“I am 50, sane, healthy, and have never suffered from mental blackouts, aberration, hallucination, or hypnotic trance,” wrote Mrs. Edya Edwards, of London, in a letter to Woman in 1950. She then told of the day she was using a hand sewing-machine, the wooden lid of which lay beside it on the kitchen table. As she turned the handle at full speed, she saw out of the corner of her eye a little man sitting on the machine cover. He could have been no more than eighteen inches high, and wore a tight-fitting green coat, black tights, and tiny boots of soft, dull black–something like suede.” The needle holder seemed to fascinate him as it bobbed up and down, and as he stared at it his head was nodding, too. Mrs. Edwards didn’t know why she wasn’t paralysed with astonishment, but she slowed the machine down very gently, at the same time turning her head towards the manikin. As the machine stopped, the little man also turned his head and looked straight at her. Their gaze met, and he instantly disappeared, but not before she had seen that his eyes were tawny gold. “To my dying day I shall know that the little people exist,” she concluded, and in a letter to me some time later she said she would always regard that incident “as one of the most vivid experiences of her life.”
Miss M. Gentle, of Watford Way, Hendon, was amazed to hear of a similar experience to her own, for she, too, had seen a gnome on her sewing machine, intently watching the needle going up and down. “Personally,” she said, “I was too ashamed to tell anyone, except my lifelong friend, about the little gnome, as they would promptly ask me ‘How many did you have?’ I am a perfectly practical-minded business woman, not given to seeing things in any shape or form.”
Another account came from Mrs. Dora Dunn of Bradley, Derbyshire, who saw an elf sitting cross-legged on an old sewing machine that she had been using at the rectory where she used to live. The little creature, she estimated, would be about six inches high if standing, and as far as she could remember it was dressed in red and green.
And here is yet another account, this time from Mrs. Lily McKenzie, of Glasgow, who awoke about 5 o’clock one November morning to see two pixies about 24 inches high, sitting cross-legged on top of a sewing machine that stood near the window of her bedroom. “I could not believe my eyes,” she said, “for they were dressed in what looked like an imitation of the same brown fur fabric out of which I was making a coat at the time, and some of which was lying on a chair in the room. They were also wearing hats of it and seemed very pleased with themselves.”
In 1952, Miss Avril Walford-Headen, of Liverpool, sent a letter to Woman describing how her mother, on going into the kitchen one night to fetch their pet dog, saw a quaint little creature of “the tubby sort” sitting “cross-legged in a perky fashion” on the stove. “He was dressed in a yellow suit with three little black buttons down the front, and he had an orange collar and a yellow cap with orange piping.” Her mother blinked in surprise, and when she looked again he had disappeared, but afterwards she saw him several times when she was alone, on the stairs or the landing.
In the kitchen of her previous house in Fleet, Hampshire, about the year 1927, Mrs. Esme Fielding was leaning against a table facing an old-fashioned range four feet away. It was the kind that had an oven each side, one of which she kept hot for cooking, while the other was always cool, with its door generally open about eight inches because the gardener used to put in it some wood to dry, which he had picked up in a copse behind the house and chopped up for kindling. A few hundred yards from the house was some rough land, part of which consisted of trees and wild rhododendrons; the other part was used as a golf course. Mrs. Fielding said that the last thing she was thinking about was pixies, when partly out through the open door of the “wood oven” came a little brown man about a foot high, and then, on seeing her, back he went into it. “That’s the only way I can describe him,” she said, “and that was the end of it! Could he really have been a brownie who had come in with the wood?”
Mrs. Evelyn Paxton used to have in her house in Washington, USA, a little fellow named Isadore, who wore a yellow shirt and green tights, and lived on a shelf where some Quimper dishes rested, behind the sugar bowl. “His shoes and his nose turned up,” she said, “and his hair was black. He was small, but his size seemed to change with his interests. He loved machinery—sewing machines, washing machines, dishwashers, and automobile motors. He deserted us to go with a railroad engineer who came to the house one day, and he’s probably riding the rails at this moment. There were also small groups of fairies, some blue-toned, some gossamy-white. They loved the barns, the garden, the children, and the cat, and swooped everywhere, riding in the cart and on hummingbirds’ backs. They also played tricks, like snatching a needle and thread, making it invisible, then dangling it in the air in front of one’s nose. They left when the children were grown. “Sometimes I can feel fairies around my place now, and sense their singing; but they play no tricks, and are different from the earlier fairy folk.”
