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The Hidden People
In Scandinavia, there is a belief that fairies are the hidden children of Eve. The story goes that after the Fall, Adam and Eve settled down and had many children. One day when God was walking through the world He came to call on Eve and asked her to present her children to Him. Caught unawares, she had time to wash only half of them. Ashamed, she sent the unwashed ones to hide and brought out only the ones she thought presentable. But God wasn’t deceived. “Let those who were hidden from me,” He said, “be hidden from all Mankind.” And this was the beginning of the huldre, the “hidden people.”
In another version of the tale, the huldre were the offspring of Adam and his first wife, Lilith.
According to these stories, fairies were not creatures of another order, like angels, but were half human.
Diminished Gods
Some believe that fairies were once important deities, worshiped in pagan times as gods and goddesses of nature. With the coming of Christianity, these spirits were reduced, or tamed, and consequently reduced in stature from powerful beings to the status of folklore.
In Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann were once believed to be the children of the goddess Don, otherworldly beings with supernatural powers. Conquered by the invading Milesians, they took to the hollow hills and became the Daoine Sidh (pronounced Deeny Shee). They battled and mated with the warriors of the Fianna Finn and over the years dwindled in stature. Originally the same size or larger than humans, down through the generations they shrank to the size of children, or smaller.
This theory overlaps with ideas of the vanquished race, driven to live in the hills. As with all beliefs surrounding fairies, the boundaries are blurred and we are left to draw our own conclusions. Suffice to say, belief in supernatural beings, in various forms, who are neither gods, nor strictly speaking ghosts, and who can intervene in human lives is widespread across many ancient cultures and peoples, from the Far East, where they have long played a role in romances and stories, to the ancient Hindu tradition, where they inhabited Earth long before the creation of humanity, to Persia, where the peris lived in enchanted palaces and castles and fought the malevolent forces of the divs.
Nowadays it’s common to think of fairies as small or even tiny winged creatures. However, that hasn’t always been the case. In earlier times, they were often life-sized, or larger. The Irish Sidh were as tall or taller than humans. An Irish “seer,” one for whom fairies are visible, once described opalescent beings of about 14 feet (over 4 meters) in stature and shining beings of about human height, or a little taller.
From the Fates to the Fairies
The word “fairy” has been through nearly as many transformations as beliefs about the creatures themselves. It originates from the Latin root fatum, meaning “destiny” or “fate.” Fata, the plural of fatum, was the name given to the classical Greek and Roman female deities said to be present at a baby’s birth and to determine the future course of that life. These Fata, or Fates, the three daughters of the night, were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho spun the thread of each individual life. Lachesis shaped and twisted the thread. Atropos took her shears and cut the thread at the appointed time. In Spain, they were known as the Hadas, and in France as the Feés. In Albania, the Fatit rode in on butterflies three days after a birth to determine the course of the child’s life.
The belief in the Fates as guardian spirits who watch over us, especially at times of transformation such as birth and death, has endured over time and they have entered into popular fairy tales, such as the story of Cinderella, in the form of fairy godmothers.
From this root, we get the French verb faer, or féer, meaning “to enchant.” From that we get faerie, or féerie, which originally referred to a state of enchantment, but which also came to apply to the “enchanter” as well. By the seventeenth century, a whole host of names, including “fairfolks,” “farie,” “fairie,” “fairye,” “fairy,” and “faery,” seem to have been in use.
Fairy or Faery?
Today “fairy” and “faery” are most commonly used to talk about fairy creatures, and “fairyland” or “faery” or “faerie” to talk about the place where fairies live (which goes by many other names in different cultures too).
Some use “fairy” to refer to the small, winged creatures most associated with the Victorians and flower fairies, and “faery” to talk about the wider group of beings with roots that originate in ancient times and places, and reach out to include nature spirits—mermaids, hobgoblins, brownies, elves, and a whole host of related beings. There is no one “correct” use. Here, “fairy” is used to refer to the many wonderful and varied creatures that make up the diverse fairy world.
Names have always been a slippery issue when it comes to fairies. Out of deference, or fear of causing offense, humans have traditionally referred to them by other names and euphemisms, such as the little people, the good folk, the fair folk, or the good neighbors. There are many names for them in the British Isles alone. The Ad-hene Manx on the Isle of Man, meaning “Themselves,” is a name humans must get right and never take in vain. The Daoine Sidh in Ireland, the Sith in the Scottish Highlands, the piskies in Cornwall—the names go on and on.
