Fairy Faith, Fairy Fear (Part 2)

Part two examines faerie folklore further, detailing the extensive beliefs regarding the nature of these beings, including more classical tales and even one modern sighting. In the latter part, we begin to discuss the implication of such myths as analyzed through a twenty-first century lens. 

Transcript

The world you are now in is that of eternal twilight. It is said that in the perennial war between the forces of darkness and light, there is a third that remains neutral in this tiresome crusade, the adherents of which are apathetic to the goings on outside of their secret world. It is somewhere between the waiting line at the pearly gates and the second circle of hell, retaining elements of both as a small-statured ambiguous enigma. Neither angel nor devil, it is a thing that haunts the land, and its only stake lies in the wilderness of the earth, from which man has worked so hard to separate himself. It is an interdimensional jester who plays by its own set of rules, forcing those who happen to wander across its path to question the most basic truth they take for granted, and robbing them of their sense of security. It dogs their step, smirking at them like it knows something they don't, leaving them with the uneasy feeling that the world they perceive, is but a thin veneer, behind which the designs of one's wildest dreams and nightmares are playing themselves out, and that at any moment, the whole stage set, might just fall. Welcome to The Hidden Passage.

Even fairies that were considered good could be easily offended should humans show disrespect. This could be done unintentionally, simply by wandering into their territory. The punishment for even a seemingly slight offense could be severe. In the novel Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie states that because of their small size, fairies are only able to hold one emotion within them at a time, unable to balance anger with compassion. While obviously a fictional tale, this seems to be an accurate description of their temperament as described in folklore. It is for this reason that the average person usually avoided them at all costs, quietly referring to them with flattering names such as “the fair folk” or the “good people” in order to denote equality and even deference. Only the druid priest dared enter these places of power for rituals and initiation rites. While transgressions could draw the ire of fairies, goodwill towards them could be rewarded with gifts such as a fruitful harvest or the completion of household chores. It was common practice among ancient peoples to leave food for the fairies to appease them. 

The legend of Knockgraften tells of a man with a humpback who hears the sounds of fairies playing music and, being a musician himself, decides to join in. The fairies were so pleased with his addition to the melody that they took away his hump. As word spread of this miraculous healing, a family with a son who also had a humpback went to the fairies and demanded that he be cured. The fairies instead gave him two humps, which weighed him down so much that he eventually died. This shows how their actions towards humans were often based on a moral judgment of our behavior. In terms of ethics, it appears that the fairies had somewhat similar understanding of right and wrong as humans. Acts that we would consider noble were likewise highly regarded by them, while selfishness and ignorance, were looked upon with disdain. However, they often did not hold themselves to the same standards and would steal from humans. They were also considered hedonistic, having a penchant for debaucherous acts such feasting and sexual promiscuity, which was offensive to the religious Christian ethos. In this sense they were associated with temptation, often using these things to seduce and lure humans to their world.

Because of the variety of dangers these beings posed, it was common practice to use forms of lesser magic, such as protective charms, in an attempt to ward against evil fairies. People would carry items which repelled them, such as salt, iron, bells, sacred herbs, bibles, holy water, and would perform certain rituals such as turning their clothes inside out. These things would be used around the home, and especially while traveling through the woods.  

 Interactions between humans and fairies was not limited to diplomacy and strife. Sometimes a deeper connection was made. The idea of matrimony between humans and fairies is fairly common in myth, as fairies would sometimes take human mates and vice versa, leaving one’s world to live with the other and have children. The fairy queens were extremely beguiling to men, while the queens were sometimes drawn to young men. Several prominent Celtic families claimed to have descended from these extraordinary unions. This type of myth may also be based on an older pagan custom wherein the king was expected to marry the local goddess of the land he ruled over.  A famous example of such a story tells of a Scottish  Maccloud clan chief, who stumbled across a fairy dwelling where he fell in love with fairy princess. The fairy king agreed to allow the couple to marry, but, recognizing the short mortal lives of men, required that she return to the fairy kingdom after a year and one day, so that his daughter would not suffer the heartbreak of her husband dying. They had a child during this time, and one night after the mother had left, the child began to cry. The fairy mother returned to sing to the child, wrapping him in a shawl, which later became the fairy flag, a powerful talisman for the clan. This flag could be waved three times in battle, summoning legions of fairies to aid the Macleods in battle. It is said that the flag was instrumental in securing two major victories against invading armies which vastly outnumbered the clan. 

