Fairies

by Morgan Daimler

  The fruit itself seems to be classically taboo fairy food, utterly tempting and dangerous to eat; to eat the food of Fairy as a mortal is to be trapped in that world and lost to the mortal realm. It is a widespread belief in fairy stories, especially Irish ones, that a person should never eat the food or drink anything of Fairy, or they will be trapped there, and often a person who is tempted will be warned by another human among the Fey Folk not to take what is offered (Ballard, 2001). The danger of the fruit is demonstrated by the story within the poem of Jeanie who ate the fruit and pined away. If the food does act as other fairy food on the mortal, one may assume that, like some uses of elfshot, Jeanie may not have died in truth, but rather was taken as a changeling with the fruit binding her to Fairyland. Briggs, however, suggests that the fruit is a deadly part of a trap designed to murder the unwary (Briggs, 1976). In either case those who eat it are doomed in the sense that they are lost to mortal Earth, although it does raise the interesting question of the connection between the dead and the fey, which has always been ambiguous. The fruit may also reflect the idea of fairy glamour, where something is given the illusion of something else, in this case whatever its true nature the Goblin fruit appears to be incomparably perfect and delicious, so wonderful that after tasting it no mortal food is good enough and the person refuses to eat. It is also worth noting that Laura does not pay for the Goblin fruit with money, but with parts of herself, with her hair and with her tear, the two substances echoing the nature of the two materials – earth and water – that she stood between when she first heard the Goblins speaking. Lizzie, however, goes to the Goblins with silver to buy their fruit to take home and ultimately returns with her coin in her pocket.

  The final theme mentioned by Briggs is the rescue from Fairyland and this may be the least obvious although it is certainly present in the poem. Although Laura has not fully been taken into Fairy she is clearly under its enchantment from eating the Goblin fruit and is close to death. Usually in examples of rescue from Fairyland a person must either have a way to force the fey to release their captive or, as in the story of Tam Lin, must endure trials to earn the captive back. In this case it is through trials that the presumptive captive is freed, as well as a somewhat impossible quest being achieved. Normally once a person tastes the Goblin fruit they are no longer able to hear the Goblins, and thus can never find them to get a second taste; the first taste alone then dooms them. In this case the only way that Laura can be saved is for her sister to follow in her footsteps, to go as she did to find the Goblin Market, but instead of buying the fruit with pieces of herself in trade, Lizzie pays with silver. She resists giving in to temptation and eating the fruit, instead insisting that she must have some to bring away with her. She endures the assault of the Goblins without complaint, without running away, and without fighting back, only focusing on not allowing any of the fruit into her mouth. She retrieves her money and returns from the liminal space, like her sister no longer knowing if it was day or night. Having endured the trial she is able to administer the cure to her sister, a second taste of the Goblin fruit, which is now bitter instead of sweet, but ultimately frees Laura from the fairies’ influence.

  Goblin Market is a complex story and often overlooked in fairylore, yet it deserves a place alongside other older traditional tales. The market itself with its liminal location and constant movement, and its summer fruit at all times of year, as well as the deeper themes of buying death – or perhaps freedom from it – from the Goblins with pieces of mortality (literally pieces of the person themselves) fit in well with other traditional tales. The Goblins themselves are much like classical depictions of Bogeys or the darker sort of deformed Goblins found in some folklore. The poem can stand as a cautionary tale of dealing foolishly with the dangerous fairies, or of what happens when one gives in to obvious temptations and ignores the hidden costs. The Goblin Market, ultimately is a place where you can only buy the illusion of what you want and only sell what you should not part with.

  Fairies, Humans, and Sex

  One of the most consistent threads among the folklore, and one that I’ve touched on previously in the sections on the Leannán Sí, is also one that seems to endlessly fascinate modern people: fairies and humans as lovers. While some today like to scoff at the concept as the fodder of lascivious imaginations and trashy novels it is actually an idea that is found and reiterated in mythology and folklore as well as in anecdotes in the modern period. It was common for the Anglo-Saxon word for Elf to be glossed with Incubus, precisely because of their reputation for sexual interactions with women.

