I’ve just finished reading Francis Young’s Magic in Merlin’s Realm- A History of Occult Politics in Britain (2022). The book set me thinking (once again) about Queen Elizabeth I and her relationship with British faery mythology. As Young emphasises, the queen established a ‘cult’ of herself as Faery Queen (to borrow Spenser’s phrase) and, in this guise was “worshipped by her knights… at a time when the fairies were still objects of genuine fear.” This brings home the striking nature of this association- at a time when the British faeries were very much associated with theft, the taking of changelings, and a generalised malevolence towards humankind, it was a surprising and striking thing for a monarch to deliberately make such a link. Today, with much more recent ideas of femininity, cuteness, delicacy and harmlessness, we unconsciously accept the label as unexceptionable, but it must have seemed anything but in the later sixteenth century. Perceptions would begin to change quite soon afterwards, though, with the poetry of Robert Herrick, Michael Drayton and, indeed, Shakespeare (in Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600).
Presumably the inherent threat of the faeries was no bad thing for a single female monarch to project. Elizabeth was, in any case, happy to be associated with magic and the occult: she practised alchemy herself and drew on the astrological and conjuring services of the (in)famous Doctor John Dee. Enhancing the supernatural aura of the queen with power over the faeries must have had advantages- and Elizabeth’s courtiers seem to have been very ready to make the most of this idea. During a masque performed for the visiting monarch at Hengrave Hall in late August 1578, the queen was seen to exert her power over the faery realm so that they changed their temperament in her presence: “the hagges of helle, that hateful are of kind/ to please the time, had learned a nature new.”
Falstaff and the masked faeries (c.1840)
A few days previously, during the same royal progress around eastern England, Elizabeth witnessed a ‘Show of Water-Nymphs or Fairies’, devised by the poet Thomas Churchyard and staged just outside Norwich. This seems to have been a performance of rather different tenor to that to be seen at Hengrave: Churchyard recorded that he had “resolved to do somewhat might make the Queen laugh.” As was the way in Tudor theatre, he had seven boys playing the his female nymphs, who were “dressed like Nymphs of the water, and were to play…the Fairies, and to dance (as near as could be imagined) like the Fairies. Their attire, and coming so strangely out [from behind a hedge] I know made the Queen’s highness smile and laugh withal.” All were equipped with tambourines and Churchyard “apparelled like a water Sprite… led the young foolish Fairies a dance, which…as I heard said, was well taken.” It’s fascinating to see the poet express concern that the choreography was only an approximation to faery dancing and known not to be wholly authentic. Most significant, though, is the fact that these ‘nymphs’ were evidently rather more feminine and unthreatening than hellish hags, intended to be the subject of amusement rather than fear.
It was a common conceit on such occasions for Elizabeth to be greeted by the Queen of Fairy, coming to pay homage to England’s monarch. So, for instance, at Elvetham in Hampshire in 1591, on the fourth day of her visit, the Tudor queen was approached by the faery queen and her maids, dancing and singing, and was addressed as follows:
“I, that abide in places underground, Aureola, Queen of Fairyland, That every night in rings of painted flowers Turn around and carol…”
The queen of fairyland had emerged to make obeisance to her earthly superior, a neat dramatic ploy that both flattered the visiting monarch as well as providing a visual spectacle. A very similar masque had been performed to entertain Elizabeth at Woodstock during a royal progress in 1575. The entertainment began with the monarch once again being approached by the ‘Queen of Fayry’ who presented herself with a loyal declaration to the effect that her love for Elizabeth had drawn her out of her woodland retreat and “caused me transforme my face/ and in your hue to come before your eyne/ now white, then blacke, your frend the fayery Queene.” Black and white were the colours of the English queen, but at the same time it does not seem that those present would have considered odd that Elizabeth’s supernatural counterpart might have a black face.
