Seeing Fairies

by Marjorie T Johnson

  Miss V. Vesey

  The following are accounts of some of the occasions when Miss M. Vesey, of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, has been clearly aware of the presence of fairies. Her vivid descriptions of the scenery make one feel one is actually there with her.

  “I was in the west of Ireland, in County Galway, in mid-August 1931. The weather had been wet and stormy, but had just changed. The day was very bright, with a light wind, and everything glittered. The fuchsia hedges were full of bees. In the early afternoon I walked inland by a road across the open country between the sea and the mountains. When the road was near to the mountains (it goes through a gap between them), it came under trees. There was a steep, high bank on the right, on which grew tall trees—some of them beeches, with moss, small plants and fallen leaves below them. On the left the ground went down steeply, covered with a tangle of trees and bushes, to a small river, which ran hidden. The trees arched over the road. The sunlight fell between the leaves in bright patches among shadows. I was aware of a tall fairy standing rather high up on the bank above the road, beside a tree. He was not looking at me but was looking out across the road towards the trees that grew down to the river. I remained there for some time. When I went on, I felt entirely happy and at peace, and extraordinarily light and untiring. I walked a long way. During the return, when I passed the same place, the later sunlight, more golden, came between the branches on the bank and on the tree’s stem. It was warm and peaceful, but this time I was not aware of anyone there. All the way home, going and returning, and throughout that evening, I did not feel tired; and the happiness remained.

  “Near a place in Wiltshire, where I lived for some time, a lane leads from a bridge over a small river, across low, flat ground, then curves uphill. One can turn off through a field to woods. By the lower, flat part of the lane are hedges and under them low banks covered with small plants, and in winter with fallen leaves, tall trees, chiefly ash, grow beside the lane. One day, on a cloudy, late afternoon, I was passing there, as I often did, and I became aware of several fairies, or elves, rather small, on the bank below the hedge at one side. They seemed friendly, and it was as if they smiled. On many other days or evenings during the years 1949 and 1950, I was aware of them. At first it was late summer; the trees and banks were deep green. Later, in autumn, the nearly bare hedges became dark and the leaves were fallen and brown. The presence of the elves made a secret, friendly feeling there.

  “In Monmouthshire, near the Breconshire border, a path leads along the lower part of a rounded hill, and bends towards a small valley between this hill and the next. (These are foothills of a higher mountain, and from here the top of the mountain behind shows above the small valley’s gap.) There are some small trees (elm, thorn, hazel) on the lower side of the path. One looks past these trees, south-westwards and west across a wide valley, and from here one can watch part of the sunset sky, or see the clouds travelling up with the southwest wind from beyond the farther mountains. Sometimes when I have passed this place, I have been strongly aware of a tall fairy standing beside these trees, which are just below the path. His back was to them and sometimes he had laid one hand on a branch. Sometimes he was looking towards me, and more often out over the slope below. When I first had this experience, it was an afternoon in late summer, but I have had it since at many different times of year: in mild, cloudy evenings in autumn, with a wind blowing along the wide valley beyond; and in very early spring, in the first mild days, with grey clouds moving slowly, the hillsides still grey, grey-brown, and the bare woods dark. The upper part of the rounded hill above the place mentioned in my previous account is partly covered by oak woods. I have sometimes felt the presence of fairies there. This was a more generalised yet a definite feeling that there were many of them. I have had this experience when looking into the wood from one side, rather high on the hill, in summer. Green bracken, not very tall, was growing under the green-leaved oaks; the afternoon sun shone gently in, here and there. Also I have felt many fairies there sometimes in autumn on a cloudy evening, when I was looking, from below, up at the edge of the wood; up the slope of bracken, which had died down, and dark gorse-bushes and grey-green turf; dry leaves clinging still to the oak-trees.

  “In Monmouthshire, not very far from the scenes mentioned in the two previous accounts but in the flatter country a little way from the mountains, there is a small triangle of a wood at the point of a field. Along one side of this runs a large road; on another is a side road, which leaves the larger one at a sharp angle; at the third side spreads the field. As one walks along the large road, one sees into the wood; in some places there are very small paths leading away among the undergrowth.