  Probably the oldest examples we have of these stories come from mythology, although I admit it gets murky to delve into this in the Irish where the Gods and the Aos Sí are often only thinly divided. We have the story of Niamh and Oisín, where Niamh is usually described as a woman of Fairy although she can equally be called a Goddess as a daughter of Manannan. Although it involves reincarnation and a Goddess reborn as a human, we also have the story of Midhir and Etain, where Etain is born as a human girl and is courted and won by the Fairy King/God Midhir. There is Áine, who we know is a Goddess, but is also a Fairy Queen, and who is the progenitor of the Fitzgeralds; she took the Earl of Desmond as her lover and gave him a son, Geirriod. In a similar vein there is the McCarthy family who are said to be descended from Cliodhna – Goddess and Fairy Queen. In the second two stories there are overtones of the sovereignty Goddess marrying a mortal lord to legitimize his rule, but in all the stories we see an Otherworldly being taking a mortal as a lover and in three of the tales having children with them. We could also add the conception of Cu Chulainn to this, although it is a bit more metaphysical in some versions, as we see Lugh – again a God and one of the Aos Sí at this point – coming to Deichtine either in reality or in a dream and fathering Cu Chulainn on her.

  Beyond the mythology we also see many examples in older folklore. There were several types of fairies specifically known for seducing mortals, including the aforementioned Leannán Sí as well as her male counterpart the Gean-cánach; these generally did so to the mortal’s ultimate detriment. However, stories of mortals having sexual relationships with fairies, often producing children, are found across fairylore and with a wide array of types of fairies including Kelpies, Selkies, Aos Sí, and Lake Maidens. In the Kelpie lore the Kelpie can be male or female and while Kelpies are more known for tricking and harming people in these cases the Kelpie falls in love with the mortal and seduces them. Sometimes the mortal awakes after a tryst and sees their sleeping lover only to notice the telltale bit of water-weed in their hair, or dripping water, or other give-away sign that reveals their nature and the mortal flees. Other times the two wed and only after a child is born does the mortal realize their spouse’s true nature and leave; although there is one iteration of the story where a male Kelpie captures and imprisons a mortal girl as his ‘wife’ and she escapes after a year, usually leaving behind a son. In the Selkies tales the male Selkie woos the mortal girl to his home under the waves, while the female is only taken as a bride to a mortal – in the stories – if her sealskin coat is taken from her. Again, however, children are the usual result of the marriage. You can see the pattern here. The Aos Sí stories appear under a variety of forms usually with the human being kidnapped or taken into Fairy, sometimes willingly sometimes not. The Lake Maidens of Wales usually are willing wives, but come with geasa, and once those taboos are broken they immediately leave, like the Selkie bride finding her sealskin, returning to the waters they came from.

  Some versions of the story of the MacLeod Fairy Flag say it was a gift to the family from a fairy lover who had born a MacLeod child. One of the most widespread stories found in fairylore across different Celtic cultures is that of the borrowed midwife who anoints the baby’s eyes and accidently touches her own, only to be granted true sight and realize that she has delivered the half-fairy child of a local girl2. This girl has been taken into Fairy as the wife of one of its inhabitants and obvio
usly just proven that humans and fairies are in fact cross-fertile. Which shouldn’t be surprising since one of the leading theories about changelings is that fairies steal people to supplement their own population, and that doesn’t entirely mean the people become fairies so much as it means the people make more fairies, as the midwife tales illustrate. The gender-flip version of this story might be the ballad of Tam Lin although Tam Lin is more properly a changeling as opposed to being a true fairy himself; in the story, however, the mortal girl, Janet, does not know that until after she’s taken him for her lover and conceived his child. Only when she goes to the well he guards to gather herbs to abort the pregnancy and Tam Lin appears to stop her does she question whether he was ever human3. Many of the Scottish witches who confessed to dealing with the fairies also admitted having sexual relations with them, as opposed to the more usual demonic intercourse other witches admitted to. At least one 19th century Bean Feasa was known to have had a fairy lover as well.

