Seeing Fairies

by Marjorie T Johnson

  “A girl fairy,” said David. She was, most decidedly, a lovely figure, and they watched her soaring higher and higher until there remained just a very faint, shining wisp. The two children were so enthralled that when they went to school they told their mistress in front of the whole class and were made fun of in consequence, though the teacher agreed there might be such things as fairies; but the mother of Margaret was furious, and the poor child was forbidden to mention the matter again. Miss Towen had her next visitation after she had been stuffing a rag doll with kapok. She placed the remainder of the down in a cardboard box, which had a lid without sides, and left it under the window for quite a long time. One spring morning in 1949, she went to the box and was lifting some of the kapok when, with a whirling motion, out floated three fairies, each of them in a different hue, yellow, bright green, and deep rose pink. In both of these experiences Miss Towen noticed that the arms of the fairies were elongated, and seemed to be used to guide them as they rose. They had no wings, but very fine gossamer veiling, which seemed to come from the back of their necks, leaving their faces and heads free.

  “Last spring,” wrote Miss Marjorie A. Thompson, of Australia, in November 1955, “two of my friends (Barbara Diprose and Jill Major) and I spent part of our holidays at my parents’ home in Traralgon, Gippsland, Victoria, and during our stay we took several trips to the Strzelecki Ranges. In these hills there is some of the most beautiful scenery in the whole country. Tree ferns fill the gullies, and on the hilltops the giant gums of the Australian bush stand erect. In the midst of this magnificent country are two reserves where the beauty of the bush is indescribable. They are known as Bulga Park and Tarra Valley. The former boasts a swing bridge, which crosses a deep gully of tree ferns, and it was here that we saw the elves. In our search for unusual wild flowers, we were a little off the beaten foot-tracks at the time, and were among a clump of tree ferns, towards the centre of which was a small clearing where only a few bracken ferns no higher than three inches were growing. Before our astonished eyes, three minute creatures resembling aborigines emerged on the far side of the clearing and began to speak to each other, though we could not hear what they were saying and they may have been using some means of communication known only to themselves.

  “This part of Victoria was originally inhabited by aborigines, and there is now a Mission Station for this diminishing race at Lake Tyers. The elfin aborigines, seen simultaneously by the three of us, were approximately nine inches in height, and each was clad only in what seemed to be a piece of bark. One carried a didgeridoo (the music-pipe used by Australia’s aborigines), and each of the others had a woomera (a throw-stick). As you can imagine, we were dumbfounded, and gazed at them in awe. We had time to take note of their appearance before they parted ways and went back into the ferns, the one with the didgeridoo accompanied by the shorter of the other two, the third retiring by himself. Naturally, my parents did not credit our tale and we were unable to prove anything to them, so we again visited Bulga Park, taking with us our cameras, but despite an afternoon spent in waiting we had no success.”

  One bright summer evening around the year 1923, near Skerries, Co. Dublin, Mrs. A. Freda Young caught a glimpse of an elfin creature. It was on a road bordered by grass, a ditch, and a hedge, and she saw it jump from the hedge across the ditch and disappear in the long grass. It went out of sight too quickly for her to observe the details of its dress, but it seemed to be clothed from head to foot in dead-leaf colour, and had no beard, and no wings that she could see. Mrs. Young said that as she was about eighteen years old at the time it is unlikely that she imagined the vision. Moreover, it caused her some surprise because the figure was approximately two feet high, much bigger than she would have expected a fairy to be.

