“I told my husband at breakfast, and he said immediately, ‘Well, that settles it; we can’t kill the only fairy you have ever seen.’ So the holly tree remained as it was, and the rockery was moved further back instead.”
Mrs. Daphne Charters, whose book A True Fairy Tale (The Greater World Association, London) deals with the origin, life, and evolution of fairies, told me of a similar experience connected with a laurel bush, which grew up against a wire fence and was getting very straggly. She thought that if the front of it, which was taking up an unnecessary amount of the flowerbed, was cut back, it would spread sideways and make a better screen from the garden next door. When her once-a-week gardener arrived, she told him what she wanted done and went to write letters in the sitting room, which had French windows leading into the garden. Suddenly she had an idea that something was terribly wrong, but she didn’t know what it was. She then heard mentally a kind of screaming and went to the window to find that the gardener was hacking the bush and had cut off its top. She rushed out and stopped him immediately, and sent him off to do something else while she tried to pacify the screaming fairy-guardian by assuring her that everything would be all right and that the bush was very strong and would grow again. The fairy eventually calmed down, and Mrs. Charters visited the laurel bush frequently until it looked more normal.
A further example of the fairy folk’s dismay when bushes and trees are interfered with was given by Mrs. Claudia F. Renton of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. She had a number of flowering shrubs planted at the top of her garden and, never having been pruned, they grew vigorously until they resembled a tiny forest. When her old gardener said, “Now, ma’am, if them there bushes were dug out, we could do something with that land,” she unfortunately agreed, and he dug them all up and left them lying on their sides. It had been Mrs. Renton’s custom for years to take a camp chair up there and have her afternoon rest, so on the following day she went as usual. It was such a sad sight to see all the shrubs up-rooted, and she regretted it keenly. However, she stayed about an hour and slept for a while. When she opened her eyes, she was astonished to see many little forms floating in the air. “I had never seen anything of the kind before,” she confessed, “and I could not understand it at all. There they were floating in all directions and all around me, dozens of them. I could follow their flight with my eyes. Some would make a circle and land on my shoulder, my arm, my hand. I knew by instinct they were fairies and had been disturbed by the uprooting of the shrubs. I could see their little airy-fairy wings with the veins (or whatever they were) running through them as fine as a hair, and their tiny round heads just like black dots. In all they would be an inch long, some smaller.” Mrs. Renton stayed watching them for a long time, then so excited was she that she got into her car and went to tell her grandchildren in Gloucester and also some in Sutton Coldfield, who came back with her. The next day they sat in the same spot in the garden, and Mrs. Renton saw the fairies but not in such numbers. To her surprise, the children could not see them, even when she pointed to one and said, “Now watch this. It is floating round my arm and has come on to my shoulder.” The tiny beings disappeared after a few days, though occasionally she saw one or two of them afterwards.
When Mrs. Dorothy J. Hancock, of Walthamstow, London, was in her twenties, the family moved to a new house, which, among others, had been built on an ancient estate where an orchard used to be. Her father had made a nice lawn with a rockery, and on a day of brilliant sunshine she was sunbathing when she became conscious of movement among the flowers in the border near her head. Keeping still and only moving her eyes, she was thrilled to see some little people from two to three inches in height and of different types. They were singing, and she could hear the same musical laughter that she had heard in her bedroom as a child. They seemed to be playing some sort of game, and the flowers they liked particularly were the foxgloves. She could not resist raising herself on her elbows to get a closer look, but this startled them and they all vanished. Ten years went by, and she had married and moved some two or three miles away to a house with a smaller garden and lawn, where her husband built a rockery and made a pond. One very hot, sunny day he thought he would alter the rockery, and was doing so when Mrs. Hancock saw a little old fellow exactly like her conception of a gnome. He was four and a half to five inches high, very wrinkled, and apparently of a great age. His clothing was green in colour and seemed to be made of the same substance as the plants, for it was moist as though covered with most or dew. He was looking very angry and resentful, and was muttering to himself. She felt that her husband had upset some arrangement of the little folks and told him what she had seen. He knew of her other experiences with fairies, so he decided to replace everything as it was, merely commenting: “If they want it like that, well it’s theirs.” The gnome watched the work of replacement and then vanished into the undergrowth of the rockery, and Mrs. Hancock said she felt “a great calm, as though all was well.” She told me that many wild birds come to her garden, which is full of old-fashioned flowers such as musk, pansies, columbine, etc., while the small rockery is composed mostly of plants given to her by her friends. An apple tree, which was grown from a pip, produces two quarts of apples a year, and a double white lilac has sprung from a branch, which had been thrown away. In the little pond dwell frogs, newts, and an old toad. “So, as you can see,” said Mrs. Hancock, “it is all centred on the fairies.”
