Fairies

by Morgan Daimler

  This chapter looks at evidence of fairies in the modern world from my own experiences, of fairies in Celtic countries and in places the populations who honor them have moved to. It discusses how and why to offer to them and ways to protect against them. It also takes a frank look at the way that popular culture has and is affecting fairylore and is shaping the beliefs as we move forward in the 21st century. For the bulk of its history the stories and anecdotes of the fairies have been passed by word of mouth, songs, and in collections of stories with a sense of genuineness and authority in their telling. But we live now in a world of social media, mass-produced fiction, and an internet reality that is shaped by anyone and everyone who chooses to add to it. The folklore and fairylore of today are quick to change and reflect new truths and new beliefs, and these too need to be understood and fit into the overall picture of what it is to believe in fairies today.

  Fairies Outside Celtic Countries

  There is an ongoing debate about the presence of Celtic fairies outside traditionally Celtic countries. Some people feel that the Aos Sí, the fairies, are limited to Ireland and historically Celtic lands, anchored to these places usually through their ties to specific geography. I can only speak here to my own experience and what I have found in studying different folklore, which is that where people from a culture go, their spirits also go.

  There are no hard-and-fast answers to this question, but as we discuss fairies in the modern world in a book aimed mostly at Celtic fairies, I think we must first address this issue of where in a wider sense one might find them. Every culture that I have studied has some beings that seem to fit the loose definition of fairies. Different cultures interact with these beings in surprisingly similar ways, including offerings and protections that are the same across continents. One school of thought on this is simply that the Otherworldly folk are the same everywhere, but appear to people in ways that those people can best understand through their own cultural filter; another view is that the spirits are influenced by the belief of the people. Personally, I tend to think that while some types of spirits are indeed sedentary, others are pulled or drawn to where the people who honor and offer to them are, so that the fairies travel as the people do.

  When the Norse settled Iceland, for example, they found Alfar and Huldufolk there just as there had been in their old home territories. The Wild Hunt is seen in American skies just as in European, although they are more commonly known as ‘Ghost Riders’ here. The areas of America heavily settled by the Irish and Scotch-Irish, like Appalachia, have local folklore that includes traditionally Irish spirits like the Banshee and Will’o’the’Wisp. In a folklore journal from 1894, we find an article about the population of an area of Massachusetts’ local belief in fairies and Pixies, the former being lucky and the latter malicious. In all these examples, the people clearly felt it perfectly natural and normal to see and experience the types of Otherworldly spirits from their homelands even in these new places.

  Local folklore in my area of southeastern New England is not devoid of fairies, and it’s clear that people here both presently and in past centuries believed the Fey Folk were around. I know of one story of a man who saw fairies in Connecticut in the late 19th century;1 he ran a small store in the west part of the state and had a reputation among the local people for seeing and speaking to the Gentry. One day he disappeared, and no one ever found out where he had gone or why, but there were those who said the fairies had taken him.

  There is also the story of the Little People’s Village in Middlebury, Connecticut, a village of tiny houses. Built about 100 years ago as part of an amusement park attraction (originally called the Fairy Village) it fell into ruin after shutting down and is now the focal point of local folklore that says the Other Crowd inhabit it and can sometimes be heard by visitors. The place is said to be a center of negative energy and the Fair Folk there are said to cause insanity to those who linger too long or offend them. There is one particular object called the ‘fairy’s throne’ and people say if you sit on it you will go mad.

  In Connecticut there is a state park, named ‘Devil’s Hopyard’, which has a certain reputation for being haunted; many of the local pagans I know have come to associate this park with the Other Crowd in particular. Why the park is named Devil’s Hopyard is unknown, but some stories say that it’s because the Devil would sit at the top of the falls and play his fiddle for the local witches to dance to. Certainly the park has a long history in local folklore of spirit activity. One old story tells of a traveler walking near the falls who saw several dark figures leaping through the trees and across the stones; the man fled and the spirits chased him until he reached the nearest town. I have been Pixy-led there with a friend, wandering for hours on a well-trodden path unable to find our goal – until we gave up and immediately arrived where we’d been trying to go the whole time. I’ve seen a water fairy there; she lives in a pool near a waterfall and dislikes people. There is also a fairy road that crosses through a section of the park, or perhaps I should say at least one fairy road that I am aware of.

  I believe that America is full of a wide variety of spirits from many cultures. I know that my grandfather when he came over from Cork never gave up the practice of pouring out a bit of his beer for the Good Neighbors whenever he drank, and even on American soil never doubted that the Good People would cause trouble if not given their due. This is a belief that has been firmly ingrained in me as well. My own experiences since childhood involved both spirits undoubtedly native to this continent as well as those that seem to have immigrated or otherwise been shaped by the beliefs of the Irish who came to this place, as well as a wide array of other cultures. America is more than just a melting pot of human cultures, but in my experience is also a melting pot of spirits, containing a wide diversity, and this diversity seems to go back hundreds of years, since foreigners first began making permanent settlements on this continent.

