There was one child, however, who derived no pleasure at all from such a spectacle. Richard Edward, when seven or eight years old, was playing in a meadow late in the evening when he heard the most beautiful music, and on turning round he discovered about a dozen little people dancing around a “fairy ring.” Feeling very frightened, he ran home to his mother and told her what he had seen. His face was ghastly, and he was crying so much that she had great difficulty in comforting him. I was told this by his niece, Mrs. S. C. Roberts of Caersws, Mont., who had often heard her father speak about his brother Richard, and he said they were always being warned not to play in that meadow lest they be drawn into the fairy ring. No wonder poor little Richard was so scared! Mr. Tom Charman said that fairies love sitting on toadstools and climbing about them; and many a time he had seen some most charming circles of fairies playing round them.
Mr. Richard Byrne, of Co. Leix, Eire, was twelve years old when he saw a troupe of fourteen fairies dancing round a fairy ring. Eleven years later he again saw fairies, but this time they were too numerous to count. They were dressed in red and gold, and were all on little white ponies and kept him with them until morning. They invited him to return to them on the following night, but he was afraid to go. Miss Maria Bradfield told me that one Midsummer Eve in her adult years, she had an exquisite vision of the dance of all winged creatures, extending from the turf on which she stood up to the brilliance of the setting sun.
A little fairy house constructed of several layers of frilly-edged fungi was seen by Mrs. Ellen Hilton, of Lancashire, a lecturer, writer, and spiritual healer. The house was at the foot of a dead tree near a stream flanked by green banks, and she noticed it first in May 1955 on the day of the Wesak moon, the Buddhist festival. Then she had to leave for Palestine, but on her return she went over the stream to see how the little folk were getting on. She found the house was a paradise of rhythm and music, and there was great activity because it was still not quite complete. It was, however, ready by Midsummer Eve, and looked very beautiful. Mrs. Hilton was the author of Therefore with Angels (printed privately) and Glimpses of Life Eternal (Regency Press Ltd., London), and she went on some of the pilgrimages with my contributor Mrs. M. K. F. Thornley, who said of her: “She sees into the other world continually. Like Clara Reed, another contributor of yours, she saw fairies in my garden.”
The garden to which Mrs. Thornley referred was in Cornwall, and possessed a “cairn,” just a pile of stones and mossy concrete blocks beside the little overflow of surface water, which, she surmised, probably ran down by her boundary to the sea a million years ago. In 1948 her seer friend, Mrs. Clara Reed, saw two large fairies there. She said their names were Trindy and Frieta, and the cairn was their home. Within the last few years a wonderful white strawberry plant had appeared, and Mrs. Thornley had gathered its fruits from early summer to November.
It was during the Midsummer of 1943 that Mr. Roy Morgan, a robust Mancunian residing in Kensington, saw in a garden at Hendon a fairy and an elf. His friends had left him alone in the garden so that he might wander round at leisure. He was not thinking of anything in particular but happened to be admiring an almost breathtaking profusion of roses on a large bush when, to his astonishment, he saw poised on a rose leaf a female fairy. She was six inches in height, perfect in form and face, and dressed in gauze of yellow and faint blue. She continued to smile at him for several seconds, and as he watched her there appeared beside her on another rose leaf a little elf, four inches or so in height, clad in brown and green raiment. Then both of them faded away as quickly as they had come. As is so often the case, the many friends to whom he mentioned this experience were more amused than believing. “It wasn’t a case of clairvoyance,” he said. “That explanation I ruled out entirely. Nor was it a butterfly or anything of that sort. It was a wee person like an exquisite doll.” He revisited the garden hopefully, on many occasions, and although he never again saw so magic a spectacle, it had convinced him that fairies were real and not just figments from a land of make-belief.