While relations between fairies and humans was well documented, as was previously mentioned, most of the time they remained insular, having their own culture separate from humankind. While distinct, there were also similarities to own. In terms of general behavior, they seem to, in many ways, mirror humans. A curious aspect to this is that since they didn’t require the things humans do in the physical world, their work activities were sometimes considered to be done as an act of mimicry. Those who witnessed fairies, observed them to have similar rituals, customs, jobs, and leisure activities. They were thought to be renown skilled craftsmen and musicians. They were often seen busily working, traveling, or simply frolicking about. Fairies were jovial, reveling in music-making and merriment, and were notoriously mischievous, finding amusement in the pranking of unsuspecting humans. In this sense, they embody a child-like, youthful nature, even though some fairies could appear very old. In my own research, I have spoken to witnesses who claim to have seen fairies personally. One report that was shared with me displays this playful nature. A witness in a small village in Bodmin Moor in Cornwall England, observed a group of three fairies while walking their dog at night. It was a particularly dark night, and as the witness was walking down the street, they began to hear a cacophony of sound which they at first mistook for disturbed cats. As they went to discover the source of the sound, they observed a group of small humanoids, two to three feet tall, dressed in white robes similar to old night gowns. The entities were laughing and screaming, and proceeded to run past the witness, jumping and dancing around an old harvesting tool in a neighbor’s yard. The witness’s dog became agitated, so the witness turned around, continuing to hear the commotion as they made their way back up the street.

Like humans, fairies also were thought to form their own societies. In European folklore, their structure resembled that of humans of the time. They were often seen in large groups, with hierarchies of kings and queens, such as was displayed during Fairie Rades, a procession of their royal court on horseback. Some fairies, however, preferred solitude and lived in isolated huts in the woods. The Irish leprechaun was one such solitary fairy.  The appearance of the fairy ranged from beautiful, strange, to grotesque, often depicted with sharply exaggerated facial features and pointed ears. They could also range in size from that of a thimble to larger than a human but were most often on the smaller end of the scale. Some fairies wore no clothing at all, or simply covered themselves with leaves and other natural items from their environment, while some were adorned in simple, tattered clothing, such as a tunic with a conical hat. Fairy royalty might have been seen dressed in fine medieval style clothing. In terms of lifespan, some myths describe them as living extremely long but could still die, while other describe them as immortal beings. Writer William Blake claimed to have witnessed a fairy funeral precession, wherein the deceased was laid upon a leaf and buried in a garden. 

Throughout time, people have speculated as to the origins of these mysterious creatures. In Pagan times, these beings were most likely identified as minor deities, genius loci, local gods who influenced certain communities. Some fairies are thought to be directly based on Celtic gods, such as the goddess of winter, and aspect of the mother goddess, Cailleach, a hag-like deity who was seen as somewhat adversarial, as she was responsible for stopping the coming of spring, however necessary, as there could be no summer without winter. This apparent conversion of gods into fairies may have been a conscious or even unconscious attempt to preserve a vestige of pagan beliefs into the Christian era. The druids, or priest class of the Celtic cultures, held a firm belief in and venerated these beings. But as these ancient religions began to fade, the knowledge of the ancestors was lost, as many of their teachings were kept through oral tradition, and only disseminated among the inner priesthood circles of those initiated into the mystery schools. And so, people were left to fill in the gaps between the remnants of much older beliefs, reinterpreting them over time. Fairy folklore took on different colors with changing cultural movements throughout history. 

