either side. Coastal locations seem to be especially favoured for these: the earliest account of pixies seen in Cornwall dates from August 1657 and is a description of a fairy hurling match held in a field of corn at Boscastle.  A large number of white figures were seen taking part and the game surged back and forth until apparently disappearing over a cliff.  The crop was left completely unmarked.  In an Irish story a man called Patch Gallagher is recruited to join one team in a vast sidhe hurling match which ranges over a full sixty miles of Connaught coastline.  Evans Wentz also notes two Irish sightings of hurling matches (Fairy faith pp.41 & 51 and see Marjorie Johnson, Seeing fairies, p.76).

Football

There’s a story from the south of Northamptonshire of a man who joined a fairy game of football. He was, perhaps, a little over-enthusiastic, as he kicked their ball so hard it burst.  He fainted and the fays vanished, but when he recovered, he found that the deflated ball had been left behind and was full of gold coins.  Evans Wentz has an Irish sighting of a football game (p.76) as has Marjorie Johnson- an experience dating to the 1890s (p.86).

Curling & other ball games

It is reported that, during freezing weather in Scotland, the fairies may be heard at night curling on every sizeable sheet of ice.

The medieval Welsh tale of the boy Elidyr and his visit to a subterranean fairyland confirms that the faerie folk enjoyed ball games: Elidyr used to play with the king’s son before he made the dreadful mistake of trying to steal the golden ball they used.  One of Marjorie Johnson’s correspondents described seeing scores of tiny fairies playing ball in a ring under an oak tree, somewhere in mid-Wales (p.232).

Hunting

The fairies love hunting with hounds, most particularly on the Isle of Man, where they are regularly heard at night coursing across the island. They are often dressed in green with red caps, in great numbers and accompanied by the loud sound of cracking whips.

Horse racing

Horses are often taken from stables and ridden at night until they are exhausted and foamed with sweat. It’s very likely that the fairies are racing against each other as well as enjoying the sheer exhilaration over steeple-chasing over fields and hedges.

Rough and tumble play

Even if no competitive game is involved, it’s clear that the fays love to indulge in energetic and noisy play. Quite often, this is combined with mischief, disturbing human households with the noise they make.  Poet Thomas Heywood referred to them “keeping Christmas gambols all night long,” creating a racket that sounded as if furniture and pots were “about the Kitchen tost and cast/ Yet in the morning nothing found misplaced.”

This sort of revelry is not just seasonal, though: Drayton recorded in The Muse’s Elysium how the fairies would scramble around rooms, overturning stools and tables.  A Manx witness described how he saw fairies playing on beached fishing boats, clambering about in the rigging with great laughter.  George Waldron recounts another encounter on the island in which a man saw some boys playing in a field at about three or four o-clock in the afternoon when they should have been at school.  He went to tell them off but they disappeared as he approached them across the open land.  Much more recent witnesses have seen the fairies engaged in games of leapfrog, chase and playing ring o’ roses (Johnson pp.91, 161, 170, 192 & 258).  This last game, of course, starts to shade into the fairy habit of dancing in rings.