  Miss Bay Kirkaldy, of London, related the following experiences of fairy vision: “My childhood was spent at Harlow, Essex, in one of the manor-house type of dwellings for which the county is well-known. When I was about twelve years of age, Edward, our garden boy who had recently left school and taken up work for us, called me and said he wished to show me something interesting. At the back of the house we had two kitchen-gardens, the newer of the two dividing the older from an orchard. At the orchard boundary a Christmas tree had been planted and was flourishing. It was simply crowded with fairies about the size of dragonflies, perfectly recognisable as to sex and seemingly quite indifferent to our presence. I remember it was a bright mid-morning in June, and the sunshine seemed to enhance their shining, almost luminous, appearance. We watched them for some time, the young lad telling me that he had seen them often. He cautioned me not to go too near, as the fairies would all disappear if we did, so we watched them across a stretch of kitchen garden. I should guess that we were about ten or twelve yards away from them. Our observation was interrupted by a housemaid who called me in to lunch. Edward told her he was showing ‘Missy’ the fairies. She said something to the effect that that wasn’t unusual but I had better not say I had seen them or grown-ups wouldn’t believe me and would say I was fibbing: I remember she said to Edward, ‘We’ve often seen them, haven’t we?’ or words to that effect. Then she touched her lips with her fingers as if to say ‘Don’t let anyone know.’ When I went back in the afternoon they had vanished, leaving no trace, but what I had seen that morning left a very deep impression upon me.”

  Bay’s next experience was in 1924, when she was still twelve. She was walking one summer evening with a friend in St. James’s Park. They entered from the Mall and strolled slowly round the right-hand side of the lake. The path curved thereabouts and there were some beautiful flowerbeds. Just before these came to an end, there was a kind of semi-grotto running back into the shrubs. The evening sun was shining into it and here again the place was alive with the little people. The men-fairies seemed to be wearing tight-fitting trousers with red, blue, or green jerkins, and a kind of fisherman’s cap. The ladies seemed to wear a kind of shining white garment and had the same luminous quality as the fairies Bay had seen on the Christmas tree. The wings of both males and females were iridescent, though smaller and not so obvious in the males, who did not seem to fly around so much. They appeared to move incessantly, sliding up and down the grotto rocks and the branches of the shrubs. They kept up a perfect babble of conversation that only came to Bay’s ears as a rather melodious twittering. She noticed that all the fairies seemed to be quite oblivious of a little crowd, which had collected to watch them, though some of the people obviously could not see them at all, despite the efforts of their friends to point them out. So far as she can recollect, their appearance was reported in the press.

  At the time she wrote to me, her home was a small, pleasant, detached house, which she shared with two friends. It faced on to a secondary main road, beyond which was a large open space leading to the Welsh Harp. Their garden at the back was secluded, and the fence at the end was covered at flowering-time with “Paul’s Scarlet” roses. She and one of her friends had often noticed that on perfectly windless days the standard roses in front bent in a peculiar way, as if suddenly bearing a weight. One day in 1956, when the roses were in bloom, she was gardening and felt that someone was watching her. It was a little old man wearing a bright green doublet, tan “breaks,” and a pointed cap. “Hello,” she said, and he smiled most sweetly at her, climbed down a rose-stalk, and disappeared.

  From Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, Mr. Stuart W. Wright wrote that many years ago he had a little daughter who used to chase fairies from flower to flower. She would run excitedly from one part of the garden to the other, calling to her father to look at some particular flower on which a fairy was perching for the moment, and she could not understand why he was unable to see any of these sprites. “Mary Stuart was a most lovable child, just like a fairy herself,” he concluded. “She passed on when she was eleven. I would love to have the gift that she possessed.”

  One autumn evening, when Mrs. A. Commins, of Cornwall, went upstairs, to draw the bedroom curtains, she glanced o
ut of the window and saw a little patch of mist, which gradually cleared to a light like neon-lighting, but ball-shaped, and then, fascinated, she watched what she called “the glitter of the fairies,” mauve, blue, green, orange, yellow, red, and white lights brighter than any gems, going around in a little circle, then darting backwards and forwards. She hurried downstairs to fetch her little daughter to the window. The child looked in the direction in which her mother pointed, and then drew in her breath and said: “Oh, Mummy, isn’t it beautiful.” They both stood spellbound, and then the daughter whispered: “Let’s go down and see if we can see them outdoors.” They went very quietly, but the opening of the door must have disturbed the fairies for they had gone. Mother and daughter searched with a torch around the place where they had seen them, and they noticed that the blades of grass and the leaves of the flowers looked as if they had been trampled on in a ring about one foot across in each direction.

