When Mrs. Louise P. Jones was sixteen years old, she was basking in the May sunshine on the balcony of a convalescent home in Hertfordshire when she saw a fairy of a similar type to that seen by Mrs. Graddol. In the shrubbery, which was separated from the balcony by a long lawn, were a few poppies. The fairy appeared from behind one of the poppy plants and ran a distance of about eight feet in and out of the small shrubs, finally reaching a larger bush, from behind which she did not reappear. Her height was approximately the same as the other poppy fairy and she, too, had long fair hair, which flowed behind her as she ran. Her arms were held straight, and stretched slightly forward; her legs were bare. Unlike the other fairy, her dress was green and of a dull matt material.
“I looked out for her for the next two weeks while I was there,” said Mrs. Jones, “but I never saw her again.” This contributor had a further experience in the late spring of 1941, when she was sauntering in the fields in a district known as Munden, which she informed me is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “pleasant valley.” She said she had noticed the reactions of children in the happy atmosphere of the place. “But then,” she added, “it supplies a stream, a very large meadow of lush grass, and always seems warm and sunny.” As Mrs. Jones wandered in the fields on this particular day, she thought she saw out of the corner of her eye an elf looking over the second bar of a five-barred gate. She stood quite still, glancing sideways, and waiting for him to move. When nothing happened, she turned slowly and walked towards him, skirting a ditch to reach him, only to find that the “elf” was a young dock-plant blown against the gate, and his cap and arms were its pointed leaves. However, from a distance it had looked so much like an elf that she felt puzzled and thought: “Fairies bring luck; I must search.” So she got down into the ditch and found not fairy gold, but Roman remains. Picking up fragments of tiles, she took them to Verulamium Museum for identification. This led to the discovery of a firing kiln, lots of shards, a very large pot in sections, and other treasures. After Mrs. Jones had left that district, she kept thinking of her discovery of the Roman remains and she wondered whether it really had been an elf against the dock-leaves, trying to draw her attention to that spot, and vanishing before she reached it. She had been in those fields scores of times before that day, and six months earlier the gravel ditch had been dug for drainage and was quite clean and dry.
Miss M. Vesey, when writing to me about her own experiences, made the following interesting remarks, which seem very applicable to Mrs. Jones’ account of the dock-plant: “Particular places, seasons, weather, etc., may affect a human being in a favourable way so that such a human being can be easily aware of fairies. When this happens, the look, position, shape of a plant or tree, or of light and shadow may suggest to us (not necessarily correctly) something of the appearance of the fairy; they may serve as points to attract our attention.” Since the bodies of nature spirits are composed of plastic matter, they are able to superimpose their shapes and features on flowers, and sometimes a flower fairy identifies itself so completely with its plant that it is hard to distinguish one from the other. Some of the garden and woodland fairies assume leaf-shaped hands and feet, and others could more aptly be called “fairy flowers” than “flower fairies” when they assume heads like the flowers they tend.
Here is an example contributed by Mrs. G. K. Evason of Kent: “One day I saw a very curious and amusing sight. There were two long columns of tiny beings, three or four deep, with heads like marigolds, walking rapidly toward the front garden of the house adjoining the one next door to me. This house has new tenants, and recently the garden was dug up and reconditioned. Sure enough, after my prophetic vision, marigolds were planted very thickly in a border round the lawn.”
The Rev. G. Eustace Owen, M.A., sent another example. He was eleven or twelve years old at the time of the experience and was living in Lancashire. “I was lying in bed on my left side facing the door, which was ajar. I could not get to sleep and was going over in my mind the events of the day (which did not include fairies!) when suddenly I saw all around the door scores of little daisy-faces peeping at me and laughing, though I heard nothing. For a few seconds they were clearly visible, and I did not ask myself why they should be seen so easily in my dark bedroom. Then they vanished, and I felt sorry for I wanted to look carefully at them. I had seen only their heads, each framed with petals, poking round the door.”
