Fairies

by Morgan Daimler

  Along these lines when questioned a variety of witches in Scotland claimed to serve not the Devil, but the Queen of Elphen or Elfhame, saying that it was this Queen who they would be brought to visit and who they served in some capacity. We can perhaps see echoes of this concept in ballads such as Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer; in the first Tam Lin is a mortal who is taken to serve the Queen of Fairies, apparently by guarding a well at Carterhaugh, and in the latter Thomas is taken by the Queen of Elfland to serve her for seven years in an unspecified manner before being returned to the mortal world. In the case of witches it was a very literal defiance of social order, where the witch’s ultimate allegiance was to no Earthly person or Heavenly power (by Christian standards) but to the monarch of the Otherworld itself, usually bound by formal pledges or oaths and by a renunciation of mortal order in the form of the Church.

  In the examples we have of historic witches associated with fairies, whether we look at those brought to trial or those renowned in more positive ways, we most often see people who were otherwise socially powerless or limited by the society of their times. People who were poor, marginalized, struggling, even victimized by the social order. Scottish witch Bessie Dunlop claimed that she made her pact with the fairies when her husband and child were desperately ill, for example. Sometimes, as in the cases of Biddy Early or Alison Pearson, the practice of magic and of dealing with the fairies seemed to be directly related to a major life change; the death of her husband in Biddy Early’s case, and an illness in Pearson’s. Both arguably directly impacted the person’s social status and ability to fend for themselves within their society, and both arguably gained status from their fairy-related practices, although Pearson was eventually caught up in Scotland’s witchcraft persecutions. Witchcraft, ultimately, was and still should be a way for people to gain or regain control of their own lives.

  The Other Crowd are dangerous and unpredictable in many ways, and so can witches be, which is what we see when we look at history; because anyone who worked outside of what was deemed the proper social order was a wild card as far as that social order was concerned. In Old Irish the Good Folk are called ‘Túathgeinte’, literally leftwards or northwards people, with túath having connotations of evil, wicked, and of motion to the north instead of the luckier and more beneficent rightward/south ward motions. In exactly the same context we have the words túathaid – person with magical powers – and túaithech – witch, or magic worker. In both cases the concepts are directly linked with the idea that dessel, with the sun, righthandwise, was lucky and fortuitous while túathal or túathbel, against the sun, lefthandwise, was unlucky and related to ill-luck and confusion. Both fairies and some witches3 then went against the right order, turning against the sun instead of with it.

  The magic of the Good Neighbors that was taught to these witches – what I in modern practice call Fairy Witchcraft – was about empowering the powerless and giving the witch a way to meet their own needs and to ensure their own safety. It was knowledge and magic that removed the person, to some degree, from human society and this removal made them dangerous because it realigned their allegiance in unpredictable ways. This is magic that is meant to effect real change for the benefit of the witch, not necessarily for some nebulous greater good. There was – is – a cost, of course, because there is always a cost in dealing with Themselves, and sometimes that cost was heavy. But it gave and gives hope to people who were suffering and hopeless, and offers control to those who otherwise are at the mercy of others.

  Walking with the sun, righthandwise, is trusting the system, whether that system is religion or something else, to bless you and take care of you because you are walking the expected way, the well-worn way. Walking against the sun, lefthandwise, is taking your fate in your own hands and disrupting that system, going against that order; it is walking with the Other Crowd into danger and uncertainty because you believe ultimately the knowledge you gain there is the greater blessing. Fairies and witches have a long history together, and it is all dangerous magic.

  Which is exactly as it should be, because dangerous magic gets things done in the end.

  Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill,

  For there the mystical brotherhood

  Of hollow wood and the hilly wood

  And the changing moon work out their will.

  W. B. Yeats, Into the Twilight

  End Notes

  1. Understand, however, that these terms are fluid and one person’s cunningman was another person’s witch, perspective being everything in these cases.

  2. Not that the Brahan Seer was a witch, necessarily, but some stories do say that it was from the fairies he got his famous seeing stone, and certainly some say that Biddy Early could look into her blue bottle and see things.

  3. There are multiple words in Old Irish that mean witch, and it should be understood that túaithech is only one and has particular connotations not seen in the others. I have discussed this in a previous blog post ‘Nuances of the word ‘Witchcraft’ and ‘Witch’ in Old Irish’.

  Appendix B

  Some Humor and Suggestions for Using Popculture

  You May Have Fairy Blood If…

  So there’s a post on a major blogsite about eight ways to tell if you may have fairy blood. The list is heavily prejudiced towards a modern (post-Victorian) view of fairies and specifically of winged flower fairies as far as I can tell. It also includes an array of characteristics that could apply to many people for many reasons, like feeling the need to lighten the mood in serious situations with humor.

  Now in the traditional lore there are stories of people who have fairy ancestry of various sorts, from the children of Selkies and fisherman to those who have a human mother and Aos Sí or Alfar father. But I would tend to use a very different measure, myself, when discussing whether someone might have ‘fairy blood’. You’ll quickly see a theme for my criteria, but I’ll say that I’m not just getting this from folklore, and that I do believe there are more things on Heaven and Earth as Shakespeare’s Hamlet said.