Folklore gives us many examples of where finding out a fairy’s true name can bring power over the creature, such as in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, where a girl must guess the name of her mysterious helper to gain power over him and avoid a curse. The same is true in the Cornish and Scottish tales “Tarraway” (or “Duffy and the Devil”) and “Whuppity Stoorie.” Here you will learn the names of many hundreds of fairies.
Many attempts have been made to categorize fairies. Thomas Keightley, the author of The Fairy Mythology (1828), divided the beings into “Fays or Fairies of Romance” (human-sized beings endowed with special powers) and “Elves or Popular Fairies” (diminutive beings). Characteristically, fairies have defied categorization—and you will find them all here.
Where is Fairyland?
Invisible lands across the sea, hollow hills that raise themselves up on legs at full moon, revealing the twinkling lights of the fairy homes within, underwater palaces and castles in the sky, streams, lakes, mountains, forests, woods, trees, and flowers, under a rock or at the bottom of the garden—fairyland, like fairies themselves, comes in many different guises.
In the county of Cornwall alone, descriptions of fairyland and fairy dwellings range from the fantastical to the everyday. In “The Lost Child” in Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England (1865), a little boy who follows the sound of exquisite music into the woods describes being led by a beautiful lady into a fabulous palace with glass pillars and glistening multi-colored arches hung with crystals. In contrast, another account states that one of the favorite haunts of the fairies are simply “places frequented by goats.”
From otherworldly palaces to mundane hillsides, fairyland is elusive, remaining always just around the corner—glimpsed briefly, disappearing in the twinkling of an eye.
Celtic tradition abounds with tales of mythical enchanted isles located somewhere across the western sea, visible only briefly to mortal eyes before disappearing again into the mists. Tir Nan Og, Land of the Ever Young, is where the Tuatha de Danann are supposed to have resided since being chased from the mainland by the Milesians. In Manx folklore, it is the Isle of Emhain, Land of the Women. To the Britons, the Isle of Man was a magical land. In “The Magic Legs” in Fairy Tales of the Isle of Man (1963), Dora Broome tells of the mist-hidden island that Mannanon, Son of Lir, could make invisible at will. In Wales, sailors told tales of isles of enchanted green meadows off the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.
The land of Avalon is one of the most famous of the fairy lands across the sea. This is where some believe King Arthur lies sleeping, awaiting the hour when he will return to rule again.
In Old Norse mythology, there are Nine Worlds which are home to the various types of beings, including humans, elves, gods, and goddesses, that make up the Old Norse worldview. These worlds are held in the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Alfheim is the world of the elves. Asgard is the world of the Aesir tribe of gods and goddesses, located in the sky, invisible to human eyes but linked to the human realm by the rainbow bridge Bifrost. Midgard is the name given to the human world.
“Gard” is derived from the old Germanic idea of innangard and utangard. Literally meaning “inside the fence” and “outside the fence,” the terms applied to the physical or geographical location of a place as well as the mindset of its inhabitants. The human world’s name of Midgard, or “Middle Enclosure,” implied that humankind sat somewhere between the ordered, innangard world of the gods of Asgard, and the chaotic, utangard world of the giants of Jotunheim.
In-between Places
Just as fairies are often connected with thresholds and transitions in human lives, such as birth and death, so too fairy worlds are located at thresholds and borders. Woods and forests that mark the separation of a town or village from the wilderness of nature, seashores and mountaintops at the point between sea and land, land and sky—all of these are in-between places where fairies dwell. Domestic fairies traditionally make the hearth their home, which sits at the point of intersection between the cosy world inside the household and what lurks outside. Twilight, midnight, Samhain (Halloween), the times favored by fairies, are all in-between times, on the cusp of night and day, light and dark, summer and winter.
The Passage of Time in Fairyland
In many accounts of visits to fairyland, time operates differently there from in the human world. In some accounts, it takes on a dreamlike quality, expanding so that a year spent with the fairies is a mere few minutes in the mortal world. One such story is that of the Welsh boy who entered a fairy ring to dance and was transported to a glittering palace in a beautiful garden, in the middle of which was a well in which fish of gold and silver swam. His fairy hosts told him he could live in their realm as long as liked, providing he kept to one rule: he must never drink from the well. After a time, the desire to drink from the well grew until it became so strong, the boy could no longer resist and he cupped his hands and drank. Immediately, a cry shook the garden and he found himself standing back on the chilly hillside among his father’s sheep. Though it had seemed to him that weeks had gone by, hardly an hour of human time had passed.