At about 8 o’clock on a spring morning in 1948, in the garden of a house in Buckinghamshire, Mrs. E. T. E. Lloyd saw what looked like a tiny female doll lying among the flowers, which bordered the long path. The little creature had transparent wings but one of them appeared to be broken, and Mrs. Lloyd stooped compassionately to pick her up. Instantly the fairy was transformed into a mauve flower-petal. “I am something amounting to a religious mystic by nature,” commented Mrs. Lloyd, “and often, uncommon experiences have befallen me. During my early Elysian childhood in Wales, I was able almost to discern the Shining Ones (The Higher Devas or Angelic Beings) visually.”
Miss E. Woodford-Grimes of Highcliffe-on-Sea, Hants., who at the time of writing was the local representative of The Poetry Lovers’ Fellowship, related an experience that had occurred in the early spring of 1938. “I had been ill,” she explained, “and no doubt was in what is called a receptive state. I was recuperating at the home of Miss Ailsie Hall, who was then living at Brockenhurst in the New Forest. She and I went walking in the clearing on a hillside towards a wood on the edge of the forest proper. Both of us were interested in poetry and drama, and I remember we were talking of the historical plays of Shakespeare and saying how clever it was to telescope the periods without obscuring the facts. On going up the slight incline, we stopped suddenly whilst staring at something. Then we looked at each other and I said, ‘Do you see what I see?’ Her answer was, ‘Fairies, and they’re dressed in blue.’ They would be from 30 to 50 feet away, and we stood watching while they danced rhythmically as if to music, although we could hear nothing but a soft wind like a sigh. There were no other people or animals about, and we said afterwards that if we had attempted to go nearer or to make a sound they would have vanished quickly. As it was, we stood some moments before they faded.”
When Mrs. Martha A. Smith was a child in Indiana, she would wander away and sit under a favourite cherry tree that grew in the backyard. There she would see the little people, and sometimes they would even bow to her. She watched them by the hour and hummed an accompaniment to their songs. Of course, like many another fairy seer, she was called “odd” and accused of day dreaming and “telling fibs.” She never forgot the fairy-leader, who was beautiful and golden-looking and seemed to command great respect from all her followers. These little ones were about a foot high, dressed in vivid colours, and would come and go “in the wink of an eye.”
“Every detail is as clear today as it was then,” began Mrs. Elsie Willetts of Worcestershire, in her letter written in 1955. She then went on to relate what had happened nearly 50 years ago, when she was twelve. She was playing hide-and-seek with her friends in their favourite spot a lovely glade near the Harcourt Estate, off the Abingdon to Oxford road. She was the seeker, and when she had finished counting she turned quickly and saw two figures who seemed to be joining in the game. They were looking up at her and backing away to get out of sight. One was dressed in pink and the other in blue, and they were “just like the fairies on a Christmas tree,” but were about the size of an average child of eight years old. Her friends had seen nothing, and she told me she was too enchanted to say anything to them.
Many years ago, in Galashiels, Mr. Thomas Shortreed’s son and daughter-in-law were visiting him from Leicester, and on the last night of their visit he proposed that he and his son might take a walk to the top of Meigle Hill. It was “a very quiet, grey-dark September evening with no wind, cloud or mist,” and after reaching the summit they had a look at the scenery and then made for home. They had just left the hill, by means of a gate leading on to a farm-track, when
Mr. Shortreed was surprised to see a few yards in front of them a troop of figures crossing the road from North to South. It was hard to describe what they were like, just long, lanky figures; all heads, arms, legs, moving up and down with a jaunty motion. There might have been about twenty of them, very happy-looking. The first was very tall, over six feet, and then a gradual sloping down to small figures of about two feet. There was a stone dyke on the right side and Mr. Shortreed stopped to see what would happen when they reached it, but the figures just seemed to melt into the dyke. He went and looked over, but there was no trace of them.
He turned to his son and asked, “Did you see that, Paul?”
“I didn’t see anything,” was the disappointing reply.
They continued on their way and, about 50 yards further on, another similar group crossed the road in front of them, but these figures were not quite so tall and not so lively looking. They were all of a white colour and did not hurry across but just danced up and down. Once again, only Mr. Shortreed could see them.
