The Hidden People
By tradition the best times for seeing fairies are twilight and midnight when the moon is full, and the best day is the Midsummer Day (June 24). The modern view of fairies is that of miniature creatures, butterfly-winged and innocent. But according to the traditional view even the kindest of them are dangerous. Traditionally, many fairies are of human or more than human size, and hideously ugly. Their most cruel practice – stealing human babies – is a matter of survival. Though they live in a world of their own, many fairy-families have to interbreed with humans to strengthen their stock. When belief in fairies was common, few people liked talking about their experience, for fairies were thought to be fierce guardians of their privacy. People who spied on fairies were supposed to be blinded, and just talking about fairies was unlucky. Most British fairies are said to live in hollow hills or in an underground country where the summer never ends.
In every country, most people have spoken about fairies as if they were creatures of the past. Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century said that pious monks and friars had driven away the fairies, and 200 years later the English writer Reginald Scott claimed it was the Reformation which had disposed of them.
By tradition, the last Oxfordshire fairies were seen disappearing down a hole under the Rollright Stones in the 18th I century, and two 19th-century children were witnesses to the farewell procession of Scottish fairies. But the stories keep on coming. Even in the 20th century, there are sincere eye-witness accounts of little men all dressed in green, and it is on these, and on accounts from former centuries, that the case for belief in fairies must rest. In the scattered parts of Britain where belief survives, it is still considered that fairies dislike being called by that name. Cautious believers prefer instead to use names such as “The Good People”', “The Little People”, or “The Hidden People”.
Hundreds of different kinds of fairies have been described. Some are grotesque, like the Spriggans of Cornwall, reputedly the ghosts of giants, who guard treasure buried beneath prehistoric stones, and have the ability to change shape at will. Others are miniature creatures, such as the 1 /2 in. high Portunes, who live on a diet of roast frog. The Portunes are perhaps England's oldest fairies, for their wizened, wrinkled faces were first described by the English historian Gervase of Tilbury some 750 years ago.
Fairy Aristocrats
In the Middle Ages fairy aristocrats were thought to be the most beautiful of fairyland's people, and their heroic exploits were described in legends about King Arthur, in the Border ballads and in medieval romance. In many stories about them, they were led by a king and queen and were at least as large as humans; but they could also be tiny. Like human aristocrats, they passed their time in hunting, hawking and feasting. Many tales were told of the Fairy Rade, when they rode in procession behind their king and queen, on white horses hung with silver bells.
These noble fairies were more common in Scotland than in England or Wales, and when they did appear in England, they were generally very small. In a story told in Cornwall in the 19th century, a greedy old man tried to steal their treasure as they feasted on the Gump, a fairy hill outside St Just. The royal dais and banqueting table were small enough to be covered by the old man's hat, but as he raised it to trap them, “a shrill whistle was heard, the old man's hand was fixed powerless in the air, and everything became dark around him”.
After their Elizabethan heyday, fairyland's aristocrats went into decline, and there are few modern accounts of them. The story of Scotland's last Fairy Rade was told by the Scottish writer Hugh Miller more than 100 years ago. A herdboy and his sister saw a procession of dwarfish strangers riding through a hamlet near Glen Eathie. As the last rider passed by, the boy asked: “What are ye, little mannie; and where are you going?” “Not of the race of Adam,” said the creature, turning for a moment in the saddle: “The People of Peace shall never more be seen in Scotland.”
The Common People
Most of the lower orders of British fairies are said to be no larger than three-year-old children. They enjoy games, music and dancing, like the heroic fairies, but they also have to work, or at least thieve. Sometimes they need help from people. There are many stories about fairies leaving broken stools or shovels for humans to mend, and paying for any help they get with small gifts of food, or of good luck.
