Another account confirming the existence of these gnomes was given to me many years ago by Mrs. C. George, of Stapleford, Notts. As long ago as the year 1900, she was passing Wollaton Park Gates when she saw some “little men” dressed like policemen, standing just inside the lodge entrance. “They were smiling and looking very happy,” she said. “They hadn’t any wings, and as far as I can remember they were between two and three feet in height.” She also recalled that fairies had been seen dancing around the lake in the park.
It has been shown in two of the three previous Wollaton accounts how nature spirits love to imitate the human activities and styles of dress, which appeal to them. Some of the fashions adopted by them may go back many centuries, like the medieval “two-steepled” headdress I saw on a fairy who was proudly tending a purple hyacinth in a pot on a friend’s mantelpiece. (Incidentally, the house stood on ground which once had been the Thorny Wood part of the ancient Sherwood Forest.) When this flower fairy noticed that I was admiring her plant, she flashed me a radiant smile. The intense joy on her face as she absorbed the vital lifeforce from the atmosphere and imparted it to the hyacinth was wonderful to see, and I was able to experience some of her exaltation. My host was beginning to tell me that he, too, could “see something,” but his wife pooh-poohed the idea and said it was his imagination, so he became silent!
The following is “a true account of a happy and wholly unexpected incident,” which happened to L. A. Bardsley, of Cheshire, when, at the age of seven, she spent a holiday at the home of her grandmother in the summer of 1909. “The house was in the small village of Bridgemont, near Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire. It had a flagged backyard, which sloped steeply, and a long, low flat-topped stonewall about a foot wide enclosed it, separating it from the rest of the garden. This long wall formed a narrow platform, which was ideal for us children to play upon, and I frequently enjoyed running and dancing along its top. The drop from the wall on the garden side was steep and rather dangerous, but playing on it was always fascinating because of the element of risk. A false step would certainly have resulted in serious and sudden disaster. On this particular warm summer afternoon the sun was shining brilliantly, making the whole wide surroundings show up very clearly, and I had the whole wall to myself. My grandmother was inside the house, though within calling distance. Having climbed on the top of the wall, I started to dance along its smooth, well-worn surface, and somehow I became suddenly filled with an enhanced sense of well being—a state of sheer joy in being alive. I felt the sun’s warmth in the stones beneath my feet, and the peace and beauty of the garden below me. I was completely suffused with a sense of heightened consciousness for I felt so fully at one with myself and all my surroundings. This stopped my game of running along the wall, and I stood still, gazing beyond the garden to the quiet, green countryside. Then suddenly, to my great surprise and delight, I saw a truly amazing sight, for there, in one of the nearby fields, was a number of miniature horses harnessed to tiny open trotting-traps racing circularly round the edge of the field—quite a dozen or more of them. In each trap a little gnome was seated, grasping the glossy reins in one hand and holding a whip upright in the other. They were all beautifully dressed, some in bright green jackets, others in scarlet, and all with hats to match, and wearing high black boots, which shone in the sunlight like patent leather. They wore gauntlet gloves, and all seemed very pleased with themselves and proud of their appearance. They continued racing excitedly round and round the field, keenly competing against each other. I could clearly see their little faces, which were perfectly formed, with rosy complexions and high cheekbones. They were so intent on the game, and so serious about winning, that they were quite unaware of my near presence. The horses were lovely, and well-groomed, with shining harnesses and equipages; some were chestnut, others darker, but all trying their hardest to win, and very responsive to the commands of their masters who were seated behind them. I could see quite plainly the golden colour and light build of the traps as they passed and re-passed each other, and even the ripple of muscles of the horses’ flanks as they moved their legs and hooves to and fro. The race became increasingly fast and furious; the gnomes were filled with glee and excitement, and horses and riders alike were intent on winning. The whole field was bathed in brilliant sunlight, making it look greener than the other surrounding fields, and I stood rooted to the spot, watching and enjoying the lovely, amazing spectacle for quite some time, absolutely spellbound. At last the fascination of the whole scene became so intense that I couldn’t stand the sight of it any longer by myself, so I called out to my grandmother in the kitchen to ‘Come quickly, come quickly’ to share my pleasure. Alas, I immediately regretted calling her and somehow realized I should not have done so, because as she came outside and moved towards me, grumbling because of her ‘rheumatics’ and the insistence of my voice, which had made her leave her chair, to find out what was amiss, I felt an increasing diminution of consciousness. Then, as she got nearer to me, her proximity began to blot out my vision, for she was what one would term an ‘earthy-earthy’ woman, and when she reached me the whole scene vanished completely and I could see nothing but the empty green field. My grandmother, of course, scolded me for disturbing her ‘for no reason at all,’ telling me brusquely there was ‘absolutely nothing there.’ At that time I had never even heard of Trotting Races, and I had no previous knowledge of fairies or little men, therefore, I certainly could not have been recollectingly thinking of such things, and there was nothing to lead up to the phenomenon. One moment there was nothing, and the next moment the vision was there, vividly and instantaneously before my eyes. Although but a child at the time, and with no knowledge of clairvoyance and such-like things, I inwardly knew that what I had witnessed was a case of second sight, and also why it was that my grandmother’s aura would, and did, blot out my vision.
“After her derisive outburst, I kept the secret to myself until I was grown-up. Then, one day, I recounted the happening to my aunt (her daughter), and she, to my surprise, said: ‘Why, that is the very field my father used to tell me about when I was a girl, and how they used to hold Trotting Competitions there, and all the sports-loving men came from miles around to take part in them. But those things died out many years ago and have never been revived since.’ So evidently the little gnomes were imitating the old races they had seen held there year after year in times past, and on that particular afternoon I must have become en rapport with them owing to my enhanced state of consciousness. Even today, I can still vividly recall and relive the sudden mood of joy that I experienced as I witnessed that entrancing scene. It must have been an exact replica of a human Trotting Race, except that everything was on a diminished scale of about a quarter the normal size, with every detail standing out perfectly.”
Miss G. R. Nicholson had been living in her house in Leicester for only three months when she had what to her was a unique experience. On this particular day she was feeling “very calm and happy,” and was looking out of her window at her small strip of garden, thinking how fortunate she was to have a garden and a little home of her own again, after having been in rooms for several years. It was then that she saw on a primrose leaf a figure like Sir Walter Raleigh in miniature, wearing knee breeches, short brown jacket, and brown hat. She was amazed, and even more so when she saw on another primrose leaf further along the garden a tiny figure resembling Shakespeare. “I looked, and looked, in astonishment,” she said, “and then they disappeared—but I felt so wonderful and light as air afterwards.” It is possible that these quaintly dressed little men, who reminded Miss Nicholson of two famous characters of a bygone period, were Brownies, for, according to the seer Geoffrey Hodson, whole tribes of earth nature-spirits are to be found in England wearing an Elizabethan style of male attire.
Mrs. G. Graddol, whose account of a poppy fairy appears in an earlier section of this book, saw in a park about nine miles from Pendleton a round-faced, inquisitive-eyed creature appear between the forked branc
h of a tree, gaze at her quizzically for a moment, and then vanish. He seemed about four inches in height and his appearance was unusual, for he wore the peaked cap and uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, complete with gold braid trimmings! This fairy gave her the same feeling of happiness, which she had when she saw the poppy fairy. She had gone to both places as a very sad woman and had come away feeling “on top of the world.”
One of the most intriguing and hard-to-believe experiences that I had was of seeing in a rose a fairy wearing a nun’s wimple in white. I am not a Roman Catholic, and at that time we had no television set and I did not always bother with the radio, so I did not know until I read about it in the newspaper that a Pope had been crowned in Rome. Even if I had known and then forgotten, I would never have conceived the idea of a rose fairy wearing a nun’s headdress. Nature spirits can go anywhere in the wink of an eye, so had this fairy been to Rome and seen a nun in a white wimple in the crowd? Had she witnessed the ceremony on a neighbour’s television set? Or had she seen it in the Reflecting Ether, which is not the real Memory of Nature like the Akashic Records (the “Book of Life” in the Christian Bible), but it reflects rather blurred pictures of all past and passing events, and can be viewed by the nature spirits. It is an interesting thought.