This issue of unusually coloured faces is something I have discussed before. It was a persistent detail of English faery belief, although it is one completely forgotten by our traditions now. Hence, in 1451, a hundred armed men broke into the Duke of Buckingham’s deer park at Penshurst, “covered with long beards and painted on their faces with black charcoal, calling themselves servants of the queen of fairies.” Their violent thieving was typical of faeries; so too, apparently, were their jet black faces. These again appear to be an accepted faery trait, marking their stark difference from humans. We’ll find the same in the 1602 play The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Shakespeare presented a somewhat more traditional picture of faeries than the royal court of the Dream. Sir John Falstaff is tricked into thinking he has met the faery queen and her attendants. These are in fact children dressed up; they are “mask’d and vizarded”- their faces are covered- and they are summoned as “Fairies, black, grey, green and white;” terms- it has been suggested- which refer as much to the colour of their faces as their clothes.
The faeries of the late Tudor period were much stranger and more perilous than we care now to remember. Their mystique and power were such that a monarch could bolster his or her image by associating with them and by showing that the scary faery realm was subjugated to the human kingdom. For more on these issues see my earlier postings and, at greater length, my 2020 bookFayerie- Fairies & Fairyland in Tudor and Stuart Verse.
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 recently visited the Angus Folklore blog, and was struck by the observation in one post that “Place-names showing the presence of the Fair Folk are as elusive as the race itself… One gets the feeling that most of the supernatural traffic in ancient times by-passed Angus altogether.” A number of faery sites are idetified (as I’ll list in a moment) but they do seem surprisingly few given that we are on the edge of the Highlands, known for the prevalence of its sith people. This set me to thinking about the distribution of faeries across Britain more generally and, realising that it was not even, I began to wonder what the reasons for this might be.
In Angus, the faery folk seem to be restricted solely to a few hills or to spaces within them. There is an Elf Hillock in Glen Clova and a Fairy Hillock at Carmyllie. The faeries are closely associated with the Sidlaw Hills (between Perth and Dundee); equally, the hillforts of White and Brown Cathertun north of Brechin are renowned faery spots, with the fair folk inhabiting a great cavern beneath. In Dundee itself, a faery palace lay underground near Duntrune House and there were faery links with a couple of souterrains or subterranean passages (what are known as fougous in Cornwall, where they are also linked to the fae).
Across Britain, in fact, some areas or counties are markedly less frequented than others. In parallel with this, some regions appear to have more ‘faery beasts’ than actual faeries. For example, Cheshire is known for its supernatural water beings, Nelly Long Arms, meremaids and asrai, as well as for Black Dogs. Lincolnshire too is more notable for its hounds and horses than conventional faery folk. Many of the home counties are the same, as is East Anglia as a whole. Frances Young has written an excellent book on Suffolk Fairylore (2019), but it’s also well-established that the three counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are the centre of the Black Dog phenomenon in Britain, as well as having a good share of water sprites. On the other hand, some counties have very few fae associations at all, for instance Berkshire or Wiltshire.
As the last paragraph may also indicate, the distribution of species of faery is uneven. So, for example, the Black Dog is far more an eastern and northern English phenomenon, and the ‘brownie’ spreads northwards from the East Midlands into Lowland Scotland. The boggart likewise is northern, as too are the brags of the North-East. The pixie-type is limited to the south-western counties (Cornwall, Devon and Somerset), although this might arguably be extended somewhat further north and east. ‘Pixie’ and ‘pisky’ are dialect variants upon pucksy, and hence derive from puck and pwcca, which means that a wider faery family might be traced into south-west Wales, the southern West Midlands and into more easterly counties along the English south coast.
One reader of this blog recently shared with me the results of his hard work inputting certain faery records into a map. He has very kindly agreed for me to publish the results more widely and, as you will see from the map, there are clear clusters in the folklore references to trows and brownies (see the end of this posting).
The next question, of course, is why these patterns exist. Are they the result of patchy faery settlement? Have the fae been driven out of certain areas by humans? Do they merely reflect poor recording of traditional beliefs on our part or may they equally mirror old stories forgotten?