The common fairies work mainly on the land, and they are believed to have traditional market-places. Legend says that one of these is situated at Pitminster in Somerset. Sometimes they visit ordinary markets. Some of the Welsh Tylwyth Teg, or Fair Family, were said to steal money from farmers' pockets on market day, replacing it with their own money, which vanished if the farmers tried to spend it. In the market-place at Bala in Merionethshire, no one could see the Tylwyth Teg, but when the noise of the market rose to a roar, and prices began to go up, everyone knew they were there.
Many fairies are said to be masters of magic. Their presents, which at first look like rubbish, may turn into jewels or gold; or presents of jewels and gold may turn into rubbish. Some of them are able to appear and disappear at will, though people can penetrate their disguise by applying a magic eye ointment made by the fairies themselves, or by holding a four-leafed clover. Some can fly, though few have wings. Usually they ride on ragwort stalks, or levitate themselves by wearing magic caps or by reciting spells.
Cradle-snatching is their chief vice: almost all covet human babies, particularly fair-haired babies with rosy cheeks, and steal them if they can. In place of the stolen baby they leave a changeling – sometimes a fairy child, sometimes a withered old man, sometimes just a piece of wood crudely carved to look like a child, which seems for a moment to be alive.
Guardian Fairies
Brownies and other hobgoblins are the best-known guardian fairies: they are usually small, solitary, shaggy-haired domestic spirits, who are said to do housework and odd jobs about the home, and to become attached to particular families or places. Most of them are hideous to look at: in parts of Aberdeenshire they are said to have no separate toes or fingers, in the Scottish Lowlands they have a hole instead of a nose, while some are reputed to have huge noses but no mouths.
According to tradition, most brownies go naked, or at least wear only ragged clothes, and can make themselves invisible or are experts at hiding. The easiest way to get rid of them is to offer them a gift of clothes. The Cauld Lad of Hilton, an unhappy brownie who haunted Hilton Castle in Northumberland, was left a green cloak and hood, and promptly left the castle singing: “Here's a cloak and here's a hood! The Cauld Lad of Hilton will do no more good!”
Though naturally helpful, brownies can become malicious if they are offended. In a story told to the Welsh folklorist John Rhys at the turn of the century, a helpful bwca (the Welsh equivalent of a brownie) savagely attacked a servant girt on a Monmouthshire farm when she paid him for his work with a bowl of urine instead of his usual bowl of milk and piece of wheatbread. In disgust, the bwca moved to a neighbouring farm, where he worked willingly until the servant girl began to mock him.
He moved to a third farm, and became friends with Moses, the manservant. But Moses was killed in battle, and the grief-stricken bwca became a malevolent bogie. This so upset the farmer that he called in a local wise man, who on a moonlit night caught the bwca by his nose and banished him to the banks of the Red Sea for 14 generations.
More sinister than brownies, and less common, are Banshees. They sometimes give advice, but more often appear only to foretell a tragedy. In Highland tradition, the Washer-by-the-Ford, a web-footed, one-nostrilled, buck-toothed hag, is seen washing bloodstained clothes when men are about to meet a violent death.
Mischievous and Evil Fairies
Bogies, goblins and bug-a-boos are openly malignant and hostile to man. Northumberland's Hedley Kow, Durham's Picktree Brag and the Buggane of the Isle of Man play shape-shifting tricks, changing into gold or silver, for instance, to taunt their victims. Others are murderous, such as the Redcaps said to haunt the Border peel towers, who try to re-dye their caps in human blood, or the Highland Baobhan Sith, who look like beautiful women, but are really fairy vampires thirsty for blood.
There are nursery goblins too, and none is more frightening than Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones. According to the Somerset folklorist Ruth Tongue, writing in 1964: 'This most unpleasant hobgoblin, as we were assured in my childhood, lived in a dark cupboard, usually under the stairs. If you were heroic enough to peep through a crack you would get a glimpse of the dreadful crouching creature, with blood running down his, face, seated waiting on a pile of raw bones that had belonged to children who told lies or said bad words. If you peeped through the keyhole at him he got you anyway’.
