Fairies

by Morgan Daimler

  Means of identifying a suspected changeling often involve tricking it into revealing itself. This may be done through careful observation, such as the story of the mother who noted that when she was with her child the baby would cry ceaselessly, but when alone in her room the baby would fall silent and the mother outside the room could hear music (Lysaght, 1991). A Scottish story along similar lines involved a changeling infant who was seen playing straw like bagpipes, or in a variant was seen playing a reed for other fairies to dance to (Bruford, 1991; Evans-Wentz, 1911). In older folklore a variety of tricks are suggested including boiling water in an eggshell, which in the tales will cause the changeling to sit up and declare that as ancient as it is, it has never seen such a thing before; a regional variant involves disposing of ashes in an eggshell (Bruford, 1991). A family could also seek out the advice of a wise person or fairy doctor to assess the suspected changeling and confirm or deny its fairy-nature. Generally if the presence of a changeling was confirmed every attempt was then made to regain the human child; only in very rare cases was the family advised to treat the changeling well and accept it in their family, with the idea that treating it well would earn good treatment for their own child in Fairy (Briggs, 1976).

  Because the fear of changelings, and more generally of losing a person to the Good People, was so pervasive there were many protections against it and methods of getting a person back. Looking at protections first we see an array of options, beginning with prohibitions against verbally complementing an infant, lest the words attract the fairies’ attention and increase the chance of the child being taken. Although in some contexts red was seen to be a Fairy color it was also used as a protection against fairies, something we see more generally in the use of red thread (with rowan); there is at least some anecdotal evidence of the use of red flannel pinned to children’s clothes as a way to keep them from being taken (Lysaght, 1991). In Wales early baptism was common because of the belief that a Christian baptism would protect an infant from being taken (Gwyndaf; 1991). So widespread that they might be termed ubiquitous were beliefs in the power of iron (or steel) to protect babies and particularly of keeping scissors, a knife, a fire poker, or tongs over or near the cradle. Other commonly found protections include burning leather in the room, keeping bread nearby, fire, silver, giving the woman and child milk from a cow that had eaten the herb mothan, and being carefully and perpetually watched (Skelbred, 1991; Evans-Wentz, 1911). In many stories it was a moment’s inattention or an adult falling asleep that allowed the changeling swap to happen, compounded by a lack of any other protections in place.

  I will warn the reader before we get into this section that, as Bridget Cleary’s story illustrated, often the means of forcing a changeling to leave were brutal and could be fatal to the person on the receiving end. There were just as many methods of forcing a changeling to leave as there were protections against them because the belief was that once the changeling was forced to leave, the human child or bride would return. To force a changeling to leave usually involved threatening or harming them, most commonly with iron or fire. In Bridget Cleary’s case she was forced to drink an herbal concoction, doused in urine, and jabbed repeatedly with a hot iron poker, as well as having a priest come in and say mass over her; after several days of this she was set on fire and eventually died of her burns (Giolláin, 1991). A piece of iron might be thrown at the changeling, or in one of the more benign rituals salt could be placed on a shovel blade, marked with a cross and heated in a fire, with a window left open near the changeling (Gwyndaf, 1991). The changeling might be beaten, pelted with refuse and animal dung, or starved in order to force its own people to take it back, with the idea that only this cruel treatment could motivate the changeling’s biological parents to return the human child to spare their own offspring (Skelbred, 1991). Fire often played a significant role in these rituals, with some involving the changeling being thrown into a fire or placed on an object that had been heated in a fire (Briggs, 1976). Another ritual to force a changeling to leave involved taking it to a river and bathing it three times in the water, and related practices involved leaving the infant or child at the edge of a body of water – a liminal space – so that the fairies would take it back and return the mortal child; a less kind version involved throwing the changeling into a river (Silver, 1999; Evans-Wentz, 1911). In cases where the changeling left and the human did not return, or the changeling had already died naturally, attempts could be made to force the return of the human captive by burning grass or trees on the nearest fairy hill (Briggs, 1976).

  Changelings are found across Celtic folklore and stories of changelings exist in both folklore and more recent anecdotes. The idea that sometimes the Other Crowd take people and that those people may be saved and returned to the human community with effort or may instead be lost forever to their own kind is a pervasive one. Ultimately the fairies may take people to increase their own numbers or to diversify their own gene pool, to possess the beauty of a particular person or for darker reasons, but the folklore is clear that they take people usually with the intent of keeping them. Those who are rescued or otherwise returned are usually permanently altered by their time among the Good People and most often the hard evidence we have shows that attempts to get people back and force assumed-changelings out results in the death of the changeling.