Miss Upton, of Nottingham, told me of an unusual experience that she had when engaged as private secretary to the female director of a local firm. Her employer was in the middle of dictating letters when she was called away for a few minutes and, to pass the time until her return, Miss Upton sat gazing idly at a picture that hung on the wall. It was a painting of a country scene, and depicted quaint cottages against which some of the village folk were standing. As she looked at it, she was amazed to see tiny figures dressed like the villagers, step out of the picture and walk along the frame—some balancing like tightrope walkers, and others executing a series of delightful gymnastics. She watched breathlessly, and she told me she kept blinking her eyes to make sure she wasn’t dreaming and that it was not an optical illusion. Then, much to her disappointment, the office door opened abruptly and her employer hurried back into the room, whereupon all the figures vanished instantly.
On being asked what was the matter, as she looked so shaken, Miss Upton described what had happened and ended lamely: “I don’t suppose you’ll believe me.”
“Oh, but I do,” came the unexpected reply, “because I myself have had a similar experience!”
In the case of an artist, one sometimes hears the expression “He put his whole soul into his work,” and this is very apt, for much of his creative energy goes into and remains with his paintings, and the nature spirits are able to utilize this astral and mental matter for their own enjoyment. Miss Upton, being in a subjective state, had apparently “tuned in” to the pictures radiations, in the same way as her employer must have done. Maybe this explains a strange thing which occurred when a visitor came to our house with an Afghan hound. When it entered the room, it caught sight of a picture that hangs on the wall above the settee. It is an original oil painting of a river with a path at the side, on which a fisherman and his dog are walking. The dog is no more than half an inch in height, but the keen-sighted Afghan had apparently seen it. He dashed to the settee, stood on his hind legs and, resting his paws on the settee-back, gazed intently at the picture for several minutes, as though fascinated. Was he seeing the life in that dog as the artist must have seen it?
On many occasions when they were being interviewed on the radio, novelists and playwrights have admitted that their characters have somehow “got out of hand” and seem to develop wills of their own and behave in ways that are quite different from those that were originally intended. The Rt. Rev. Bishop Leadbeater said in his before-mentioned book The Hidden Side of Things that nature spirits can ensoul the strong thought-forms created by an author and enact scenes of their own; and in the second volume of Spiritual Unfoldment (The White Eagle Publishing Trust, Hampshire, UK) White Eagle wrote: “I would add that fairies love to work with an author, and will often stimulate his imagination with fantastic ideas and plots.”
It is well-known that Robert Louis Stevenson, while in the dream state, received constant help with the plots of his stories from what he called his “Brownies” and his “Little People”—though perhaps he gave them these appellations without being a
ware of their true nature, for he asked: “Who are the Little People?” It is certainly true that we leave something of ourselves wherever we go, with whomever we meet, and on whatever we gaze, and there is constant reaction and interaction between these elemental beings and us.
Chapter 15: Fairy Music and Fairies Dancing to Music
It is said that the elusive strains of fairy and elfin music are fragmentary echoes of the Celestial Song, and Byron had a similar thought in his Don Juan, XV when he wrote:
There’s music in the sighing of a reed;
There’s music in the gushing of a rill;
There’s music in, all things if men had ears;
Their earth is but an echo of spheres.
In her lovely book Rediscovering the Angels, Flower A. Newhouse said “The tiniest elemental moving among the grasses in the fields, or lowly wild flowers, sends out a miniature ‘lariat‘ which circles the grass blades or plant shoot he concentrates upon, filling it with two or three tones of pulsating colour. Moreover, all the while this display of colour-changing continues, a soft humming of the Song of Creation attends the workers.”