  Popculture, Modern Fiction, and Fairies

  Our modern understanding of fairies is in many ways a unique thing in itself and has been shaped less by traditional culture and folklore then by modern fiction and television. The effects of popculture and fiction on Fairy Faith beliefs have been profound, especially with the advent of social media, and I want to address some aspects of modern belief that are rooted in this rather than older beliefs. I think it is important for people to understand what is genuinely older folk belief and what has grown up in the past few decades as modern belief, although I’ll say up front that I doubt I can include all of the ways that modern media is influencing neopagan beliefs on this subject.

  I also want to be clear at the beginning that pointing out that something is a more modern belief is not necessarily a judgment on that belief. I happen to personally agree with some new beliefs, but I still think it’s important to be clear about what is new and what is older. Not only does paganism do itself no favors by putting new beliefs forward as ancient, but I think it’s also disrespectful to the traditional cultures and existing folk beliefs to re-write them and then claim the new version is somehow more genuine or older than the existing ones. My goal here is simply to help differentiate between traditional folklore beliefs and modern beliefs rooted in fiction and popculture. The following then is based on my own knowledge of the subject and personal observations, and should be understood as such.

  The Summer and Winter Courts

  This is one of the ones that I personally like and use myself. However, as far as I can find, it is a newer term for the two courts. Of course as was previously discussed in the section on the Seelie and Unseelie Courts themselves the entire idea of two courts as such is itself probably comparatively new as well, having come into popular belief in the past several hundred years. Within the past decade or so there have been several young adult fiction series and paranormal romance series that have featured the idea of either a Summer and Winter Court of the Fairies or of courts based on all four seasons, or who use the terms Seelie and Unseelie, but also inco
rporate Summer and Winter as nicknames for each. This concept has been adopted into fairylore more generally by those who dislike the hard Seelie = good, Unseelie = bad division and feel that Summer and Winter are more ambiguous and less morally loaded terms.

  The Dark and Bright Courts

  Similar to the Summer and Winter Courts, this is another way to name the Unseelie and Seelie Courts, which has appeared in modern fiction. It avoids the use of the terms good and bad or good and evil, but still carries the connotations of the original terms. The Dark Court is synonymous with the Unseelie Court and contains those who mean humans harm, while the Bright or Light Court are those who mean humans well. I must admit I’m quite fond of this particular one myself.

  The Grey Court

  Another idea like the Summer and Winter Courts that cannot be found in older folklore as far as I am aware, but which is gaining in modern popularity. The Grey Court is a term I came across in a paranormal romance series based on the Fae, but has also popped up among pagans who believe in fairies as a term for a third, more neutral, court2 or used as a term for the court of those fairies who are more wild and less civilized than the other two courts. In traditional fairylore, the more wild fairies would have been termed solitary as opposed to the more civilized fairies or those who prefer to be in groups who were known as trooping fairies. The traditional division into courts has always either bifurcated the fey into Seelie and Unseelie, or else seen them divided into a multitude of different courts based on location and who their monarch was.

  Unseelie as the Good Guys

  To be clear all fairies are mercurial and can be inclined to either help or hurt; however, those termed Seelie were known to be more inclined to helping while those termed Unseelie were known to be more inclined to hurting. The idea that the Unseelie were all or largely just misunderstood good guys, and more so that the Seelie were the real bad guys3, is entirely from modern fiction, and so common now that it has become a trope of its own. The idea that the Unseelie are just angst-ridden bad boys trying to prove they can be good is really, truly just from modern fiction. Yes there are stories in folklore of beings generally labeled Unseelie doing helpful things or falling in love with mortals and so on, but those were exceptions rather than the norms and also those stories still tended to end tragically. When it comes to Fairy the only generality we can really make is that we can’t easily make any generalities.

  Fairies are Nice

  Fairies can be nice, but fairies are not nice by nature any more than people are. The idea that they all are all the time is entirely modern and an extreme break from actual folklore. I tend to point to the Victorians as the source on this one, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when and what started this shift and I think in reality it was probably a combination of the Victorian flower fairy obsession, the New Age movement’s emphasis on the positive and a conflation with the idea of spirit guides. This leaves us with modern popculture fairies who don’t resemble historic ones; certainly Disney’s Tinker Bell is an example of the stereotypical modern fairy, but J. M. Barrie’s Tinker Bell, from the 1904 play Peter Pan and 1911 novel of the same name, was pretty vicious. Fairies in folklore were not to be messed with. They could – and would – kill, maim, or hurt people for what may seem to us to be trifling slights.

  Fairies are our Guides

  This appears in both books and pagan culture more generally, the idea that fairies are a kind of spirit guide or are more highly evolved beings seeking to help humanity grow and develop. Some of them may perhaps be beings along these lines, there is after all a lot of diversity, and there is the idea in folklore that some people – especially witches – may have a particular individual fairy who helps them. But they are not all like this and I think it is an error to assume that every single fairy is a helpful spirit guide to all of humanity. For many kinds of fairies, such as the Each Uisge (water horse) or Hags, we are nothing but a food source, and to others we simply don’t matter at all.