Unavoidably, we are dependent upon the source material available to us and this is in many cases the fruit of individual labour and fascination on the part of Victorian folklorists- often amateurs, often also clergymen. If a region didn’t have a keen collector resident, stories and memories could easily have been lost to us entirely. This weakness lies behind all attempted interpretations of the data.
Working with the records we have, one answer that explains distribution might be environment. Taking, for example, the aquatic beings who inhabit the still water of marshes and pools, or those that prefer flowing rivers- or even the sea- they are naturally restricted to suitable bodies of fresh or salt water. We encounter meremaids and asrai in the inland pools of Suffolk and the Shropshire plain, for instance. Yet, there seems to be nothing equivalent known from the Somerset Levels of Romney Marsh, implying that more than just habitat is involved here.
In previous posts I have examined the information that place names may give us about faery habitat preferences. There is more to be mined from this resource, I believe, although it may require a team of experts in their disciplines to gather a complete picture: specialists not just in toponymy but also in botany, geology and ancient landscapes would need to work together closely to try to determine the exact conditions of sites in medieval times when names were applied. A pit or pool said to be the lair of a puck obviously indicates a preference for subterranean or wet conditions, but more precise information about the actual conditions likely to have prevailed in specific locations may take us much nearer to understanding what led to the faery association and whether these are constant across counties or the country as a whole.
There are evidently lots of questions yet to be asked and answered- and a lot of work to be done on the records- but the reward could be a much deeper knowledge of faery society and biology. We might discover why they live where they do and how they choose to organise their communities- particularly, why some are solitary (or will live with humans rather than their own kind) and some prefer to cohabit in communities.
It’s that time of year in England and Wales when communities ‘wassail’ their orchards. These ceremonies are typically conducted in January, often on Twelfth Night, January 6th. The wassail held at Tarring in East Sussex is a good example of the ceremony: with torches, morris men, instruments, fireworks and noise, it is proclaimed that “All of the birds and all of the insects will come to the tree, they will clean it and cleanse it of evil spirits and ensure a bountiful harvest.” This is followed by a chant, the purpose of which is to enchant the trees and ensure fruitfulness. The trees are then toasted with cider. Note that these songs are addressed to the tress and not not just about them.
Practices vary from place to place. Sometimes cider is poured on the tree roots; sometimes pieces of toasted bread are hung from the boughs- ostensibly to attract birds and other animals, who will then perform their cleansing function. In Wales the mysterious Mari Lwyd might turn up, snapping her jaws and helping to scare away evil; at Melbury Osmond in Dorset, the horned Ooser may appear, presumably having the same effect. This mysterious being wears a cow skin and has cow’s horns; its name may derive from dialect word meaning ‘hairy’ or, possibly, just cow/ oxen. In Somerset a dragon dances at Wellington and an old crone at Wiveliscombe.
The nature of the ‘evil spirits’ that wassailing scares off is unclear; they seem to be a generalised harm that might blight trees and fruit. At Wellington, the wassail is directed against the mawlscrawls, who are identified as mischievous sprites- although the word, also found as maskel, is local dialect for a green caterpillar (an obvious threat). By implication, though, we might conclude that good spirits- whether taking the form of winged creatures or otherwise- are being simultaneously summoned and assisted by the practice of ‘charming’ the orchards.
Wassailing beliefs and practices cannot be unrelated to parallel notions about faery interest in, and involvement with, fruit crops. English orchards and nut groves are haunted by sprites whose role is to bring life to the trees and to protect the fruit from thefts. This benign influence over the productivity and security of fruit and nut trees might be considered as part of the wider faery role of promoting agricultural fertility (of crops and cattle). However, these orchard spirits appear (rather like dryads) to be inseparable from their trees, so that thinking of them as indwelling- as against merely protective- may be a more accurate way of conceiving of them.