In the summer of 1936, while holidaying at Sheringham, Norfolk, I had a vivid “dream” in which I walked through some woods with my sister and saw a brown pixie peeping at me from a tree branch. The next day my sister and I went to Pretty Corner, where I sat playing for a while on a homemade bamboo pipe—there being no one else about at the time. We walked home through the woods at twilight, and just as we passed a group of trees I heard music coming from one of them. The tune was repeated many times, like the pealing of tiny bells, or notes played on a miniature harp. I went right up to the tree and peered through its branches, for, although the light was fading, I could still see clearly enough to convince myself that no human being was hiding there. Neither could I see the fairy musician, probably the pixie of my “dream.” Although the music seemed at first to come from the tree, it did not stay there, but rose and fell and swayed over the treetops. It continued for some time, but my sister, who was usually able to share these experiences, could not hear it. I tried to remember the notes by writing them down there and then, in Tonic Sol Fah, and later I sent the fragment to Dr. Thomas Wood, Mus.D., who had heard fairy music on Dartmoor, and he put it in correct musical notation for me. Of course, it would be impossible to say it is exactly the same as the original, but it is as near as anyone could get from memory. Just before the Second World War, I went for a weekend to Lunds in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, and it was there I heard the wild, haunting singing of the undines in a waterfall. The notes were high and plaintive, and rose in scale beyond my range of hearing. The sound was so alluring that I was filled with a strange longing.
Miss Stella Watson often heard minute, bell-like notes in her lakeside garden in Surrey, and also near the house. She described the music as being like that played on tiny handbells, or which might result from striking fine wineglasses with a glass rod—very clear and sweet. “The sounds come in groups,” she said, “and seem to be now ahead of me, then to the side, and then behind, and so on, as if it was a tiny band going in circles.”
When the husband of Mrs. A.R. Hastings was a young man, he lived for a while with a family in Cork. One day, when lying in a peaceful field in the sunshine, he heard the most delightful tinkling music “like tiny bells.” On his return he asked the family what it could have been, and they were greatly thrilled that he, they stated, had undoubtedly been singled out to be able to tune in to the music of the Little People.
This type of music seems popular with the fairies, for at break of day on a summer morning in the year 1905, Miss Edith Hudson, of Warwick, was awakened by “the dulcet sound of tiny bells.” She looked at her watch and said to herself, “Bells at 3 o’clock in the morning?” She arose and went to her window, which was about fifteen feet above ground level, and the music sounded louder as she drew nearer to the open air. For as long as ten minutes it continued, and during that time the bells seemed to pass and repass close to her face. Then gradually the sound receded into the distance as though minute hands were ringing the bells as the ringers continued their journey through space. Miss Hudson was living at that time in a house in the Market Square, Warwick, with a friend to whom she related her experience. “My friend promptly declared I was dreaming,” said Miss Hudson, “but I told her that was impossible as I’d walked to the window and the music had continued. Then she asked me, ‘Could it have been a wind-harp?’ and she described that instrument, but I replied ‘No, these were definitely bells,’ so she had to admit: ‘They must have been fairy bells that you were privileged to hear.’ Both of us taught music, so we were all the more interested in the experience. The sound of those tiny bells ringing out their sweet music will never be effaced from my memory.”
The well-known writer Mr. S. P. B. Mais also heard fairy bells, very sweet and low, at the furthest point of Dig, above the Atlantic; and Dr. Walter Starkie, C.B.E., Litt. D., who, at the time of writing to me was the British Council’s Representative in Spain, said he had heard fairy music in Kerry, where his mother came from, and also in West Cork.
I was told by Mrs. Iris Ratsey that on one occasion she and her (then) small son listened on Midsummer Eve to fairy music at a ford, which led to the house where Rudyard Kipling wrote his Puck of Pook’s Hill, and the ford is mentioned in that book.
Miss Edith M. Atkinson gave me the interesting information that her Welsh grandfather, the late James Bilsland Hughes (Iago Bencerdd), the harpist whose history is to be found in Robert Griffith’s book Llyfr Cerdd Dannau, once stated that he had heard and written down some fairy music.
Another music lover was Mrs. Marguerite Connelly, who received inspiration from some fairy music that she heard. Many years before her marriage, she was a student in a class for Music, Art and Drama in Harrogate, and at the end of term she was chosen for the part of Melisanda in Maeterlinck’s “Polleas and Melisanda,” which was to be acted to a select audience. The book she studied had words but no music, and in the mornings she used to walk alone in a beautiful valley to learn her part. It was there that the music for the verses that she had to sing came to her “out of the blue,” and received much appreciation when subsequently rendered by her, but unfortunately no recording was made. She asserted that she was not a clever musician, had never composed anything, and knew of no music for the part at the time.