Due to the fairy’s association with ancient burial mounds and megaliths, some believed that they were in fact the spirits of the dead, ancestors, or diminished forms of the old gods, who shrank in size and retreated to secluded places as people stopped believing in them during Christianization. As Christianity took hold, many old-world folkways took on a more sinister tone, interpreted by church authorities as demonic, in order to root out competition. Christian thinkers speculated fairies to be the souls of the unbaptized or even demons. “It is said- that the good people- are some of the fallen angels who were turned out of heaven, and who landed on their feet in this world, while the rest of their companions, who had more sin to sink them, went down further to a worse place.” (The Priest’s Supper- T Crofton Croker). This perspective supposes that fairies exist in a limbo state, not good enough for heaven but too good for hell, again emphasizing an in-between nature. One Icelandic Christian story says that the first Huldufolk were the children of Eve. She was bathing them when God appeared and asked to see the children. Eve had not yet bathed all the children, so she decided to hide the unwashed ones from him. God, however, being omniscient, could see through this, and decided that if they were hidden from him, that they would also be hidden from man. During witch trials of the 1600’s, a common charge was that the accused person had consorted with fairies and other evil spirits, keeping them as “familiars” who would do their bidding. Alleged witch Isobel Gowdie confessed to going to a hill where the fairy queen gave her more meat than she could eat. In Irish lore, the Tuatha De Danann were a supernatural race of god-like giants who once ruled over the land, but were eventually defeated by the Milesians, or the Celtic Gael settlers, and agreed to relinquish half their territory and retreat underground, leaving the other half above ground to the victors. The premise of such genesis stories were most likely an invention of medieval Christian writers and had little to no basis in the original traditions.

An important development in our modern perception of fairies took place during the German Renaissance through the writings of Swiss alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus. This period in history saw a revival of classical Greek culture and was influenced heavily by ancient esoteric schools of thought such as Hermeticism, describing metaphysical laws by which the universe operated. It was believed these forces could be understood and utilized in order to influence nature. The mantra, “as above, so below”, reflects the belief that everything in the material world has a divine correspondent. A variety of spiritual beings were created by God, each of whom were responsible for carrying out certain aspects of creation. It was from this philosophical framework that Paracelsus developed the idea of elementals, or nature spirits, drawing from preexisting mythical beings, particularly the Greek “nymph”, which was known as a caretaker of the forest, and which could be considered a cognate to the fairy. To him, all manner of fairies were semi-divine and part of this elemental system. He described four groups of entities: gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines, belonging to the four alchemical elements - earth, wind, fire, and water. Because these four elements are the building blocks of creation, Paracelsus theorized that the elemental’s purpose was assisting in the creation of all things in nature, inhabiting all aspects of nature. This was his attempt to identify everything as having a function within the divine order of the universe as everything is a product of God’s will. While there is some earlier mention of fairies being “spirits of the air”, it is important to note that the idea of the fairy as being an elemental did not exist before Paracelsus, however it is this notion that has become predominant in many new age Wiccan belief systems. And so, the fairy began to be perceived as a more positive force. 

The perception of the fairy underwent another transformation in the Romantic era, which again embraced a nostalgia for the past, pre-Enlightenment era when thought was guided by emotion rather than the perceived coldness of logic. One could see how this reactive movement might produce bias. And so, fairies were sentimentalized in the works of great fiction writers of the time. They took on a purely benevolent form, representing wonder and magic. Their physical form became less alien and more human-like, with the addition of sparkling butterfly wings. Their destructive magic was left out in descriptions. This interpretation has largely informed out modern perception of fairies as being quaint and fictional characters. William Butler Yeats
 wrote:

“Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild,
 With a faery, hand in hand,
 For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

This illustrates a dramatic shift in thought. As was mentioned earlier, in ancient times, abduction by the fairies was a very real threat that terrified people.  Perhaps as the comforts of developing society, which sheltered us from the forces of nature, gave us security and took away our fear of nature, it also diminished our fear of the spirits that inhabited it, allowing us to spectate from a safe distance. And finally with the advancement of science, we no longer required the idea of spirits to explain the mechanisms of nature, as we began to view it as a self-organizing system through natural processes. 

Today, it is assumed by modern scholars that fairy phenomena can be explained through rational means.  Elf shot was invented by people who didn’t understand the real causes of disease and illness. The modern medical term stroke is derived from the phrase. Likewise, the idea of fairy abduction was a way to explain illness and deformity in an era when people had no understanding of genetics or microbiology. These were invisible forces until the invention of the microscope. If a baby was deformed or a person became ill, it was assumed the healthy person had been replaced with a fairy. The fact that males are more likely to have birth defects could also why people thought boys were more likely to be abducted. Furthermore, the idea of changelings is thought to have been an attempt to also explain neurological disorders. The odd behavior that typified fairy changelings such as OCD and stilted speech correlate with the modern diagnosis of autism, and autistic people have often expressed feelings of alienation, even to the degree of not feeling human. It is interesting to note that use of eggshells in changeling rituals could have been a type of fertility rite, the egg being a symbol of such, suggesting that on a subconscious level people understood that this was a reproductive issue.