Nature Fairies
Most nature fairies are the descendants of pre-Christian gods and goddesses, or of the spirits of streams, lakes and trees. Black Annis, a blue-faced hag said to haunt the Dane Hills of Leicestershire, and Gentle Annie, who governs storms in the Scottish Lowlands, may be descended from the Celtic goddess Anu or Danu, mother of Ireland's Cave Fairies. Their Highland sister, the Cailleach Bheur or Blue Hag, seems to be the spirit of winter. She freezes the ground by striking it with her staff, and loses her power when spring comes.
Water spirits such as mermaids and mermen, river spirits and the spirits of pools and lakes, are the most common nature fairies. Tradition has transformed some of them into ghosts.
According to the popular belief, widespread in Britain, Russia, and all over Europe, Midsummer Day is the best day for seeing mermaids as well. In Wales, many stories survive of beautiful lake maidens who come ashore to marry young farmers, bringing herds of water cattle as a dowry. Usually taboos surround the marriage: the fairy wife must never be touched with iron, and she must never be struck. Most of these marriages end when the taboo is accidentally broken, and the lake maiden returns to the water taking her cattle with her.
The coasts of Britain, lashed by fierce storms and shrouded by frequent mists, form the setting for many old and curious legends. These tales are part of the heritage of everyone who lives by the shore, seamen and landsmen alike. They vary from the imaginary to the semi-historical; from tales of mermaids, phantom ships and ghosts of the drowned dead, to traditions which almost certainly have some foundation in fact.
Tales of mermaids abound, and there are some about mermen too: but the stories of mermaids are more common, perhaps because their long hair and alluring features make them more attractive than their ugly and uncouth male counterparts. Mermaid legends are very old and are remarkably similar, whatever their country or origin. The mermaid is traditionally a seductive siren and her presence always foreshadows a calamity, a storm, a shipwreck or drowning. Sometimes she sits alone at the water's edge and longs for the soul which she can attain by marrying a mortal. At other times she lulls sailors to sleep with her sweet singing and carries them away beneath the waves. Many sailors tell of weddings between humans and mermaids (or mermen). If a mermaid is injured or her amorous advances are rejected, she will call down curses on the offending human. On the other hand, kindnesses are rewarded with life-long service and good luck. Like the centaur with its horse's body, the mermaid is a mythological composite of human and animal. Sailors' tales resulted in sketches in which the mermaid is depicted with a lion's head. Some other show the more traditional idea of the beautiful sea-creature, who, with a comb, a looking-glass and a song, lures sailors to their doom.
Encounter with a Mermaid
Belief in the existence of the near-human race of merfolk was widespread among seamen and coastal dwellers until the late 19th century, and in some places it may persist still. As recently as 1947, an 80-year-old fisherman from the Isle of Muck, Inverness-shire, declared he had seen a mermaid near the shore combing her hair. At Sandwood in Sutherland, traditionally called the “land of mermaid”', the appearance of a mermaid was reported on several occasions early in the present century.
Mermaid's Rock, near Lamorna, in east Cornwall, derived its name from a legendary mermaid who once haunted the spot, and whose singing foretold shipwrecks. Many fishermen, it seems, were lured to the rock by the sweetness of her singing, but none was ever seen again.
Also in Cornwall, there is a sandbank known as Doom Bar. which choked Padstow harbour and caused many shipwrecks. The sandbank is reputed to be the result of a curse laid by a mermaid after a local resident fired a shot at her while she was bathing. On the Isle of Man, the thick mists which often cover the island are also said to originate from a mermaid's curse. She punished the entire island when her amorous advances were rejected by a local youth.
In some accounts, merfolk lack the traditional fishy tail, while in others the creatures seem to be able to shed them at will. In the 12th century, some fishermen from Orford, in Suffolk, caught a creature in their nets which they described as having 'the appearance of a man in all his parts'. The fishermen's prize proved unable to speak, even though prompted by torture, and when taken to church, it showed no sign of Christian reverence. On being returned to the water to bathe, the creature quickly, and understandably, escaped by swimming out to sea.