Miss H. M. McCarthy, of Hants, said that from early childhood she had seen fairies of every description, and Mrs. L. Dickens Yates, of Kent, had seen so many fairies, including leprechauns, that she said it would take days to tell me about them. A weekend was arranged so that we could meet, but unfortunately, owing to illness, I had to cancel my visit, and I never obtained the details of her experiences.
One summer day in 1948, Mrs. Eleanor Laing, of Essex, was walking through Epping Forest with a friend of hers, Mrs. Freda Garrard, and on entering a glorious glade they rested awhile and began to meditate upon the beauty of their surroundings. Suddenly Mrs. Laing became conscious of movement at the base of a tree quite near at hand. “Look, Freda!” she exclaimed to her friend. “Fairies!” Mrs. Garrard could not see them, but Mrs. Laing had no doubt at all that she herself was seeing them clairvoyantly. They were quite four inches high and had white wings. Their legs seemed very thin. With their arms interlocked like a daisy chain, they were dancing in a circle at terrific speed round the tree. She also noticed on this occasion two gnomes dressed in red coats, with green trousers reaching down to just below the knees. They had on their heads small, acorn-like hats. Each carried in his hand a small garden fork.
Some time later, she had an experience at Tiptree. Choosing a quiet spot in her aunt’s garden there, she seated herself upon a small hillock surrounded by almost an acre of differently coloured wallflowers, and, near at hand, large clusters of forget-me-nots. She soon fell a-meditating and presently became aware of a wee fairy, blue like the forget-me-nots, perching on the top of her shoe.
Her last experience of this kind was in 1950. Again Mrs. Freda Garrard was with her, and they were seated in the cemetery of Upshire Church, Essex. The church stands upon a hill providing a glorious panorama. It was not long before she became aware of a hovering movement over some of the flowers growing in the cemetery, quite close to her. Soon she discerned an amorphous mass of heavenly mauve with a tiny being in it. “Look, Freda!” she said. “A fairy!” But again her friend was unable to see anything unusual; and in a moment the fairy was gone.
“Some 60 or more years ago, when I was about nine years old,” wrote Mr. James O’Connor of County Meath, in 1955, “I was coming home along the Cavan-Dublin road with an aunt of mine, Miss Alice Connell, who had been milking her cow. I looked over the hedge, which bordered a triangular field, the apex of which would not be more than 20 yards, and saw some men kicking a football. I took them to be local, as they wore whiskers like some of the men from the town, but their headgear seemed peculiar, though I can’t say definitely in what way. My aunt did not notice them. Time rolled on, and I still could not get them out of my mind, but it was not until many years afterwards that it dawned on me who or what they really were. They had been kicking the football in the apex of the triangle, and this was bounded by the road on one side and, of course, by the field on the other. I realized that it would be impossible for any full-sized man to have kicked the ball without it going repeatedly on to the road or the field. The thought of these people haunted me so much that they seemed to have cast a glamour over me, and it lasted for over 40 years.
“I might add that at a distance of another half mile in the Cavan direction there is a hill, covered with gorse and bracken, called ‘Cobblers Hill,’ and I am sure it got its name through someone seeing these people mending shoes.”
When the Rev. S. Henshaw was a child of about six, he was playing with his sister in the garden of a house in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, and, tiring of their games, he suggested that they should roll a log over, which had long lain lengthways by a boundary fence. When they had done this, there was disclosed a strange creature about six inches in height, standing straddle-legged across a hole in the ground, which was approximately three inches in diameter. The creature had the obvious shape of a man. He was completely naked, if one does not count the section of an onion that he wore as a cap. His beard and his hair, which protruded from the back of his “cap,” were straw coloured. “The incident,” said Mr. Henshaw, “struck me as an occasion for action, so I ordered my sister to fetch a pair of scissors from the house a few yards away that I might cut him in two. Losing patience because she was so long gone, I remember looking towards the door of the house, and when I returned my gaze to where I had seen the pixy he had disappeared. I believe he had gone up the pear tree beyond the boundary fence. I will not go into the clever suggestions that are supposed to explain this and similar experiences for I have read much if not all that modern psychology has to say on the matter. The fact is that my sister and I remember it as vividly as ever, though it happened so many years ago.”
Early in the summer of 1956, Mrs. Agnes A. Powley, of Peterborough, Northants, was lying in bed wide-awake, and the night was so beautiful that she was tempted to rise and look at the garden by moonlight. Right in front of her bedroom window was a large lime tree, with several bushes nearby, and as soon as her eyes grew accustomed to the outside scene her attention was drawn to a number of small objects flitting from the tree to the bushes and flying around, touching each other in mid-air. She stood quite still for a few minutes and thought how very lovely it all looked by moonlight, “Although,” she wrote in her letter, “it is really a very ordinary little garden.”
She said she had absolutely no thought of fairies in her mind and at first believed then to be moths, though they were larger and their flight was daintier than that of a moth. She moved closer to the window to get a better view, and in a flash the garden was deserted. Only then did it dawn upon her that they were fairies.
Writing from California in the same year, Harriet P. Foster, whose main job was the editing, typing, and preparation of authors’ manuscripts, told me that when she visited Ireland the old boatman who used to row her around on Bantry Bay could see “the little paypul” plainly when he passed “the Fairy Isle.” She never could do so, but she remembered a man in New York State telling her that he could see “the nicest bunch of little pixies” always around her.
An eight-year-old boy with whom she used to spend many happy hours in a small fairy-house he had built in a thicket under a lovely pine-tree in the wooded section of Balboa Park, San Diego, California, also had this faculty, and would describe for her the charming little creatures he could see around them both, especially one whom he called “Tinkle-Star” because she was “all sorts of shiny colours” and tinkled when she moved.
Delamere Forest is a well-known Cheshire beauty-spot, and at the age of nine Miss Gwyneth M. F. Tait went for a holiday there with her mother and grown-up brothers. She was very fond of slipping off alone into the fringe of the forest, and on this particular sunny morning she was playing among the trees in a glade full of sunshine and green shadows when she saw, standing beside a clump of tall grass, a white figure about two feet high, unclothed, but seeming to have transparent wings. It had pale golden hair, but of its face and expression Miss Tait had no clear recollection. She knew it must have been f
riendly because she was not in the least alarmed, and followed eagerly the delicate dancing feet of the fairy as it skipped from tuft to tuft of the forest grass. She was led in this way some distance into the woods where she had not been before, but when she lost sight of her guide among the bushes she was able to return to the more familiar paths without difficulty.
Miss Tait did not visit Delamere again until she was grown up, when, she said, she had no magical experiences and caught not the least glimpse of the fairy of the forest. But on two separate occasions she was there with a party of adults and children who were lost among the thousands of similar pine trees and could not find the main road, and although it was years since her childhood visit and she, too, did not know the way, she was able to lead them safely and confidently out of the wood.
I am grateful to Mrs. Ellen Jackson, whose own account of water fairies appears elsewhere in this book, for an experience related to her sister by Mr. Bruce Glaister. He had taken his father’s gun (an act that was forbidden) and gone out on the moors to do some shooting. When it was time to go home, he was afraid his father would see him bring back the gun, so he hid it in the heather. Later, on going to retrieve it, he found a crowd of little folk around it, examining it with great interest. Feeling afraid, he ran home and told his mother, who was a very religious and strict person. She did not believe him and punished him for lying.
Mrs. Jackson also gave me the interesting information that the Yorkshire novelist Halliwell Sutcliffe told her brother he often saw fairies whilst stamping over the moors.
At the age of three, Miss Kinara Kestyn, of London, used to play in a large and very lovely garden, and there were many fairies there. “They were nothing extraordinary to me at that age,” she said. “I was meeting new things and new experiences every day, and they were to me a normal part of a world I was just discovering. They were tiny, delightful, winged creatures, bathed in light, and not at all frightened of me. They went about their business, mostly flitting from flower to flower quite happily as I watched, and sometimes they watched me. I never spoke to them, nor they to me, yet somehow we communicated. For some reason I never thought of touching them.”
Seeing Fairies Page 12
