Fairy folklore

“ I confess that I see no reason to entertain so sinister an idea.
3. A better answer, perhaps, is that the fairies were not always in a position to harm him who offended them. This may well have been the belief as regards any one who had at his command the dreaded potency of magic. Take for instance the Irish story of a king of Erin called Eochaid Airem, who, with the aid of his magician or druid Dalán, defied the fairies, and dug into the heart of their underground station, until, in fact, he got possession of his queen, who had been carried thither by a fairy chief named Mider. ”

“ THE INHABITED ROSE SPONGE.
And who shall say that our pretty fay is a myth, or her magic wand a wild creation of the fancy? May we not see the wonder-workings of that potent wand on every hand, even though our fairy has eluded us while she cast the spell? There are a host of these wee fairies continually flitting about among the trees plotting all sorts of mischief, and leaving an astonishing witness of their visitation in their trail as they pass from leaf to leaf or twig to twig. ”

“ Is fairies' night when they receive
All their friends and all their slaves,
The goblins, witches, trollish knaves.
And if the olden tales be true,
All men and maids have cause to rue,
Who on this night dare go abroad
And touch a foot to fairy sod;
For naught will save them but to jump
Right o'er a fire or blazing stump.
But if you're brave and do not fear
That for your rashness you'll pay dear,
Then stand beneath an elder tree
And King of Fairies you may see. ”

“ One need but to recall A Midsummer Night's Dream to realise how important and how delicate and pleasing was the charm pertaining to fairy lore. Beauty was the most characteristic attribute of the fairies. Not only were they beautiful in face and form, but also beautiful in all their surroundings. When they rode abroad they were mounted on the best of horses, slenderly shaped and delicately prancing. None of such quality were ever possessed by mortals. In the fields the fairies flew hawks superior in breed and training to the best that belonged to human beings. ”

“ But she would quickly banish such thoughts, and gliding round the room would touch every dull corner with her fairy wand till it shone and brightened with a magic charm, would cast a spell upon the smouldering fire, so that it burned and crackled cheerily, would lay her cool hand upon the sick girl's throbbing brow till the pain abated, and would cast a fairy haze before her languid eyes, so that they saw beautiful visions in the changeful sky. ”

“ Emerson says: "What Nature at one time provides for use, she afterwards turns to ornament," and Herbert Spencer, following out this idea, remarks that "the fairy lore, which in times past was matter of grave belief and held sway over people's conduct, has since been transformed into ornament for The Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, The Fairy Queen, and endless small tales and poems; and still affords subjects for children's story books, amuses boys and girls, and becomes matter for jocose allusion." ”

“ The child is interested, too, in the strange people he meets in the fairy tales: the clever little elves who lived in the groves and danced on the grass; the dwarfs who inhabited the earth-rocks and the hills; the trolls who dwelt in the wild pine forest or the rocky spurs, who ate men or porridge, and who fled at the noise of bells; the fairies who pleased with their red caps, green jackets, and sprightly ways; the beautiful fairy godmother who waved her wonderful wand ”

“ As we read and meditate, its mountains and its vales, its verdant fields and lucid streams, objects on which we probably never again shall gaze, rise up in their primal freshness and beauty before us, and we are once more present, buoyant with youth, in the scenes where we first heard the fairy-legends of which we are now to treat. ”

“ Besides these, animals, pigs and bears, cows and hens and goats, inhabit the child’s world side by side with man, helping the story to make its way to the child’s affections. Then there is the host of witching fairy folk: fairies, giants, elves, pixies, witches, goblins. Music as well as language has attempted to suggest them, and with surprising agreement in artistic convention. Language makes fairies light, airy, tripping ”

“ After the Alpen glow, or rosy light, that flushed the mountains like a maiden’s blush, the fairies came out to dance in the meadows. They always went away and disappeared at sunrise, for the dancing fairies would be turned into stone, if the sun’s rays struck them. It was even worse for them, than for mortals, who, even amid the ice and snow, when climbing high mountains, might be sunstruck and die. ”

“ The Seven Crickets in the hedge are still, the birds sleep in their nests, the brook dreams of the mountain home it stole away from yester morning. Tell me, therefore, whence comes this wondrous fairy music, and show me the strange musicians that make it."
"Look to the grass and the flowers," said the fairy queen. "In every blade and in every bud lie hidden notes of fairy music. Each violet and daisy and buttercup,—every modest wild-flower (no matter how hidden) gives glad response to the tinkle of fairy feet. ”

“ When I walk out in the woods, or ramble through the fields alone, the objects which appear ordinary and commonplace to people who have, unhappily for themselves, neglected to study Fairy Lore, bear to me quite a different appearance. I see traces of the little beings which are not visible to the careless, still less to the unbelieving eye. I hear voices which are inaudible to the ear of the incredulous; and even without this, Fancy—free, glorious Fancy—clothes the grass, the flowers, the bushes, the trees, with a beauty of her own, and peoples every fairy haunt with a spirit company. ”

“ Other spirits, such as dwarfs, brownies, elves, and such like, are represented as deformed creatures, whereas the fairy is a beautiful miniature of “the human form divine”. It is perfect in face, delightful in figure, and more of angelic than human appearance. These points of distinction, with generally a dress of bright green, mark the personal individuality of the fairy. The origin of the fairy superstition is ascribed to the Celtic race; hence in Ireland, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and Wales, the fairies are even to this day believed by some to exist. ”

“ It is otherwise with the mound traditions and their relation, if not to fairy tales in general, to tales about fairies, trolls, elves, &c. These are very few in number, and generally bear the character of anecdotes. The fairies, &c., steal a child; they help a wanderer to a drink and then disappear into a green hill; they help cottagers with their work at night, but disappear if their presence is noticed; human midwives are asked to help fairy mothers; fairy maidens marry ordinary men, or girls marry and live with fairy husbands. ”