Water Bulls and Water Horses
On the Isle of Man, the fearsome Tarroo-Ushtey, or water bull, would leave the sea to feed, and even mate with domestic cattle. Sometimes it fed placidly and at other times it would rage and bellow furiously. It is told that one island farmer was forced to board up his windows against the monster but, finally, it so terrified his family that he had to abandon the farm.
Water horses, with their creamy-white coats and manes, flashing eyes and fiery spirits, were among the more dangerous legendary creatures of Britain's shores. They usually grazed in pastures by the sea, ready saddled and bridled: should a person mount one, the horse would gallop into the water and drag the rider beneath the waves.
In 1910, a duck-shooter in Shapinsay Sound, Orkney, claimed to have sighted a creature whose 18-ft neck was surmounted by a horse's head. Most modern monsters, however, like the 28-ft creature washed ashore on an island in the vicinity of Scapa Flow in 1942, have been identified by experts as huge basking sharks.
Who Were the Fairies?
Many explanations have been given to account for belief in fairies. Some believers have thought that fairies are a special creation, and that they exist in their own right. Others have said that fairies, like ghosts, are spirits of the dead, or of certain types of dead – people who died before Christianity came to Britain, for instance, or unbaptised or stillborn babies. According to another tradition, fairies were fallen angels, neither wicked enough for Hell nor good enough for Heaven.
Witches and fairies were closely associated in the popular imagination, and the witch cult certainly added to the fairies' reputation. Many witches attributed their powers to knowledge gained from fairies. John Walsh, a Dorset witch, admitted in 1566 that he had learnt from the fairies “how persons are bewitched”. And fairies were supposed to make the elf arrows (in reality, Stone Age flints) which many witches used as evil charms.
The belief that fairies were elementals – creatures made only of earth, air, fire or water – seems to have been common among medieval magicians, who devised complex spells and rituals for raising them and using their powers. One ritual, recorded in an early 15th-centuty manuscript now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford involves stripping the bark from three hazel wands, writing a fairy's name on the wood, and burying the wands “under some hill whereas you suppose fairies haunt”. The fairy will come if she is called on the following Friday, after the wands have been dug up.
Many of the traditions associated with fairies are uniquely British, and one explanation is that they may have evolved from far-off memories of a Stone Age race which once lived in these islands. When the Celtic invaders from Central Europe arrived in about 500 BC, they drove the original inhabitants into hiding in remote hills and caves. As the years passed, it may well have seemed to the conquerors that there was an uncanny quality in the people they had displaced. They were small and dark; they lived underground; they were a secret people whose skill at hiding in the woods seemed to give them the power of invisibility. Long after the race died out, or had become absorbed into the population, the memory of these characteristics lived on in Celtic tales about fairies.
The tradition that iron gives protection against fairies may also have sprung from some dim memory of the Celtic invasions. The victorious Celts were armed with iron; the race they dispossessed had weapons of stone or bronze. Another theory, and one which draws support from the ideas of those who believe in fairies, regards the fairy faith as a cult of the dead. In many stories, it is hard to tell the difference between ghosts and fairies - both are said to haunt prehistoric burial mounds, for instance, and in fairyland, as in the land of the dead, the passage of time is miraculous. The dead were sometimes said to have been captured by fairies, and even seen in fairyland.
Many theories explain part, but not all, of the fairy faith. Certainly, some fairies are memories of ancient pagan gods and nature spirits. Others may have developed out of early attempts to explain the strange happenings now associated with poltergeists. In the end, only one thing is certain: fairies, whatever the truth about their origins may be, have the ability to survive. The Hidden People may be shadowy and elusive, as they always have been, but they are also indestructible.
This is an extract from "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" by J.M. Barrie, a magical tale, that introduces Peter Pan, the little boy who never grows any older. He escapes his human form and flies to Kensington Gardens, where all his happy memories are, and meets the fairies, the thrushes, and Old Cow the crow. The fairies think he is too human to be allowed to stay in after lock-out time. That is why he has to fly off to an island which is in the middle of the Serpentine, the lake that divides the Gardens from the more grown-up Hyde Park.
