Seeing Fairies

by Marjorie T Johnson

  Mrs. Gwen Cripps made the acquaintance of a tree spirit, which dwelt in a very large poplar in her garden, and she felt the strength of its aura coming through to her whenever she touched the tree.

  While travelling on a train that was slowly passing a tree-bordered meadow, Miss Kathleen Hinde saw the lovely snow-white nude figure of a nymph step out of one of the trees into the knee-high grass, and melt away before her eyes.

  Mrs. Clare Sheridan, of Sussex, the sculptor and writer, became very “fey” during the six years of the Second World War when, as a pacifist, she lived a very secluded life on the South Coast. “I found,” she said, “that I was able to talk with the spirit of a very old tree, and, of course, with other nature spirits.”

  In 1938, Mrs. Vera Westmoreland bought a house with a lovely old-world garden, which narrowed down at the far end to where a tall tree stood near a rockery. Her father wished to make room for a greenhouse, and during May he planned to cut down the tree. Through the wide French windows, she and her mother watched him put down his spade and walk forward with the saw. The next moment he was rubbing his chest. He went forward a second time and again rubbed his chest and moved slightly backwards. At the third attempt he fell right over on to his back, and soon he came into the house looking flushed and worried. When they asked what was the matter, he told them that twice he had felt a hard “something” push at him on his chest, and the third time it had knocked him right over. Mother and daughter went into the garden, where they watched him try once more. This time, a much harder knock made him again fall backwards. He heard a voice say, “You cannot do that to my tree!” and then he saw an elf whose face was brown and wizened, and whose clothing was tattered. That settled it! He would have nothing more to do with that tree, and it became his daughter Vera’s job to collect its fruit. At rare times she saw the face of the elf, and she said it was “like that of an old man in miniature,” who looked as if he had seen many years of work. He would nod his head at her, so she knew that he realised she could see him.

  When the 1939 war started, arrangements had to be made for an air-raid shelter to be sunk. The men whose job it was to dig the ground and erect the shelter went to the tree to remove it. Their spades broke, and two of the men fell backwards. They became so frightened that they were told they could move the rockery instead, so the shelter was put there and the tree was left alone, unscarred. “I saw that elf grin more than once when air raids were on, and I used to pop out of the shelter to make hot drinks,” said Mrs. Westmoreland. “His was the only wrinkled face I have ever seen on an elf.”

  Many years later, she and her husband went to live in Oldham, where their work for the crippled and the blind awaited them. They lived in a very old house where the roof bent in, and the living room window was faced and darkened by two weary and withered elm trees that were barely alive in the sour soil that was burned by many years of heavy soot from the mills. The old place became a sanctuary for many handicapped people who needed help and comfort, and one day the couple planned to move those trees when the rain stopped. On the morning of the first fine day, Mrs. Westmoreland had been cleaning the windows of the house when, to her surprise, she saw an olive-green elf staring hard at her as he moved from one branch to another, though she felt nothing, and had no idea what he was thinking. She told her husband about it, and they wondered if the elf knew their plans. Then they thought no more about it, and that evening they set to and sawed off the treetop. Mrs. Westmoreland felt a strange pushing at her back, but didn’t take any notice. Then quite suddenly, while standing upright waiting for her husband to tell her what he wanted moving first, she was hit by a force and pushed down by something small and strong on to the sharp tree-stump, which pierced her leg above the knee, giving her a permanent blue mark there. They knew, then, that some force was about which did not agree with their removing the tree, but, for the sake of the house-bound inmates, they struggled on, leaving a small part still growing. They remembered Vera’s seeing the elf that morning, and her father’s experience when he had tried to cut down a tree, so they left the other one untouched.