“ So the old fairies put their heads together, to find a proper name for the new fairy flower-baby, that was to live among the cold mountain tops and refuse to be frightened, or frozen, or be driven down lower, or to be cuddled up in meadows, near men’s houses, where it was warm. ”

“ Our subject naturally divides itself into two principal branches, corresponding to the different classes of beings to which the name Fairy has been applied. The first, beings of the human race, but endowed with powers beyond those usually allotted to men, whom we shall term Fays, or Fairies of romance. The second, those little beings of the popular creeds, whose descent we propose to trace from the cunning and ingenious Duergar or dwarfs of northern mythology, and whom we shall denominate Elves or popular Fairies. ”

“ Of all the minor creatures of mythology the fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable in literature. Like all organic growths, whether of nature or of the fancy, they are not the immediate product of one country or of one time ”

“ Fairies black, grey, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny, [394]
Attend your office and your quality.
Crier Hob-goblin, make the fairy O-yes.
Pist. Elves, list your names! silence, you airy toys!
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;
Where fires thou findest unraked, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
Our radiant queen, hates sluts and sluttery.
Fals. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.
I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye. ”

“ The volumes of fairy stories are by no means all for juvenile consumption, since the modern adult dearly loves the type himself. Many, or most, of the stories of [240] fairies told frankly for children are adaptations or variants of continental folk-legends. The more literary side of fairy-literature has come from the Celtic lore, for the Dim People are dearest of all supernatural beings to the Celtic soul. ”

“ He promised her all the grass of the field and all the trees of the forest if she would only tell him what was the matter, and, to satisfy the desire of his sister’s heart, the golden-haired youth set off next morning for the garden of the fairy queen. He went on and on, smoking his chibook and drinking coffee, till he reached the boundaries of the fairy realm. He came to deserts where no caravan had ever gone; he came to mountains where no bird could ever fly; he came to valleys where no serpent can ever crawl. ”

“ For just what the flower says to you, would the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more plainly as a face and human figure can express more than a flower. For the house or the clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer, cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy, which you could not describe, but which described itself to you. Whether all the flowers have fairies, I cannot determine, any more than I can be sure whether all men and women have souls. ”

“ This is the legend as we find it in the ancient Hindu sacred books; and this explains at once the source and the meaning of the Fairy Tale.
Nor is it in the story of Cinderella alone that we trace the ancient Hindu legends. There is scarcely a tale of Greek or Roman mythology, no legend of Teutonic or Celtic or Scandinavian growth, no great romance of what we call the middle ages, no fairy story taken down from the lips of ancient folk, and dressed for us in modern shape and tongue, that we do not find, in some form or another, in these Eastern poems. ”

“ Let the ethnologist frame what theory he will upon this subject, my own private belief is that once upon a time a good fairy who loved mankind put on the wings of a stormy petrel and flew over many lands, carrying in her hand a sieve full of tiny seeds, and shaking it upon those spots where there appeared to be most children. The seeds, falling to earth after this fashion, sprang up and bore many-colored fairy tales, to rejoice all hearts for evermore. ”

“ Here Fairy Godmothers reward good children, and punish bad ones; here red-capped Little Men yield up their treasures of gold and magic gifts, while Pixies drop silver pennies in water-pails, and merry Spriggans and Fays hold nightly revels in the moonlight. Here, too, a child may dance in Fairy Rings, or hie away to Elfinland for a year and a day to play with wonder-children, pick Fairy flowers, listen to Fairy birds, and be fed on magic goodies. ”

“ These Gaelic and Brythonic magicians and witches, and ‘fairy mediums’, almost invariably claim to derive their power from their ability to see and to communicate with fairies, spirits, and the dead; and they generally say that they are enabled through such spiritual agencies to reveal the past, to foretell the future, to locate [Pg 265] lost property, to cast spells upon human beings and upon animals, to remove such spells, to cure fairy strokes and changelings, to perform exorcisms, and to bring people back from Fairyland. ”

“ We have seen that the Fairy Stories came from Asia, where they were made, ages and ages ago, by a people who spread themselves over our Western world, and formed the nations which dwell in it, and brought their myths and legends with them; and we have seen, too, how the ancient meanings are still to be found in the tales that are put now into children's books, and are told by nurses at the fireside. And we have seen something of the lessons they teach us, and which are taught by all the famous tales of Wonderland ”

“ I have never seen a man fairy nor a woman fairy, but my mother saw a troop of them. She herself and the other maidens of the townland were once out upon the summer sheiling (grazing) . They were milking the cows, in the evening gloaming, when they observed a flock of fairies reeling and setting upon the green plain in front of the knoll. And, oh King! but it was they the fairies themselves that had the right to the dancing, and not the children of men! ”

“ Of the Fairy Mythology which constitutes the principal and most efficient part of this beautiful drama, it is the more necessary that we should take particular notice, as it forms not only a chief feature of the superstitions of the age, but was, in fact, re-modelled and improved by the genius of our poet.
The utmost confusion has in general overshadowed this subject, from mixing the Oriental with the Gothic system of fabling, the voluptuous or monstrous Fairies of eastern and southern romance, with those of the popular superstition of the north of Europe ”

“ The boy-fairy in jewelled
coat.
The fiddlers they laughed till
they scarce could see,
And then they fiddled so cheerily, O,
And the fairies and children around the tree,
They all went tripping so merrily, O.
The fiddlers they boxed up their fiddles all;
The fairies they silently flew away;
But every child at the Christmas ball
Had danced with a fairy first, they say.
So they told their mothers—and did not you
Ever have such a lovely time at your play,
My boy and my girl, that it seemed quite true
That you'd played with a fairy all the day? ”