  “I was passing there one day and was aware of a fairy standing on one of the small paths. I had the impression he was two or three feet high. This experience was in the summer, 1952 or later, and all about where the fairy stood was green. On other days and at other seasons, I have sometimes been aware of the fairy people there, one of them being the same man fairy as at first, while some of the others seemed to be girl fairies. And once when I was sad, I felt their presence, and I became much happier, and reassured.

  “In Surrey, near a London suburb, there is a brook with steep, high banks. Thorn trees grow thickly on both sides, and some larger trees, oaks, and others, in some places arching over the brook. Bushes grow all along the farther bank; on the nearer side, along which leads a path, they are in groups, with gaps between. One can see across, and can see the brook below, shadowed. When I was walking there in June, many years ago, I was aware of a fairy on the farther bank, among or behind the flowers of a hemlock-like plant that rose bright from light green sprays under the dark bushes, above the dark running brook. This was a lady fairy, and she seemed not very tall; about two feet high, I would say.

  “One year I was in Switzerland, in the Canton de Vaud. It was summer, and I was walking along a zigzag road up a very steep mountain-side, above a place, which I knew well. The road in this part led between fir woods; the sunlight where it came through was very bright on the road; under the firs the shadows were very dark. During part of the way, above me on my right, there was a steep bank up to the fir trees. Some wild martagon lilies, of lilac-rose colour, grew at the edge of the trees above, partly in shadow and partly leaning out into the sunlight. I was aware of a fairy standing there, just within the trees. This was a man fairy. I think that he would have appeared to me as if slender, dark, and perhaps about four feet high.”

  Chapter 6: Fairies of Iona and Fairies Seen by Gypsies

  Mrs. Pauline McKay, of Glasgow, described Iona as “an unforgettable little island vibrating with spiritual power and beauty.” She had most of her fairy visions while visiting Iona, and any clear fairy or gnome forms which she had seen usually came when she was resting with her eyes shut. On one occasion, while in her favourite bay on the Isle, she saw the expanse of sand there and a little man sitting right in the centre with his knees drawn up to his chin. He was wearing a white, tight-fitting suit and a tall scarlet hat, which was rounded at the top like a mushroom, and all round him tiny bright lights were dancing. He was looking in the direction of the sea. Many of Mrs. McKay’s experiences came to her before sleep, and the first was a vision of a tiny fairy with violet-coloured wings attached to a minute body. The effect was as though the little creature were made of violet-coloured light. I will quote the other entries as they were given to me, from her diary:

  “January 3. 1953. I saw a large green and gold wing like that of an enormous butterfly. It had a pulsating and radiant quality and I felt it belonged to one of the lesser Devas.

  “March 12. A cherubic face in the centre of a daffodil, with the corolla making a frame round it.

  “July 6. A little elf-like figure, wearing a white suit and green cap, sitting on a toadstool and watching me intently.

  “October 16. A fairy or small angelic form with very blonde hair and two small white wings.

  “October 28. A large fairy for
m all made of light, wearing a little Juliet cap. She shone with a star-like effect.

  “November 6. An elf with very large ears.

  “December 9. A small fairy form in the centre of a brilliant flash of light.

  “December 14. A fairy with a light band round her head, a star above her brow, and smaller stars encircling the band. Also gnomes sliding down things shaped like ? [Apparently MJ could not read the words here; she placed a question mark.] I could see their little homes, resembling apples with apertures cut in them, and tiny windows.

  “January 22, 1954. I saw light whirling and cherubic forms drawn into it, shaping the mass of light into small clouds.

  “April 25. A Devic-looking Being in intense coloured light—a small sweet face beneath a head-dress of shining threads of light, which vibrated continually. A halo of spring green and sunset pink all round the face and headdress.

  “April 30, 1955. A pixie wearing a pointed hat, sitting on the steps outside a closed house-door. He was dressed all in green.

  “November 13. A tiny man standing on the bench in our garden shed. Very large eyes. Dressed like a human. Head and face very large in comparison to body.”

