Fairies

by Morgan Daimler

  Some people wander Fairy unwittingly while some go there intentionally. Others are taken by a member of Fairy either permanently as a spouse or servant, or else for a set temporary period, often as a servant. In the second case the person is usually returned to mortal Earth after either a year or seven years, although occasionally other periods of time are noted (Briggs, 1976). There are usually specific prohibitions relating to Fairy if one wants to return to mortal Earth again. The most common one is that you cannot eat or drink any food while there or you will be bound to stay forever. In the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer we see a different version, where Thomas must remain completely silent, or else he will be trapped forever in Fairy. In a story from Ireland of an abducted child, the fairies were not able to keep him because he had a blackberry thorn under one fingernail (Ballard, 1991). They had a prohibition on them that they must remove all Earthly things from him within three days or return him (Ballard, 1991). They took his clothes and, as the story goes, washed him thoroughly, but they were unaware of the small thorn’s presence, and so when the three days were up had no choice but to bring him back. Ballard suggests that this was a symbolic removal of the boy’s humanity, which the fairies had three days to complete, and because they could not remove everything – could not effectively remove all traces of mortal Earth and make the boy one of themselves – they had no choice but to return him. Excluding Thomas the Rhymer, where it seems Thomas was an exception based on the terms under which he was taken into Fairy by the Queen, the overall pattern involves changing the person or binding them to Fairy. This can be done by removing all external traces of mortal Earth – and one might assume, after three days, all internal traces as well through the normal natural processes – or by having the person internalize Fairy itself by eating or drinking a substance from it, which we may suppose contains its essence3.

  Rescue from Fairy

  There is a long tradition of people being rescued from Fairyland by those still on mortal Earth. Yeats relates a story of a policeman who rescued a girl who’d been taken, by burning all the ragwort in a field associated with the fairies. The Rev. Robert Kirk, author of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, was said to have been taken by the fairies and later to have appeared to a friend and said he would be seen in church on a certain day and, if his friend acted, he could be freed (Bennett, 1991). His friend failed to take the proper action at the appointed time, and Kirk was never seen again. In the ballad of Tam Lin Janet rescues Tam Lin by pulling him off a fairy horse as the Fairy Rade passes by and holding him without faltering when the Fairy Queen transforms him into a variety of fearsome things. In the ballad The Faerie Oak of Corriewater a sister tries to save her brother in a similar manner, but when he is turned in her arms to fire she panics and is killed by the flames. There were also means of freeing people from the Slua Sidhe by tossing items in the air including gloves or a knife and yelling: ‘This is yours that is mine.’ When we study the stories we find three main patterns emerging: gaining the return of people by threatening something the fairies value, rescue by passing trials to free them, or exchanging something else for the person. Each of these three methods has its own risks, and none comes with guarantees. Usually threatening something the fairies value means being willing to destroy those things normally held sacred by the fairies, including their trees and hills. The trials one must undergo vary, but may mean holding onto a person while they seem to change into frightening things, or sometimes finding a specific weapon and using it to kill or destroy someone or something. In the ballad Childe Rowland, for example, the protagonist must take a sword and travel to the castle where his sister is being held, beheading anyone who speaks to him; when he reaches the castle his sister greets him and he sadly kills her, only to find out that it was just a test and she is still alive. His older brothers had failed to save her and had fallen into an enchanted sleep because they could not bring themselves to kill her when she spoke.

  To Stay or Go

  Even those who go willingly to Fairy must adhere to specific prohibitions to stay there. In a tale from Pembrokeshire, a young man taken into Fairy after joining a fairy dance lived there happily for years, under the single prohibition that he not drink from a fountain in the center of a garden. When he finally did so he was immediately returned to mortal Earth, where he realized only a few minutes had passed (Briggs, 1976). In another story, this one from Cornwall, a girl who was brought to Fairy to act as a governess for a little boy broke a prohibition put on her not to touch her eyes with the ointment she put on the child’s eyes, and when she is found out she was cast out for it (Briggs, 1976). The Fey Folk seem swift to punish even those who they have adopted as their own, when those people break rules set upon them.

  Those who succeed in returning from Fairy rarely come back unchanged. Thomas served the Fairy Queen for seven years and was rewarded with the gift of prophecy, but also an inability to speak anything but the truth; both a blessing and a curse. In one tale of a girl who joined the fairies in a night of dancing, she was able to escape by refusing a drink, and being given a bit of enchanted ground ivy as a charm, but was warned that when she heard the fairy music again and danced she would be taken into Fairy forever (Briggs, 1976). The threat to take her back when she heard the music a second time is unusual, as in most cases once a person is freed from Fairy, willingly or not, they are not taken back again. Some people who were saved from Fairy or otherwise returned from it died shortly afterwards, pining away for the Otherworld, as in the story of a man rescued from a fairy ring who could not reconcile his night dancing with the year that had passed for everyone in his town (Briggs, 1978). Others were haunted by their experiences and were described by one source as pale, thin, and with unsteady eyes (Firth-Green, 2016). More often though those who returned after too much time had passed would simply crumble to dust as the years they had missed on mortal Earth seemed to overcome them on their return.