  Fairies are Small, Winged Creatures

  This one I do solidly blame the Victorians for and the popularity of children’s books during that time that featured little winged flower fairies. This compounded with the early 20th century Cottingley Fairy hoax seemed to have profoundly affected how people visualized fairies, something that has since been perpetuated by everything from Disney to the art of Amy Brown. In folklore, however, and many anecdotal accounts the Good People appear in a wide array of forms from animal to human-like from tiny to giant, from beautiful to monstrous. Wings are actually very uncommon features that seems to have been added within the past couple of hundred years, initially in theater productions and later artwork.

  Fairies Protect the Environment

  Many modern pagans are firmly convinced that fairies are nature spirits and staunch protectors of the environment, an idea that appears in the works of pagan authors as well as movies (I’m looking at you Fern Gully). This is not something supported in actual folklore though, but an idea that seems to have begun and gained popularity with humanity’s own growing awareness of environmental concerns. It is true that many of the Fair Folk are extremely territorial and messing with their places is a profoundly bad idea, but this isn’t due to a wider drive for them to protect our world so much as an urge for them to protect what belongs to them. There is, to my knowledge, not one single example in myth or folklore of the Good People appearing and warning anyone about the dangers of clear cutting forests, damning rivers, polluting, etc., prior to the modern era. And, yes, those things did happen historically, which is why Europe isn’t covered in forest any more and has lost a variety of native species to extinction due to hunting.

  Fairies Rescue Abused Children

  Fairies in folklore were known to take a variety of human beings for a variety of purposes, not all of them positive. They would take brides and musicians, as well as midwives and nursing mothers. But they were also known to take infants and children and I think this is ultimately the root of the modern idea that they rescued abused children. However, I will argue that saying they were rescuing these children is a modern recasting of the stories to soothe our sensibilities today. The idea appears in fiction dating back to the 1990s, at least, and gives a much nicer explanation for why the children were taken than folklore, which says they were – effectively – breeding stock to supplement low population numbers among the Fey Folk or servants. As with the other examples so far there is nothing in the actual folklore to indicate that the children taken were abused and in fact usually in the stories they seem to have been wanted and well loved, with many tales revolving around the parents’ struggle to get the child back.

  Maeve as Queen of the Unseelie

  I admit this one baffled me when I ran across it. There are certain beings associated as queens of Fairy in Ireland as was discussed in an earlier chapter and Maeve could be counted among them. However, Ireland doesn’t have the Seelie and Unseelie Court structure the way Scotland does, and as far as I know there is no Scottish equivalent to the Irish Maeve; also the Irish Maeve would not necessarily fit the mold of the Unseelie, never mind as a Queen of it. There is the English Mab who appears in Shakespeare is a Fairy Queen, but is never mentioned as being Unseelie and is referred to as a midwife to the fairies and is associated with dreams and mischief making. These two are often conflated with each other which can cause some confusion but Mab/Maeve’s appearances in early 20th century literature hold to the view of her as a granter of wishes and giver of dreams. It isn’t until very recently with The Dresden Files and The Iron Fey series, as far as I’ve been able to suss out, and possibly some television shows such as Merlin, Lost Girl, and True Blood, that Queen Maeve/Mab has been cast in the role of the Unseelie and given a darker personality and inclination. As far as I can tell this is entirely based in modern fiction.

  Oak, Ash, and Thorn

  If you’ve spent any time in either Celtic paganism or around modern pagans with an interest in the Fair Folk you may have run across the phrase �
��by oak, ash, and thorn’, usually either tied to the idea that these three are signs of fairy presence or that they ward off fairy mischief when branches or twigs of each are tied together. The earliest reference that could be turned up for these three trees was Rudyard Kipling’s A Tree Song from the 1906 book Puck of Pook’s Hill (this poem was later turned into a folk song that some may be familiar with as it gets a lot of midsummer play, by the name of Oak, Ash, and Thorn). I haven’t found anything prior to that or any references to these three trees in traditional folklore. In fact, the ash is mentioned as a protection against fairies in many sources while the oak and both the blackthorn and hawthorn are associated to varying degrees with fairies.

  These are only a handful of examples of ways that modern fairylore differs from traditional fairylore and has been influenced by popculture. Indeed new fiction and new movies continue to come out and the popular ones seem to inevitably find a way to affect what people believe about the Other Crowd. For example, when a recent movie featuring a Selkie came out (and a great movie it was too), which had the plot twist that the Selkie couldn’t speak without her sealskin coat, I started seeing people repeating that tidbit as if it were traditional folklore, even though it is not. In a culture today where many people are disconnected from the traditional folklore and plugged into mass media and popculture it should not be surprising that it is fiction and movies that are shaping people’s fairy beliefs rather than actual traditional folklore. Unfortunately, most of this material is based in plot devices or attempts to intentionally go against traditional folklore – to have that surprising twist as it were -, so it’s best to take pop-culture fairylore with a grain of salt until you’ve looked into its validity.