An Easter visit to Cornwall gave me an opportunity to discover a site I’ve written about previously but had not seen- this was the faery well at Alsia, a source which seems to have had some connection to changelings and their cure.
The hamlet of Alsia is tiny and obscure, but well worth the effort of visiting. The well is plainly cared for: what was described in our old guidebooks to Cornish wells as a difficult and unclear ramble through fields to a muddy and neglected spring turned out to be an easy stroll along a pathway mown through pasture to a beautifully tended well. Sitting at the foot of a south-facing slope, the spring and watercourse were tidy and clean, with flat stones laid on the ground for access. A large clump of giant rhubarb (Gunnera) grows very near the well, a feature that could make it harder to find and much more shady later in the year, but in April the invasive plant had barely started to sprout and the spot was sunny and attractive- making it readily understandable what might have drawn people to its pure waters in the past.
Mulfra Quoit
During the same break we also made return visits to the holy wells at Sancreed and Madron and to the faery well of Venton Bebibell. A long ramble in the vicinity of the latter impressed upon me what an important role it might once have played in its overall landscape. The spring (once again looking tended and more attractive amidst the low, early April foliage) is the source of the river that flows into the sea at the fishing village of Newlyn. It may not be irrelevant that, in its final course to the sea, the river runs along a valley known locally as the Coomb. This is the site of a story told to Evans Wentz and which appears in his Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911). A version of the story of Cherry of Zennor, it tells of a Zennor nursemaid employed at Zimmerman Cott (still standing in the town), who is warned by her master never to enter one room in the house and not to touch a box of ointment stored there. Of course, she disobeys such clear prohibitions, puts the ointment on her eyes and sees pixies dancing with the man in the orchard. She’s sent away from the house- and turns out to have been absent from her home for twenty years (Evans Wentz, 175). The tale neatly concentrates several classic faery themes: a magic ointment that penetrates glamour (ingredients for which could be found in fields at the top of the hill above Newlyn), pixie festivities, and the disconnect between faery and human time. It also underlines the notable pixie presence along the entire course of this otherwise unremarkable seeming watercourse.
The Newlyn stream is obviously of general significance locally, over and above which it has powerful supernatural associations (apparently being part of faery pattern of land use) and, what’s more, it appears to have been a focus within the prehistoric human landscape. Only a short distance away to the west of Venton Bebibell stands the famous holed stone arrangement of Men an Tol and, north west, the early medieval inscribed stone called Men Scryfa. A slightly wider diameter circle around the spring takes in the Nine Maidens stone circle to the east and Bosiliack cairn to the south; an even larger circle encompasses Lanyon Quoit to the south and the Carfury menhir south east. The farther horizons take in Chun Quoit on the west and Mulfra Quoit to the east, both on hill tops around two miles away. This concentration of monuments strikes me as impressive and certainly underlines the richness of the Penwith environment as a whole and the pervading sense of an enchanted landscape, about which I wrote recently.
To reinforce the impression derived from Venton Bebibell, another visit of this same holiday was to the standing stone that featured in the 2023 film, A Year in a Field. This menhir, along with other monuments, forms a further cluster of ancient sites focussed upon the Merry Maidens stone circle, which stands on a ridge above the Lamorna Valley. It’s hardly surprising, perhaps, that long-time Lamorna resident, the artist Ithell Colquhoun, should have been inspired by her time in Penwith to write her evocation of The Living Stones of Cornwall.
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.
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.
I have been invited to a winter solstice gathering at the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities (an event I sadly can’t attend because of a family visit), but the invitation included a poem by science fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft I decided to share. It would be more appropriate for my Nymphologyblog, I know, but I thought I’d post it here for more people to read, as it relates to several topics touched on in past articles I’ve posted.
Impressively, the poem was written by Lovecraft when he was only twelve years old, in 1902, and was first published in the Tryout magazine in 1919 under the title ‘An Old Pagan Speaks.’ It is related in theme to the much more famous Dead Panby Elizabeth Barret Browning and to Ezra Pound’s Pan is Dead. Schoolboy Lovecraft’s lament adopted archaic, ‘poetic’ diction, which seems very stilted indeed now, but the speaker’s powerful desire for the nymphs still to be alive, active within Nature, is a sentiment that I find attractive- as, I hope, do you.
To the Old Pagan Religion
“Olympian gods! How can I let ye go And pin my faith to this new Christian creed? Can I resign the deities I know For him who on a cross for man did bleed?
How in my weakness can my hopes depend On one lone God, though mighty be his pow’r? Why can Jove’s host no more assistance lend, To soothe my pain, and cheer my troubled hour?
Are there no Dryads on these wooded mounts O’er which I oft in desolation roam? Are there no Naiads in these crystal founts? Nor Nereids upon the Ocean foam?
Fast spreads the new; the older faith declines. The name of Christ resounds upon the air. But my wrack’d soul in solitude repines And gives the Gods their last-receivèd pray’r.”
A few days away on the border of Devon and Dorset provided the perfect opportunity to visit Ottery St Mary, birthplace of the poet Coleridge and annual venue of the famous Pixie Day. Unlikely as it may seem, these are related highlights in the history of this small, rural town.