  In the course of one of her visits to Killagally, in County Offaly, Ireland, Mrs. Eve Gall was privileged to see a tree spirit of the dryad type, and told me of her experience. “It was a beautifully warm, sunny day; a lazy day, with that soft warmth that one only gets in Ireland. My hostess and my husband had wandered off and left me to my own devices. I strolled up through the park towards the lodge gates to a place where there was a broad stretch of greensward beside the drive, and seated myself under the shadow of a huge Beech tree. I sat for a while, quietly enjoying the lovely scene before me and allowing the peace and beauty of it all to steal into my soul. Presently I found myself in that fey state of consciousness that is so easily attained in Ireland. All was still; even the birdsong was hushed, and the silence was tense with an air of expectation, when there appeared beside me, under the great tree, a very tall figure at least ten or twelve feet high. It was a female figure dressed in green, flowing drapery, which, although there was no wind at all, seemed to wave and flutter in a breeze. The hair, which was a lustrous metallic green, was long and flowing free; the skin of the face was very pale with a luminosity hard to describe; the features were fine and delicate, with an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and full lips. Her hands and arms were stretched sideways and her face was uplifted to the sky. The outstanding impression I received was of her tremendous vitality—she was absolutely vibrant with life, and she seemed to be radiating this life and energy into the world of Nature around her. She was visible for four or five minutes, and then gradually faded from my sight.” Mrs. Gall told me that without her knowing how, this glorious creature had made her aware that she was the spirit of the great Beech-tree, and she said that for the rest of that day she carried with her a feeling of elation and exaltation such as she had seldom experienced before.

  My sister and I saw the aura, but not the actual form, of a tree spirit in Colwick Woods, Nottingham, where my sister had the ring of blue beads returned to her by the fairies. In our youth we had played there with the children from the farmhouse (long since demolished) that was part of the Colwick Park Estate once owned by the Chaworth-Husters, where Byron’s Mary had lived. We had spent the happiest times of our lives there, gathering blackberries, mushrooms, elderberries, and picking up acorns, which we turned into fairies’ cups or elves’ caps. We would roly-poly down the hillocks or lie on the grass among the wild flowers, listening to the grasshoppers or watching the skylarks. Sometimes we would catch a glimpse of baby partridges, rabbits, or foxes. We pretended to be Scouts, or Red Indians, and played hide-and-seek among the trees, which we loved and never defaced. To us, it was Paradise. When middle aged, we had taken our cocker spaniels there for their daily exercise, and they would drink at a little spring near the cherry and crab-apple trees in the valley. Now, after a long interval of many years, we were wandering again over the familiar haunts, this time in our old age, and (though we did not know it) for the last time together. We were in a nostalgic mood, and we sat down to rest on a hilltop, trying to recapture the old magic. After a while, feeling more peaceful and relaxed, we began to retrace our steps and were walking towards a tree, which had known us intimately in our younger days and grew apart from the others, when to our amazement it suddenly became illumined. This was no trick of the sunlight, for the tree shone from within, and its radiance rayed out in a golden-white aureole, ethereal and translucent. The tree wanted us to know it had recognized us, and we stood in silent communion under its branches, enfolded in its welcoming vibrations. After a while we had to say goodbye, and we continued our walk home feeling blessed and uplifted. It was a truly wonderful and touching experience to be greeted and remembered so lovingly by an old woodland friend.

  Banshees

  I cannot mention the fairies of Ireland without including the Banshee (Bean Sidhe), or “Woman Fairy,” who attaches herself to certain old Irish families and gives a warning when some
disaster or the death of a member is imminent. Sometimes she is observed sitting on a rock while keening, but she is more frequently heard than seen.

  One such account came from Miss Rolanda Hirst, of Bedwas, Monmouthshire, who in 1927 was staying at Lissadill in Sligo as governess to the children of Sir Josslyn Gore Booth. Sir Josslyn’s sister was Countess Constance Markievicz, the Sinn Feiner who played such a prominent part in the Easter Rebellion of 1916. One day, Lady Gore Booth came into the schoolroom to say that she and her husband were going to Dublin at once, as they had heard that the Countess was ill in hospital. “That afternoon,” said Miss Hirst, “I took the children down to the shore for a picnic and bathe. The children went into the sea and I stayed on the shore, preparing the tea. Soon I heard a terrible and mournful wailing coming from the rocks in the sea, and it went on for some time. When the children returned from their bathe, I asked them if they had heard the wailing? Their reply was: ‘No, but it might be seals.’ I said no more, and we had tea and returned to the house. There a telegram awaited us saying that the Countess Markievicz was dead, and would I take the children up to Dublin? She was born at Lissadill, and I think it can be inferred that what I heard was the Banshee, said to wail when any famous member of an old house died.”