These faeries go by various regional names, including Jack up the Orchard, the Grig and the Apple Tree Man. As well as wassailing ceremonies, at harvest time in Somerset a few apples would always be left behind on the trees, which would be regarded as the pixie’s rightful entitlement and property. This customary offering was called ‘pixying,’ ‘grigging’ or the ‘pixy-hoarding’ and in return it was hoped that the next year’s crop would be blessed. The traditional Yuletide rituals address the ‘old apple tree,’ but surely this must denote not the mere organism but a life or spirit within it. The autumn gifts of apples far more explicitly acknowledge the vital faery presence in the trees. The exact concepts at play here- ‘payment’ for assistance, a recognition of faery residence or some notion of identity between spirit and plant and a resultant wish not to harm or over-exploit the tree too much- are ill-defined.
Ontological debates aside, fruit tree spirits are found across England. One British writer in 1913 listed the following:
“Churn-milk Peg (West Yorkshire & Malham, North Yorkshire) and Melsh Dick (north country) are wood-demons supposed to protect soft, unripe nuts from being gathered by naughty children, the former being wont to beguile her leisure by smoking a pipe. The Gooseberry-wife (Isle of Wight), in the guise of a large furry caterpillar, takes charge of the green gooseberries, hence ‘If ye goos out in the gearden, the gooseberry-wife’ll be sure to ketch ye’; while in the orchards is Awd Goggie (East Yorkshire), guarding the unripe apples.”
Another writer described Awd Goggie as a wicked sprite and added that children were warned to stay away from orchards at “improper times” otherwise (just like the gooseberry wife) “Awd Goggie might get them.” We can also add to this list Nut Nan, who guards the hazels from theft with threats of burning naughty children with heated pokers. Churn-milk Peg is described as being an old and very ugly hag, whose name derives from the hazels in their green state, when they’re called ‘churn-milk’. All she says is “Smoke! smoke a wooden pipe!/ Getting nuts before they’re ripe!” and if this doesn’t work, she’ll abduct the disobedient youths. Melsh Dick apparently gets his odd name from the same unripe, ‘mushy’ or ‘mulchy’ nuts; he too will make off with disobedient children. All of these northern sprites were assisted by Clap-Cans, a being with no physical form or substance whose sole purpose is to scare away youngsters by beating on tins with sticks.
In the south of England, Lazy Lawrence haunted orchards from Hampshire to Somerset. In the former county, it seems that- rather like the colt-pixy or cole-pexy in Dorset- he might take the form of a horse and chase off naughty children and apple thieves. The equine form of Lawrence in more easterly counties perhaps has ancient links to the presence of the Mari Lwydin Welsh orchards. The Welsh name means, simply, ‘Grey Mare’ and- as may also be the case with the bovine Ooser- suggests that sprites in animal form had sepcial efficacy in guarding the unripe fruit.
In Somerset, Lazy Lawrence inflicted crippling ailments on anyone detected stealing the fruit. One spell used by farmers to protect their crops wished on the intruders that:
“Starke be their sinews… May dread and doubt Enclose them about… So be the cramp in the toes Cramp and crooking And fault in their footing.”
The thieves struck by this charm would become immobile and trapped, hence the rhyme “Lazy Laurence, let me goo/ Don’t hold me summer and winter too.” Another Somerset proverb, “So many cratches [baskets], so many cradles” explicitly links fertility in the orchards and groves to fertility and growth in the human population.
These orchard spirits are sometimes termed ‘nursery sprites’ because of their particular role in stopping children ‘scrumping’ fruit and nuts before they’re ready to be picked. This function was doubtless an important one, as it both protected the crops and avoided infants getting poorly from eating unripe produce. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the fact that these beings are found only near their trees, the southern English customs of wassailing the orchards, and the example of the Elder Woman who inhabited her tree, we may be justified in suspecting that the faeries of the orchards and groves had a more profound role in promoting growth and fruitfulness.
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.”