  In August 1956, Mrs. McKay wrote to me from Iona: “The little folk abound here, no matter where one looks they flash by in great numbers.” Later she told me: “If I am allowed to sit quietly, long enough to stare at one group of them, their vibration seemed [sic] to become slower and they would glide and swoop rather than flash by. They never took form though, but remained as points of intense light. Occasionally a soft pink glow would appear among them, as though a member of a higher order of beings was trying to manifest.” In August 1957, the weather was wet and misty while Mrs. McKay was staying on Iona, but she said, “The mist has its compensations though, for apart from the feeling of remoteness it brings, the Little Folk seem to shine more clearly against a pearl-grey background… In no previous year have they been so abundant… Everywhere I turn my eyes I see bright little lights hovering, leaping or flying, and small clouds of soft colour, mostly pink and yellow or gold.”

  Another contributor, Mrs. Ellen Hilton, was also able to see the wonderful fairy lights on Iona.

  Miss Margaret Tait of South Shields, County Durham, had already visited the island for a day with a party of other tourists, but their chatter “struck a discord” and, feeling strangely attracted and attuned to the sacred atmosphere of the place, she longed to return there alone on some future occasion. This she was able to do in the 1920s, and she set out across the machair to visit the Atlantic side of the island. The sky was blue, the air was warm, and there was a breeze playing around. As she sauntered along, she rejoiced in her freedom, the quietude, the beauty of the little iridescent pools of water among the green grass, the feeling of space around, and a sense of being cared for, as though a beneficent being was showering blessings on her. She reached the shore—to her right, white-sanded with pulverized little white shells; to her left, rocky. She stood at the water’s edge among the rocks until the fresh sea-air soaked into her and the rhythm of the waves bemused her. Then, turning, she wandered up and down the stony beach looking for anything of interest among the greenish-brown, rocky debris. After picking up a lovely specimen of a “mermaid’s purse” tinted in rich olive-green, she began thinking of lunch, and stepped back on to the green sward, still looking down. She had not gone many steps when she saw gazing shyly up at her a little fairy not more than ten inches high, with a broad forehead, brown eyes, and a pointed chin. Her dress, of a soft pink silk-like substance, hung in folds to the ground, where it appeared to be caught. Miss Tait smiled at her and said softly and playfully, “What! You here?” The fairy kept her eyes on her and smiled back very demurely. Delighted with her “find,” Miss Tait straightened up and looked around but could see nobody. When she directed her gaze downwards again, the fairy had vanished. Later, she bought a guidebook and discovered that the spot where she saw the fairy was only a little distance from the Sithean Mor, or Great Fairy Mound, of which she had not heard until then. This mound was formerly known as Cnoc an Angael (Hill of the Angels), the traditional site of St. Columba’s tryst with the angels. The author and folklorist Alasdair Alpin MacGregor said there were natives and visitors alike who swore to having heard fairy music issuing from that mound: and the Yorkshire writer and poet Dorothy Una Ratcliffe also informed me that the Fairy Piper had been heard by many people on Iona.

  I cannot mention Iona without referring to the Lordly Ones, otherwise known as the Sidhe (Shee), or Tuatha de Danann who dwell in the hills. They are a radiant, God-like race, eternally young, and Miss Lucy H. M. Bruce, a well-known folklorist on Iona, believed that they belong to an earlier world period than ours, and are not, properly speaking, sylphs, as their bodies are not formed of one element only. “How beautiful they are, the Lordly Ones,” wrote Fiona MacLeod (William Sharp) in his well-known Fairy Song set to music by Rutland Boughton in The Immortal Hour. George Russell (AE) told in his book The Candle of Vision (Macmillan & Co. Ltd, London, 1920) how one of the Lordly Ones passed over him as he lay on the sand dunes by the Western sea. First he heard music, and then he saw this flowing figure pervaded with light as if sunfire ran through its limbs. Over its brows was a fiery plumage like wings of flame, and on its face was an ecstasy of beauty and immortal youth.