  Mrs. Commins had had previous experiences, and she described the speech of fairies as “high-pitched, quick, and very clipped.” She used to see what she called “working-party elves” in groups of five or six very industrious little fellows tidying up the twigs, which had fallen from branches, and stacking up leaves. Their dress consisted of knee-length boots like Wellingtons; light fawn trousers; dark brown or khaki-green jerkin; black belt and collar; and brown pointed cap. Their faces were flesh-pink but “very grubby-looking.” She described the costume of gnomes of the “cobbler” type as slightly different, with a green ruffle round the neck, and shoes with pointed toes. Each fairy-cobbler wore a leather apron, and carried a little pack on his back, and she always knew when one of those was about, for his hammering had a definite rhythm: Tap tap tippity-tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap.

  Mrs. Commins recalled that when she was fourteen years old her father was appointed to the Coastguard Station at Dartmouth, and one October day in his spare time he took her into the country and left her sitting on a large stone in a woodland bower while he went shooting. The first thing she saw was a snake coming out from under a stone. It wriggled away from her and went into a clump of bushes. Looking round, she saw a space in the bushes, and standing there in the dim light was an animal, which she thought was a collie dog. She was used to dogs, so she jumped to her feet saying “Here, Boy; come on; come on; Boy,” and was going up to stroke it when her attention was distracted by what appeared to be a large blue butterfly. It was flying up and over and under the branches of a tree, and as she watched it out of the corner of her eye its colour changed from blue to white, and then to mauve, and she realised it was not a butterfly but a lovely fairy. Just as she was thinking this, it vanished. At that moment her father came dashing through the opening in the bower shouting, “Are you all right, Rene?” for what she had thought was a collie dog was a huge fox, which must have been frightened by the sound of her father’s gun and had crept into the bower for refuge. Her father had returned just in time to see the animal slinking away from there, and he thought if the child had innocently cornered it and touched it she might have been bitten.

  “When I told him about the fairy,” said Mrs. Commins, “he replied that it must have come to protect me, and that I must always believe in fairies because they had helped him lots of times.” Her father then went on to tell her that in his younger days he was coming home one evening when he saw what seemed to be a beautiful broken flower lying in the lane, and he thought what a pity it would be if some person or a horse should step on it. He picked it up and placed it on some grass, but when he had walked on for a few steps, he thought “That’s queer: that flower seemed like a living being,” so he went back and straightened its petals and put it further towards the hedge, realising that the fairy spirit of the flower was still with it. At the same time he made a wish, not for himself but for his two sisters, one of whom had always longed to live in Paris, and the other to be a titled lady. “My father’s wish, at that time, was fantastic,” said Mrs. Gamine, “but within a year Aunt Edith was living in Paris and Aunt Anne had married a Count.”

  At the time of writing to me, Mrs. D. Van der Molen was a capstan operator in London, working nine hours a day. “So” she said, “I have no room for imagination.” Before the 1939-45 war, she met an interesting family of cliff-dwelling pixies in a village a few miles from St. Austell, Cornwall. Her husband’s boat was there frequently, so she made many visits. The first of these pixies to be seen by her was almost two feet in height, very lithe, and chatty. He had abnormally large ears, of a deep brown colour, and between the tips of them, just above the forehead, was a conical-shaped growth, which was semi-hard to the touch. This he called his “lump of knowledge.” His lady was long, dark brown in colour, and covered with short hair similar to that of a horse. From the ankles to the shoulder blades, and from the wrists to the shoulders, were round bands of yellow-coloured hair, which gave the impression of zebra markings. The face, neck, hands, and feet were very dark brown, more like leather than skin. The toes were extremely long, just like fingers, the big toe being wide apart like a thumb on the hand. When working, these pixies used both hands and feet with extraordinary speed and agility. Mrs. Van der Molen had to knock a pre-arranged number of times on the cliff when she wanted to see them. She assured me that communication with them was not telepathic: she conversed with them in the ordinary way, and was able to see them plainly.