It’s said that, back in the fourteenth century, when the new church was being built in the centre of the town, the local pixies objected. They had previously held sway over the area and, as was traditionally their way, objected to the construction of a Christian building, symbol of a threatening faith. This longstanding allegation of antipathy between Faery and Church is something I’ve discussed before and it is often reported to have led to active interference in building work, with the faeries repeatedly moving the stones and timbers of planned churches and chapels at night in an effort to prevent construction. Frequently, this succeeds, and a new site is chosen. In Ottery, the pixies didn’t do this and only became actively opposed when they learned that there would be bells in the church tower. The noise of chiming bells is especially unpleasant to our Good Neighbours, it seems, and the local response was, first of all, to try to interfere with the casting at the foundry in Exeter and then to try to prevent the completed carillon making it to its destination. The monks bringing the bells were pixie-led, and nearly hauled their precious cargo over a cliff, but a monk purportedly trod on a thistle, instinctively blessed himself and, by using holy words, broke the pixies’ spell.
The bells were safely installed in the church tower and the pixies, defeated, had to withdraw from Ottery town itself to a new home about a mile further south in a cliff beside the River Otter- a cave now known as the Pixies’ Parlour.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery on October 21st 1772, son of the local vicar. In summer 1793, during his holidays whilst a student at Jesus College, Cambridge, the young poet wrote ‘The Song of the Pixies,’ which describes a picnic at the Parlour and imagines the inhabitants welcoming the party to their home. In their multi-coloured clothes, dew-drinking and flights with gauzy wings, these faeries are very much the delicate sprites of emerging convention, purged of the malign inclinations reflected in the medieval legend.
“Whom the untaught Shepherds call Pixies in their madrigal, Fancy’s children, here we dwell: Welcome, Ladies! to our cell. Here the wren of softest note Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, Ladies! to our cell.
When fades the moon to shadowy-pale, And scuds the cloud before the gale, Ere the Morn, all gem-bedight, Hath streak’d the East with rosy light, We sip the furze-flower’s fragrant dews Clad in robes of rainbow hues: Or sport amid the shooting gleams To the tune of distant-tinkling teams, While lusty Labour scouting sorrow Bids the Dame a glad good-morrow, Who jogs the accustomed road along, And paces cheery to her cheering song.
But not our filmy pinion We scorch amid the blaze of day, When Noontide’s fiery-tressed minion Flashes the fervid ray. Aye from the sultry heat We to the cave retreat O’ercanopied by huge roots intertwined With wildest texture, blackened o’er with age: Round them their mantle green the ivies bind, Beneath whose foliage pale Fanned by the unfrequent gale We shield us from the Tyrant’s mid-day rage…”
In further stanzas, Coleridge described the graffiti scratched into the sandstone of the cave (“As round our sandy grot appear/ Many a rudely sculptured name/ To pensive Memory dear!”)- the names of lovers and of hoped-for partners. He also seems to reflect a recorded- if rare- notion that the faeries involve themselves with human love affairs: the invisible beings, “Veiled from the grosser ken of mortal sight,” spy on couples- “We listen to the enamoured rustic’s talk/ Heave with the heavings of the maiden’s breast/ Where young-eyed Loves have hid their turtle nest/ Or guide of soul-subduing power/ The glance, that from the half-confessing eye/ Darts the fond question or the soft reply.”
At night, in the moonlight, “the blameless Pixies” dance in circles as well, of course- “through the mystic ringlets of the vale/ We flash our faery feet in gamesome prank” and, “with quaint music hymn the parting gleam/ By lonely Otter’s sleep-persuading stream.” The young poet’s primary interest in his song was not the pixies but the young woman who was crowned ‘Fairy Queen’ of their summer outing, but he nonetheless provided a useful survey of the common notions about faeries in the late eighteenth century.
Ottery St Mary today is proud of its links to one of our greatest poets, but it makes much less of its supernatural connections. Although the Pixies’ Parlour is just a short walk south from the town centre, by way of the “the purpling vale and elfin-haunted grove,” it isn’t signposted nor does it have an information board. You’ve got to know where you’re going and what your’re looking for. This has benefits: the site seems largely unchanged, so that the graffiti Coleridge mentioned is still there (doubtless augmented), including two skulls carved in the arch above the cave mouth. The dry, sandy hollow is perhaps twelve to fifteen feet deep, sheltered and still mysterious. The original pixie troublemakers aren’t entirely forgotten by Ottery though: I happened to arrive when there was a display of decorated Christmas trees in the parish church, one of these being supplied by the local Cub and Brownie troops and decorated incongruously with little pixies (what would their forebears have said?) More importantly, every June the local Scouts and Guides celebrate Pixie Day, trying to seize control again of the church and town- as this cleverly adapted advert from this year’s programme reflects. If you do plan to molest some monks and destroy some property, you probably will be in need of a good solicitor…
I have described previously how, if preventative measures failed and a parent had the terrible misfortune of finding their child taken by the faeries and swapped for a changeling, there were remedies available to recover the infant. These were essentially the same from Scotland all the way down to the South West of England. An illustration of the extremes to which some people went is the story of a woman called Jenny Trayer who lived near Carn Euny in Penwith, which is recounted by William Bottrell in the second volume of his Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1873).
I’ve set out the full story of The Changeling of Brea Vean before, but in brief it tells how Jenny had her child taken- and this despite employing one of the recommended precautions: she had crossed the (iron) fire hook and the furze prong on the hearth. The changeling creature that the piskies had left behind was forever crying and always hungry, yet however much it ate, it only got thinner as time passed. Jenny was advised that the cure was to dip the changeling infant in Chapel Euny well on the first three Wednesdays in May, turning the child round three times from west to east- or, in other words, anticlockwise, against the sun. She started the process but, on her third trip to the well, Jenny was scared off by a disembodied voice addressing her- and to which her changeling child responded. We may note that the ability of changelings to behave like adults is- like their failure to thrive and unsettled temper- another key indicator of their real nature.
This method of expulsion involving ‘holy water’ having been thwarted, Jenny was advised to try something more forcible. Firstly she had to lay the child on a pile of ash and to beat it with a broom. This appears to be a double insult of assault and filth (in one Manx changeling story from 1897, the suspected changeling was laid across a pot of mooin, stale urine used for laundry, which drove it off). Next, Jenny was to leave the baby out naked overnight beneath a church stile- another double abuse of the infant. This second stage of the remedy involves exposure (although I’m not sure whether placing the child under a stile might all the same indicate an element of hesitancy- in that the step of the stile would give it some protection from rain). Be that as it may, it’s left near to hallowed premises, which would have been considered a powerful charm in its own right. Additionally, the choice of a stile, rather than just an open field- as was prefered in other cases- might indicate that the location was seen as liminal- between the civilised, Christian world and the wild countryside. This may have made the changeling more acceptable and accessible to its faery relatives, encouraging them to take it back.
Whatever the exact nature of their efficacy, these remedies worked and Jenny’s son was quickly restored to her, well washed and wrapped in a clean cloth. Nonetheless, after his spell in Faery, the boy was never ‘right’ again and spent most of his time tending cattle before dying aged only thirty.
The role of the local holy well (dedicated to Saint Euny) is notable here. Brea Vean is a farm north-east of Sennen, very near now to the Land’s End aerodrome. It stands at the foot of Carn Brea Hill, from which a clear track runs directly to Carn Euny, about a mile and three quarters away. The ruined chapel and its well would once have been very well known in the area.
The story of Jenny, and her desperate cure, is not unique in this part of west Cornwall. In the first volume of Bottrell’s Hearthside Tales (1870), he recounted at length the unhappy life of one Nancy Trenoweth, who after her lover’s death went to live with her grandmother, Joan, whose home was at Alsia Mill, a hamlet on the edge of the well-known Silena Moor south-west of St Buryan. This is barely four miles away from Brea Vean.
“The old dame’s maiden name is said to have been Johanna Pendre or Pender. Though now only spoken of as old Joan of Alsia [who] …was noted as one of the wise women deeply skilled in the healing art. Her salves, ointments, and lotions, prepared from the herbs culled from the wilds and moors, were in great repute. [Folk] came to be benefited by her charms, to be relieved from the spells of witchcraft and the blasting of the evil eye. Many unlucky mothers came to learn how they were to get rid of the changelings and cause the small-people [the pobel vean, the faeries] to restore the stolen children, concealed in their fairy homes. By her divining powers An Joan told the fortunes of the young and numbered the days of the aged. Besides all these professional avocations no other in the neighbourhood was so skilled in making sweet-drink (metheglin), and in distilling strong waters from the herbs of her garden, which contained every plant of repute for its medicinal virtues, every sweet flower then known in the country gardens to afford a honeyed store for the hives of bees that crowded every sunny nook and corner about the old dame’s pleasant garden and cottage, which stood a little above the mill. Here poor Nancy found refuge, and here, with the sweetest flowers of early summer, an innocent babe was born into a sinful world.”
What’s especially striking is that wise Joan lived at the site of another holy well. Alsia Well was, in the past, of “great repute” for two properties: if bathed or dipped in the water at Beltane (in May, as at Carn Euny), weak and rickety children could be strengthened and revived. The well also had powers of divination, determining when a maiden and her sweetheart would be united by dropping pebbles or pins in the water and observing how they sank and the bubbles that rose up. Floating bramble leaves on the surface was another method of discovering how lucky you might be in love.
Hard to locate across some muddy fields, the well’s powers of healing sickly infants would have been a great draw in the past and may not be unrelated to Joan’s knowledge of changeling remedies. Folklorist Arthur Quiller-Couch recorded the details of the well’s powers, but also noted that there was some antagonism between well visitors and the locals, as they relied on the spring for their drinking water and were not so keen on having babies and other items dipped or dropped into the source.
The quasi-baptism of suspected changelings, although it would make them wet and cold, was comparatively benign compared to the violence often meted out to frail children. It was one of a battery of methods available to desperate Cornish parents but, given the close links between the pixies and the holy wells of Cornwall, it was perhaps the one that was regarded as especially powerful.
British Pixies- with the rare and highly collectable first cover (!?)
Last week, I was fortunate enough to be able to get access to one of the libraries of the University of Arts London, in order to be able to read a very rare copy of a magazine from 1977, Deluxe. This was a short-lived publication, lasting for only two issues, and (as far as I was able to discern) the London College of Fashion held the only copies in the capital. It was principally a fashion journal- hence, given the year, there was a feature on the Seditionaries designs of Vivienne Westwood (and Malcolm McLaren)- but there were also articles on art, literature, film and general culture.
I was interested in an interview with the artist Peter Blake in the first issue of Deluxe. Readers may recall my 2018 survey of his faery paintings, most of which date from this period. In November 1969, Blake, his first daughter, and his wife Jann Haworth (also an artist) moved to live in the village of Wellow, five miles south of Bath and very near the impressive Stoney Littleton long barrow. In 1975, along with other artists who had left London for a rural lifestyle, he founded the Brotherhood of Ruralists. Another member of this group was Graham Ovenden, one of Blake’s former pupils, and through this friendship Blake developed an interest in the work of Lewis Carroll/ Charles Dodgson (the two painters eventually worked on a joint project illustrating Alice in Wonderland), as well as a fascination with the Victorian faery painters.
The interview with Blake in Deluxe is curiously rambling and unstructured, almost a stream of consciousness, and ends abruptly with the artist suggesting he make some tea. Nonetheless, he refers to his admiration for the faery art of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, as well as that of the later Heath Robinson brothers and of American fantasy painter, Maxfield Parrish. Blake was also fascinated by the works of Joseph Noel Paton, Richard Dadd and Arthur Rackham. He began to assemble a collection of their illustrations for his daughter, doubtless influenced again by Ovenden, who was a great collector of Carroll’s photographs as well as faery art- so much so that he published a book in 1976, Nymphets and Fairies, which featured the book plates of Richard Doyle, William Stephen Coleman and Eleanor Vere Boyle (often known as EVB).
Between 1969 and about 1983, Blake had a highly productive period during which he painted at least twenty faery images. Other than a couple of studies of Puck, he concentrated on portraits of ‘fairy girls,’ different named young women whose images are frequently based upon photographs found in fashion or glamour magazines; for example, Flora-Fairy Child (1977) is taken from a popular magazine; the subject of Fairy with Mushrooms of the same year is a topless model from a source such as Playboy or Penthouse. Placida- Fairy Child (1977) derives from an advert for the airline Avianca, with a chestnut husk added as a hat; Fairy Child Crying (1981) comes from the women’s magazine, Nova. The cover of Deluxe, and of the catalogue for the Tate Gallery’s major Blake exhibition in 1983, was one of his many studies of faery queen Titania (1972-74).
Blake’s vision of Faery comes through clearly from these pictures: it is a realm in touch with Nature- hence the Poppy Fairy and Daisy Fairy as well as Flora and Fairy with Mushrooms. There is frequent nudity- their nakedness symbolising an innocent lack of shame about their natural state- along with personal decorations made from items found in the countryside: Rossweise- Fairy Warrior (1977), wears a necklace made of a conker, seashell, leaves, flowers and a bottle top she has picked up, rather like his well-known three quarter length study of Titania.
I’ve recently been asked to submit a contribution to a planned book looking at different aspects of the alternative history of ‘Albion.’ I chose to write about two of the earliest attempts at fulling describing and cataloguing the nature of British faeries: those by the Reverend Robert Kirk– the famous Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, which was written in the 1670s- which I contrasted to the books by the Reverend Edmund Jones from the late eighteenth century, in which he gave one of the first comprehensive surveys of Welsh faery belief. Readers may note here that both men were Christian ministers; in my recent post on vanishing faeries, I observed how the spread of Protestantism was antithetical to folklore belief. To this I should add the observation that many of the folklore researchers of the Victoran period were vicars, preachers and priests- a fact that may have further inhibited their interviewees in confessing to ongoing ‘superstition’ and is very likely to have encouraged them to push back faery accounts to an earlier generation, allowing them to retain a connection through grandparents but yet to deny actual contemporary credence. Kirk and Jones were quite different in that they shared so much of the parishioners’ belief in the supernatural and so were able more faithfully and frankly record local traditions.
Thinking about what to feature in the new book, though, I considered other possible British texts. Kirk was describing the Scottish sith folk, as they were known on the southern edges of the Highlands, west of Stirling. Another Scots source could perhaps have been Daemonologie (1597) by King James VI of Scotland (and later the 1st of England). As the title may indicate, this was written from the perspective of exposing witchcraft as a satanic cult, which means that much of what he wrote about faeries in relation to the alleged witches was tainted by his preconceptions. Nonetheless, he disclosed that the popular opinion was that the ‘Pharies’ would carry people away and that they lived under hills. They had a king and queen, with a “jolly court and train” and “were thought to be sonsiest [healthiest] and of best life.” Part of the reason they lived so well, the king wrote, was because the Good Neighbours “had teynd [tithe] and dutie, as it were” eating and drinking foodstuffs produced by humans. All of these elements are core features of British faery belief and are obviously authentic.
I also considered several texts from England, the first being Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584). Although written over a decade before James’ book, Scot took a starkly different stance and regarded witchcraft and faerylore as uniformly nonsense. Superstition, in his opinion, was just silly: “certainlie, some knave in a white sheet hath cousened and abused manie thousands…” he reported dismissively. Even though ghosts, bullbeggars, hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellow were foolish delusions only fit for children, Scot nonetheless helpfully gave quite a lot of detail about all the things he reckoned weren’t worth paying attention to. People danced with faeries and made offerings to them to have chores done, he reported:
“In deede your grandam’s maides were woont to set a boll of milke before [the incubus] and his cousine Robin good-fellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight: and you have also heard that he would chafe exceedingly, if the maid or good-wife of the house, having compassion of his nakednes, laid anie clothes for him, beesides his messe of white bread and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith; What have we here? Hemton hamten, here will I never more tread nor stampen.” (Book IV, chapter 10)
Regular readers will be very familiar with the idea that faeries and brownies will do household work in exchange for food and warmth, but will be driven off by gifts of clothes.
Witches were alleged to feast with the devil and the faery queen (“the ladie of the fairies”) but after the banquetting was done, although they had “eaten up a fat oxe, and emptied a butt of malmesie, and a binne of bread at some noble man’s house, in the dead of the night, nothing is missed of all this in the morning. For the ladie Sibylla, Minerva, or Diana with a golden rod striketh the vessell and the binne, and they are fullie replenished againe. Yea, she causeth the bullock’s bones to be brought and laid togither upon the hide, and lappeth the foure ends thereof togither, laying her golden rod thereon; and then riseth up the bullocke againe in his former estate and condition.” (Book III, c.2) The very same tales were later told of the Dartmoor pixies, for example, some three hundred years later. Lastly, Scot mentioned in passing three surprising aspects of Elizabethan faery belief: one is that they might be realted to witches’ familiars and that their names could be highly suggestive– he refers to “Tittie and Tiffin, Suckin and Pidgin,” for instance. Thirdly, there’s a clear indication that contemporary thought accepted that the faeries might look quite alien to our present notions: Scot speaks of “white spirits and blacke spirits, graie spirits and red spirits…” (A Discourse upon divels and spirits, chapter 33)
In 1635, Thomas Heywood published his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, which- as the name says- is a survey of the different ranks of angel in Judaeo-Christian belief. In its ninth book, Heywood gives us a couple of excellent verse snapshots of everyday British faery belief, first of all describing Puck and other domestic spirits:
“Pugs and Hob-goblins call. Their dwellings bee In corners of old houses least frequented, Or beneath stacks of wood: and these convented [gathered together], Make fearefull noise in Buttries and in Dairies; Robin good-fellowes some, some call them Fairies. In solitarie roomes These uprores keepe, And beat at dores to wake men from their sleepe, Seeming to force locks, be they ne’re so strong, And keeping Christmasse gambols all night long. Pots, glasses, trenchers, dishes, pannes, and kettles They will make dance about the shelves and settles, As if about the Kitchen tost and cast, Yet in the morning nothing found misplac’t.”
Heywood also mentions the “Subterren Spirits”- what we’d now call Knockers– who “chiefely that in Mines and Mettals trade.” They work alongside miners, digging for ore, but also causing nuisances by putting out lamps, breaking ladders and stealing tools.
Heywood, Hierarchie
Thomas Hobbe’s famous political tract, Leviathan (1651), was written from a perspective equally as sceptical as Reginald Scot’s: in the author’s opinion, faeries were the product of ignorance, superstition and the lies of the Catholic church. It’s probably connected to this last reason that he also claims that the faeries speak Latin; like the faes singing in Latin in Thomas Randolph’s play Amyntas (1632), this is surely far more to do with both men’s education than with the actual nature of British faery folk . Hobbes firmly declared that the idea of “a whole kingdom of fairies and bugbears” that “walketh (as some think, invisibly)… in the dark” was just the “matter of old wives’ tales.” Yet, just like Scot, in dismissing all these fables, the writer also recorded them for the future. So it is that we learn that:
“The Fairies in what Nation soever they converse, have but one Universall King, which some Poets of ours call King Oberon… [they] inhabite Darknesse, Solitudes, and Graves. The Fairies also have their enchanted Castles, and certain Gigantique Ghosts, that domineer over the Regions round about them.
The fairies are not to be seized on and brought to answer for the hurt they do… [they] are said to take young Children out of their Cradles, and to change them into Naturall Fools, which Common people do therefore call Elves, and are apt to mischief… When the Fairies are displeased with any body, they are said to send their Elves, to pinch them.
The Fairies marry not; but there be amongst them Incubi, that have copulation with flesh and bloud… It is in the Fable of Fairies, that they enter into the Dairies, and Feast upon the Cream, which they skim from the Milk.” (Leviathan, Part 4, chapter 47)
The key features of faery nature listed by Hobbes- the taking of changelings and the leaving of ‘oafs’ (elves), physical punishments of humans who vex them, the theft of our dairy produce and sexual relationships between humans and faeries- are all, still, central elements of British faerylore.
Lastly, in 1665, a second edition of Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft was published, to which an unknown author appended “A discourse concerning the nature and substance of devils and spirits.” This added considerable extra material to our overview of faeries as they were understood in the seventeenth century. The writer’s description of the status of the spirits may suggest that contemporray views had moderated somewhat from the time of Scot and James VI: he stated that “their nature is middle between Heaven and Hell and that they reign in a third Kingdom from both, having no other judgment or doom to expect for ever.” This seems to reflect the belief of some that faeries were fallen angels, trapped forever between heaven and hell- not fully demons and anxious, even, about their ultimate fate.
The Discourse continued, seeking to describe the physical nature of faeries and their habitations:
“To speak more nearly unto their natures, they … have their degrees of continuance, whereof some live hundreds, some thousands of years: Their food is the Gas of the Water, and the Blas [emanation] of the Air: And in their Aspects, or countenances, they differ as to vigour and cheerfulness: They occupy various places of this world; as Woods, Mountains, Waters, Air… Mines, and… also antient Buildings, and places of the slain. Some again are familiar in Houses, and do frequently converse with, and appear unto mortals.
They are capable of hunger, grief, passion, and vexation… when they are worn out, they return into their proper essence or primary quality again; as Ice when it is resolved into Water: They meet in mighty Troops, and wage warr one with another: They do also procreate one another; and have power sometimes to make great commotions in the Air, and in the Clowds, and also to cloath themselves with visible bodies, out of the four Elements, appearing in Companies upon Hills and Mountains, and do often deceive and delude the observers of Apparitions, who take such for portents of great alterations, which are nothing but the sports and pastime of these frolick Spirits: as Armies in the Air, Troops marching on the Land, noises and slaughter, Tempest and Lightning…” (Book II, c.1)
According to this writer, then, the faeries were close to humans in many respects, albeit of an insubstantial, spiritual nature, All the same, they could age, sicken and die- and could fight and kill each other.
Showing the influence of the revived classical learning of the Renaissance, the author of the Discourse classed together a range of native as well as Greek and Roman spirits:
“Terrestrial Spirits, which are of several degrees according to the places which they occupy, [such] as Woods, Mountains, Caves, Fens, Mines, Ruins, Desolate places, and Antient Buildings, call’d by the Antient Heathens after various names, as Nymphs, Satyrs, Lamii, Dryades, Sylvanes, Cobali, and more particularly the Faeries, who do principally inhabit the Mountains, and Caverns of the Earth, whose nature is to make strange Apparitions on the Earth in Meddows, or on Mountains being like Men, and Women, Souldiers, Kings, and Ladyes Children, and Horse-men cloathed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to Convert them into Horses as the Story goes. Besides, it is credibly affirmed and beleev’d by many, that such as are real Changlings, or Lunaticks, have been brought by such Spirits and Hobgoblins, the true Child being taken away by them in the place whereof such are left, being commonly half out of their wits, and given to many Antick practices, and extravagant fancies, which passions do indeed proceed from the powerful influence of the Planet in their nativity, and not from such foolish conjectures.
Such jocund and facetious Spirits are sayd to sport themselvs in the night by tumbling and fooling with Servants and Shepherds in Country houses, pinching them black and blew, and leaving Bread, Butter, and Cheese sometimes with them, which if they refuse to eat, some mischief shall undoubtedly befall them by the means of these Faeries. And many such have been taken away by the sayd Spirits, for a fortnight, or a month together, being carryed with them in Chariots through the Air, over Hills, and Dales, Rocks and Precipices, till at last they have been found lying in some Meddow or Mountain bereaved of their sences, and commonly of one of their Members to boot.” (Discourse, Book II, chapter 4)
Once again, the mention of changelings, of being able to enchant items to use them in flight, their subterranean dwellings, abductions, and incursions into human homes, are all well-established faery traits. Whether this text may have been read by Kirk, with whose book it shares some similartities, is unknown.
In conclusion, there were quite a few English descriptions that I might have examined for the forthcoming Albion book, but none were as detailed or as lengthy as Kirk and Jones, which is why I gave them preference. Nevertheless, well before those late Victorian folklore collectors, there were writers seeking to set out what were generally agreed to be the nature and habits of British faeries in some sort of ‘encyclopaedic’ form. We owe then a great debt- as well as those individuals and orgnsations who have digitised these texts, so that you can read them all for yourself online if you choose.
In this post I’m going to look at the work of children’s illustrator Richard (Dicky) Doyle and what his representations of faeries might tell us about contemporary views towards them. Although his work appeared in simple story books, Doyle unconsciously betrayed many of the contemporary adult attitudes about the behaviour ofthe inhabitants of Faery.
Doyle (1824-83) was the son of a cartoonist and, in his turn, became one of the leading cartoonists of his onw generation, working for the satirical and humorous magazine Punch. As an illustrator, he also contributed to books by Dickens and Thackeray, as well as several of his own titles. In 1846, Doyle was commissioned to illustrate a new English translation of the Brothers Grimm tales, The Fairy Ring. This established him as a faery artist and he subsequently worked on numerous similar titles, including John Ruskin’s King of the Golden River in 1850. The illustrations used here come from In Fairyland, Pictures from Elf-World of 1870,which incorporated William Allingham’s poem, A Forest in Fairyland, along with Andrew Lang’s Princess Nobody.
Two detailed scenes from the Triumphal March of the Elf King
Numerous sources tell us what fairy hair looked like: in 1792 an account of the parish of Liberton near Edinburgh described how the local fairy women were “girls of diminutive size, dressed in green with dishevelled hair, who frequented sequestered places and at certain times conversed with men.” Evidently those men weren’t at all put off by the untidy state of their hair (or their stature for that matter). A contemporary report from Kirkmichael in Banffshire also described fairy women who appeared to travellers “with dishevelled hair floating over their shoulders and with faces more blooming than the vermeil blush of a summer morning”- evidently a dangerously enchanting combination. A few decades later, in 1827, another Scottish witness portrayed young fairy women as “beautiful young girls, clad in green, with loose dishevelled hair, who frequent woods and valleys. Men have often seen and spoken to them.” It seems pretty clear that a major part of the attraction for those human males was the fresh, natural look of the faes, their unkemptness being suggestive of a wild or uninhibited nature that contrasted alluringly with that of the well-groomed (and well-chaperoned) girls of their everyday acquaintance.
Girls combing goats beards, 1870
Underlying these accounts were social assumptions and stereotypes that only got stronger as the nineteenth century passed. For Victorians, disorderly hair was associated with an unconstrained sexuality, loose-flowing tresses being a clear sign of what we’d now call the femme fatale. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of “her loosened hair’s downfall” in Love-Sweetness and, according to one authority on the period, the saying “loosening one’s hair” implied moral looseness and rebellion. Of course, freeflowing hair didn’t have to be dishevelled and unkempt. The very act of combing could be erotic: all those mermaids sitting on rocks arranging their hair were deliberately and ostentatiously drawing attention to their lovely locks and, albeit in a slightly different way, were regarded as just as wanton and wild as the faeries who allowed it to blow tangled in the breeze.
The fact that Doyle was conveying these almost subliminal messages about faery conduct and morality seems to me to be confirmed by other scenes in his pictures. There are plenty of scenes showing faeries kissing- harmlessly and rather childlishly, certainly- but their affection, however tentative and shy it may be, says something about the freer morals of Faery. I can’t help think, for that matter, that the faery girls with their long loose hair, whom Doyle painted combing the beards of goats, not only conveys messages about the odd association often noticed between fae and caprine, but is at the same time a sly joke for grown-ups, hinting at ‘goaty’ natures.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith (1866-68)– archetypal femme fatale
Finally, the fact that most of the artist’s faeries tended to look rather like children or teenagers will probably have added extra layers to the complexity of the undertones at play here. Wearing the hair loose and long was the fashion for prepubescent girls in Victorian society and Doyle’s illustrations will inevitably have been read with these assumptions being made. Consequently, we are seeing a depiction of Faery that implies that its people are, to some degree or other, like children and yet are allowed far greater personal freedom than the offspring of a middle-class book buying public. The faery world was presented as one in which social and personal rules are radically laxer than ours; they are alien to us in much of their behaviour. Doyle’s faeries would have appeared endearing and amusing, but they would also have borne in their combination of juvenile appearance and adult behaviour a strange and non-human aura.
An Elfin Dance (detail)
A further aspect of Faery, one which further distanced its inhabitants from respectable Victorians, was the matter of dress (and, frequently, undress). The second of the close-up images from the Triumphal March of the Elf King above is a good example of the tendency for fae maidens to wear nothing but light, sleeveless slips- highly informal, very revealing. Two other images from In Fairyland further illustrate this stereotype: the fairies’ loose and casual attire could very well turn into no clothes at all. Doyle regularly depicted boy and girl faeries wearing nothing, other- perhaps- than a cape over the shoulders. The Victorians could just about tolerate bare arms (this style was briefly fashionable for women’s and girls’ formal evening wear during the 1880s), but bare legs or any greater exposure were decidely not proper. The indecency of the faeries- their seeming obliviousness to flaunting their flesh- conveyed strong messages about their wildness, their natural state. Like so-called ‘primitive’ peoples, their choice to go about uncovered indicated a lack of civilisation and- even worse- a want of morals. This trait was tolerable when the fae were portrayed as children, but it still fitted in with the other subliminal messages of the illustrations to proclaim that Doyle’s faery folk were not human; they were feral, amoral (if not actively wicked) and- it might be inferred- unpredictable like a wild animal. Pretty and endearing as they might seem- and, as such, suitable for children to look at in picture books- I think there was a subtle warning as well. Their naked otherness was a threat and we could only be thankful that- if Doyle was to be trusted- they were mostly no larger than sparrows.
A Fairy Concert
As concluding, general, observations, a couple of other aspects of Doyle’s illustrations may be noted. The first is the entirely rural surroundings of his faeries. This is not especially surprising, for the majority of painters of the period also set their faeries in natural world- for example Sir Noel Paton or John Simmonds. Nevertheless, the lack of human contact and the avoidance of mortal dwellings (unlike, for instance, in the work of John Anster Fitzgerald), help to stress their otherworldly character and their independence from us. I’ll also draw attention to their wings. The oddest thing is Doyle’s inconsistency: some of the faeries have them, but most don’t. The choice doesn’t appear to be determined by gender or status, making the artist’s reasons for adding them very hard to discern. Perhaps he simply felt awkward about the aesthetics and logic of the appendages- witness the faery girl conducting the birds, or the one kissing over the toadstool. Quite how their wings fit through the cape and dress the pair wear is anyone’s guess… Whatever the answer, it seems Doyle didn’t see them as essential fae features. Nevertheless, we must recognise that his famous pictures were very influential on the illustrators who followed him- so that Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairies, fifty or so years later, were much more consistently winged and- very definitely- part of Nature.
Richard Doyle, The Triumphal March of the Elf King
I recently gave a talk at the Last Tuesday Society, held at premises in Hackney that house their absinthe parlour, gallery and the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities. My presentation was part of a programme of events linked to the launch of Viktor latest book of Dark Fairy Tales.
I spoke on a topic I have posted about in the past: the conundrum that is our perennial conviction that the faeries have ‘just’ disappeared- that they were something our grandparents believed in, but which can only be regarded as naive nonsense by ‘modern’ society. The irony is that people have been saying things like this at least since the time of Geoffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century. The ‘era of the faeries’ and the date of their last sighting is revealed to be a perpetually shifting point in time, always about one hundred years ago…
Very evidently, the concept of the vanishing faery is something entirely to do with us humans and nought to do with the Good Folk themselves. Over the centuries, a variety of popular explanations have been advanced for the flight of faeries from our company. These include:
Religion– the disappearance is a consequence of Protestant puritanism and a growing reliance on the Bible as the sole source of truth in Christianity. Presbyterian preachers have been blamed for driving the trows from Shetland to the Faeroes; then again, one Welsh bwbach drove away a Methodist minister because he was teetotal and didn’t relish good company and a pint of strong cwrw da (ale);
Modern agriculture– in the Scottish Borders it has been said that farming with iron tools (ploughs/ scythes and such like) is what repels the local fae. The interesting implication of this- it seems- is that they have no objection to an earlier, pre-Iron Age manner of cultivation, with wooden ploughs and flint bladed sickles. This in turn suggests that the faeries are attached in some way to the Neolithic- that they are ancient, perhaps ancestral;
Industry– the smoke and noise of our industrialised society– factories, mills, quarries, telephones and railways– have all been accused of making life intolerable for the local faeries (although we must recall that the faeries are themselves not averse to manufacture and mining);
State education has, of course, played a role in undermining people’s faith in traditional wisdom and stories, creating a gulf between the and older generations; and,
Modern media– from cinema, through radio and television, to the interweb, new technologies have all distracted us. It’s not so much that the faeries can’t abide TikTok and Instagram, though, but the problem that we’re so engrossed, or cut off by headphones, that we’re not alert to our surroundings and don’t look around us anymore.
On my recent Highland trip, I saw numerous abandoned farmsteads- stone cottages that had fallen into ruin over the last few decades. These are a more recent instance of our retreat from marginal, less easily cultivable land, a trend that was more brutally expressed in the Victorian Highland clearances. These derelict homesteads, whether the roofless walls of post-Victorian structures or the razed foundations of cleared villages, made me think of the Scottish tales of the departure of the sith. The best examples of this theme are:
‘Farewell to Burrow Hill,’ in Robert Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale Song, 1810: a procession of thousands of “little boys” was seen entering a hill in about 1790- the last ‘faery rade‘ in the Borders;
Hugh Miller’s ‘Departure of the Fairies’ in Old Red Sandstone (1841): they were seen by some children at Eathie on the Black Isle dressed in “antique” clothes, riding minute horses and declaring that “the people of peace shall never more be seen in Scotland;” and,
‘The Gloaming Bucht,’ 1901: an account of the ‘last Scottish faery,’ “a wee little creature” searching for her companion Hewie Milburn in the Cheviot Hills.
Reflecting on these accounts, and the evidence of abandoned settlements in the far north, I began to wonder whether these stories are actually more to do with our feelings of disconnection from the landscape- a sense that we are leaving the faeries, rather than them deserting us. The clearances and the relinquishment of marginal land results in people being separated from the landscapes in which their cultures have developed. They are severed from their ancestors, a sense of continuity and from a context for finding meaning in family and community history. Viewed from this perspective, might not the factors that have ‘driven off’ the faeries better be understood as manifestations of our own guilt: we have shown a lack of faith in them? They are a part of our culture, environment and history and we have wilfully violated nature, and accelerated the material elements of our culture, to the point where the supernatural is all to frequently drowned out. The vanishing faery is, in fact, a symbol for our own guilty feelings of alienation and loss. The Good Folk are still there; it’s humans who divorced and deserted them.
Eathie- scene of the Highland faeries last appearance
British Fairies 