Chapter 9: Animals and Fairies, and Fairies Enlisting the Help of Human Beings
Many dogs, cats, and horses are psychic and are aware of the fairy folk, but they react to their presence in different ways, just as children do. Some animals seem really afraid of them, while others are friendly towards them. A friend of Mrs. Joan Rasmussen, of Queensland, recounted in a letter to her dated 18 September 1956, his first experience with fairies, which concerned his horse, and I am very grateful to both of them for allowing me to quote in full, as follows:
“I lived then in Queensland, and one of my favourite pastimes was to ride quietly through the bush in the moonlight. Though I owned many horses, I invariably chose a thoroughbred named Penelo on these occasions, because he somehow understood and shared my contemplative delight in the soft beauty and peace about us. One night we entered an almost circular clearing among the trees where the moonlight seemed to have a remarkable yellow-ivory brilliance. Penelo stopped, and I dismounted and sat on the ground, then decided to stretch out on it for a time in sheer enjoyment of the stillness. A while later, I noticed Penelo’s ears point forward, and then he stood taut and motionless, clearly interested in something near the trees. I wondered what it was—perhaps a possum, wallaby, or snake—so I turned cautiously on to my side to look, and was intrigued to see several very diminutive elfin-like figures moving in excited conference at the edge of the moonlit circle. Then I caught the faint sound of their high-pitched, rather tinkling voices. The pitch was far too high for me to distinguish all their words, but the trend was obvious. Finally they overcame their doubts and advanced. Penelo nuzzled me and then resumed his alert stand. Silent now, they halted about four feet away to inspect me. My attire, particularly the boots, interested them intensely, and amused them. They vied with each other to point out something about me. It was at this stage I smiled. They noticed it, and their voices tinkled again in rapid exclamation. One felt my boot, then all closely examined the fabric of my clothes with their fingers. Slowly I advanced a hand, whereupon one of them—dressed as a forester might have been over a hundred years ago and thus distinctive from the others whose attire was more gossamer—felt my wrist and tried to move it. Another, with beautiful golden hair, had come round behind me. Suddenly she leaned over my shoulder, placed her head against the side of mine in a delightful, friendly way, and tried to speak to me. On a subsequent occasion I gathered that her name was Valerie, or one that sounded very like it. A noteworthy aspect was their playfulness. I saw one try to tickle Penelo’s foreleg with a long piece of grass, and all that happened was the arching down of the horse’s neck to watch proceedings. A few minutes later, at a signal, they left us. That was my introduction to fairies.
“I was able to go there again two nights later, and after a while they came, making me aware of their presence by tickling me about the head with grass, from behind my back. I have always wondered whether Penelo saw them just as I did; or was he merely aware of their voices, or instinctively conscious of something unusual at that spot? It was interesting that, given free rein, he invariably made for that particular place if it were a similar moonlight night, but not otherwise.”
The Derbyshire poet, Miss Teresa Hooley, wrote in 1958 that her Southern Irish ancestors would cry shame on her if she said she did not believe in the Little People. “I have never seen one of them,” she admitted, “but I’ve been very near them. There is a little patch of green woodland in an almost deserted wee lane in Somerset, and always whenever I took my terrier there he would dash madly round in circles, wildly elicited and happy—always in the same place! I am sure they were there, and that my dog was playing with them.”