  In the book The Good People, which is an anthology of collected articles about fairies there are several discussions of more modern anecdotes. These come from interviews with people in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland conducted in the 20th century and looking at modern fairy beliefs. It is, in its own way, the next generation of Evans-Wentz’s Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries and it includes some discussion of fairy lovers and of the children born of these unions. Generally to have a fairy lover carried prohibitions (geasa), often of silence about their existence, but sometimes it might be something like not striking the spouse three times. With the Selkies, who were unwilling brides, the magical sealskin must be hidden, and in Welsh lore a fairy wife was often secured by learning her True Name, which had power over her. The children of these unions were known to be uncanny and in many stories were taken into Fairy by their Otherworldly parent; those who remained in our world generally stood out as odd or unusual in their mannerisms and preferences; like their fairy parent, they tended to behave in ways that seemed to defy human mores or etiquette as often as not. Children born with Selkie heritage were said to long for the sea and often to have webbed hands or feet, as well as dark hair and eyes.

  So, we can see that there’s a long established pattern of fairies taking human lovers. Sometimes only as lovers, sometimes as spouses, sometimes producing children, sometimes not. Usually the human half of this equation is someone who has broken social boundaries by seeking the fairies out, such as we see in stories of woman going to do their work in places known to belong to Themselves or going to wells known to be Theirs, or of people who are in a liminal state, for example about to be married. Keep in mind as well this wasn’t, for the most part, figurative or imagined – not ‘on the astral’ as some people might say – but occurred in the physical, tangible world. Other people reported seeing these beings in some cases and the resulting children were real, physical children. Usually when the person was taken into Fairy they were thought to have died, which in the parlance of Fairy means they might have actually died in our world. Give that some thought.

  Before you go rushing out to find a fairy lover of your own it is worth considering that as often as not these things end badly. And by badly I mean with the death of the mortal partner, sometimes through mischance and sometimes through violence. In other stories the mortal violates a taboo – a geis – set down by the fairy partner and loses them forever, which generally drives the mortal mad. So this whole concept is a bit more dangerous than your average Tinder hook-up, and shouldn’t be treated lightly.

  Possession by Fairies

  One aspect of fairylore that has become quite obscure today is the idea that fairies are able to possess people. However, this idea was quite common in older belief. We find it in the old Anglo-Saxon medical texts alongside the idea of demonic possession. Elves and fairies more generally were believed to cause a variety of physical maladies, and spiritual possession was included among these. In one example found in the marginalia of an Anglo-Saxon manuscript we see a scribe adding the word ‘aelfae’ (Elf) to the usual Latin prayer of exorcism giving us ‘Adiuro te satanae diabulus aelfea’ (I adjure you devil of Satan, Elf) (Jolly, 1996). The cures for these Elf-sicknesses and possessions were given along with remedies for demonic possession, seizures, and nightmares, perhaps giving us an idea of the sort of things fairy possession was associated with. Another charm found in an Anglo-Saxon Leechbook specifically calls on the Christian God and Jesus in Latin to expel attacks by Elves, which may be interpreted as an exorcism charm in context, as it is followed by a similar charm for exorcising demons (Hall, 2007).

  Evans-Wentz writes about an incident in Kilmessan of a girl who was possessed by fairies, a situation that lasted for years and became so severe that the family had the girl put away; finally she was taken to a witch in Drogheda and apparently a cure was able to be worked (Evans Wentz, 1911). The person relating the tale blamed two factors for this situation: the girl’s father ‘held communion with evil spirits’ and the family home was built partially into a fairy hill (Evans-Wents, 1911, p.34). This may indicate that one must be both open to such influence and also have violated a fairy taboo – in this case the home cutting into a fairy hill – in order for such possession to occur. Some understandings of changelings take the view that it was the spirit that had been taken, not the physical body, which for all intents and purposes results in a case of possession where the original person’s body is now inhabited by a fairy spirit (Silver, 1999).