  The Scottish witches who owed loyalty to the Fairy Queen claimed during their trials that they would be taken to Fairy to see the Queen or otherwise do business with the fairies, and their repeated travel between worlds did not seem to harm them. This may perhaps be because they had a guide bringing them and returning them. In Irish tradition there were and are those who regularly visit Fairyland and they are also thought to be slightly odd or unlike other people. I have heard it called being ‘touched by the fairies’, ‘off with the fairies’ or ‘away with the fairies’, which are also euphemisms for being eccentric or slightly mad. Fairy leaves its mark on a person and going to the place changes something deep inside them, whether the visit is temporary or permanent.

  End Notes

  1. Some mortals, such as the witches who claimed to have gone to Fairy and met the Fairy Queen or otherwise mingled with the fairy folk there regularly traversed back and forth. However, they also had the help of either a particular fairy guiding them, or were there at the Queen’s bequest and one assumes under her power. There are some other exceptions to the distortion of time, and people who are able to travel safely back and forth. Overall, it should be understood that a distortion of time is a serious concern and should not be dismissed lightly.

  2. It is certainly interesting that we see the white horse as a repeating motif in these journeys; Thomas the Rhymer is also brought to Fairy on a white horse, and we see white horses elsewhere appearing as significant.

  3. This theory seems quite solid, as it also works in reverse in stories. Not, as it happens, on fairy brides who come to Earth under strict conditions and usually bound by having a literal piece of themselves – such as the Selkie’s seal skin – held captive. No we see it in stories like that of the Green Children (see Katherine Briggs entry under that heading in her 1976 Dictionary of Fairies) where beings of Fairy have all that makes them fey stripped away, are fed mortal food and clothed in mortal clothes, are baptized, and eventually lose their Otherworldly essence and become mortal entirely. From this we may deduce that it is the process
of eliminating the essence of one world and inculcating the substance of the other into a being that in effect makes that being either fairy or mortal.

  Chapter 2

  Basic Facts about Fairies

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

  Shakespeare, Hamlet

  We use the term fairies very loosely to describe all inhabitants of the Otherworld as well as some spirits tied more closely to our world, but there are some general things that can be said about them. We will be looking at common questions asked relating to fairies and looking to the general patterns we see in folklore for answers; as always there will likely be exceptions to any rule when it comes to the members of Fairy. However, this chapter will give a person a good idea of the basics before the book gets into the more detailed aspects of fairies and looks at some specific types and common interactions.

  Do Fairies Have Physical Forms?

  Among some people in modern belief, fairies are often assumed to be entirely insubstantial; that is they are described in the same terms as ghosts or other incorporeal spirits and are said to have no physical forms that can be touched or interacted with. This view has become so widespread in some groups that the idea of fairies having any physicality is considered ludicrous, and yet a brief look at folklore shows that in Celtic cultures historically, as well as other cultures such as the Norse, these spirits were always assumed to have a physical form that could be interacted with. A quick survey of a variety of stories in folklore provides evidence of fairies acting in very physical manners, but also being compared to formless things like the wind – so which is it?

  Now I’ll start by saying there are some understandable reasons why people tend to go with the insubstantial view. Firstly fairies are usually invisible to humans (unless they choose otherwise or the humans have some special ability or talisman) and this invisibility naturally lends itself to an assumption of a lack of substance. Yeats recounts a tale of a group of the Other Crowd who wanted to play a game of hurling, but were unable to touch the ball until they found a human to play the game with them; many people tend to interpret this as necessary to give them solid form in our world (Yeats, 1893). It’s also true that one of the better known historic texts on Elves and fairies, the Rev. Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Faires refers to the Good People as having bodies that were like a ‘condensed cloud’, ‘congealed air’, and compares them to astral forms (Kirk, 1691). They were generally believed to be able to either become invisible to mortal eyes or to become insubstantial entirely and pass through solid matter (Firth-Green, 2016). This certainly paints a picture of a being without physical form. Many types of fairies, including the Slua Sí and the Wild Hunt are also described as traveling through the air, a feat that is easier to reconcile if they are assumed to be intangible.

  However, that being said, even Kirk goes on to discuss a variety of things that are done by the Good People of a very physical nature. He mentions them using solid weapons, for example, and that they steal nursing mothers to wet-nurse fairy babies, these women being physically removed and sometimes returned unharmed years later. People who are taken and returned relate stories of living among the fairies, which involve activities much like those found among humans including spinning, sewing, cleaning, and cooking. Similarly we see many Welsh tales of the Fair Family in which they are physically interacting with people, often by kidnapping women, children, or babies (Sikes, 1881). In one notable tale a boy who was taken by the fairies steals a golden ball from them and finds his way back out of Fairyland to make a gift of the ball to his mother (Sikes, 1881). It is quite clear in that story that the boy is acting in a physical way with the fairies – such as playing with the King’s son – and that the golden ball is tangible and exists as something that humans can touch and take. Ballads like Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer also offer examples of people interacting in very physical ways with the Good Folk, as do the myriad tales of Selkie wives. W. B. Yeats related a story of a woman whose mother had a friend among the Good People who similarly could be substantial and gave the woman one day an herb for protection; this was passed to her from the fairy woman’s own hand (Yeats, 1893). In the ballad of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight the eponymous protagonist Lady Isabel lulls the Elven knight who means to murder her to sleep and then ties his hands and kills him with his own dagger, proving both his physicality and mortality1.