  Mrs. Elizbeth Niven, a schoolteacher in Londonderry, Ireland, who had spent the greater part of her life in County Donegal, said, “I certainly have heard the Banshee’s wail, and my husband heard it also. It followed a family who did not live far from us after we were married.”

  In November 1955, Mrs. Katharine Johnston, of Castlewellan, County Down, Ireland, wrote: “I cannot claim any personal visions of fairies, but my mother (Lady Coghill), as a child of eight or nine, heard the Banshee keening in the garden round her old home in Castletownshend, County Cork. This was on a June morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., and she was so frightened that she sought refuge with her older sister (the late Dr. E. OE. Somerville). At breakfast-time came the news that a whole boatload of my grandfather’s tenants had been drowned just outside the harbour, while returning from prolonged wedding festivities in a neighbouring harbour. This happened at the time my mother heard the Banshee keening. My mother also told me often that she had once heard the fairy music. This was long after she was grown-up. She could not describe it beyond saying it was most lovely and seemed to sweep around the house.”

  From Mrs. Norah de Courcy of East Grinstead, Sussex, came the following testimony with an interesting variation: “My mother had been ill for about a fortnight and was, I knew, failing fast. I had been to see her in Hampstead on Friday, August 5th, 1949. I was living near Midhurst at that time, and had to return as my daughter was under two years old and I had no one with whom I could leave her. On Sunday August 7, I was of course thinking a great deal about my mother, and at about 7 p.m. I was in the kitchen when I heard a sound, coming as if it were from the roof above me, as of a woman wailing. One can only use human terms in describing such experiences, though in reality the sound was not exactly like a woman’s voice. I never heard anything so utterly sad or awesome. About a quarter of an hour later, my husband came into the room. I told him I had just heard the Banshee and then I heard it again, but he heard nothing. I could feel my hair literally standing on end. I had known for many years that a Banshee was supposed to foretell the death of members of the de Courcy family, for my mother’s mother was a de Courcy (a different branch of the same family as my husband’s), and she and a sister of hers had heard it when they were in Germany early in the century before an aunt of theirs died; but I had not been thinking of this at all before hearing it myself. (I may mention that although I have used the term ‘hearing’ I felt as though the sounds were received by other means than the physical ear.) I rang up the nurse who was looking after my mother, and she reported no change. At about midnight I heard ‘bells’ (the nearest equivalent to the sound) ringing above the house far up. The tone and joyful clangour were more wonderful than any earthly sound. My mother died at this moment, as far as I could discover. I have not heard of these bells in any other connection or experience, but they were a wonderful message to me as my mother and I were very close to one another until very tragically her mental powers deteriorated. Curiously enough, none of my own family heard the Banshee.”

  Just before the hour of midnight in the year 1905, Mrs. L. Connolly heard the loud wailing of a Banshee, and her husband did not live long afterwards. “Mother was a hard-headed English-woman,” said Mrs. E. Hazlehurst, her daughter who kindly sent me the account, “but she was living in a small village in County Kildare, Ireland, when she heard the Banshee.”

  Mr. Willie Monks, of Lusk, County Dublin, sent this account of a Banshee heard by members of his family. “My mother, before she was married, was staying with an older married sister, Mrs. McAllister, at Staffordstown, Donabate, County Dublin. During her visit, a child got badly burned and died as a result. While he was dying, my mother claimed she heard the Banshee crying in or around the house. She said the sound was entirely different from that made by cats or other animals. This was in the 1890s. Sometime in the 1930s, at the same house, a sister of the burned boy got sick and later died. While she was ill, a sister of mine went to see her, and she heard the strange crying sound. What surprised her was that none of the other people in the house made any comment about it. Several members of the family died during the intervening years and since, but no one reported ever hearing anything unusual.”

