Young, 'Fairy Imposters in the Great Famine'

While statistics show that the newly restructured constabulary of 1836 were largely justified in reducing the numbers of crimes in the late 1830s (agrarian outrages, serious assault and murders fell from thirty-three to twenty-five per cent of all crime between 1835-42) however, the methods employed to achieve these reductions make this triumph questionable.1 As the crime rate and number of outrages declined, police corruption seemed to escalate. At least awareness of corruption did increase as police reports were expected to become more and more thorough and therefore open to more scrutiny by officials in Dublin Castle and many cases of fabricated crime were detected. Further to this, following years of attempting to suppress oppositional newspapers, lax attitudes towards the press on the part of Dublin Castle, allowed a culture of scandal driven papers to spring up and to report unsubstantiated outrages to suit their own political agenda. More often than not, however, the use of spies to fabricate crime was at the centre of most of these cases of fabrication, spies who were generally motivated by financial gain; yet behind each spy was a policeman, who himself was looking to gain financially or through promotion. This paper examines the relationship of spies, police corruption and the fabrication of crime by highlighting a series of notorious incidents which occurred in Shinrone, Kings County in 1844. Almost concurrent with this incident, a separate scandal, in the same town, and involving the Orange Order and a Catholic magistrate, also challenged the authority of law by increasing already fraught sectarian tension through instigating a further form of fabrication. Both cases will be examined to portray the workings of a midland provincial town in the pre-famine period, offering an insight into social, religious and economic tension during this time.

Nineteenth-century newspapers have not always received due attention in folklore studies, not least because scholars found it difficult to search through extensive paper runs. However, the recent creation of large online newspaper databases means that news that may be of interest to folklorists can now be tracked down and analysed more easily. In this article we look at four 'fairy changeling' episodes from nineteenth-century Ireland reflecting on the difficulties that they present, but also on the opportunities that they offer for future studies. Three are cases of children being abused, in the belief that they were changelings, while another is an account of an adult changeling from Co. Cavan. We include, as an appendix, a handlist of nineteenth-century Irish 'changeling crimes', crimes thought to have been influenced by fairy belief.

North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 50 (2010), pp 89–107

This paper discusses the context and content of a set of stories published in Folklore in 1891 and apparently collected in the Carrs of North Lincolnshire. These stories contain a wealth of folkloric references which this study seeks to assess. Background research on the folklore of Lincolnshire indicates that there were varied calendar customs and rituals taking place at strategic times throughout the year

There follows a taster for Higson, South Manchester Supernatural (978-1-8380969-0-8) This is southern Manchester as you have never seen it before. We have: shape-changing ghosts; cow-levitating Boggarts; child-murdering Jenny Greenteeth; the tree-haunting Nut Nan; Dicky, a railway-destroying skull; din-making Clap Cans; border-guarding Pad Feet; and, beware, above all, Raura Peena the last fairy of Saddleworth. All this in a hundred-and-three pages, in the Pwca Ghost, Witch and Fairy Pamphlet series. The author, John Higson (1825-1871) wrote, from the 1850s, a series of supernatural sketches of Gorton (where he was born and grew up), Droylsden (where he lived), Lees (where he died), Saddleworth (where he walked) and other areas he visited, including Preston and Derbyshire. Born to a poor family, raised without an education, Higson became, through hard-work and talent one of the most exciting Lancashire folklore writers of his generation, and got to be friends with some of the most influential county authors of his day. However, because Higson never brought his folklore work together in a single volume his supernatural prose (and two songs) have been lost in obscure and, in some cases, forgotten publications. For the first time now his folklore compositions, from fifteen different articles and books, are gathered together in the hope of giving Higson (and the supernatural world he inhabited) the attention they so richly deserve. Also included: a short biography and William E. A. Axon’s ‘Hartshead Boggart’ (a tribute to Higson from a friend).

The life of 17th century Scottish pastor and writer Dr Robert Kirk, whose 1691 book, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, was the first attempt to collect together Highlander folklore in regards to fairy lore, was an extraordinary one, at the crossroads of cultures, history, and folklore. Here is a man, named, born, lived, who lived a fairy story, really lived it: and in the popular imagination, he lives still. There are innumerable stories of fairy contact in countless cultures throughout the world, but Robert Kirk is not anonymous — fairy-taken, he, like Bridget Cleary in 19th century Ireland, real, documented, flesh-and-blood people, have stepped out of the human world, the world of the ordinary, sideways into a strange, parallel universe where nothing is quite as it seems. In this paper, Sophie Masson investigates the case of a man who moved from history to folklore, from reality to myth, against a background of tumultuous times in Gaelic-speaking Scotland.

Lived fairy experiences in nineteenth-century Ireland and their relation to Irish folklore.

Russian Sociological Review, 2016