# Who still believes in faeries? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 10, 2000, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925 "2000-12-10T21:28:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Medea\_s\_Child](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Medea\_s\_Child](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Medea_s_Child)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/21 "2000-12-13T14:43:22Z")
I believe! For the same reason I believe in all sorts of other things. I’m happier with a whimsical view of life than a coldly ‘realistic’ one. I’ll take happiness over cold fact any day. Yea, don’t mess with the Little People. They don’t like that at all. ---
**Author:** ![Quisp\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/8491ac/32.png) [@Quisp\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quisp_Eater)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2000, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/22 "2000-12-14T08:21:05Z")
Believing in fairies is the same as believing in angels. The current angel craze is just a sort of revival of the fairy craze of the early 1900’s. I recall reading somewhere that even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed fairies existed. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2000, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/23 "2000-12-14T13:25:40Z")
Conan Doyle got suckered by the Cottingley Fairies hoax… he became an ardent Spiritualist later in life, and some people reckon his critical faculties got, well, suspended somewhat on the subject of the supernatural in general. One of his Professor Challenger stories , _The Land of Mists_, deals with Spiritualist themes. It’s widely regarded as one of his worst, though I found it fairly readable, so YMMV. I’ve never taken fairies seriously myself, (no matter how you spell them), and I’ve never known anyone who did… maybe it’s just my modern suburban upbringing. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2000, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/24 "2000-12-14T15:25:40Z")
Fascinating question and enlightening responses! Most interesting to me are those people who blithely, almost proudly announce that they’re happier believing in faeries than in “reality.” I suppose they’re harmless folks. Sort of faerie-like themselves, aren’t they? And how do these peculiar beliefs manifest themselves in terms of social responsibilities? Do faerie and angel and elf-believers tend to be benificent, generous and democratic? Or, are their tendencies toward the selfish and controlling? What are their voting tendencies? Social/political tendencies? What are these people really like? They walk among us, this I understand. Hmmm curiouser and curiouser. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2000, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/25 "2000-12-15T20:20:48Z")
> [@](#): > > In 1968, the people of Ballymagroartyscotch were outraged when road builders threatened to cut down > a skeog (fairy tree). Several contractors refused to destroy the tree; one said, “I heard of a chap with the > electricity board, and he cut down a fairy tree, and the next day he fell off an electricity pole and was > killed”. Eventually, the road was diverted. In the 1960s a sidhe (fairy mound) was discovered to be in > the way of a planned airport in Ireland; again, builders would not touch it. The airport sidhe became the > focal point of controversy before the builders bypassed it. [http://www.assap.org/subject/legend/article2000.htm](http://www.assap.org/subject/legend/article2000.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2000, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/26 "2000-12-15T21:40:27Z")
Of course, the Irish Sidhe aren’t much like little fairies with wings…If you believe in them, there’s a reason you leave them alone. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2000, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/27 "2000-12-15T22:16:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ishmintingas \* > \*\*Speaking of trolls and Scandinavians . . . > > The novel _Dance of the Tiger_ by paleontogist Björn Kurtén is about interactions and socialization between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals in prehistoric Scandinavia (during a glacial interstadial period, no doubt). The Cro-Magnon folks refer to the Neanderthals as “Trolls.” (With a capital _T_, as though it’s the name of an ethnic group.) > > Kurtén seems to be postulating that the existence of trolls, so deep in the Scandinavian folkloric psyche (remember “In the Hall of the Mountain King”?), can be traced back to ancestral memory of when Neanderthals walked the earth. \*\* Odd; that’s the same premise as Michael Crichton’s _Eaters of the Dead_–interactions between Vikings and the last Neanderthals in historic (barely) Scandinavia. Which came first? Crichton’s book was made into a movie with Antonio Banderas, the name of which escapes me at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2000, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/28 "2000-12-15T23:26:55Z")
This exchange happened on the David Letterman show back in the mid-80s with guest Art Fleming: (Letterman) _Well, were there any memorable wild answers?_ (Fleming) \*Yes. Here’s one: Back in the mid-60s, one contestant was given the answer “If you believe in fairies, then you believe in me.” The proper answer was, of course, “Who is Tinkerbell,” but that’s not what the contestant said. The contestant actually said “Who is Liberace?” Well, the audience roared in laughter at that response, but we couldn’t let that response air on television, so we simply edited out the audio on it. The television audience only heard the answer, some silence, then the audience’s reaction, and I have never publicly told this story until tonight.\* Fleming also told another story about (in his opinion) one of the best contestants they ever had, how he had aced the qualification test, and had the most charming personality–good TV material. However, when the show started rolling he froze up, and came in dead last. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2000, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/29 "2000-12-18T11:41:27Z")
[quote] Kurtén seems to be postulating that the existence of trolls, so deep in theScandinavian folkloric psyche (remember “In the Hall of the Mountain King”?), can be traced back to ancestral memory of when Neanderthals walked the earth. Odd; that’s the same premise as Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead–interactions between Vikings and the last Neanderthals in historic (barely) Scandinavia. Which came first? Crichton’s book was made into a movie with Antonio Banderas, the name of which escapes me at the moment. [quote] _The Thirteenth Warrior_. Or it might have been _The 13th Warrior_, I forget which. One reviewer called it “both the most literate and the most violent film of the year.” I did think of that while I was posting, but held off on mentioning it. _Eaters of the Dead_, published in 1974, came first. But it was an adventure tale, while Kurtén’s book was written as a mystery novel to dramatize his hypothesis to answer a paleontological mystery: why did the Neanderthals die out? Crichton’s novel was curious in many ways. He began by reproducing the actual narrative of Ibn Fadlan, verbatim, and then weaved his own fiction into it seamlessly, imitating Ibn Fadlan’s style so well you couldn’t tell where one left off and the other began. The _wendel_ “trolls” in _Eaters of the Dead_ were troglodytes, but I didn’t read them as Neanderthals. My impression of them was of an extremely violent savage tribe of debased humans, who had degenerated into a subhuman state. When a procession of them carrying torches snakes through the night, the terrified villagers fancy they see a fiery dragon. The Nordic hero Buliwyf whups their ass in battle. Then he descends into their caverns and slays their queen. Eventually he perishes in the final battle. Then you gradually realize that Crichton has been setting up the story that would, in the retelling over time, develop into the _Beowulf_ saga. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2000, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925/30 "2000-12-18T16:23:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ishmintingas \* > > Crichton’s novel was curious in many ways. He began by reproducing the actual narrative of Ibn Fadlan, verbatim, and then weaved his own fiction into it seamlessly, imitating Ibn Fadlan’s style so well you couldn’t tell where one left off and the other began. > > The _wendel_ “trolls” in _Eaters of the Dead_ were troglodytes, but I didn’t read them as Neanderthals. My impression of them was of an extremely violent savage tribe of debased humans, who had degenerated into a subhuman state. The Ibn Fadlan narrative is non-fiction? I didn’t know that. The Neanderthal connection is not mine; I haven’t read the book since the mid-70s, but I’m pretty sure it was stated explicitly, perhaps in a foreword by the author. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-still-believes-in-faeries/44925.md?page=1)