  “It was during our first visit to Ireland in September 1948,” recounted Mr. William C. Gall, M.P.S., of Emsworth, Hants, “that my wife Eve and I went with our hostess to spend a day or two at her brother’s house at Killagally, south of Athlone. It was a big, Georgian house, almost a mansion, built on the ruins of an ancient nunnery, but being Ireland, and remoter Ireland at that, it had no modern conveniences, such as gas or electricity. Thus, it happened that in the evening we were gathered round a log fire in a huge and lofty eighteenth-century room, dimly illumined by two candles set in tall silver candlesticks, engaged in conversation such as one can enjoy only in Ireland. It was a still night, but pouring with rain; the great window shutters were closed; there was no other house within a mile; and it was half a mile to the lodge gates on the highway. We were listening to reminiscences of the past, when I heard a most unearthly howling noise from somewhere outside. I looked at my wife and she looked at me, but the others continued talking as though they had not heard it. Again there came that uncanny wailing, more prolonged this time, and still they made no remark although it was manifest that they were rather disconcerted. Our query ‘Whatever was that?’ passed unheeded. When for a third time there was that eerie howling, rising and falling in pitch and even more persistent and insistent than before, it was impossible to ignore it, but our host’s only reaction was to rise abruptly and say, ‘I think we’re stirring them up too much. We had all better go to bed.’ Without more ado, he bade us ‘Goodnight’ and left the room. There was nothing more to be said, so each of us lighted our candles and went to our rooms.

  “Once we were in our bedroom, by force of habit I looked at my watch, which showed a little after ten o’clock. My wife, Eve, said to me, ‘Whatever was that weird howling; one would think it was a Banshee.’ I replied: ‘Well, it was certainly not a dog, or a fox, or an owl.’ (It was quite unlike any of these and the persistent, mournful rising and falling wail sent cold shivers down the spine.) ‘I believe it was a Banshee, and if so it is a bad omen for someone here tonight.’ It was with subdued and apprehensive feelings that we eventually settled down for the night. The next day our friends absolutely ignored any attempt to refer to the matter, and in the course of a really delightful holiday we soon forgot our fears and forebodings and the whole affair sank into the background of our minds. The sequel came when our holiday was over and we returned to our little cottage at Waterlooville in Hampshire, where we were living at the time. There we learnt, to our distress, that a very dear friend and neighbour had been terribly injured b
y two burglars and was critically ill in hospital. He was the owner of a laundry situated at the rear of our cottage, and he lived in a house at the end of the road, so he had to pass our cottage on his journeys between his home and the laundry. On the very night on which we heard the Banshee, our friend had occasion to visit the laundry office, which was situated upstairs, on the first floor. He entered the building, using an electric torch to see his way, and as he went to mount the stairs to the office he was attacked by the two men concealed there, who struck him down and then hurled a large cash-box at his head, which gave him a dreadful injury. He lost consciousness but regained it again some time later and then attempted to reach his home. It must have been a nightmare journey as he crawled along, weak with loss of blood and with spells of unconsciousness. At last he reached the door of our cottage and he has a distinct recollection of sitting on the doorstep, fervently wishing that we were at home and could come to his aid. Eventually he did manage to reach his home just as his son was about to go in search of him. For a long time his life was despaired of, but brilliant surgery and careful nursing restored him to health once more. Checking over the details with him when he was well enough to discuss them, we discovered that he was sitting on our doorstep mentally calling us in his distress, at the very same time that we were listening to that wailing Banshee in Ireland.”

  Chapter 4: Fairies in Houses, Fairy Glamour

  Some people think that fairies are associated only with woods and gardens, but this is not so. They frequent buildings also, as the following accounts will show. In September 1952, Mr. and Mrs. Gall, of Hampshire, had spent a long, happy day making a new garden, and having finished it, they went indoors and relaxed in armchairs before the fire. They were sitting there in the twilight, talking over the day’s work, when they saw a tiny fairy flying round the room. It circled twice and then disappeared through the wall as suddenly as it had come. The little figure, some nine or ten inches in height and human in shape, shone with a brilliant silvery radiance and had transparent and faintly luminous wings. It was visible for about fifteen seconds, and its disappearance left Mr. and Mrs. Gall looking at each other in amazement, asking “Did you see what I saw?” This was not the only experience that occurred to Mr. and Mrs. Gall, as will be seen in other parts of the book.