The following account sent by Mr. John Pettman, of Monmouthshire, strikes a macabre note among the others in this book, yet I feel it should be included because it was a genuine experience. Recalling the time he was twelve or fourteen years old, he wrote: “When I had grown tired of the long August holiday, I decided to spend one day on a long walk, taking with me a bag containing a few things to eat. With no definite objective, I just chose north, and followed a road in that direction. I later found out I had got as far as Dowlais. The countryside turned into moorland, and houses and people became few and far between. As I was passing through a derelict brickyard, for some reason I looked over my shoulder, and about a minute’s walk away I saw in broad daylight a man about a foot high, dressed in red, running along the path after me, waving his arms in what I took to be a threatening manner. But the impression that has remained with me most clearly over the 23 or so years between then and now is that he looked demented, and his face was shiny and so suffused with colour that it was redder than his clothing. Being a timid child, I started running, and after a minute or so when I looked back again there was no sign of him. Arriving at the next house, I asked if I could stay inside for a while. When they asked the reason and I gave them the story, they looked at me with the same combination of wondering pity and apprehension that has been its reception ever since. I enquired if they knew of any midgets thereabouts, but they shook their heads and I think were rather glad to get rid of me.” It is unusual to hear of such extreme anger in a nature spirit, and we shall never know the reason, but it may be that the boy John had unknowingly trampled on some tiny creature or plant that had been greatly treasured and loved by the dwarf to whom such a loss through human carelessness would indeed seem a tragedy.
Mr. Gordon Harte was once a bus driver in Ireland, and one day in a lonely part of the country his bus would not start. He had dropped all his passengers and was quite alone, his conductor having gone to ring up the garage to ask them to send a mechanic. While he waited near the bus, he heard voices, and thought they were far off until out from behind some bushes no further than fifteen feet away came two little men of about two feet in height. One of them told him straight away that a battery-lead was loose, and he found this was so. They talked together about a lot of things, but “It would sound plenty crazy if I told you,” he said in his letter to me. His conductor shared the next experience with him. They were coming back from a run with the bus in a very lonely place in County Sligo, Eire. As they were rather early and didn’t want to leave before 7 p.m., Mr. Harte was standing waiting beside the cab do
or of the bus. Just then, two rabbits dashed out of a bush, and immediately after them came the smallest girl he had ever seen in his life. She was nine or ten inches tall, and he could hardly believe his eyes. When he could speak, he called to his conductor who was sitting in the back of the bus making up his waybill, and he came out and searched the bushes. Then both of them saw her just for a second on a small grass bank about 25 feet away, but when they got there she was gone. Mr. Harte’s grandfather, when a young man, broke his leg while trying to jump over a river in that part of the country, and he claimed up to the time of his death that the fairies helped him from the river-edge and saved him from drowning. Meanwhile his wife was “told,” though she could never really say how she knew, that he was in some sort of difficulty, so she left the house at 4:30 a.m. and went to the river, and there she found him in great pain. Neighbours helped to get him to the house, which was half a mile from the river. “In this part of Ireland many strange things have happened,” said Mr. Harte, “and my Mother still tells us some queer stories regarding fairies.”
When Capt. Sir Quentin Craufurd conducted some experiments with the fairies in his own garden, they caused several non-productive plants to bloom by request. They were also able to bring into the house the scent of fresh flowers, apparently as a joke. Several of my contributors, and I think many other people, have experienced these flower scents, and some think they are brought to them by their loved ones who have passed on. This is true in some cases, but I think the nature spirits play an essential part in producing the aroma.