Several contributors have seen fairies in or around roses. My sister Dorothy saw a semi-transparent figure on our rose bed, near the “Rapture” rose. She said it had long, narrow wings, but only one of them was fully materialized. Later, both she and I saw this small being on several occasions, and once I watched it following her down the garden path. It was of the elfin type. I was looking through the window at the garden one day when I saw a fairy standing at the side of a rose bush, which was not yet in bloom. She was dressed in yellow and was about eight inches high. As my sister had been resetting the rose bushes in different parts of the garden, I did not know which one this was, so I pointed it out to her. “Oh, that’s a yellow rose-tree,” she said. Eight days later I saw the little figure standing there again, and this time the yellow roses were coming out and were the same shade as her dress.
Mrs. Erica R. Forty, of London, told me that when she was young she saw a fairy near a rose; and Miss Irene Barron, of Queensland, Australia, caught sight of a tiny fairy in a rose, during her early childhood in England. “It was very tiny,” she said, “and lay curled up asleep in the middle. I just stared, hardly daring to breathe, but then, silly-like, I walked away, and when I came back it was gone. I have not seen one since.” A rose fairy was also observed by Miss Mary McGowan Slappy, a professional writer and artist, of Washington, USA, when she, too, was a child. “I saw her there,” she said, “on the first red rose to bloom in our garden. No one else saw anything but the rose, but my fairy was there.”
The poet and writer on mystical subjects Miss Maud Baynes wrote to me that when she lived in Ealing she picked three or four yellow roses in her garden one very warm summer afternoon, and took them up to her bedroom where she placed them in a vase on a little table by her bed. As the weather was so hot, she lay on top of her bed to rest for a short while. “I was quite awake,” she assured me, “there being no question of my being even near sleep, when, glancing at the roses, I saw them distinctly begin to shake as if in a dance. The shaking and dancing continued in a rhythmic manner, and I was aware of ‘personalities’ within them. It was as if they wished to draw my attention to something, and although I could not actually see the figures I was intensely aware of great friendliness, persistence, magnetism, and happiness. I have had many similar experiences, and once heard with physical ears their sweet laughter. I have also heard music.”
In a letter written in 1957, Mrs. G. K. Evason, of Kent, reported that she had seen a gnome wheeling a tiny garden wheelbarrow. “He is interested in the front garden, which is cared for by the lady tenant of the flat above me. He is taking himself and his work very seriously, for the garden is not thriving too well and he is helping to clear away old roots, etc.” This busy gnome must have been clearing the way for one of the garden sylphs, for in December another letter came from my correspondent: “On waking at the usual early hour, I became aware of a pink cloud in what appeared to be a small rose tree in its winter garb, that is, no foliage or blooms, just bare branches. Then the rosy glow dissolved and a dainty pink fairy became clearly visible. She appeared to be tending this little tree, which is in the front garden here, so I hope it will bloom well after being treated so lovingly.” The sequel came in August of the following year, when Mrs. Evason wrote: “Do you remember my account of the fairy tending the rose bush? Well, the front garden has a number of these bushes, six pink ones in a row, and many others of different varieties round the garden. All of them bloomed, and some continue to bloom most gloriously, so evidently the fairy really did help, as this is the first time that they have been so successful.” I think the gnome, too, deserves a share of the praise for preparing the ground.
These little earth-folk can be very helpful, as Mrs. Clara M. A. Clayton, then living at Stapleford, Notts, discovered one very hot, dry afternoon when she was trying to hoe the garden ready for some seeds, which she wanted to sow. The ground was parched, and she couldn’t pull the weeds out. Feeling hot and tir
ed, she was still struggling when she saw a little brown gnome watching her. He had his arms folded and was laughing at her efforts. “Don’t stand there laughing at me,” she said to him, “but help me with this hard ground.” Immediately, he disappeared, and she stood there fascinated as she saw the ground moving and the soil throwing up the weeds until a large patch, much bigger than she had needed for the seeds, had been thoroughly loosened. “There could have been more than one gnome working on it,” she said, “for within a fraction of time it was ready for me, and all I had to do was to gather the weeds into a bucket and get the rows ready for sowing. The earth was beautiful to work in, and I kept thanking the little brown gnome and letting him know my pleasure and appreciation for what he had done. I didn’t see him again, but I knew he was there, and I felt that he shared my happiness.