  The following is just my own list, feel free to disregard if it doesn’t appeal to you. And I know it won’t to many people.

  You may have fairy blood if.…

  1. An aversion or reaction to iron and iron alloys – it’s pretty traditional in most stories for the Good Neighbors to have issues with iron, which is why it’s such a powerful protection against them. This same thing can also apply to other traditional fairy protections.

  2. A flamingly inappropriate sense of humor – laughing when other people are crying, or laughing when other people are very angry. In many stories fairies are described crying at happy occasions or laughing at funerals. The jokes they play on people are also often extreme and lean towards the macabre.

  3. An unusual charisma or ability to charm people – if we look at stories that mention people with mixed ancestry they are usually described this way.

  4. A reputation for magical skill or healing – same as above.

  5. An unusual physical appearance – in stories this can be exceedingly pale, fair, dark, tall, beautiful, Otherworldly or so on.

  6. Intense emotions that may be described as inflexible – again based on looking at how folklore portrays fairies, they are often described as quick to anger, quick to love, and difficult to sway.

  7. A love of both the beautiful and the broken – in folklore the fey love luxury and fine things. They also have a penchant for the grotesque.

  Using Popculture as a Tool, or Teaching My Kids about Fairies

  We’ve looked at the ways that popculture is affecting fairy beliefs, and the impression that may have left is that popculture is a bad thing, but it isn’t really. The issue is making sure that we are controlling the way it influences our beliefs instead of passively absorbing it and allowing our beliefs to be shifted without realizing it. To illustrate what I mean I want to share my own approach in handling how I am using modern fairy beliefs and mass media to help teach my childr
en about the Other Crowd.

  The main focus of my actual day to day, rubber-hits-the-road spirituality is the Otherworldly spirits and land spirits. I also have three children currently aged three, eight, and twelve, which is an interesting spread to deal with. I have always held to the belief that we should raise our children with our beliefs and let them decide what they want to do from there, so from birth my kids have been raised pagan. Teaching them about the Gods has been fairly easy – they see what I do on holy days, they hear the stories, they see the altar, the offerings. I read them the mythology, much of which can be found in child-friendly versions. My husband is a very casual sort of Egyptian pagan, but they see his version of spirituality too and it offers a nice counterpoint, I think to my own.

  Teaching them about the Other Crowd is a whole other kettle of fish, almost literally.

  You see, I realized very early with my oldest that I was swimming against the popculture tide, for the most part, on this one. Because the pagan Gods generally are untouched by modern younger kids’ shows and movies, with few exceptions, but while I’m over here railing against twee little fairies and the dangers of assuming too much safety with the fey, Disney, Nickelodeon, Hollywood in general and a glut of children’s fiction is teaching kids – mine included – the exact opposite of everything I’m saying to them.

  And here is the real crux of the problem – I can’t tell them that the happy nice fairies don’t exist, nor that there aren’t any winged little ones either. Because as much as I might emphasize the darker dangerous sort for the sake of caution I don’t deny that Fairy is a dizzying array and variety of beings in nearly every imaginable form and temperament. There are nice little garden fey, and winged sprites, and gentle fairies who are shy and unassuming; there are all the kind and harmless things that can be imagined and probably many beyond our imagining. And there are also things that eat us for dinner, and dye their hats in our blood, and drown kids for sport. And none of it is really that cut and dried at all because really it’s not black and white, but infinite shades of grey that constantly shift and change, and just when you think you’ve sorted out who’s on which side of the divide of good and bad or safe and dangerous all the lines have moved and everything’s topsy turvy. The cute little winged fairy is biting a chunk out of your hand and the giant monstrous fey is helping you in exchange for nothing but a good word. Because that’s the only constant in Fairy, that it’s never constant by our measure.

  But little children don’t think well in nuances and degrees, they like concretes – good and bad, dark and light, either/or. Basically things I’m not good at. I can talk plenty about the dangers of Fairy and the need for caution to adults with decades of fairies-are-watered-down-angels-meant-to-serve-us ingrained in them, but that’s born of my soul-weariness from constant overexposure to the saccharine-sweet bubblegum approach that denies everything traditional fairylore ever was or still is. When it comes to my own children, I was baffled as to how to reach them without either scaring them so badly they iron plated themselves, or failing to get through to them at all and watching them merrily trip into danger face first.

  Paracelsus once said: ‘Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.’ I decided this was good advice in this situation as well, if I made it work for me. Popculture was the problem, but popculture could also be the solution. There are, after all, some decent movies out there with fairies in them, or fairy themes: The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Labyrinth (especially for my older daughter), Spiderwick Chronicles, The Secret of Roan Innish, Into the West, even Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit when they get older. None of these are perfect, but if I watch them with my kids I can gently bring up the disconnects from the older folklore and redirect them in a better direction. I can make a fun movie into a subtle teaching experience. If I’m clever (and I certainly try) I can work in the actual methods of dealing with them safely. I can read them, and tell them, the old stories too of course, and teach them what I do and the folklore, but they are less interested in that than in the captivation of a good movie. Because as much as it pains me, child of books that I am, while my kids like to read and like stories well enough their imaginations are captured by movies in a way that reaches the places I need to speak to right now. And unlike boring old mom talking, a fun movie will get all three of them, diverse ages or no, sitting down together and paying attention. So I have to make popculture my weapon instead of letting it be used against me.