  Perhaps the best answer to this question can be gained by looking at the Norse and Germanic evidence. Here we see that Elves are considered both insubstantial and also able to take physical form. Grimm relates a story of an Elf-maid who entered a house like smoke through a knothole, then married the son of the family, bore him four children, only to eventually leave the same way she had entered (Grimm, 1883). He also states that Elves are strongly connected to butterflies because both are ‘the product of repeated changes of form’ (Grimm, 1883, p 462). In this way then it is not a matter of Elves and fairies either being insubstantial or having form, but rather a matter of them being both, or at least able to be one or the other. This can be a difficult concept to grasp, but another valuable lesson if you want to deal with fairies is to work to let go of an either/or mindset and instead embrace the idea of multiple possibilities even when those possibilities seem to be contradictory.

  In Celtic lore fairies are known to both shape-shift as well as use a type of magic called glamour to deceive the eyes of those looking at them. Glamour is used not only to obscure the fairy’s own appearance, but also to make other objects look different than they actually are, so that a handful of leaves may look like gold or a dank cave may seem like a palace. In the ballad of Tam Lin the Fairy Queen uses her magic to make Tam Lin appear as several frightening things in the arms of his lover Janet, including a burning brand (Acland, 1997). Beyond magical manipulation of the viewer, fairies are also often said to be able to change their shapes in truth, so that the Púca, for example can fly through the air as an eagle, or run across the land as a horse or goat, or appear as a small wizened man.

  Ultimately folklore shows us stories of fairies that are shadowy and can pass through the physical substance of our world as well as stories where they are as solid and able to affect our world as we are. In some cases the choice between forms seems to be theirs, in others, such as Yeats’ hurling tale, there appears to be a more formal set of rules in play. In the end it would seem that it is true that fairies are both insubstantial and tangible, and that we should not assume they are limited to either.

  What do Fairies Eat?

  Like everything else to do with Themselves there’s actually no one simple answer and it depends a lot on what sort of fairy we’re talking about. There’s also been a lot of speculation, even going back to the 17th century and the writings of the Rev. Kirk, that fairies may not eat our solid food at all, but rather absorb the essence of the food, what Kirk called the ‘foyson’, Campbell called the ‘toradh2’, or Evans-Wentz called the quintessence. It was for this reason that food offered to the fairies, or which it was believed they had consumed the essence of, was not considered fit for human consumption nor even for animals to eat (Evans-Wentz, 1911). Again, though, this may be something that is true of some types, while others do literally consume the item itself. Without getting into what may be traditionally offered to fairies, but only looking at what folklore tells us they are known to consume, here are some general things we can say to give people an idea of what different fairies eat:

  • Some fairies eat ‘corn’ (a general term for grains), bread, and drink liquor and milk (Kirk, 1691).

  • Fairies will steal, and presumably eat, any and all human food and produce if the owner of it speaks badly about it, by taking the ‘toradh’ out of it so that it gives no value to the humans (Campbell, 1900).

  • Fairies are known to take the ‘substance’ from such crops as turnips and grain, and will take butter if they can (Evans-Wentz, 1911). T
hey will also steal quality food from the hearth that is cooking, such as meat or vegetables, leaving behind something wasted or unpleasant in its place (Wilde, 1920).

  • The Corrigans and Lutins are fond of meat, especially beef, and will steal and butcher cows to prepare their own feasts (Evans-Wentz, 1911).

  • Some fairies are said to use glamour to make their food appear as delicious fare like to what humans would eat when really it is leaves, weeds, roots, and ‘stalks of heather’ (Briggs, 1976).

  • Several types of fairies, including Hags, Kelpies and Water Horses, are known to eat human flesh. Briggs mentions one such reference to a fairy court’s feast, which consisted of the prepared and cooked body of an old woman (Briggs, 1976, p 145). Similarly tales of the Hag Black Annis mention her penchant for eating children; Kelpies can trick people into riding them, tear them apart and eat them (Briggs, 1976). On a related note the Baobhan Sí drinks blood, and the welsh form of the Leanann Sí, the Lhiannan Shee, is also said by some to have a vampiric nature (Briggs, 1976).

  • It is said that some Irish fairies eat fruits, vegetables, honey, and drink milk, but do not eat meat (Lysaght, 1991).

  • The Good Neighbors of Orkney and Shetland eat oatmeal, fish, and drink milk (Bruford, 1991).

  • In Wales the fairies eat eggs, butter, and drink milk (Gwyndaf, 1991).

  • Yeats recounts a tale of one of the Gentry who passed a Halloween with a family and ate with them a meal of duck and apples, although she had only a single bite from each portion (Yeats, 1892).