Fairy music, “like tiny flutes being played,” was heard by Mr. Wm. Spiers in the woods between Farnham and Lion Lane when, at the age of twelve, he was lying there “feeling at peace with all the world.. He said it sounded in the air all around him, and although he never saw the fairies he felt their presence very strongly.
The folklorist, Miss Lucy H.M. Bruce, of Iona, told me that an artist, walking along the north shore of the island, heard fairy music and said it was like a miniature orchestra in which he could distinguish several different instruments. Miss Bruce also met a woman who had heard fairy music in a hill in Ireland and said that it was far more beautiful than any earthly music.
In the 1930s, when living in Edinburgh where he was studying science, Valentine Rippon, M.A. Oxf., went on a coach tour through the Highlands. At the halt for the midday meal he escaped from the crowd and went alone up a hillside to eat his sandwiches and fruit. The air was very still, and he was sitting enjoying the sunshine and the countryside when suddenly he heard music. It sounded sweet and happy, but lasted only a few moments, stopping as suddenly as it had started. At that time, when science was all in all to him, he tried to explain away the occurrence by thinking that a puff of wind had brought the music, though he had to confess to himself that he hadn’t noticed any breeze, and that he had, during those few minutes, “sensed a presence.” The music had also brought a feeling of joy, which persisted for the rest of the homeward journey, and since then, whenever he thinks of it, he experiences the same feeling of happiness. Perhaps it is as well to remind young readers that in the 1930s the sound would not have come fro
m a transistor radio.
The same applies to this account, for it was in 1933 that Miss Lucy Walpole and her sister had a little house built at Ufford, in Suffolk. At that time Ufford was a lovely village in a setting of tall trees and green water-meadows, with a stream running through. The house stood on a hill overlooking this valley, and part of the hill was called on old maps “Fiery Mount” which, Miss Walpole was told, was probably a corruption of “Fairy Mount.” The whole place had an almost magical feeling of peace and quiet. One summer soon after they came to live there, Miss Walpole’s sister heard on several occasions the sound, as if in the far distance, of a simple little tune being played, and it was she said, like the plucking of the strings of a tiny harp or other stringed instrument. As it was always very early in the morning when this occurred, Miss Walpole told her sister to come to her bedroom and waken her the next time she heard it, so that she could go back with her and listen at the open window which faced the “Fiery Mount.” This she did, and both of them heard the little tune of about six notes, repeated many times. The two sisters were never able to think of any sound like it that human beings would make in such rural surroundings at such a time—about dawn—and they always spoke of it to each other as “the fairy music,” for after that one summer they never heard it again.
About the year 1938, Mrs. T. Hanley and her husband were being driven in a car over the Denbigh moors by a friend to have supper with him and his wife, who was a Welsh novelist. The friend stopped the car on a high bit of the moorland road so that they could look back at the magnificent sunset, and they all got out to stretch their legs. The evening was deathly still, without a breath of wind, and to Mrs. Hanley’s surprise she could distinctly hear music, although there was nothing in sight to cause it. She thought at first it might be a wireless from somebody’s house, but one could literally see for miles in all directions and there was certainly no house in sight. Then she wondered if it might be an unusually musical telegraph wire but there was none, and her husband and friend, when questioned, said they couldn’t hear anything like music. Indeed, both of them remarked on the extraordinary silence of the moor. She asked the friend, who knew the place well, if there were any houses near, though she hadn’t seen any and he said he didn’t think there was one within a radius of five or six miles. The music was “lovely and mysterious,” consisting of long, dreamy chords—a sort of singing, but not vocal. It was a composite sound like an orchestra, and might have had flutes, violins, and horns, though it would be difficult to say what the instruments were, or to make out any particular tune or air, and when she tried consciously to concentrate on the music it faded slowly until she could hear it no more. They continued on their journey and eventually arrived at the friend’s house, where they met his wife, and told her that Mrs. Hanley had heard music on the moors. They described whereabouts they had stopped the car, whereupon his wife exclaimed, “Oh, that’s odd. There is a field there, where, tradition has it, the shepherds used to go to listen to music. It was fairy music, they said.”
Seeing Fairies Page 39