  Since childhood Mrs. A. Campbell, of Queensland, Australia, had been able to see things that were unseen by others who were present, and consequently she used to receive many scoldings for “telling falsehoods.” In 1929, while she was sitting resting in the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, New South Wales, she noticed a movement in a bed of aster daisies, and thought it strange on so mild an afternoon. As she watched the flowers in motion, a small head of fair, curly hair popped up, and its smiling owner, sheath-like in form and covered in green, stepped partly out of the flowerbed.

  Her second experience was in 1933. “I was arriving home (quite sober) at about 10:30 p.m.,” she related, “and this creature, which I am about to describe, must have heard me walking down the garden path. It was coming backwards down a branchless tree-trunk, and in shape it resembled a large-sized ape. Its body had a dark leaf covering; its neck was short and I saw no hair but a dark green head with a cap-like covering. Its feet were flat with nails like claws; its hands had small hooks. When it reached the ground, it did not turn round but slunk round the tree trunk, and I was not brave enough to go after it with a torch.” Some time later, in the same garden, she saw among the trees a forest nymph that she reckoned, in comparison with her own height, would be about four feet tall. She did not notice its feet, but its legs were bird-like. Its body resembled that of a butterfly, with folded wings, which scintillated colours. The back of its head was also butterfly-like, with curled antennae, but its face was human. It was standing perfectly still. She met several other people who had seen these wonders, but they refused to say much about their experiences on account of being thought queer. A bush naturalist, who collected specimens of flora and fauna for that country and overseas, told her that it was a common occurrence to see these forms, but that if she were wise she would keep the knowledge to herself or she would be called a crank.

  The house in Kent in which Felicity E. Royds lived as a child was modern but had been built near a knoll, where, she said, “We often found prehistoric flint implements, and there was a sunken ditch running through the garden, which according to tradition was the track of an old British (not Roman) road.” It was one cold, grey summer evening when Felicity, aged eight or nine, had returned home late along with others after visiting some cousins who had been frightening her with ghost stories. She found she had left some object—her coat or a toy—in the rose garden, and was sent back alone to fetch it. The rose garden was surrounded by thick yew hedges, and at the end of it was a cast-iron gate leading into a thicket of rhododendrons. The object, which she had gone to fetch, was on the grass near this gate, and she had just retrieved it
and was turning away, fearful of what might come out of the bushes, when she saw coming through the gate a small man leading a light brown horse. The man was shorter than Felicity and appeared to be wearing a blue tunic with something white at the neck. His skin was very brown, browner than his hair. The pony was about the size of a Shetland but very slender. Although she did not feel frightened, Felicity did not look at the man directly, only out of the corner of her eye. He put his hand on her wrist, and his touch was cool, not cold like a fish or lizard but much cooler than a human touch. He led her out of the rose garden and onwards until they were within sight of the house, and then stood still while she went in. She said that she was not at all musical, but while he held her hand she seemed to be aware of a strain of music that was sweet and high but sounded rather unfinished. Some nine years later she again heard the same strain coming from the knoll, but although she went out to investigate she was unable to see anything.

  Miss Doris G. Stephens of South Wales told me that an old man who was caretaker of the Castle at Laugharne, in Pembrokeshire, saw some “little white elfin maidens” in the ruins. She also spoke of her young niece who used to see a fairy man. He would come and sit on the windowsill of her playroom, and she called him Orton, or referred to him as “the little white man.” She first saw him when she was four, when she shouted to me in her Grandpa’s garden, “Look, Auntie, there is the little white man,” but I could not see him. “He has gone now,” she said, “across the field, but he will be here again soon.” She told me he was dressed in a white teddy-bear suit, which also covered his head, and he had “something to do-with the daisies.” “Later in the year, when winter came on, I asked her, ‘Where is Orton now?’ and her reply was: ‘He has gone to live underground.’” Miss Stephens remembered that in fairy legends the Little People go to live in their homes underground, or in the Irish raths or Little People’s hills, in the winter, and she supposed that the child had obtained many of her facts about Fairyland from the books, which her nurse had read aloud to her. “But,” said Miss Stephens, “when the nurse was questioned she avowed that the child had not been told any of those things from books. The information could only have been given to her by her fairy friend. When she was seven she gave up speaking about him anymore.”