Do You Believe in Fairies?

Scotsman ^ | Thu 28 Apr 2005 | DIANE MACLEAN

[nickcarraway]

IF YOU had asked your great-great-grandmother if she believed in fairies, she would have looked at you askance. Believe in fairies? Of course she did!

Ninety-five per cent of Scots continued to believe in fairies right up until the middle of the 19th century. These were not the diminutive, be-winged fairies of 1800s children's books. No, these were strange folk who bewitched you, killed your cattle and kidnapped your wives and daughters.

Fairy lore flowed through the centuries, their presence acknowledged in ballads, poems and stories. They came in all shapes and sizes and different parts of Scotland had different myths. Even today they are remembered in the fairy glens and fairy hills found in every part of Scotland.

This belief in fairies extended beyond Scotland; there was almost universal acknowledgement that they existed.

"Fairy folklore was world-wide," says Dr Lizanne Henderson, a lecturer of history at the University of Glasgow's Crichton Campus. "They filled a need to explain the unexplainable. It was easier to look for a rational explanation for things that happened, and back then fairies were the rational explanation."

Yet for all that was written on the subject, there was no consensus about what the fairies were. Earlier writings speak of them as being dead souls or fallen angels. When a more "rational explanation" was needed, there was a move away from describing fairies as mystical and an attempt to place them within the human world.

John Frances Campbell of Islay was one of the first to go into print with his new theory. "I believe there once was a small race of people in these islands," he wrote in 1860.

Campbell’s theory remained speculative until a remarkable archaeological discovery in 2004 on the Indonesian island of Flores. The skeletal remains of a dwarf man, similar to modern humans, were discovered in a cave. Carbon dating proved that this small humanoid co-existed with modern man and may have survived until fairly recently. In light of this discovery, Indonesian folk tales of "little people" are being re-evaluated and questions are being asked if these abnormally small people have been living with us all along.

"I think it's highly unlikely," says Michael Bird, a geo-scientist and professor at St Andrews University who was involved in carbon dating the skull in Indonesia. "Although it's good for funding to let people speculate that they were around for a long time, I think it is probable that modern human ate them just as soon as they landed on the islands."

Bird is even less enamoured of any attempt to suggest that a similar race of little people were responsible for the fairy lore of Scotland, pointing out the devastating effect of the Scottish Ice Age.

"Scotland was virtually completely covered during the Ice Age and would have been a particularly nasty place to be," says Bird. "I really don't think anyone would have survived it."

Whilst it seems unlikely that a race of little people were hiding in the woods of Scotland, the commonality of fairy lore still demands some universal explanation. One man not afraid to stand up and state his belief is Sir Iain Noble, the owner of Hotel Eilean Iarmain on the Isle of Skye.

"There's no question that they existed. They most definitely did," Noble insists. "We have two fairy houses quite close by and we have records of conversations between fairies and people on the island."

Nobel is referring to the houses at Glenn an Uird, but so-called fairy houses cover Skye like a rash. The island is particularly rich with fairy stories and these underground homes have long been regarded as the doorways the fairies, or na Sithein, used between their world and our own.

"From 1000BC onwards, the Iron Age people were prevalent in Skye," says Martin Wildgoose, an archaeologist who helped in the excavation of the fairy houses and concedes there could be a fact-based explanation for fairies. "They were probably much smaller than us, and they lived in turfed underground houses.

"The Vikings could easily have started the stories about the fairies," he continues. "After all they were tall, blond-haired, and would have been quite startled by these small, dark strangers emerging from grassy knolls."

That Iron Age people had their own language, religion and lived underground is not in dispute, but to suggest that they are the inspiration for fairy myth is a step too far for Henderson, the Glasgow University history lecturer.

"I just don’t buy this original Iron Age man thing at all," she says. "The facts just don’t fit what we know of the oral tradition."

For all our progress and science, we are still as unsure about the origins of fairies as our confused ancestors. Still, few people seriously believe in them any longer.

"I had assumed that fairy belief was a dead tradition," says Henderson. "People are reluctant to admit to it - because fairies have become the realm of children - but it is amazing how many people come up to me and confess that they still believe."

[nickcarraway]

The infamous Cottingley fairies, photographed in 1917, were the source of much discussion at the time

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini in 1922

The Man Who Believed in Fairies

For Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, the proof was in the pictures

Doyle's great sleuth, Holmes, was super-rational, but the famous author himself was the world's best-known advocate of Spiritualism, the belief that human personality survives death and that the living can communicate with the dead. Spiritualism was all the rage around the turn of the century. Séances, rapping, table turning, automatic writing and other occult methods of contacting the spirit world attracted thousands. Doyle was the antithesis of a man who would try communicating with the dead, but after converting to Spiritualism he set about trying to convert others.

Eventually Doyle's obsession seriously compromised his reputation and strained his friendships, most notably with the escape artist Harry Houdini, who had once been a fake medium and whose training in the "artifices of conjuring" led him to approach Spiritualism with great skepticism. Perhaps the most damaging blow to Doyle's good name resulted from his outspoken advocacy of the existence of fairies, a matter somewhat fancifully retold in the film Fairytale: A True Story, starring Peter O'Toole as Doyle, which is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures in October.

In 1917, two girls from the Yorkshire village of Cottingley made photographs of themselves cavorting with fairies. Few took the pictures seriously, but Doyle did. He wrote a book defending their authenticity. "And what a joy," he enthused, "is in the complete abandon of [the fairies'] little graceful figures as they let themselves go in the dance! They may have their shadows and trials [but] there is a great gladness manifest in this demonstration of their life."

The girls did not confess their hoax until 1983. Doyle died in 1930, still a believer.

[lady lawyer]

Believe in fairies? What choice do we have? They're always in your face, screaming about their rights. The love that once dared not speak its name is now the love that won't shut up.

[martin_fierro]

Faeries are real.

[day10]

Insert your favorite Ron Reagan, Jr. joke here.

[xsmommy]

so is FRUIT!

[kingattax]

[Old Sarge]

Every time someone says they don't, somewhere a fairy falls down dead.

- J. M. Barrie, "Peter Pan"

What do you think I'd say?

[pissant]

yes they are!

[RichInOC]

I believe in Mark Morford. Is that close enough?

[Semper Paratus]

Not until I first moved into a large city.

[Enterprise]

[Jaysun]

Beware the banshee!

[Corin Stormhands]

Lembas ping.

[Darksheare]

I've been accused of being one of the fey.
*shrugs*
I still have yet to sour someone's butter churn or hex their cattle.
Though the thought has occured to try.

[COBOL2Java]

[scott says]

[rockabyebaby]

Do You Believe in Fairies?

LMAO, I live in GAYsachusetts, they are EVERYWHERE, especially in Provincetown, LOL!!!!

[Mark in the Old South]

That is just WRONG.

[theFIRMbss]

>Do You Believe in Fairies?

Welsh Witches exist!
Maybe people mistake them
for fairies at night . . .

[reagan_fanatic]