  Fairy Familiars

  The familiar spirit, often simply called the familiar, is one of the most well known companions of the classical witch. When most people think of the traditional witch’s familiar they automatically imagine a demonic one; However, there is a long history of fairies taking the role of the familiar spirit with some witches in Europe, just as some witches met not with the Devil, but with the Queen of Elfland. In these cases the fairies seem to have been less like servitors, as some classic familiars may appear, and more like advisers who aid the witch by giving them knowledge and acting as a go-between for them with the world of Fairy.

  There is a great deal of fluidity in the terms used here and what a clergyman might call a demon or devil, the accused witch in turn would call instead a fairy or even an angel. For example Andro Man, a witch tried in Scotland in the 16th century, said that his familiar was an angel who ‘favours the Queen of Elfland’4 (Wilby, 2005). In Eastern Europe there was a concept of witches or healing women having either good or evil spirits who aided them (Pocs, 1999). In some views what differentiated the familiar as either a fairy or a demon, as either a ‘good’ spirit or an ‘evil’ one, was the actions of the human being and the use they put the knowledge they gained from the spirit. This reflects a deep-seated conflation of Elves, fairies, and demons that existed, particularly in England, and shows a striking similarity in the supernatural afflictions caused by and magical cures used against both groups (Hall, 2007). This gives us not only a blurry line between fairies and demons as familiars, but also shows us that there was truly no hard and fast line nor rigid definition separating the two types of spirits in common understanding.

  Fairies as familiars are associated with both witches and cunningfolk, that is with both those who used magic for personal reasons and those who used it in service to the community. How a person was defined, like the term used for the familiar itself, was often fluid and could change or be multifaceted, so that one person’s witch was another person’s cunningperson or seer, and so on. Robert Kirk mentions such fairy familiars being attached to the Scottish Seers who he describes as predominantly male (Wilby, 2005). In later periods such familiars came to be more associated with women, even perhaps finding echoes in the more modern Leannán Sí who guide and give knowledge to the Bean Feasa, but several older accounts claim the fairy familiar as the province of men (O Crualaoich, 2003; Davies, 2003). It may be best to say that fairy familiars were not segregated by the gender of the practitioner, but that both men and women might have them.

  Fairy familiars could take the form of animals, particularly dogs, but just as often appeared as ordinary looking people. They
were notable only for how very unremarkable they were, looking little different than the common people around them; although they did sometimes wear the fairy color of green they were also noted to wear all black or all white (Wilby, 2005). In some cases, like the fairy who was seen helping a Bean Feasa in Ireland as she gathered herbs, other people besides the witch themselves saw the fairy (O Crualaoich, 2003). It should also be noted that they were clearly visible to the witch as tangible presences, not as dreams or see-through illusions (Wilby, 2005). While modern people may tend to relegate the familiar to the mental realm of guided meditations or spiritual journeys, historically they were real-world manifestations that were seen, heard, and spoken to in the waking world. The reality of the fairy and encountering of the fairy familiar in daily life and while the witch was awake is noted in multiple sources (Wilby, 2005; Davies, 2003).

  These fairy familiars were acquired in one of two ways, either met apparently by chance while the person was engaged in some mundane activity or else given to them intentionally as a kind of gift (Wilby, 2005). In several cases of accused witches in Scotland, the witch claimed the Queen of Fairy herself gave them their fairy familiars, while in others it was passed on to them by a family member or other human being. The ones who were assigned by the Queen of Fairy seemed to act in particular as a go-between connecting the witch to Fairyland, relaying messages, and bringing the witch to Fairy to see the Queen at specific times. Those who found the fairy familiar coming to them spontaneously were in times of crisis, in great need due to illness, poverty, or other desperate situations, and would be offered help by the fairy in exchange for listening to the fairy’s advice or agreeing to their terms (Wilby, 2005). Once the witch agreed to what the fairy asked or did as the fairy suggested they might continue to deal with that same familiar spirit for a short time or for years (Wilby, 2005). The relationship between the witch and the fairy familiar varied widely from person to person, based on accounts that survived, mostly in witch trials, and could be either formal or more intimate.

  The main help fairy familiars offered to those they were attached to came in the form of giving knowledge, both predicting events and teaching the person cures to treat illness (Wilby, 2005). Cunningfolk in particular made their careers through the knowledge of healing gained this way and the ability to cure any person who came to them with their familiar’s help. These spirits acted as givers of healing knowledge and as guardians for the witch, and in some cases granted the witch special powers of foresight or second sight directly (Pocs, 1999; Davies, 2003). They would accompany the witch when they went to meet other witches, traveled to see the Fairy Queen – and indeed would advise the witch there on proper behavior, such as kneeling – and when they went to the infamous witches’ sabbath (Wilby, 2005; Davies, 2003). This is a marked difference from the role the demonic familiar played in other, particularly continental, lore, where it might be sent out to do the witch’s bidding by directly affecting people. The fairy familiar, in contrast, did not generally work the witch’s will that way, but rather improved their life by passing information to them and offering them advice and protection.