Regarding these flower scents, I have a touching story to tell concerning my Mother, who was just recovering from a serious illness and had come downstairs for the first time. My sister and I didn’t want to leave her alone, but she insisted that we visit a friend of hers, Mrs. S., who lived on the next road and had been ill like herself. When we arrived at the house, I admired a large bunch of tulips which were in a bowl on the table. “Yes, they are nice,” said Mrs. S. “I want you to take them to your Mother, but unfortunately they haven’t any scent, have they?” I went to smell them and had to agree with her. If I could discern anything, it was only a faint, bitter tang when my nose was pressed right inside one of the vari-coloured flowers, which was wide open. We took them home, but it made us sad to think that Mother would not be able to see much of their beauty, for she had glaucoma and her sight had almost gone. I knew that the flower fairies always stay with their charges until they fade, whether in the garden or the house, and as I arranged the tulips in a vase I wished fervently that their fairy attendants could give them a lovely perfume for Mother’s sake. I carried them into the room where she was sitting and described to her their beautiful colours, adding that it was a pity they had no scent. My sister and I sat down beside her, and we were talking quietly when we became aware of the most exquisite fragrance, and it came from the tulips. Mother sniffed, and then exclaimed delightedly: “Why, you said they had no scent, but it’s glorious. Can’t you smell it?” We could, indeed, and I can only describe it as being like the scent of wallflowers, honeysuckles, and lime flowers blended into one. We all became silent, breathing it in, and I sent my thoughts of gratitude to the fairies for making Mother so happy.
Mrs. Elsie Innes wrote a book called The Elfin Oak of Kensington Gardens (Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd., 1930) in which she told how her husband, Mr. Ivor Innes, used to see the elfin folk playing in the oak tree there. With chisel and colour, he tried to define their shapes, and that is how his well-known “Griglan” art originated. In the Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne, Australia, is another such tree, which once was burnt in a fire and later had fairies and animals carved on its dead trunk by the famous sculptress, Miss Ola Cohn, ARCA (London), who was a firm believer in fairies after having had, during her student days, a dream-vision of what she called “a fairy elf.”
It was on a Sunday evening in September 1944, when living near the Snaefell mountain, that Mr. Thomas Wignall caught a glimpse of the fairies. He had decided to walk up to the mountain summit by way of the old lead-mines and to return along the old tramway track back to Laxey village. “I had not been on the beer,” he assured me in his letter. “The pubs are closed in the island on Sundays, so I could not put my experience down to having too many pints.” The light was fading, and he was just over halfway down when he heard music rising from a few feet below him in the valley. It was always just ahead of him till he reached the last wind of the tram track, which brought the lights of the village in full view. Then he saw what he called “the queer ones” dancing and tumbling in the clearings or fairy rings that abounded there in the gorse and heather. “I was very scared,” he continued, “and I hurried on my way to the end of the track and to the friendly lights of Laxey. I told my good landlady what I had seen, and she said I was lucky to get away from them, as mostly they are not at all friendly. From the glimpse I got of them there must have been a hundred or more, about a foot high or maybe less, dressed in light clothes that showed up plainly enough in the gathering dusk.”
Major W. Tudor-Pole, O.B.E. was a servant of the Archangel Michael and was in close and conscious touch with the higher planes of being and those forces of light and power working for humanity. As many people know, it was he who launched the Big Ben Observance, and in 1958 he purchased the Chalice Well and spring at Glastonbury, together with the surrounding gardens and orchards. With the help of friends, he created the Chalice Well Trust, and the following is an extract from a letter he wrote to me in 1961. “Our Chalice Well gardens have been full of fairies and air and water elementals this summer—I only wish they could have been photographed. We intend to make our Centre there a real oasis of peace and inspiration for all our nature friends as well as for the human pilgrims who find their way there from the ends of the earth.” In an earlier letter he said: “Man must not only learn how to make peace with his fellow men if true vision is to become possible, but to make peace also with the three so-called ‘lower’ kingdoms if he wishes to secure the friendly cooperation of fairies, elementals, and the little people. Vivisection and the horrors of our abattoirs have raised a tragic barrier between man and the fairies and the little people of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. When will we begin to mend our ways? Until we have learnt how to behave ourselves better, we must expect to be cold-shouldered by the inner worlds of Nature and their denizens, and this point should be strongly emphasized in any writings on the subject.”