Writer, photographer-filmmaker, and cultural curator Hannah L Close as Seonaidh, Lewis, summer 2024
There would appear to be an extremely fine line between polite sharing with faeries and human behaviour that more closely resembles the making of offerings or, to put it more bluntly- sacrifices, to the Good Folk. The implications of this difference are, however, profound, for they distinguish between a friendly quid pro quo and a stark indication that the other party is not merely approached with caution and respect, because of their unpredictable temperament and capacity to cause a nuisance, but is feared because they have much greater and far more extensive powers.
Such supplications are likely to be made where humans feel helpless and vulnerable. I will suggest that this is particularly the case in those situations where water is involved, as we are then more exposed and more at the mercy of the elements.
Marine spirits & Mermaids
Communities would often make small sacrifices to appease the sea folk. At Halloween, the people of Lewis used to attend a nocturnal ceremony at St Malway’s church that involved brewing a special beer that was then poured into the sea by a person who had waded out from the shore. This act was accompanied by an oral invocation: “Seonaidh, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you will be so good as to send us plenty of seaware [seaweed] for enriching our ground during the coming year.” The hope was that ‘Shony’ or ‘Shoney’ (Seonaidh: meaning ‘augury’ or, perhaps, ‘John,’ in the sense of the Christian saints) had sufficient control over the sea and the weather to guarantee a good supply of seaweed over the ensuing twelve months. A very similar ceremony was performed on the remote isle of St Kilda, where shells, pebbles, rags, pins, nails and coins were thrown into the sea. The ‘sacrifice’ of relatively precious metal objects (often bent and useless as well) is notable, not only for its historic precedents dating back to pre-Roman times, but because these items were also dropped into faery ‘wishing’ wells. In those instances, the prediction of a future lover was frequently what was sought. Seonaidh’s powers were clearly much greater.
All around Britain, in fact, meat, drink, bread and other valuable or necessary items would be offered up to sea spirits. On the coast of Somerset, fishermen walking from the village of Worle towards the quay at Birnbeck followed a path along a ridge, halfway along which lies a pile of stones called Picwinna’s Mound, a reputed pixy site. The passing fishermen would pick up a stone as they walked and throw it onto the mound as they passed, wishing “Picwinna, Picwinna, bring me a good dinner.” The cairn is also named Peak Winna in some sources; this form indicates that people were trying to make sense of a word that made no immediate sense to them- in turn, it’s pretty clear that its original form and meaning are lost. I’ll hazard a wild guess that the name might be a relic of far older times- perhaps Pwcca Wyn or the Brythonic equivalent- the ‘White Spirit’? Further west still, at Newlyn in Cornwall, the pixies living between low and high water mark, known as the bucca, would be offered a ‘cast’ of three fish so as to guarantee a good catch in the nets. These ‘sacrifices’ imply that- like Seonaidh- these faeries possessed some kind of control over the sea and its contents and that th eofferings were therefore made with a view to a specific outcome- in effect, a prayer bargain with minor divinities.
On Orkney the custom was that the first fish caught on a hook when out line-fishing would be thrown back to ensure that the rest of the catch would be good. Indeed, the superstition was carried much further: people drowning were regarded as being a sacrifice to the sea spirits. Regrettably, this meant that to try to rescue them would cheat the ocean of its offering and would bring bad luck on those who intervened- and even those who touched drowned bodies.
The people of the Isle of Man interestingly sought to control the sea by propitiating a land-dwelling (if liminal) spirit. They used to sacrifice rum to the buggane of Kione Dhoo headland. A small glassful of the spirit would be poured into the sea by fishing boats sailing from Port St Mary as they passed the promontory on their way to the Kinsale and Lerwick fishing grounds. The specific site of their sacrifice was a cave called Ghaw-Kione-dhoo (Black Head Inlet). Rum was occasionally thrown from the top of the cliff as well, with the words “Take that, evil spirit (or monster)!”. This dedication resembles that used by fishing boats’ crews who were preparing herring on board ship: they always threw a share to the mermen in recognition of the help they gave and to keep on the right side of them,saying “Gow shen, dooinney varrey!” (‘Take this, sea people.’) What’s absent here is the specification of what was wanted in return, such as we saw in imprecations to Seonaidh. All the same, the implications are pretty clear.