  Having a fairy familiar was not an entirely positive experience, however. Many of the witches and cunningfolk who spoke of such spirits mentioned times were they were frightened by them, even knowing that the fairy meant them no harm, one witch even going so far as to say that when confronted once unexpectedly by her familiar she fell to the ground in a fit (Wilby, 2005). There were also a variety of taboos that existed around such familiar spirits, often extensions of similar taboos seen throughout fairylore. For example, it was considered unwise to speak of one’s fairy familiar or to tell others of the things one’s familiar did to help. In the trial records, many witches initially denied having such familiars and only admitted it later under hard questioning, fearing breaking this taboo (Wilby, 2005).

  The idea of the witch’s familiar is a classic one and one that most people have some awareness of; usually the image people immediately think of is the demonic familiar spirit; however, historically the fairy familiar was just as present. There were some key differences between demonic and fairy familiars, the most important perhaps being who the spirit answered to – Devil or Fairy Queen – and the fact that the demonic familiar usually required a ceremony to call it forth while the fairy familiar was noted to appear at its own will, often to the surprise of the witch. Additionally the manner in which the spirit aided the witch also differed significantly between the two types. In other ways, however, it seemed that the difference between the two types of spirits was a semantic one, depending on the opinion of the person describing it as well as the actions and reputation of the person who it was attached to. In modern understanding it is the demonic familiar spirit that has come to be the main one we remember, but we would do well to consider the significance and folklore of the fairy familiar as well.

  End Notes

  1. Although it should be remembered from our earlier discussion of the two courts that nothing with Fairy is ever that cut-and-dried and there are always exceptions to every rule.

  2. In different versions the girl was either thought to be dead, missing, or known to be taken by fairies. In all versions the midwife later sees the husband at a fair and he puts out her eye when he realizes she can see him.

  3. Oh Janet, really? Seems like the sort of question you might have wanted to ask a smidge earlier, if it mattered. Like before you lifted your skirt.

  4. The quote in Scots is: ‘swyis to the Queue of Elphen.’

  Chapter 8

  Fairies in the Modern World

  The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

  Eden Phillpotts

  There are those who believe that the fairies have left this world, perhaps after the fashion of Tolkien’s Elves in his books, leaving behind our mortal Earth forever. This idea is reinforced by poems such as Corbet’s 16th century Farewell, Rewards, and Fairies, which proclaimed the fairies all dead and the land utterly changed by Christianity so that there was no more room for the enchantment of the fey. Knowing that the author was a bishop may perhaps explain his particular view on the subject, but it is certainly a sentiment shared by people down to the modern day. A 19th century Scottish account told of a boy who saw a cavalcade of fairies and boldly asked them where they were going, to which one stopped and replied that they would never again be seen in Scotland (Briggs, 1976). There have been other such accounts in poetry and folklore, and I myself have heard people say that the Good People have been driven out of this world long ago and can be found here no longer. However, as Katherine Briggs says: ‘Yet, however often they may be reported as gone, the fairies still linger.’ (Briggs, 1976, p 96)

  For others the fairies haven’t left this world, but have been driven away into the far wilderness or else shun human habitations. From this viewpoint the fairies have become reclusive and impossible to find. People seeking the spirits of the Otherworld often ask how find them to connect to them, where to go – as if those spirits weren’t all around them, everywhere, even in people’s homes and in our very modern cities. The idea of house fairies, of fairies’ dependence on humans in different ways, of fairies as powerful and frightening beings, has eroded until all that is left is a post-modern understanding of Themselves as ephemeral nature spirits. There is a lack of engagement with the enchantment of the world that hides the presence of the spirits all around us, effectively blinding us to what is still all around. Because I don’t think that it’s the world that’s less enchanted, or the fairies who have gone anywhere, so much as that people have lost the desire or will to be aware of what’s around them.

  People slowly stopped seeing what’s there because many people have stopped allowing themselves to embrace the moments of true joy or to feel the moments of atavistic fear that exist in our world separate from humanity. People seek the middle road and reject what W. B. Yeats called the ‘unmixed emotions’ of the Gentry, or of childre
n, and in doing so I think people lose that sense of wonder and enchantment. To reclaim it we have to be willing to experience life, to embrace the moments of enchantment when we find them – and once we know them perhaps we can learn how to make them for ourselves. To believe in fairies in the modern world we have to be willing to believe that magic and enchantment still exist, and can still be engaged with. We have to be open to experiences and possibilities instead of immediately seeking to rationalize and explain away anything and everything that is unusual or uncanny.