“The gnomes are also the guardians of the minerals within the earth,” continued Mrs. Clayton. “They are form-builders, and they work in stone metal, etc. Without them we should have no beautiful jewels or precious metals. They guard carefully the secret of their life work, but on certain occasions it is revealed to a member of the human race, if such a one has a great love for all these unseen workers of nature and a firm belief in their existence. These two things I have always had since childhood. And so, one day, I found myself in the presence of a little green gnome on a hill. His face was serious, and he looked anxiously from side to side. Then he beckoned to me, and as he went suddenly through the ground like a fish swimming through water, he changed to the colour of earth and he moved easily through soil, rock, etc. I followed him with my inner vision until he ceased his downward journey and showed to me his particular place of work. He was busying himself with metal of some kind, I thought, but he was able to put his hands through it and enter into it and, as he worked within it, he beat it and moulded it and then pulled a piece out just as if it had been a bit of soft clay. The creative force working through him was fashioning that part of Mother Earth, and he could do anything with that particular substance within it. He showed the piece to me and then rubbed it and seemed to wash it in an underground stream. Suddenly I knew it was silver. It appeared whitish-grey in the earth, and he grinned and seemed delighted that I knew what it was, for now he held it close to me and it gleamed like pure silver. Then he stiffened and became alert, as if he heard the approach of his co-workers. All at once, everything went dark and I saw him no more, but I thanked him in my heart for showing me his secret workshop.”
Near Mrs. Clayton’s previous house in Stapleford is a huge, isolated mass of rock with layers of harder stone protecting the softer red sandstone below. This ancient sentinel is called the Hemlock Stone, and according to Arthur Mee’s Nottinghamshire, it is 70 ft. round, 30 ft. high, and is said to weigh over 200 tons. “When I’ve gone to it alone,” said Mrs. Clayton, “I have been aware of its great Guardian, which has been with it throughout the ages and will be with it until it has crumbled away in the distant future. To me, it is hallowed ground where this strange stone stands. I have drawn into its very heart, uniting my life with the One who lives within it and whose aura extends a long way into the surrounding area. This noble Rock Spirit is silent and withdrawn, yet aware of my presence and of my gentle touch upon the stony surface. Little gnomes are working under and around it and in the adjoining wood. They are very busy, but nowadays have an air of resentment towards the folk who visit the place and the children who constantly set parts of the wood on fire near it. The great stone has been for some time encircled by an iron fence, but the children burrow a way beneath it and try to deface the rock. Before I left the district I definitely felt a change in the atmosphere of the place, and the nature spirits were working further below the ground.”
Mrs. Clayton has seen at various times the sylphs, or air spirits, and describes them as “brilliant creatures, swift as lightning in their movements. I have also been aware of fairies in my garden,” she said. “They are lovely creatures of varied colours, their shining auras more light and delicate than the most beautiful flowers in the garden. These flower fairies, which may be a variety of sylphs, have wings; the wings really being forces that come out of them. I used to bend low among the flowers and enter into the life and beauty that surrounded me on all sides. I would see certain flowers lighting up with a most delicate radiance. This was the aura of the little fairies, flashing a golden-yellow herd, a pale pink there, a lovely violet, blue, and green in other parts. Wherever they concentrated their vital force, those particular flowers seemed to grow lovelier and more radiant for the time being. Little gnomes, too, were busy among the flowers. It was truly a fairyland of beauty and enchantment. So much work was being done, the nature spirits being used by the higher beings to imbue the flowers with their life force.”
Mrs. Clayton was born in Wales, and when she was nearly eighteen years old she used to go as often as she could, on fine days, on a lovely wooded slope, which was part of the Snowdonian range. The spot she visited had beautiful grassy slopes, and to the left could be seen the Menai Straits. “I used to take sandwiches with me,” she said, “also a book which I had on my Confirmation Day and the New Testament. I always sat on the same grassy slope with a wood behind me, quite away from the path unseen by anyone. Then I would read for a while and meditate, and try to enter into the heart of Nature, whose bounty surrounded me on all sides. In my soul I spoke to the God of that mountain and felt his presence very strongly. I knew he brooded over the place and was ever watchful—a Being full of Peace, Strength and Beauty. I felt he was aware of all forms of life which existed in and on that mountain, including me.