Mrs. Iris W. Ratsey, who was formerly Hon. Sec. of Universal World Harmony at St. Annes-on-Seal, Lancs., has seen fairies at odd times ever since she was a child. For a few years she shared the house of a friend at Cox’s Mill, near Heathfield in Sussex, which unfortunately has seen many changes since that time. “This house,” she said, “possessed a real fairy wood, and on summer evenings it was quite possible to watch the little people lighting up the hollows in certain treetrunks, and to catch glimpses of them as they flew among the trees. Undines, too, used to be in the streams and small lake.” Mrs. Ratsey’s book Pioneering (Regency Press, London) contains a description of a complete cycle of fairy life.
The Rt. Rev. C. W. Leadbeater used to tell of a little wooded island on the river at the Theosophical Headquarters at Adyar, which, he said, was a special haunt of nature spirits, and many a time when he and Krishnamurti were on their way back from their daily swim in the sea, they would stand for several minutes to watch the fairies at their play.
Another Theosophist was Miss Clara Codd, formerly General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in Australia and Southern Africa, and an international lecturer. She used to broadcast a great deal in Australia, and one of her talks was called “Do you believe in Fairies?” She received two letters in reply. One was from a lady who saw flower fairies in her garden, and she said they had gossamer wings of the same colour as the flowers they tended. The other lady wrote that she had a stream at the bottom of her garden, and one day she went to pick some maidenhair ferns growing by this stream, but desisted when
she saw a wizened old gnome with a red cap who looked very angry with her for touching them. Some weeks after this, she was sitting by her drawing-room window darning stockings, when she saw the same little gnome on her lawn, beckoning to her. She went out and he led her to the stream, and with a gesture indicated to her that now she could pick the ferns.
Miss Ivy Powell of Surrey conversed with and saw etheric beings “in the mental sense only,” and was surprised at the intelligence of a gnome “connected with grass growing.”
The BBC has its seers, too, for when Frank Delaney was discussing books on folklore with Dr. Katherine M. Briggs in a “Bookshelf” programme in December 1979, he was courageous enough to confess that during his boyhood in Ireland he had seen fairies dancing under a tree.
Some readers of this book may remember the first BBC disc jockey in 1927, Christopher Stone. His sister was Mrs. Faith Compton Mackenzie, and in her autobiography As Much as I Dare (Collins, London, 1938), she recalled how she and her brother Christopher used to see the little people “without surprise” in their grandmother’s garden at Walditch in Dorset. “Christopher supports me in this,” she said.
Apart from the fire spirit and the wood elf described in other chapters, Mrs. Gwen Cripps has seen “delicate little creatures with colours like the rainbow, very ethereal. They spin round and round at a tremendous speed, and then vanish at the peak.” She often saw these little beings in the luminous states when she was working in sleep, but she noticed that not all astral dwellers (the so-called “dead”) and visitors to the astral planes could see them. On one occasion she had observed the tiny humming-bird type of nature spirits, but only those that were violet-coloured. “In physical consciousness I see only the lights and not the shapes of the fairies,” she told me. “On the astral planes, one has to be very careful in distinguishing the fantastic shapes of gnomes, etc., from the thought-forms of experimenters. Unfortunately, while working astrally, one cannot always work in beauty. One has to be of service and forget one’s own feelings, and I do rescue work among sex addicts and drug addicts, etc. One never finds nature spirits in these unhappy states of existence (the lower astral plane).” She never ceased to marvel at her astral experiences, and said: “It makes me very humble and deeply grateful for the absolute certainty it has given me of survival.”
Seeing Fairies Page 14