  In 1941, there was held at the Scottish National Gallery an exhibition of paintings, including those of fairies and other little etheric creatures, by the distinguished Edinburgh artist John Duncan, R.S.A., who for nearly 40 years was a member of the Theosophical Society. Charles Richard Gammen, F.R.S.A., said in a letter in 1952: “I knew Duncan very well. He was, perhaps, the only mystic painter Scotland ever had, the Scottish Blake. He was also a poet, a scholar, a man of singularly gentle and wise spirit, and a close friend of Fiona MacLeod during that poet’s last years. The faerie folk Duncan saw in the islands were not only the Little People but the Lordly Ones.” Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, who also knew John Duncan, told me that the painter first went to Iona for a brief holiday but stayed for months, coming more and more under the enchantment of that sacred Isle. While walking alone one day, he had noticed two figures—tall and of strange aspect, descending a hillock in his direction. Their feet did not bend the thick heather over which they walked, and they made no sound as they passed close to him and then “faded out.” From that moment he knew that he was fey. Subsequently he saw other members of the Sidhe on Iona, and always obliquely (out of the corner of his eye). “He had so much experience of Faerie and the Lordly Ones there,” said Alasdair, “that he found himself losing touch entirely with the earth and his own earthly existence. So, in the end, he thought it wiser to tear himself away from that mystical, haunted Isle.”

  In the springtime, the Lordly Ones have been glimpsed by Mrs. Nancy Norris: in 1939, in beech-wood clearings in Chiltern Hills districts; near the Tor at Glastonbury in 1939 and 1940; in woods at Clyffe Pypard (six miles from Avebury) from 1941 at intervals until 1945; and at Holford Glen, Quantock Hills, in 1954. “I have to say ‘glimpsed’ when I see these Lordly Ones,” she explained. “They don’t remain long. To me, in appearance they are as made of shining gold-white light. They are very tall and have elongated faces, hands, and limbs. They are quite impersonal, but they bring with them a sensation of tingling excitement. In fact, for a moment one experiences a breathtaking realisation of a lifeforce lived on another plane. Even as I write these words, I have that faintly tingling sensation up and down my spine. I don’t think it is very difficult for me to contact them. I’m possessed of a quite unfailing energy, the kind that one associates with the Lordly Ones—and I can go on and on without food or sleep… I’m usually surrounded by children, who seem to think I’m their age. I seem to have a magnetic power over animals. Also I have green fingers. Apart from these things, I’m an ordinary, intelligent, practical, normal person. But I must admit that at times I feel as if I had possibly strayed into a sphere of manifestation to which I do not ri
ghtly belong… My maternal great-grandfather was Capt. Marryat, R.N., of Peter Simple fame, and Florence Marryat was my great-aunt. Both had recognised psychic faculties, which I have no doubt inherited.”

  Sometimes the Lordly Ones assume strange shapes, and Mrs. Norah Hanbury-Kelk saw them in another guise in 1907, when she was picnicking with a party of friends on a hill above one of the lakes at Glendalough, County Wicklow. She was eighteen at the time, and although partly Irish she had never been in Ireland before. The party was very gay and noisy, and she said she was in anything but a mystical state of mind when she saw, moving along the road by the side of the lake, what appeared to be columns of dust about three feet in height, and in motion they seemed to take on a spiral shape. She admitted she was rather puzzled when she came on to the road and found it was not at all dusty, but even then she did not realize she had witnessed anything supernatural. Not, that is, until later, when her cousin, unknown to her, wrote about her experience to W. B. Yeats, and he was very interested and replied that she had certainly seen the Sidhe. “I knew nothing of the fairies of Ireland,” she asserts, “and had never heard of the Sidhe. I think I have seen them again, in Galway, but the experience was not nearly as vivid as on the occasion at Glendalough.”

  Fairies Seen by Gypsies

  In the old days, when the nomadic Gypsies slept in primitive tents in wild, unspoilt surroundings, their close contact with Nature and with the magnetic currents of the earth developed in them an independent form of clairvoyance. They took the Little People for granted, but were reluctant to speak of them in case it brought them ill luck. According to Smart & Crofton’s Dialect of the English Gypsies (Asher & Co., London, 1875), the “deep Romanes contained no word for ‘fairies,’ so the Gypsies coined the phrase ‘Mi-Dooveleski-bitta-folki’ which meant ‘My God’s Little People.’” The old clairvoyance still lingers in some of the descendants of the true Gypsies, and here is an account of fairies, which my contributor, Miss Doris G. Stephens, of South Wales, obtained from a Romany friend. It was printed as a letter in Vol. 24 (Third Series) of The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (Liverpool University), and I received permission to quote it in full: