Month: March 2026

The Re-enchanted Landscape

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Ithell Colquhoun, Dance of the Nine Maidens, 1940

During a visit to Glastonbury late last year, I came across a copy of Rupert White’s 2017 book, The Re-enchanted Landscape- Earth Mysteries, Paganism and Art in Cornwall, 1950-2000 in Courtyard Books. I’ve written on the theme of faeries as spirits of place and of ‘re-enchantment‘ and this, coupled with my Cornish family links, compelled me to buy the book without further ado.

As the title suggests, the primary focus of the text is on matters such as ley lines, stone circles, fogous, witchcraft, the Goddess and the Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft and Magic– all matters that have interested me for decades. Numerous visits to the county over the years have involved trips to the ancient sites and holy wells– which posts on this blog have reflected. The book also contained a good deal (a dedicated chapter and many other references) about the painter Ithell Colquhoun, a writer and painter whom I’ve mentioned in previous posts. All in all, therefore, there was much to enjoy in the book and much that was new and fascinating for me.

In specific ‘British Fairy’ blog terms, there was limited coverage in The Re-enchanted Landscape of pixies, spriggans and the bucca. Nevertheless, there were a few items to catch the eye of the faery researcher. I was fascinated to discover that the famous doctor and sexologist Havelock Ellis had lived in Carbis Bay, near St Ives. Even more surprisingly, he reported on his use of mescaline in the medical journal The Lancet in 1897 (!), reporting that its use led to a “saturnalia of the senses… an orgy of vision… an optical fairyland…” An article on the ‘Spirit of the Lizard [Peninsula]’ by Robin Ellis, that was published in the magazine Meyn Mamvro (‘Stones of the Motherland,’ 1990), invoked the earth energies of the Cornish landscape. Ellis described “apparitions of a female entity! Gigantic snakes and strange voices! The shining people…” I take this last phrase to mean the elves, or faeries, given that the name ‘elf’ derives ultimately from a word meaning ‘white’ or ‘shining’ (and one particular quality of the Anglo-Saxon elves was their inherent ‘shining’ nature- aelfscynne).

The Owlman of Mawnan

Particular reference is made in the course of the book to the exploits of Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels (1938-2024). The website artcornwall.org calls Shiels “Britain’s best known surrealist magician/ illusionist/ prankster/ hoaxer/ trickster figure/ artist,” a description which prepares us suitably for mentions of some of his work. Through the folk music scene in the county, Shiels got to know two other local Tonies, Tony Deane and Tony Shaw, who were the authors of The Folklore of Cornwall in 1974. This has been a very valuable book in my researches over the years. From Re-enchanted Landscape I discovered as well that Shiels’ link to the two authors may have generated his own rather mischievous contribution to the folklore of the south-west peninsula.

The ‘Owlman of Mawnan’ is an owl-like humanoid creature said to have been seen in April 1976 in the village of Mawnan on the Helford River. It was Shiels who first reported this being, a large “feathered bird-man” seen hovering over the church tower by two sisters on holiday. They were, it was said, so scared by the sight that their family had cut short their Easter holiday in Cornwall. In July the same year, “a big owl with pointed ears, as big as a man,” with glowing eyes and black, pincer-like claws, appeared to another two girls on a camping holiday.

The owlman story was first publicised in a pamphlet titled Morgawr: The Monster of Falmouth Bay by Anthony Mawnan-Peller. As will be apparent, the appearance of the account of this ‘faery beast’ was closely linked to the description of another, marine, supernatural being. I’ll describe Morgawr briefly in a moment, but firstly I’ll just remark that the author of the pamphlet seems (to me) to have a very suspicious surname, partly composed of the name of the village where the owlman was spotted and partly incorporating a version of the Cornish word ‘pellar,’ meaning a sorcerer or wizard. In additon, he’s called Tony…

As for Morgawr (‘sea giant’), this being was a sea serpent said to live in the sea around Falmouth Bay. The creature was first sighted near Pendennis Point (south of Famouth town) in 1975 and was described as having a very long neck and black or brown skin like that of a sea lion. Local fishermen apparently blamed bad weather and poor fishing on the monster. In 1976 Shiel tried to lure the monster into the river itself by having two members of his coven swim naked in the river. The nudity was typical of his magic working, but it certainly drummed up excellent coverage in the papers, to which Tony Shaw added his expert knowledge of local sea serpent legends. Rather like the owlman, there’s a good deal of evidence that this sea beast was another bit of playful theatre on the part of Shiels- who went on in 1977 to produce some colour photographs of the Loch Ness monster (partly explaining why the Falmouth creature was also called ‘Fessie’).

Much as I’d love to add these two faery beasts to the collection I’ve written about, I think we have to view them with extreme caution- and simply enjoy them as amusing pranks on the part of Shiels. Rupert White in Re-enchanted Landscape is equally sceptical, but even if we set aside this episode, there’s plenty in the book to relish and inform.

That’s ‘Them’ in the Twilight: elvish & faery origins

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A 1907 etching of the ‘shagfoal’

I have just finished reading one of the books I received at Christmas, Francis Young’s Twilight of the Godlings- The Shadowy Beginnings of Britain’s Supernatural Beings (2023). I had been keen to read this as I had enjoyed- and found very useful- his 2019 study of Suffolk Fairylore, which I’ve mentioned before.

Twilight of the Godlings is much more a work of folklore than of faerylore. By this, I meant that it’s an academic examination of the process by which the idea of the modern British faery might have evolved out of elements of belief in Roman nature deities, Anglo-Saxon elves, Norman French fay women and native British mythology; it covers the period from the Roman colonisation through to the late fifteenth century- what Young terms the longue duree. This study is not, therefore, a book by a believer in the ‘Fairy Faith’ (of the Celtic countries or anywhere else), for it treats the faeries as entirely socially constructed inventions- and ones that may not be of any great antiquity, either. By its scholarly nature, too, it’s taken up with debates about different learned writers’ theories about faery origins, so there’s quite a lot of comparison between, and critiqueing of, various folklorists’ published research. The text’s style reflects its academic intentions: Twilight of the Godlings is published by Cambridge University Press- in contrast to the Suffolk book, which comes from regional publishers Lasse Press in Norwich- and this means that, given its intended audience, you may find it to be rather less accessible than the latter. I’m used to this more intellectual, analytical manner of writing from my own researches, as well as from a former career in the law, but I won’t say it’s necessarily a light or easy read in the same way as Suffolk Fairlore is. That said, if you want a serious and methodical historical investigation, which carefully weighs the conflicting documentary and archaeological evidence, then the book is certainly recommended as thorough, detailed, enlightening and comprehensive.

What emerges that’s of particular interest on these pages is, firstly, how little is still known about the nature of those Anglo-Saxon elves and how and why their name was inherited into medieval and thence modern times. Secondly, Dr Young examines several medieval stories that I have written about in the past- Malekin, the little girl abducted in Essex, and the Green Children of Woolpit. In particular, he provides us with fresh and valuable perspectives upon a couple of puzzling early medieval reports of faery beings, types that I have discussed in a previous post.

I have mentioned the foal-like East Anglian creature known as the Grant (described in Thomas Keightley’s Fairy Mythology and in Katherine Briggs’ Fairy Dictionary). Francis Young’s new reading of the name (although he doesn’t highlight this) is ‘Gyant’ (suggesting that previous researchers may have misinterpreted a letter in the original medieval manuscripts). ‘Gyant’ is a good old English name of obvious meaning. ‘Grant’ could have derived from Norman-French ‘grand,’ and so had pretty much the same sense, but an English/ Saxon name might indicate that the creature has deeper roots in its surroundings. Either way, it’s a pretty straightforward descriptive label by the look of it, linking this creature to other large, supernatural horses found around Britain, such as the kelpie, colt-pixie and shagfoal.

The account of the gyant/ grant is to be found in Gervase of Tilbury’s Otia Imperialia (c.1210-14), a text which also describes the mysterious ‘Portunes‘- small, domestic sprites who gather by cottage fires at night. Their name is unlikely to be English and Dr Young notes that it might possibly be derived from the Roman Portunus, the god of harbours, who may in turn be related to Neptune. Nevertheless, as the author goes on to observe, why a fairly obscure Roman maritime god should be remembered in thirteenth century Christian England- and why he’d have anything to do with tiny farming spirits- is so difficult to explain convincingly that any connection must be dismissed as implausible. However, Dr Young does suggest that the Latin word opportunus, with the sense of ‘he who arrives at the right time’ might actually be the source of Portune. A faery who turns up just at the right moment to help a farmer with the harvest or threshing (perhaps after a careless wish for help to get a job done) would certainly fit in extremely well with several stories that survive in the recorded folklore (mostly Scottish, I think). The name would also coincide very well with our tendency to refer to faeries in oblique but complimentary terms- the ‘Good Neighbours,’ the ‘Good Folk’ and the ‘Fair Family.’ This seems to me to be a very satisfying solution to otherwise baffling label.

For more details of Twilight of the Godlings, see Dr Young’s website or the CUP page for the publication.

A unique Anglo-Saxon manuscript drawing of elves