More common are the tales of time passing so swiftly in fairyland that a person who thinks they have been away for only three days returns to find that 300 years have passed in the mortal realm. In the Japanese story of Urashima Tar, a fisherman who rescued a turtle was rewarded with a visit to the underwater realm of the dragon god, Ryu¯jin. He was a guest at his palace, Ryu¯gu¯-j¯o, but after three days, he asked to return to his village on land to visit his ageing mother. He arrived there only to discover that 300 years had passed. Then he opened a tamatebako, a special box, a gift from the underwater realm, which he had promised to keep shut, and released a cloud of white smoke. Instantly, his back bent, his beard grew long and gray, and old age and death fell upon him.
Adventures in Fairyland
The theme of old age and death coming to those who return from the fairy realm to the mortal one is common. The legends of Oisin and Bran are examples of two heroes who lived to tell the tale of their visits to fairyland. One was strong enough to survive the return to the human realm; the other had a lucky escape back to fairyland.
Oisin and Tir Nan Og
In Irish folklore, the story of Oisin is a famous example of how mere days or months in the fairy realm can add up to years in the human world.
Oisin was the son of Fionn mac Cumhaill and a fairy woman of the Sidhe. With fairy blood in him, it was no surprise that he was a great singer, poet, and warrior, and he lived through many great battles. The fairy princess Niamh of the Golden Locks invited him to go with her to Tir Nan Og, the mythical Land of the Ever Young that lay across the sea to the west of Ireland. There they lived happily together for what seemed to him a few months.
Oisin wished to see his father and his people, the Fianna Finn, to tell them that all was well with him. Niamh was reluctant to let him leave, but in the end gave him a white horse to ride back across the sea. She told him not to touch the earth of Ireland, for if he did, he would not be able to return to Tir Nan Og. He promised and rode away across the waves.
When Oisin arrived back in Ireland, however, he found everything changed. The hills seemed small, the forests and woodlands had shrunk, and the great fort of Tara was reduced to nothing more than a hill. There wasn’t even a single voice or face anywhere that he recognized.
In despair, Oisin turned his horse to return to Tir Nan Og, but came across a group of men, who seemed to belong to a smaller, less mighty race than the Fianna Finn. They were struggling to move a stone. Even though they tried with all their might, they could not shift it. Feeling compassion for their weakness and courage, Oisin stopped to help them. Remembering his promise, he didn’t dismount from his white charger, but bent down and lifted the stone with one hand. The men regarded the shining golden warrior with amazement. But at that moment, the saddle slipped and he fell to the ground. The white horse thundered away to the sea. Where the great warrior had fallen, there lay an old man, the weight of hundreds of years heavy upon him.
Unlike many returning from the fairy realm, Oisin did not crumble to dust on mortal soil, however, but lived on and told the new Irish race about the heroic days of the Fianna Finn.
Bran and the Land of Women
The passage of time works in a similar way in Emhain, the Land of Women. It is related in the story of Bran mac Febail, as told by Lady Gregory in Gods and Fighting Men (1904).
One day the Irish king Bran mac Febail heard the sweetest music. It lulled him to sleep and when he awoke he held in his hand a silver branch covered in white blossom. He brought it to the royal house, where a woman appeared in strange clothes and began to sing:
I bring a branch of the apple-tree from Emhain, from the far island around which are the shining horses of the Son of Lir.
A delight of the eyes is the plain where the hosts hold their games; curragh racing against chariot in the White Silver Plain to the south.
She went on to describe a shining, many-colored land of blossoms, birds, and sweet music, without grief, sorrow, sickness, or death. When she had finished her song, the silver branch leaped from Bran’s hands into hers and she vanished.
Next morning Bran set out with a fleet of curragh boats to row across to the sea to find the Isle of Emhain.
After two days and two nights, he and his men encountered Mannanon, Son of Lir, in his golden chariot. He told Bran he would reach the Land of Women before sunset.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long afterward that they reached the Isle of Emhain, where the chief woman welcomed them and pulled them ashore with a ball of thread. They went to a grand house where there was a bed for every couple and food and drink without end. There Bran and his men lived happily for what seemed to them a year.
Despite the beauty and delights of the Isle of Emhain, one of the company, Nechtan, grew homesick for Ireland and begged to return, just for an hour. The chief woman was loath to let them go and told Bran they must not touch the soil of Ireland and must talk to only their company on the boat. Bran promised, saying he would stay only a short while and return quickly.
They rowed away to Ireland, where the people gathered on the shore asked who they were. Bran asked if they had heard of Bran of Febal, but they replied that no such man was alive now, although their old stories told of a man who had rowed away to the Land of Women many hundreds of years before. On hearing that, Nechtan leaped from the curragh and waded to shore. As soon as his foot touched the soil, he turned to a heap of ash, as if he had been in the earth for hundreds of years.
Cautioned by his fate, the other men stayed aboard the curraghs. Bran rested long enough to tell of his voyage, then turned his fleet around and rowed back to the joys of the Isle of Emhain.
