Do you believe in Fairies?

No, not a alt/lifestyle thread.

I have heard that some New Age or Wiccan groups view these traditional beings as part of their faith.

Some general info, please? Do the Baring-Gould tales count?

Dunno about that – the Pagan types I know don’t believe in fairies.

I’ve hard that there are some ho believe that the Cottingley Fairies were either a.) The Real Thing; or b.) “Thought Projections” a la Ted Serios. See The Big Book of Hoaxes pp.80-82, or James Randi’s book Flim-Flam!, or any of a number of articles in The Skeptical Inquirer.

I dunno about fairies, but some believe in elves. There is a new-age commune in my area called Lothlorien. They change their basic tenets of their beliefs every few years, but last I heard, they believed that elves descended from a spacecraft 40,000 years ago to keep a watch over humanity and they hide in the woods, but special people (i.e. people who get brainwashed and join the commune) can see them, talk to them and just might be ONE of them who lost his way.

Yes, they’re nuts… but they have some killer weed.

We’ve gotten this popular image of fairies as cute twinkly delicate little pixies, thanks to the Nutcracker Suite, Peter Pan, etc.

Actually, the original people of Faërie in old Celtic lore, the Sidhe, are NOT cute or twinkly. They are wild, dark, powerful, generally human-sized, and potentially quite dangerous. They are more like the jinn of Arabian legend. They inhabit a parallel dimension to ours. If one of them should draw a human into their world, the human is liable to experience extreme disorientation and time dilation comparable to General Relativity. What seems like a week in the faërie world can be the equivalent of several years in the human world. They may appear fair or terrible to our sight should they choose to manifest themselves. Their relation with humans may range from erotic dalliance to indifference to outright malevolence. They are not to be fucked with.

In Celtic lore the Sidhe (pronounced “shee”) were a prehistoric race, masters of magic arts, that inhabited this world aeons before humans appeared and withdrew before the advance of humans. The name Faërie means literally the Realm of the Fates, from Latin fata, the Fates of classical mythology, the Weird Sisters. They were known to inhabit mounds and were accused of stealing human babies and substituting Sidhe babies in their place. To this day, many Scots and Irish will avoid disturbing known Sidhe mounds for dread of their wreaking revenge. Construction projects in Scotland have actually been halted in recent years because Sidhe were reputed to be in the vicinity.

One modern description of a human’s wandering in the world of the Sidhe was in The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The medieval Scottish ballad of Thomas Rhymer tells of a human who was seduced away into Faërie by its Queen . . .

*True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,
A ferlie he spied wi’ his e’e;
And there he saw a ladye bright
Come riding down by Eildon Tree.

Her shirt was o’ the grass-green silk,
Her mantle o’ the velvet fyne;
At ilka tett of her horse’s mane
Hung fifty siller bells and nine.

True Thomas, he pull’d aff his cap
And louted low down to his knee:
All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!
For thy peer on earth I never did see.

O no, O no, Thomas, she said,
That name does not belang to me;
I am but the Queen of fair Elfland
That am higher come to visit thee.

Harp and carp, Thomas, she said,
Harp and carp along wi’ me,
And if ye dare to kiss my lips,
Sure of your bodie I will be.

Betide me weal, betide me woe,
That weird shall never daunton me.
Syne he has kissed her rosy lips
All underneath the Eildon Tree.

            Now ye maun go wi' me, she said,
              True Thomas, ye maun go wi' me,
            And ye maun serve me seven years
              Thro' weal or woe, as may chance to be.

            She mounted on her milk-white steed,
              She's ta'en True Thomas up behind;
            And aye whene'er her bridle rung
              The steed flew swifter than the wind.

            O they rade on, and farther on --
              The steed gaed swifter than the wind --
            Untill they reach'd a desart wide
              And living land was left behind.

            Light down, light down now, True Thomas,
              And lean your head upon my knee;
            Abide and rest a little space
              And I will shew you ferlies three.

            O see ye not yon narrow road,
              So thick beset with thorns and briers?
            That is the path of righteousness,
              Though after it but few enquires.

            And see ye not that braid, braid road
              That lies across that lily leven?
            That is the path of wickedness,
              Though some call it the road to heaven.

            And see not ye that bonny road
              That winds about the fernie brae?
            That is the road to fair Elfland,
              Where thou and I this night maun gae.

            But Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue
              Whatever ye may hear or see,
            For if you speak word in Elflyn land
              Ye'll ne'er get back to your ain countrie.

            O they rade on, and farther on,
              And they waded through rivers aboon the knee,
            And they saw neither sun nor moon
              But they heard the roaring of the sea.

            It was mirk, mirk night and there was nae stern light
              And they waded through red blude to the knee;
            For a' the blude that's shed on earth
              Rins through the springs o' that countrie.

            Syne they came on to a garden green
              And she pu'd an apple frae a tree:
            Take this for thy wages, True Thomas,
              It will give thee the tongue that can never lie.

            My tongue is mine ain, True Thomas said,
              A gudely gift ye wad gie to me;
            I neither dought to buy nor sell
              At fair or tryst where I may be;

            I dought neither speak to prince or peer
              Nor ask of grace from fair ladye.
            Now hold thy peace, the lady said,
              For as I say, so it must be.

            He has gotten a coat of the even cloth
              And a pair of shoes of velvet green;
            And till seven years were gane and past
              True Thomas on earth was never seen.*

A book by Richard Grant called Kaspian Lost has the theme of malevolent fairy beings which look a lot like humans(or maybe they’re aliens, Kaspian isn’t quite sure) and how they pull people out of this reality and into another where time flows differently. In away it’s a lot like the experience Morgaine has with the fairy folks in Mists of Avalon, except Morgaine has fewer people thinking she’s nuts afterwards. Chalk it up to modern skepticism.

elfkin, thanks for the cite. That story looks like a good example of what I meant.

The Fairy Folk in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are of different kinds. Titania, Oberon, and Robin Goodfellow are most like the Sídhe I was describing above. They are fond of constant feasting, parties, and sensual pleasures in the woods (as in The Mists of Avalon). When humans wander into their realm, they disorient them and mess with their sense of reality. The theme of the Queen of the Fairies seducing a mortal Man (as in “Thomas Rhymer”) reappears here. These wights are amoral, sensual, jealous, vindictive, and hazardous to one’s mental state. The minor fairies (Peaseblossom, Buttercup, etc.) are more like the cutesy little pixies in the popular imagination that produced the likes of Tinkerbelle. Shakespeare was definitely tuned into the traditional lore of old Britain, but at the same time he was a popular entertainer.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s novella Smith of Wootton Major (his last story) is about the loss of enchantment. The hero is a villager in a time and place where everyone thinks fairies are nothing but dainty little pixies, silly entertainment fit for children. But Smith is drawn into the alternate dimension of the real Faërie (the awesomely powerful Sídhe) and parties with their Queen. He also is threatened by a whole marching army of big armored Faërie warriors. He travels back and forth between his humdrum ordinary life and Faërie several times until the portal is forever closed.

[Hoggle] PSSHT Fifty-eight. PSSSHT Fifty-nine. [/Hoggle]

There was a story on the radio show This American Life about people in Iceland who believe in elves. 'Zat close enough?

http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/99/146.html