  As with the more familiar demonic possession, fairy possession involves the person’s spirit or personality being repressed or pushed aside and the possessing spirit taking over. Often the person appears insane or has fits of madness, acting in inexplicable ways. The only option is to drive out the possessing fairy and then use a variety of protections to keep that spirit out.

  Methods to break such possessions varied, but included chants calling on higher powers as well as burning specific herbs near the person, and the Anglo-Saxon Leechbooks also recommended consuming different prepared herbal mixtures. Two herbs that are mentioned for fumigation purposes include mugwort and thyme, which would be burned near the person to drive the spirit out.

  Changelings

  The basic premise of the changeling is that it is a foreign being or object left behind in exchange for a desired human who is stolen into Fairy. In some cases the changeling was said to be one of the Good People who magically appeared to be the human, but usually acted very differently; if it was a baby who had been taken the replacement would typically be sickly, constantly hungry, and impossible to please, while an adult who was taken might display equally dramatic personality changes. A person who had previously been kind and gentle might become cross and cruel, while a child who had before been pleasant and easy tempered would suddenly be mean-spirited and demanding. In other cases the changeling might not be a living thing or spirit at all, but rather would be an object like a stick or log enchanted to look like the person, left to waste away and die while the real person lived on in Fairy. Generally this was understood as the person having been replaced by a changeling although there were some occultists during the Victorian period who came to believe that changelings actually represented a type of possession where the human would be overtaken by a fairy spirit. In 20th and 21st century anthropology, changelings are often viewed as attempts by folklore to explain medical conditions (Silver, 1999).

  The primary targets for fairy abduction were babies and brides, but especially those of great beauty and the best temperament. Physical health was usually an important factor and in at least one story a bride who was in the process of being taken is left when she sneezes, because the Fae want only those in perfect health (Lysaght, 1991). Generally speaking humans in liminal states, which included any transitions such as birth or marriage, were at risk of being taken, with babies and children up to age eight or nine being at high risk and women in childbearing years being in equal danger (Skelbred, 1991; Jenkins, 1991). Other popular targets for abduction included
new mothers who might be taken to wet-nurse fairy babies, and may or may not be kept permanently or later returned; similarly some humans such as midwives and musicians might be borrowed, but usually were returned fairly quickly and usually were not replaced with changelings. Those replaced with changelings were those who the Good Folk intended to keep, and the changeling often died or returned to Fairy at some point, leaving the human family to mourn the person they then believed to be dead.

  Why the Other Crowd take people is not entirely known, but there are many theories. Probably the most common belief is that the fairies steal people in order to supplement their own numbers (Gwyndaf, 1991). This idea usually hinges on the related belief that the Good People reproduce rarely and with difficulty and that they must therefore look to outside sources such as humans to strengthen their own population; or to be blunt they take humans to use as breeding stock. This is seen particularly in the variety of stories about stolen brides as well as stories of borrowed midwives where the midwife is taken by a fairy man to the bedside of his wife only to find herself delivering the child of a human girl she recognizes, but who everyone thought had died. Another belief was that fairy babies were unusually ugly and so fairies coveted beautiful human babies and would exchange one for the other (Skelbred, 1991). They seem to prefer people who are in some way deviant or have broken societal rules (Jenkins, 1991). This can be seen in both anecdotal evidence where people taken are usually out alone when or where they should not be or have failed to follow the usual protocol for protection, or in ballads and folktales where people are taken while in or near liminal places. On the one hand this can represent one way in which people open themselves up to being taken, but it could also represent a deeper underlying motivation, in which perhaps the people are being taken because they have some quality that the Fey Folk either admire or need more of themselves. This of course is predicated on the idea that changelings are left in place of people taken for some at least nominally positive use; however, it is worth noting that not all theories of fairy abduction are benevolent, by even the most lenient standard. If one favors the idea of the teind to Hell as an actual tithe that occurs and in which humans can be used as substitutes for fairies, then arguably people may be taken to be offered to darker spirits so that the fairies themselves may be spared (Lyle, 1970).