Oissin and Bran were lucky to escape the fate of death on returning to the human world. Like Nechtan, many who return from fairyland crumble to dust on touching human soil. This raises comparisons between fairyland and the Underworld, or the land of the dead.
Fairyland, the Underworld, Glamor, and Taboos
As in many stories of the Underworld, often there are taboos placed on eating and drinking in fairyland, and visitors would be wise to refuse any food or drink offered to them, no matter how appealing it appears. Fairies are known for using their glamor, or magic, to conceal the real nature of things.
The Legend of Innis Sark
Lady Wilde’s Legend of Innis Sark (1887) provides a cautionary tale against consuming fairy food and a lesson that all may not be as it seems in fairyland.
One November Eve (soon after Halloween), exhausted after a hard day’s work, a young man fell asleep under a haystack. He awoke to find himself in a fairy kitchen where, to his horror, he saw an old hag being chopped up and boiled to serve to the dinner guests.
The next thing he knew, he was being seated at a banquet table and a prince sitting on a throne at the head of the table was inviting him to eat. He looked around at the beautiful ladies and noblemen seated at the table, and then at the banquet. Fruit, chicken, turkey, butter, freshly baked cakes, and glasses of bright red wine filled the table.
Again, the prince invited the young man to eat. But, the scene from the kitchen still fresh in his mind, he declined. The prince persisted, insisting the young man taste the wine. Unable to resist the bright red liquid winking in a crystal cup offered to him by one of the beautiful ladies, the lad gave in and drank it down in one gulp. No sooner had he set down the empty glass than a clap of thunder shook the table, the lights went out, and he found himself alone in the dark night lying beneath the haystack.
Cherry of Zennor
In another tale, it is not food and drink but a special ointment that is taboo. This is a Cornish tale, “Cherry of Zennor,” collected by Robert Hunt in Popular Romances of the West of England (1865).
A few generations ago there lived a man known as Old Honey, such was the sweetness of his nature. He had a wife and several children and together they lived in a humble two-room cottage set on the cliffs at in the far west of Cornwall in a place called Trereen. Despite a simple diet of winkles and whelks and potatoes, they were a healthy, handsome family, and none more so than one of their daughters, Cherry.
When the miller’s boy visited to collect corn for the mill and left his horse tied to a furze bush, Cherry would climb onto its back and gallop off across the rugged cliffs and up onto the rough, rocky cairns that rose behind the little village.
Inevitably, this lively young lady soon became frustrated with the simplicity of her daily life and longed for a pretty frock to wear to the fair, or the church, or even to the preachings at the nearby villages of Morva or Nancledry. When one of her friends did just this and boasted of all the young beaus who had walked her home, she decided that she must leave home and look for work in the “low countries,” as the adjacent parishes were known. Her mother wanted her to go no further than Towednack, so she might still see her occasionally. But Cherry said, “No! I’ll never go where the cow ate the bell rope, and where they eat only fish and tatties and conger pie on Sundays.”
Old Honey saw that his daughter was determined and so one bright spring morning, Cherry put a few things in a bundle, waved goodbye to her family, and set off over the moors, heading south in the direction of Gulval and Ludgvan.
The path was steep and hard, and by the time she came to the crossroads at Lady Downs, she had to sit down to rest on a hard granite rock. She was tired and hungry and thirsty and began to regret her hasty decision. She hadn’t met a single soul on her journey, but now, quite suddenly, a gentleman appeared before her.
“Good morning,” he said. “Could you direct me to Towednack?”
Cherry pointed to the east and explained that she had left home to look for service, but was now resolved to return to Zennor.
“What great fortune smiles upon us both,” said the gentleman, “for I am looking for a good, clean girl to keep house for me, and here you are!”
He explained that his wife had died and he needed someone to look after his little boy, milk the cow, and tend to some light housework. He seemed a very kind gentleman and Cherry agreed to go with him.
They walked down from the moors and before long Cherry found herself in beautiful, gentle countryside such as she had never known before. Soft green trees shaded the lanes and pretty flowers carpeted the verges. The scent of honeysuckle and sweetbriar filled the air and ripe red apples hung from the trees.
Soon they came to a crystal-clear stream of water. Uncertain as to its depth, Cherry paused, not knowing how to cross. The gentleman lifted her and carefully carried her to the other side.
The lane became ever darker and narrower, almost like a tunnel through the trees, and they seemed to be going rapidly downhill, but Cherry felt safe in the company of this kindly man.
