What are Fairies? Who are the Faery Folk?
I am indebted to Mr R.J. Stewart for granting permission to quote from his book “The Living World of Faery
“The faery races are our natural allies between the outer realm of manifest nature and the inner realm of ever-becoming, of transformation, of boundless potential. They are our cousins in the art of perfection and health of the land and the planet. We have abandoned them and polluted the world, which means that we have abandoned and polluted ourselves, for the human and faery races mirror and complete one another.”
The Fairy Folk of Tara
On the ancient Hill of Tara, from whose heights the High Kings once ruled all Ireland, from where the sacred fires in pagan days announced the annual resurrection of the sun, the Easter Tide, where the magic of Patrick prevailed over the magic of the Druids, and where the hosts of the Tuatha De Danann were wont to appear at the great Feast of Samain, to-day the fairy-folk of modern times hold undisputed sovereignty. And from no point better than Tara, which thus was once the magical and political centre of the Sacred Island, could we begin our study of the Irish Fairy-Faith. Though the Hill has lain unploughed and deserted since the curses of Christian priests fell upon it, on the calm air of summer evenings, at the twilight hour, wondrous music still sounds over its slopes, and at night long, weird processions of silent spirits march round its grass-grown raths and forts. It is only men who fear the curse of the Christians; the fairy-folk regard it not.
The Rev. Father Peter Kenney, of Kilmessan, had directed me to John Graham, an old man over seventy years of age, who has lived near Tara most of his life; and after I had found John, and he had led me from rath to rath and then right through the length of the site where once stood the banquet hail of kings and heroes and Druids, as he earnestly described the past glories of Tara to which these ancient monuments bear silent testimony, we sat down in the thick sweet grass on the Sacred Hill and began talking of the olden times in Ireland, and then of the ‘good people’:–
The ‘Good People’s’ Music.–‘As sure as you are sitting down I beard the pipes there in that wood (pointing to a wood on the north-west slope of the Hill, and west of the banquet hall). I heard the music another time on a hot summer evening at the Rath of Ringlestown, in a field where all the grass had been burned off; and I often heard it in the wood of Tara. Whenever the good people play, you hear their music all through the field as plain as can be; and it is the grandest kind of music. It may last half the night, but once day comes, it ends.’
Who the ‘Good People’ are.–I now asked John what sort of a race the ‘good people’ are, and where they came from, and this is his reply:–’People killed and murdered in war stay on earth till their time is up, and they are among the good people. The souls on this earth are as thick as the grass (running his walking-stick through a thick clump), and you can’t see them; and evil spirits are just as thick, too, and people don’t know it. Because there are so many spirits knocking (going) about they must appear to some people. The old folk saw the good people here on the Hill a hundred times, and they’d always be talking about them. The good people can see everything, and you dare not meddle with them. They live in raths, and their houses are in them. The opinion always was that they are a race of spirits, for they can go into different forms, and can appear big as well as little.’
Source: The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, W.Y.Evans-Wentz, London and New York; H. Froude, 1911
Reverend Robert Kirk
The Reverend Robert Kirk (1644 – 1692) was a Scottish Episcopalian minister, a Gaelic speaker, and a seventh son. He was the minister of Balquhidder Church from 1664 until 1685, and of Aberfoyle from 1685 to 1692.
It is said that he would go out in the evenings lay his ear to the ground on Doon Hill and listen to the Faeries. In 1691 he wrote the booklet The Secret Commonwealth Of Elves, Fauns And Fairies. On 14th May, during one of his visits to Doon Hill, he disappeared and it is thought that he entered the Faerie Underworld and it is local belief that his was transported away as punishment for revealing too much about Faeries and their ways. There he now resides as chaplain to the Faerie Queen, but one day he may return to visit his old church once more.
The Fairy Minister
He heard, he saw, he knew too well
The secrets of your fairy clan;
You stole him from the haunted dell,
Who never more was seen of man,
Now far from heaven, and safe from hell,
Unknown of earth, he wanders free.
Would that he might return and tell
Of his mysterious company!
And half I envy him who now,
Clothed in her court’s enchanted green,
By moonlit loch or mountain’s brow
Is chaplain to the Fairy Queen.
~ Andrew Lang
‘He’s away with the fairies’
What are the origins of this phrase? It’s used to describe someone who is anyone who is incapable of normal conversation, utterly distracted, or displaying odd or bizarre behaviour.
In Irish and Scottish tradition there are numerous tales of humans who, by accident or design, found themselves visiting the Faerie Folk. They would spend what appeared to be just a short time among them, but on their return to the human world they would find that many years had passed. So someone who is ‘away with the fairies’ is so called because he or she does not seem to be part of the normal, human world.