The sea-trows of Shetland were regarded as dangerous and best avoided, but they might occasionally be helpful to humankind. Reversing the land/ sea division just described, at Crawford Muir on Shetland in the 1770s a tenant was reported to have sacrificed a black lamb to the sea-trows so as to reinforce curses he was placing upon his enemies. Also known on Shetland is a species of water horse called the shoopiltee. One local folklore authority has explicitly classed the creature as a “water deity,” who is in special charge of both the sea and the islands’ streams. Shoopiltee can appear in a number of forms- as a sea monster to fishermen or, on land, in the form of a pony. Again, as with Seonaidh, people once sacrificed ale or pins and coins to it to ensure good catches at sea.
The Bucca, as created with Arts Lab help by Year 6 at Newlyn School for Mazey Day during the Golowan Festival (see thelostgiantmakers on Instagram)
Fresh Water Spirits
Even on land, the spirits of bodies of still or flowing water represented a danger to humans and to their livestock and were propitiated accordingly. These freshwater spirits turn out to be much more blood thirsty than the marine ones.
A fearsome being that demanded human sacrifice infested Lochan-nan-Deean in the Highlands near Tomintoul. The local people resolved to drain the lochan to get rid of it, but as soon as work began an enraged man in a red cap emerged from the waters and drove off the workers (the cap and its colour are supernatural markers and remid us of the Red Caps of the Borders). Here, violence and fear was successfully applied by the faery in order to perpetuate fear and self-inflicted violence. A similar monster called Mourie inhabited Loch Maree in the Highlands and was appeased with the sacrifice of a bull on August 25th each year.
More typical of the freshwater sprites is Peg o’Nell of the River Ribble in Lancashire- a being who lives in Peggy’s Well near the watercourse and emerges to claim a human life every seven years- unless a small animal or bird has been sacrificed to her. There is a similar sprite haunting the stepping stones at Bungerley near Clitheroe in Lancashire, which can take several forms and which, just like Peg o’Nell, takes a life every seven years. Comparable perilous creatures inhabit the River Gipping in Suffolk, the Derwent in Derbyshire and the Dart in Devon, a watercourse that claims a human heart each year, it is believed.
Offerings to Spirits on Land
On land, as at sea, we may identify two separate categories of offering- those that might be termed general ‘protection money’ and those that are specifically related to favourable outcomes in farming, whether crop cultivation or livestock rearing.
Clearly falling into the ‘protection racket’ category is a story from the Borders. The lowland Scots ballad Tam Lin refers to those passing the faery hill of Carterhaugh leaving a wad (that is, a ‘wed’ or pledge) for the residents. This makes the traveller’s ‘gift’ sound very much like a transaction or guarantee, a payment for protection from faery ill-will. This becomes even more apparent when we discover that, in the song, the ‘pledge’ that’s demanded from young women is “Either their gold rings, or green mantles, Or else their maidenhead.” A pledge is, of course, a valuable security that’s theoretically returnable (as with gold items given to a pawnbroker); needless to say, the sacrifice of virginity can only be regarded as an extorted payment. Plainly, these faes demand an extremely high price for a person to be free of their malign attentions and, as is often the case in human-faery relations, sexual exploitation may never be far away.
We find traces of related attitudes a little further south into England, at Alnwick in Northumberland. Here it was recorded in early Victorian times that an old woman regularly put out “a loake [a small amount] of meal and a pat of butter” for the faeries. She explained that she got a “double return” from them for her mark of respect. As these examples emphasise, it can often be hard to determine whether these ‘gifts’ were provided out of sympathy and neighbourly kindness, out of fear of a supernatural power, or as a kind of bargain, as appears to have been the case in Alnwick.
The Cheese well, Mincmuir, near Traquair
Fear was plainly the motivation in the next example. In Aberdeenshire, there are two hills topped by wells at which travellers must make a small sacrifice to the bean-sith (banshee or faery woman) of the hills. The customary offering is a barley-meal cake, marked with a circle on one side, which is placed beside the well. Neglecting this can have dire (and swift) consequences: for instance, one woman failed to leave a cake at the well and fell dead at a cairn only a short distance away. Rather similar, it appears, was the practice at Minchmuir, Peebles-shire, where there was the so-called ‘Cheese Well’ into which locals threw pieces of cheese for the guardian faeries. At Wooler, in Northumberland, the implicit deal was plain: sickly children would be dipped in the well’s waters and bread and cheese were left as an offering. Offerings of pins were also made at Wooler so as to have a wish come true; pins were given too at Bradwell in Derbyshire on Easter Sunday and at various other sites in Scotland (along with buttons). If we see the faes as having some sort of divine status, then these offerings are marks of honour aimed at appeasing the Good Neighbours, averting ill fortune, and ensuring their continuing good will.
Something more like a sacrificial bargain was involved when a Shetland boy had been made ill by the trows. His parents were advised to tether a calf to his bed and offer it to the ‘grey folk.’ The next morning, the boy was well and the calf had died. This appears to be a sort of indirect immolation, exchanging one desirable life for another.
In one account from Skye, a man came across a bean-nighe washing a shroud at Benbecula and, following established practice, seized her tightly and demanded to know whose the shroud would be. It turned out to be for the local clan chief but, when this noble learned of his apparent fate- that he would leave Skye and never return- he decided to take matters into his own hands: he slaughtered a cow and left the island of his own volition. By this pre-emptive action, it appears that he succeeded in breaking the faery spell, as he survived, albeit far from home. As with the Shetland incident, what we seem to have here is the exchange of a life for a life; the sith folk were satisfied with blood, regardless of its source.
Given these last two examples, it is less surprising to hear that when, in 1859, some archaeologists opened up a barrow near Tynwald Hill on the Isle of Man, a local farmer killed and burned a heifer there after they had departed, with the aim of atoning to the ferrishyn for the desecration of the site.
The Maiden Well or Pin Well, Wooler
Offerings to Earth Spirits
To prevent (it would seem) faery interference in agriculture, offerings were regularly made to them. It was the habit in the Scottish Highlands and islands to make regular donations of milk to the gruagach and glaistig who often looked after the cattle on farms and in communities. Small quantities were poured out on special stones, perhaps after every milking or at certain times in the farming year. At Pier o’ Wall, Westray, in Orkney, stand two burial mounds called Wilkie’s Knolls. Milk used to be poured daily into a hole on top of one of these. If this was neglected, the resident spirit called Wilkie would cause a nuisance and- far more seriously- could bring down plague on the cattle. There is in these cases a degree of confusion between spirits who might cease to care for the livestock they oversee and those who might decide to inflict harm on humans through their property.
All the same, a case from East Lothian reveals that offerings such as these should not always be viewed as a bargain or appeasement. Tried before a church court in 1649, Agnes Gourlay was accused of pouring milk down the drain for the faeries; her justification was “they that are under the yird [earth] have as much need of it as they that are above the yird.” Agnes was acting charitably, therefore, indicating a very different balance of power between the parties.
English orchards are haunted by sprites whose role is to bring life to the trees and to protect the crop from thefts. These beings go by various names- Owd Goggy, Lazy Lawrence, Jack up the Orchard, the grig and the apple tree man. At harvest time a few apples should always be left behind for them- an offering termed the ‘pixy-word’ (or hoard)- and, if this is done, the faeries will bless the crop.
Conduct closely comparable to that of farmers was found in the mines of the South West of England. The miners would give up a portion of their lunches to the ‘knockers’ in the mine, hoping that they would then be led to the best lodes of tin. Just as Seonaidh and others control all aspects of the marine environment, so too faeries and pixies govern the produce of the earth- both above and below.
Lastly, readers will be familiar with the brownies and broonies who helped out in the farms and homes of England, Wales and Scotland. They received food and a warm fire as a kind of recompense for their labours, but once again the distinction between ‘pay,’ ‘protection money’ and a sacrifice can be hard to pin down.
Writing about Shetland in 1808, John Brand reported that forty or fifty years earlier, nearly every family had had a “browny” who had faithfully served them and to whom they “sacrificed.” By this he meant that, when milk was churned, some would be sprinkled in the corners of the room and, when beer was brewed, some of the wort would be poured into a hole in a ‘browny stone’ (closely comparable to the milk offerings just mentioned). The brews would fail without these offerings, although if the neglect persisted, eventually the brownies would desert the house. Brand indicates that it was godly adherents of the reformed church who drove out the domestic trows, banishing them not by kindness but by deliberate refusal to engage with or to respect them.
In conclusion, British attitudes towards faeries seem to have varied across the country according to local circumstances and experiences. In some places, the faeries were deserving of food and shelter- I hesitate to say they were in need, as such, as this downplays the respect and caution that underlay the interactions. Elsewhere, the elements of prudence and deference were much more obvious in the relationship. Lastly, in some regions, the faery beings approached a status of ‘godling,’ controlling the environment and therefore the prosperity and well-being if humankind. Here, offerings were made less out of wariness and more as propitiation.
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…
Today I visited a remarkable folklore exhibition in central London. It was a display of a new painting by artist and singer Ben Edge- ‘The Children of Albion’- along with a selection of his older folklore works. The show is being held in the Fitzrovia Chapel, a stunning jewel hidden in a newly built square of blocks of flats; the church is in Byzantine style, the walls covered in golden mosaics, and it is presently set up so that the large new painting served as a kind of altar piece. Drawing as it does on the works of Hieronymous Bosch, this seemed entirely appropriate.
I’ll quote from the event publicity to summarise what Edge’s work is about: the artist aims to record an ongoing “Folk Renaissance,” which he sees as a reflection of a rising contemporary desire to reclaim ancestral roots and to reconnect with nature. This isn’t about nostalgia, though, but instead represents an effort “to re-enchant our relationship with the land and reimagine a shared cultural identity that bridges past, present, and future.”
Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire
To achieve this reconnection, “Edge’s works conjure ancient sites and the mythologies that surround them,” linking these to “the tensions of modern life- grappling with environmental collapse, identity crises, and a collective yearning for meaning.” The artist believes that “we’re all part of this evolving story,” and observes how “Since the pandemic, I’ve seen a renewed fascination, especially among younger generations, with folk traditions and the spiritual power of the land.”I’ve written before about this idea of ‘re-enchantment.’
The new painting takes its title most directly from a collection of “Poetry of the Underground in Britain,” compiled by Michael Horovtiz in 1969. A deeper inspiration is drawn from the work of William Blake, in whose vision the giant Albion was a major character and whose figure of ‘Glad Day’ or ‘The Dance of Albion’ (1794) is incorporated into the new painting (as well as forming the cover of the Horovitz volume). I’ve often written about Albion and the sense of spirit of place.
Mari Lywd, Chepstow
Edge’s other paintings celebrate British folk traditions, such as the the black dog tradition of the Shuck, the Welsh Mari Lwyd and the ‘Obby ‘Oss of Padstow, alongside ancient sites such as the stone circles of Avebury, Rollright and Orkney’s Ring of Brodgar.
The show is definitely worth a visit if you’re in or near London, but it finishes in less than a week, on November 26th. Luckily, you can view Edge’s work on his website and buy a copy of his lavishly illustrated book Folklore Rising, published by Watkins in 2024.
British Fairies 