They came to a gate and when the master opened it, Cherry thought she must have entered into heaven. The garden was filled with flowers, fruit hung from the trees, the air was alive with birdsong, and a bright light shone everywhere, although the sun itself could not be seen. Cherry was reminded of the fairylands of which her granny had spoken, but here was the gentleman standing tall beside her and at that moment a little boy came running down the path crying, “Papa, Papa!” so, surely, these could not be fairies.
Before Cherry could greet the child, whose eyes were bright and direct, a bent and bony old woman appeared and took the boy back into the house. As she did so, the old hag stopped in the doorway and gave Cherry such a look that it felt as though a dagger was piercing her heart. However, when they entered the house, the old woman, who was called Aunt Prudence, laid the table with good food and drink, and Cherry soon recovered her good spirits.
Next, Aunt Prudence gave Cherry her instructions. She was to sleep in a bedchamber at the top of the house, where the child would also sleep. She was never to open her eyes at night, nor to speak to the boy. At daybreak, she was to take him to the spring in the garden to wash him and anoint his eyes with a special ointment that she would find in a crystal box beside the water. She was never to touch her own eyes with the ointment. After dealing with the child, she was to call the cow to get some milk for breakfast.
The next morning Cherry did all these things, then Aunt Prudence gave her a good breakfast and explained her household duties. Most of these were scrubbing and washing dishes and utensils and churning the butter and scalding the milk. She was warned not to wander about the house.
The following day, the gentleman asked Cherry to help him in the beautiful garden, picking apples and pears and weeding the leeks and onions. She enjoyed the work and the master gave her a kiss to show his appreciation of her diligence.
The days passed happily in this way and Cherry was quite content. Then, one day, Aunt Prudence took her into the rest of the house, which seemed dark and forbidding. She was told to remove her shoes and enter a room that had a floor as smooth as glass. All around it were stone statues of figures large and small, some distorted or limbless but all disturbingly lifelike despite their stony appearance. Cherry was frightened, but when Aunt Prudence insisted that she polish a wooden box as hard as she could, she did as she was told.
Suddenly, there came a terrible groaning from the box and poor Cherry fainted to the floor.
The master heard the noise and came angrily into the room. He gently carried Cherry down to the kitchen, where she soon revived. Aunt Prudence was dismissed from the house for taking Cherry into forbidden corners of the building.
Cherry recovered her vitality and curiosity and continued to live happily with the little boy and her master.
A year drifted by, but despite her contentment, Cherry could not help wondering about the boy, who she often thought saw more than she did with his bright, strange eyes, and even about her master, who sometimes disappeared for days on end or vanished into the depths of the house where Cherry was afraid to go.
One day, she could not resist touching some of the special ointment to her own eyes. Immediately, she felt a terrible burning sensation and splashed water from the spring to cool her eyes. As she did so, she was astonished to see hundreds of little people all dancing and playing in the pool. Among them was her gentleman, as tiny as the rest, dancing with the ladies. Cherry looked around the garden and everything was sparkling and bright, with tiny fairies and elves cavorting among the flowers and bushes and trees. She spent the rest of the day gazing at them in a trance of delight.
At dusk, her master rode up, restored to his normal self. He went to the enchanted room where Aunt Prudence had taken Cherry, and Cherry heard the sound of beautiful music floating on the soft night air.
Days passed and the master spent more nights in the private room. One night, Cherry’s curiosity overcame her fears and she crept to the door of the magic room and peered through the keyhole. What a sight met her eyes! The master was singing with many ladies in attendance; one in particular was dressed like a queen and playing on the wooden box that Cherry had polished. Cherry was filled with jealousy when she saw her master kissing this beautiful lady.
The next day the master stayed at home and asked Cherry to help him pick fruit in the orchard. After a time he bent to kiss her, but she drew back and slapped him, saying, “Keep your kisses for the fairy people!”
Realizing that she must have used the magic ointment, sadly the master told Cherry that she would have to go. That same night he called her and gave her a bundle of good clothes as payment for her services, and with a lantern to light the way, they set off into the lanes by which they had come so long ago. But now they were steep and dark and narrow and they only came onto the Lady Downs as the gray light of dawn slowly drove away the darkness.
The gentleman kissed Cherry goodbye and said he was sorry to leave her, but she had broken her word and he could no longer keep her in his service.
The sun rose over the moors and Cherry made her way back to Old Honey and her family. When they first saw her, they thought she must be a ghost, as they feared she had died. To begin with, they weren’t convinced by her story, but as time went by and she didn’t change a single word of it, they all came to believe her.
But Cherry longed for the life she had left behind, and on moonlit nights they say that you still may see the lonely figure of Cherry Honey wandering the Lady Downs in search of her long-lost fairy master.