A MYTH OF MIDRIDGE
Filed under: English Fairy Tales, Fairy Encounters, Fairy Lore
Or, a Story anent a witless Wight’s Adventures with the Midridge Fairies in the Bishoprick of Durham; now more than two Centuries ago
TALKING about fairies the other day to a nearly octogenarian female neighbour, I asked, Had she ever seen one in her youthful days? Her answer was in the negative; “but,” quoth she, “I’ve heard my grandmother tell a story, that Midridge (near Auckland) was a great place for fairies when she was a child, and for many long years after that.”
A rather lofty hill, only a short distance from the village, was their chief place of resort, and around it they used to dance, not by dozens, but by hundreds, when the gloaming began to show itself of the summer nights. Occasionally a villager used to visit the scene of their gambols in order to catch if it were but a passing glance of the tiny folks, dressed in their vestments of green, as delicate as the thread of the gossamer; for well knew the lass so favoured that ere the current year had disappeared she would have become the happy wife of the object of her only love; and also, as well ken’d the lucky lad, that he too would get a weel tochered lassie, long afore his brow became wrinkled with age, or the snow-white blossoms had begun to bud forth upon his pate.
Woe to those, however, who dared to come by twos or by threes, with inquisitive and curious eye, within the bounds of their domain; for if caught, or only the eye of a fairy fell upon them, ill was sure to betide them through life. Still more awful, however, was the result if any were so rash as to address them, either in plain prose or rustic rhyme. The last instance of their being spoken to is thus still handed down by tradition:–’Twas on a beautifully clear evening in the month of August, when the last sheaf had crowned the last stack in their master’s hagyard, and after calling the “harvest home,” the daytale men and household servants were enjoying themselves over massive pewter quarts foaming over with strong beer, that the subject of the evening’s conversation at last turned upon the fairies of the neighbouring hill, and each related his oft-told tale which he had learned by rote from the lips of some parish grandame. At last the senior of the mirthful party proposed to a youthful mate of his, who had dared to doubt even the existence of such creatures, that he durst not go to the hill, mounted on his master’s best paifrey, and call aloud, at the full extent of his voice, the following rhymes:
“Rise little Lads,
Wi’ your iron gads,
And set the Lad o’ Midridge hame.”
Tam o’ Shanter-like, elated with the contents of the pewter vessels, he nothing either feared or doubted, and off went the lad to the fairy hill; so, being arrived at the base, he was nothing loath to extend his voice to its utmost powers in giving utterance to the above invitatory verses.
Scarcely had the last words escaped his lips ere he was nearly surrounded by many hundreds of the little folks, who are ever ready to revenge, with the infliction of the most dreadful Punishment, every attempt at insult. The most robust of the fairies, who I take to have been Oberon, their king, wielding an enormous javelin, thus, also in rhymes equally rough, rude, and rustic, addressed the witless wight:–
“Sillie Willy, mount thy filly;
And if it isn’t weel corn’d and fed,
I’ll hae thee afore thou gets hanie to thy Midridge bed.”
Well was it for Willy that his home was not far distant, and that part light was still remaining in the sky. Horrified beyond measure, he struck his spurs into the sides of his beast, who, equally alarmed, darted off as quick as lightning towards the mansion of its owner. Luckily it was one of those houses of olden time, which would admit of an equestrian and his horse within its portals without danger; lucky, also, was it that at the moment they arrived the door was standing wide open: so, considering the house a safer sanctuary from the belligerous fairies than the stable, he galloped direct into the hail, to the no small amazement of all beholders, when the door was instantly closed upon his pursuing foes! As soon as Willy was able to draw his breath, and had in part overcome the effects of his fear, he related to his comrades a full and particular account of his adventures with the fairies; but from that time forward, never more could any one, either for love or money, prevail upon Willy to give the fairies of the bill an invitation to take an evening walk with him as far as the village of Midridge!
To conclude, when the fairies had departed, and it was considered safe to unbar the door, to give egress to Willy and his filly, it was found, to the amazement of all beholders, that the identical iron javelin of the fairy king had pierced through the thick oaken door, which for service as well as safety was strongly plated with iron, where it still stuck, and actually required the strength of the stoutest fellow in the company, with the aid of a smith’s great fore-hammer, to drive it forth. This singular relic of fairyland was preserved for many generations, till passing eventually into the hands of one who cared for none of these things, it was lost, to the no small regret of all lovers of legendary lore!
Source
English Fairy and Other Folk Tales
by Edwin Sidney Hartland
[1890] Choice Notes: Folk- Lore, p. 131.