“During these visits, which became even more sacred as they went on, I was aware of little beings watching me in the wood, which was behind me, possibly tree nymphs and wood elves, but I felt they were very shy and would not come out from the wood. I was also aware of small creatures, light and airy, dancing in the sunshine on the slope beside me, and I felt, rather than saw, the fairies scampering over my knee and alighting on my shoulders. Shrill music was sometimes heard close to me, and then in the wood behind. In this wood was a great Presence, the Spirit of the trees, who stood tall and still, with folded arms, guiding and directing the work of the wood elves and tree nymphs, and his aura filled that area. What I experienced on that mountain has lived with me to this day.”
Mrs. Minnie Higgs, of Morden, Surrey, said that one summer evening late in 1938 she and her child were riding with her husband on his motorcycle and were about to enter Forest Row, East Grinstead, when a strange feeling of being surrounded by a fairy host made her touch her husband and say, to his utter astonishment, “Drive the motorcycle quietly, as anything could happen here.”
Writing in 1955, Mrs. Higgs said that the two other members of her family had both passed on, but she still went to Forest Row and the feeling she had at first was always strongly with her.
Miss Christina L. Bain, of Blackley, Manchester, is another contributor who senses the presence of fairies and knows when she is in their surroundings. When she was 30, and staying at Kents Bank, Grange-over-Sands, she joined a group of friends for a walk over the hills. On the wooded crest of one hill, the group stood “stock-still” when she said, “Hush! The fairies!” To her, their presence was very real. At a later date the leader escorted another group over the same spot, and a friend told Miss Bain that he halted the party there, saying: “Here live the fairies.”
“On another occasion,” said Miss Bain, “my sister motored me slowly down the by-lanes of Warwickshire and we came to a ring of trees. Here I cried: ‘Look, a fairies’ ring!’ To me they were there, and I still feel the atmosphere of the fairies when I recall these experiences.”
Writing about the flower fairies in her garden, Mrs. D. Goddard, of Hampshire, wrote: “They are so tiny and luminous that the very air seems lighter as I sense them. They seem to me to have slight little bodies with gossamer wings. I feel they pass on some of their lovely colours to the flowers as they open, as one would paint
the hues on a painting. They are too wonderful to describe in our language because the brilliance of their presence makes physical things only half beautiful in comparison. I feel they play an important part in God’s creation.”
When she was young, Mrs. Caryl Haynes, of Shropshire, used to spend hours alone with Nature. The lovely fields, and a dingle with a brook and waterfall, provided a playground that could not be bettered, for it was peopled with creatures that she wouldn’t have changed for any other playmates. She remembered the name of one little fellow, because her mother tried to make her say “Arthur,” when she insisted he was called “Hartha.” He stood about eighteen inches tall, and his dress seemed part of him. This varied with the seasons, although she couldn’t remember seeing him during the winter, when there was snow on the ground. His speech was like the sighing of wind in the fir trees and had a fascination for animals. “That’s how I came to play with the rabbits and the birds,” explained Mrs. Haynes. “The rabbits came and sat at my feet, and the birds, on my hands.”
As she grew older, her mind became filled with mundane matters, and she did not see any of her little friends until many years later, when she and an aunt were walking in the country. The aunt was chattering away, when Mrs. Haynes saw the head of a nature spirit peep out of the hedgerow. She couldn’t resist it; she whispered “A rabbit!” and, putting her hand in the hedge, she brought out a fine baby bunny, which had been popped into her hand by the little being whose head she had seen. She showed it to her aunt before letting it go free, and her aunt was thrilled. She thought her niece had some power of a kind that brought rabbits out of hats, and Mrs. Haynes said she never would be able to explain to her aunt what really happened.
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