The light, which was as high as your head above the ground, was composed of myriads of glow-worms all holding on to each other, and so forming a dazzling canopy over the fairy ring. There were thousands of little people looking on, but they were in shadow and drab in colour compared to the glorious creatures within that luminous circle, who were so bewilderingly bright that Maimie had to wink hard all the time she looked at them.
It was amazing and even irritating to her that the Duke of Christmas Daisies should be able to keep out of love for a moment; yet out of love his dusky grace still was: you could see it by the shamed looks of the Queen and court (though they pretended not to care), by the way darling ladies brought forward for his approval burst into tears as they were told to pass on, and by his own most dreary face.
Maimie could also see the pompous doctor feeling the Duke's heart and hear him give utterance to his parrot cry, and she was particularly sorry for the Cupids, who stood in their fools' caps in obscure places and, every time they heard that “Cold, quite cold,” bowed their disgraced little heads.She was disappointed not to see Peter Pan, and I may as well tell you now why he was so late that night. It was because his boat had got wedged on the Serpentine between fields of floating ice, through which he had to break a perilous passage with his trusty paddle.
The fairies had as yet scarcely missed him, for they could not dance, so heavy were their hearts. They forget all the steps when they are sad, and remember them again when they are merry. David tells me that fairies never say, “We feel happy”; what they say is, 'We feel dancey.'
Well, they were looking very undancey indeed, when sudden laughter broke out among the onlookers, caused by Brownie, who had just arrived and was insisting on her right to be presented to the Duke.
Maimie craned forward eagerly to see how her friend fared, though she, had really no hope: no one seemed to have the least hope except Brownie herself, who, however, was absolutely confident. She was led before his grace, and the doctor putting a finger carelessly on the ducal heart, which for convenience sake was reached by a little trap-door in his diamond shirt, had begun to say mechanically, “Cold, qui -.” when he stopped abruptly. “What's this?” he cried, and first he shook the heart like a watch, and then he put his ear to it.
“Bless my soul!” cried the doctor, and by this time of course the excitement among the spectators was tremendous, fairies fainting right and left. Everybody stared breathlessly at the Duke, who was very much startled, and looked as if he would like to run away. “Good gracious me!” the doctor was heard muttering, and now the heart was evidently on fire, for he had to jerk his fingers away from it and put them in his mouth.
The suspense was awful.
Then in a loud voice, and bowing low, “My Lord Duke,” said the physician elatedly. “I have the honour to inform your excellency that your grace is in love.”
You can't conceive the effect of it. Brownie held out her arms to the Duke and he flung himself into them, the Queen leapt into the arms of the Lord Chamberlain, and the ladies of the court leapt into the arms of her gentlemen, for it is etiquette to follow her example in everything. Thus in a single moment about fifty marriages took place, for if you leap into each other's arms it is a fairy wedding. Of course a clergyman has to be present.
How the crowd cheered and leapt! Trumpets brayed, the moon came out, and immediately a thousand couples seized hold of its rays as if they were ribbons in a May dance and waltzed in wild abandon round the fairy ring. Most gladsome sight of all the Cupids plucked the hated fools' caps from their heads and cast them high in the air. And then Maimie went and spoiled everything.
She couldn't help it. She was crazy with delight over her little friend's good fortune, so she took several steps forward and cried in an ecstasy. “O Brownie, how splendid!”
Everybody stood still, the music ceased, the light went out, and all in the time you may take to say, "Oh dear!' An awful sense of her peril came upon Maimie; too late she remembered that she was a lost child in a place where no human must be between the locking and the opening of the gates, she heard the murmur of an angry multitude; she saw a thousand swords flashing for her blood, and she uttered a cry of terror and fled.