  So one weekend we tried two new animated movies, Epic and Strange Magic, borrowed from the local library. Very different movies, but both were good in their own ways.

  Epic is the story of a teenage girl who goes to live with her estranged father after her mother dies. He is obsessed with proving that in the woods by his house live an advanced civilization of tiny people – read: fairies. Meanwhile the fairies are divided into two opposing factions, the Boggans who are bad fey intent on spreading rot and decay, and the Leafmen who are good fey who fight the Boggans and whose Queen is the only power that can reverse the damage the Boggans cause. The girl decides to run away and stumbles across the Fairy Queen as she’s being attacked; the girl ends up being shrunk down to fairy sized (about two inches) and entrusted with a magic pod that will choose the new Queen. And adventure ensues.

  Pros: sticks to the rigid ideas of good and bad with the fey; likable characters; teaches kids to be aware of what’s around them; time runs differently

  Cons: balance is mentioned as necessary, but is portrayed as endless war. The only true wisdom is held by the good side and the evil side is just mindlessly bad and destructive. This movie also reinforces the ‘fairies are tiny’ idea.

  Lessons I was able to teach my kids after watching: things aren’t what they appear to be. Things that appear harmless can be dangerous. Things that appear unpleasant can be helpful. Time runs differently in Fairy.

  Strange Magic: a story of two Fairy Kingdoms, one of Elves and winged fairies (all tiny) and one of Goblin-like creatures (also tiny) led by a winged King who looks a lot like a cross between a cricket and a fairy. The Bog King hates love and has imprisoned the only fairy who can make a love potion. The Fairy Princess Marianne has her heart broken by an unfaithful fiancé, who then tries to get her back so he can be King. When her younger sister’s best friend, an Elf who is in love with the sister, gets tricked into sneaking into the dark kingdom to free the fairy to make the love potion (by the fiancé who wants it to use on Marianne) adventure ensues.

  Pros: great message about not judging by appearance; good isn’t always good and bad isn’t always bad; nice trickster fairy in the mix. Strong female lead.

  Cons: singing. Lots of singing; painfully campy at times. Another tiny fairies movie.

  Lessons I was able to teach my kids; don’t judge good or bad on looks, what seems fair can be treacherous, and what seems ugly can be trustworthy. Also don’t judge beauty by our own standards, what we think is beautiful may be ugly to other beings, and what other beings find beautiful may seem ugly to us.

  I’m still not a fan of popculture fairies, but I’m adapting. And my children and I are finding common ground to pass on the old ways in a new day and age.

  Author’s Note

  Many people are curious about the Fey Folk, and yet also find themselves wondering how to learn about them and if it’s safe to connect to them. For some people it’s not an option – they will be around whether you want them to be or not – so its self-defense to learn how to be safe. For other people, well, there’s an advantage to respecting them and being on their good side, that’s worth the effort. And there’s also that saying about ‘no risk no reward’.

  I should add that being successful at any dangerous real-world pursuit means never forgetting your place in things or thinking you have more power than you do. Arrogance and overconfidence kills. The same applies exactly to dealing with the Other Crowd. Know exactly what you can do and how far you can pus
h, and never forget where you fit into the food chain (and it isn’t at the top).

  Sometimes people ask me why I don’t talk much about personal practice and experience with the Other Crowd, beyond a handful of anecdotes that I repeat and some fairly generic for-public-consumption stories that I have shared here. I’m pretty free with talking about experiences that occurred with other people, about being Pixy-led, or seeing fairy hounds, or items being taken and returned. And I will talk about the numinous, about the Gods even the liminal Gods, pretty easily. So why not share more of the deeper personal things?

  It’s a hard thing to talk about for many reasons. Certainly one is that I worry about people questioning my sanity as I talk about these experiences. It’s funny how we, as Pagans or Polytheists, can talk about things with Gods and people are, if not supportive, at least more willing to consider possibilities; even ghosts are met with a basic assumption of the person’s sanity. But when it comes to the Other Crowd, at least in my experience, people are far quicker to jump to ‘crazy’ to explain away something. And of course I worry that in speaking about it I’ll say too much and lose their favor, which is a concern supported by folklore – the quote may go that the ‘first rule of fight club is don’t talk about fight club’, but in my experience that is far more applicable to fairies. There’s also always the worry that people simply won’t believe me because it’s so difficult to convey these experiences in words without making them sound trite and contrived. Even I don’t think some of them sound believable when I tell them, and I was there when they happened. So there’s the fear that people just won’t believe what I’m saying is true.