The Fair Folk

I have applied to exhibit my work at the New Forest Fairy Festival, so I'm thinking about fairies a lot and what they mean to me. Fairies seem to have become smaller and cuter over the centuries, to the point where in the Victorian era the fairies became tiny children with insect wings. But what were fairies seen as back in the middle ages? They were scary creatures, and you could be condemned to death for consorting with the fair folk. In 1691, a Scottish clergyman, Robert Kirk, recorded popular folklore of the time in The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies:

"These siths, or fairies, they call Sleagh Maith, or the Good People, it would seem, to prevent the dint of their ill attempts, (for the Irish use to bless all they fear harm of,) and are said to be of middle nature betwixt man and angel, as were daemons thought to be of old; of intelligent fluidious spirits, and light changeable bodies, (like those called astral,) somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight. These bodies be so pliable through the subtlety of the spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear or disappear at pleasure."

"Their bodies of congealed air are some times carried aloft, other whiles grovell in different shapes, and enter into any cranny or cleft of the earth where air enters, to their ordinary dwellings; the earth being full of cavities and cells, and there being no place nor creature but is supposed to have other animals (greater or lesser) living in or upon it as inhabitants; and no such thing as a pure wilderness in the whole universe."

"However, the stories of old witches prove beyond contradiction, that all sorts of people, spirits which assume light airy bodies, or crazed bodies coacted by foreign spirits, seem to have some pleasure, (at least to assuage from pain or melancholy,) by frisking and capering like satyrs, or whistling and screeching (like unlucky birds) in their unhallowed synagogues and Sabbaths. If invited and earnestly required, these companions make themselves known and familiar to men; other wise being in a different state and element, they neither can nor will easily converse with them."

He then explains how fairies steal food from humans to consume in their subterranean homes, and what might be done to prevent them from milking your cows. He also explains how mothers are kidnapped to nurse fairy children. Placing bread, the bible, or a piece of iron in a woman's bed protects them from being kidnapped, as "Wights are terrified no nothing earthly so much as by cold iron." The fairies are easily disguised as humans, as he explains:

"Their apparel and speech is like that of the people and country under which they live: so are they seen to wear plaids and variegated garments in the Highlands of Scotland, and Suanochs therefore in Ireland. They speak but little, and that by way of whistling, clear, not rough. The very devils conjured in any country, do answer in the language of the place; yet sometimes the subterraneans speak more distinctly than at other times."

"Their men travel much abroad, either presaging or aping the dismal and tragic actions of some amongst us; and have also many disastrous doings of their own, as convocations, fighting, gashes, wounds, and burials, both in the earth and air. They live much longer than we; yet die at last, or at least vanish from that state. 'Tis one of their tenets, that nothing perishes, but (as the sun and year) everything goes in a circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions; as 'tis another, that every body in the creation moves, (which is a sort of life;) and that nothing moves, but has another animal moving on it; and so on, to the utmost minutest corpuscle that's capable to be a receptacle of life."

"They are said to have aristocrat rulers and laws, but no discernible religion, love, or devotion towards God, the blessed maker of all: they disappear whenever they hear his name invoked, or the name of Jesus, (at which all do bow willingly, or by constraint, that dwell above or beneath within the earth, Philip 2:10;) nor can they act ought at that time after hearing of that sacred name. The tabhaisver, or seer, that corresponds with this kind of familiar, can bring them with a spell to appear to himself or others when he pleases, as readily as Endor witch to those of her kind. He tells, they are ever readiest to go on hurtful errands, but seldom will be the messengers of great good to men. He is not terrified with their sight when he calls them, but seeing them in a surprise (as often he does) frights him extremely. And glad would he be quit of such, for the hideous spectacles seen among them; as the torturing of some wight, earnest ghostly staring looks, skirmishes, and the like. They do not all the harm which appearingly they have power to do; nor are they perceived  to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen."

"Ceridwen" by Annika Garratt

"But other men of the second sight, being illiterate, and unwary in their observations, learn from those; one averring those subterranean people to be departed souls, attending awhile in this inferior state, and clothed with bodies procured through their almsdeeds in this life; fluid, active, ethereal vehicles to hold them, that they may not scatter, or wander, and be lost in the totum, or their first nothing; but if any were so impious as to have given no alms, they say when the souls of such do depart, they sleep in an unactive state till they resume the terrestrial bodies again."

He says that the fairies throw darts, which are subtle like thunderbolts, and mortally wound humans without breaking the skin. There are many places called fairy-hills, which Highlanders regard as sacred because they believe the souls of their predecessors live therein. Some spirits are restless because they seek justice for a murder, or to reveal a forgotten treasure. I get the impression that the belief in fairies comes from the veneration of ancestor spirits, and that these ancestors were feared because they were thought of as souls of the damned. To sympathise with the fairies would imply sympathy for paganism, which was thought to be devil worship. The ghostly spectres appeared sullen and sorrowful because they never had a chance to convert to Christianity. The fairies might be jealous of their descendants who had the good fortune to be saved from damnation. And so it was natural to fear the fair folk, and to tread carefully around their fairy-hills.