How she ran! and all the time her eyes were starting out of her head. Many times she lay down, and then quickly jumped up and ran on again. Her little mind was so entangled in terrors that she no longer knew she was in the Gardens. The one thing she was sure of was that she must never cease to run, and she thought she was still running long after she had dropped in the Figs and gone to sleep. She thought the snow-flakes falling on her face were her mother kissing her goodnight. She thought her coverlet of snow was a warm blanket, and tried to pull it over her head. And when she heard talking through her dreams she thought it was mother bringing father to the nursery door to look at her as she slept. But it was the fairies.
I am very glad to be able to say that they no longer desired to mischief her. When she rushed away they had rent the air with such cries as “Slay her!” “Turn her into something extremely unpleasant!' and so on, but the pursuit was delayed while they discussed who should march in front, and this gave Duchess Brownie time to cast herself before the Queen and demand a boon.
Every bride has a right to a boon, and what she asked for was Maimie's life. “Anything except that,” replied Queen Mab sternly, and all the fairies echoed, “Anything except that.” But when they learned how Maimie had befriended Brownie and so enabled her to attend the ball to their great glory and renown, they gave three huzzas for the little human, and set off, like an army, to thank her, the court advancing in front and the canopy keeping step with it. They traced Maimie easily by her footprints in the snow.
But though they found her deep in snow in the Figs, it seemed impossible to thank Maimie, for they could not waken her. They went through the form of thanking her – that is to say, the new King stood on her body and read her a long address of welcome, but she heard not a word of it. They also cleared the snow off her, but soon she was covered again, and they saw she was in danger of perishing of cold.
“Turn her into something that does not mind the cold,” seemed a good suggestion of the doctor's, but the only thing they could think of that does not mind cold was a snowflake. “And it might melt,” the Queen pointed out, so that idea had to be given up.
A magnificent attempt was made to carry her to a sheltered spot, but though there were so many of them she was too heavy. By this time all the ladies were crying in their handkerchiefs, but presently the Cupids had a lovely idea. “Build a house round her,” they cried, and at once everybody perceived that this was the thing to do; in a moment a hundred fairy sawyers were among the branches, architects were running round Maimie, measuring her, a bricklayer's yard sprang up at her feet, seventy-five masons rushed up with the foundation-stone, and the Queen laid it, overseers were appointed to keep the boys off, scaffoldings were run up, the whole place rang with hammers and chisels and turning-lathes, and by this time the roof was on and the glaziers were putting in the windows.
The house was exactly the size of Maimie, and perfectly lovely. One of her arms was extended, and this had bothered them for a second, but they built a verandah round it leading to the front door. The windows were the size of a coloured picture-book and the door rather smaller, but it would be easy for her to get out by taking off the roof. The fairies, as is their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it. So they gave it ever so many little extra touches, and even then they added more extra touches.
What is a Leprechaun?
At one time, people believed that there lived on this earth with us all kinds of strange beings who had magical powers. Sometimes they were called fairies, and sometimes they had special names, depending on their power or on the country where they were supposed to live.
Leprechauns were the fairy shoemakers of Ireland. They were little old wrinkled men, not even as big as a new-born child. In Scotland, fairies about 60 cm high, were called brownies. A brownie chose some house to serve and, coming at night, scrubbed and cleaned and did all sorts of work. All he would take in payment was a bowl of cream and a bit of white bread.
In England, the very smallest fairies were called pixies. They would wear green jackets and red caps and dance to the music of crickets and grasshoppers. In France, they were called fees, and in Scandinavia, white elves. They lived in the woods and fields and a mortal could find his way to their home only on one of the 4 magical nights of the year – Midsummer Eve, May Eve, Christmas Eve, or Halloween.
Fairies that were bigger in size had different names. For instance, if they were from 45 cm to the size of children, they were called goblins. In Germany they were called gnomes and dwarfs. And in Scandinavia they were called trolls.
Sometimes they were human-sized fairies, and they were hard to tell from mortals. In Germany, if you met a man with green teeth he was a nix, or water-spirit. When nixes ventured on land, some bit of their clothing was always wet.