In 1942, Mrs. E. M. Tampin, of New Malden, Surrey, was evacuated to North Devon. With her two children—one aged five and the other a baby of eight months in a pram—she was returning one evening in May to her billet at Chilsworthy after visiting a lady at Halsworthy with whom she had become friendly. At the bottom of a steep hill was a small river or stream, over which was a little bridge, and as she climbed down the hill to approach it she noticed a pony trap coming down a hill on the other side. When the pony reached the bridge, it stopped dead in its tracks, and although the old man in the trap tried his hardest to make the pony go on it was useless. By this time, Mrs. Tampin was nearing the bridge from the other side, but when she was about 100 yards away she, too, stopped for no reason. Darkness was falling, and on turning her face to the right she saw a line of little lights about a foot from the ground, moving slowly up the hill on the same side as the pony and trap. Then she looked down the road and saw that the end of the line was just going across it and through the hedge. There seemed to be hundreds of little lights, and it took a long time for them to go by. As soon as they had passed, the pony started off again, and Mrs. Tampin, too, felt she could go on. “The old man stopped and told me not to tell anyone what I had seen, or the little people would make things uneasy for me,” she said. “I was not scared, but I didn’t say anything about them all the time I was in Devon. I kept thinking of them for ages afterwards, but couldn’t get myself to go down there again in the evening.”
Mr. E. M. Armytage, of Ludham, Great Yarmouth, could not say that he believed in fairies or that he had ever given the subject serious thought, but he admitted that there is much that we humans do not know, and his reaction to the following experience was not one of surprise. Rather did he accept the vision as a matter of course. About 6:30 on the evening of Tuesday, 11 January 1955, he was sitting in an armchair with his dog, Bruce, at his feet. He was reading the paper, but put it down to look at whatever it was that had made Bruce sit up and watch the floor in a friendly, quizzical way. And this is what he saw: about a yard away, between him and the brick fireplace, were the shadows of several little feet moving very quickly, almost dancing, backwards and forwards in a straight line across the tiled floor. “I thought it was mice,” he said, “but there were no bodies and no substance.”
The “leprechaun” which Miss Bryant saw was, she declared, “a vague and momentary thing.” She was grown-up then, and was living in a house which stood on ground that had once been a very old wood. The roots of the trees had branched out again, so where it was not cultivated it was very thick, and many rare birds used to nest there. She was wandering with an old retriever when suddenly he stiffened and stopped dead. Glancing in the direction in which the dog was looking, she saw a queer little face peering at them. They all stared at each other for a matter of seconds, and then the little figure disappeared. He would be no less than a foot high and seemed to be covered in something tight, of a light green colour. She saw no wings. When the creature vanished, her dog was frightened and wouldn’t move forward. Nor would he go into the wood for s
ome time afterwards. She doesn’t know why she said to herself, “Oh, I have seen a leprechaun at last,” nor why she should see one in Northumberland “for,” she thought, “surely they are Irish!”
Mrs. Esme Swainson, of Batheaston, Bath, once saw the fairy group who gather sun-force round the apples to help them ripen when the weather has been unfavourable. These beings appear like bright points in a ball of silvery mist. She was fortunate in having lived with a friend who had always seen fairies. “Only a few years ago,” she said, “he saw them on the lawn—just beyond where we were having tea—playing what he called ‘ring-a-roses.’” They were quite small and had wings. She recalled the time she lived at Harborne, Birmingham, and had musical weekends—she playing the violin and the piano. On one of these weekends, they had been playing a lot of Mozart. There were just three people left in the room and Mrs. Swainson’s black cat, who they always felt was psychic. This animal started to behave in a very queer way, first watching something dancing about on the piano (a baby grand), then something flying about the room and evidently touching the cat’s nose every now and then. Mrs. Swainson asked her friend to turn on his “sight,” and he said there was a green nature-spirit about twelve inches high, dancing about on the piano and having a game with the cat. After this, she often saw the game going on in the garden, though she could not see the fairy.
Our first cocker spaniel, Peter—the friend and defender of wild birds and field mice—seemed to enjoy being teased and played with by the fairies. He would twist and turn in all directions as his eyes followed their flight into the air around him and down again, and his face would assume the most ludicrous expression when they tweaked one of his long ears, pulling his head down on one side. He was a very portly dog, and sometimes, when he seemed to be trying to dance with them on the lawn, it was a sight to behold.
Seeing Fairies Page 31
