Miscellaneous Q & A

I thought it would be fun to do another question and answer blog today so I asked for questions on social media and here they are along with my answers:


Rei asks: On the subject of fairies, do you think there are wildly different beings in different parts of the world with different 'rules of engagement' as it were? I've had some experiences here in Appalachia that do not seem to hold to the same rules like for example apologizing/thanking seems OK even polite depending who you're dealing with.
My answer: wildly different no, but different yes. I think we can find beings throughout the world that might fit the wider definition of what we would call in English 'fairies', that is Otherworldly beings that come into our world and follow specific patterns of behavior including interacting with humans in specific ways. When it comes to the etiquette I like to compare it to human culture. If you travel around the world what is good manners in one place may actually be rude somewhere else, so it's always good to try to learn the local customs as it were.


Rebecca asks: Do you have any fairy resources that are not Irish? I have some Scottish based books that I got from your bibliographies but can't find much on Welsh or general British.
My answer: there's an older book called 'British Goblins: Welsh Folklore, Fairy Mythology, Legends, and Traditions' by Wirt Sykes. I would also recommend checking out this site http://www.fairyist.com/fairy-places/welsh-fairies/
For British I'd recommend British Fairies by John Kruse as well as the blog of the same name here https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/


David asks: In old Irish tradition the good people like the finer things which were available at the time; cream, butter, meat and so on.
If we accept for arguments sake that they exist in a different time realm, so to speak, then would you say that today's offerings should now also be the finer things available to us, such as champagne, fine wine, delicacies and so on?
My answer: I tend to think the times change but their preference for quality hasn't. But then I also think that the whole point was always twofold - to make sure humans remembered that the Good Neighbours were owed a portion, and that they expected the top of the harvest not the bottom. Or put another way I'd never risk giving skimmed milk


Maggie asks: Are there any references to Brighid and fairies?
My answer: Not that I know of but I will dig a bit deeper and see what I can find


Pamela asks: I know there's lots of theories as to why they dislike iron, l was wondering what your personal opinion is about why they dislike it so much?
My answer: my personal theory is that iron is very grounding and disrupts their magic. They avoid it because it reduces their ability to effect the world and control things and may also be directly harmful to them. Rev. Kirk theorized their bodies were partially made of energy and if he is right then a grounding material like iron might physically harm them. Although I'm starting to wonder if it may not be a more straightforward and literal allergy to the metal, but I also tend to believe they are or can be physical beings as much as tehy are or can be non-physical beings. 

Eliza Marie asks: What are your thoughts on comparisons between older accounts of encounters with the Gentry and modern day "alien abduction" experiences?
My answer: I personally think that alien encounters are modern interpretations of fairy encounters. I think that as humans stopped believing in fairies as real powers who were dangerous and could take people, and started to believe in dangers from other planets we start to see fairy abductions and encounters shifting into alien ones. Since fairies have always been known for using glamour to effect what humans see and perceive it would make sense that humans expecting outer space monsters would get them.

Kathryn asks:Do you have an suggestions for further research on Yeats and the Fellowship of the Four Jewels?
My answer: Not something I'm familiar with relating to Yeats, but looking into Ella Young's writings may prove more fruitful. If you haven't already I'd read Graf's book 'W. B. Yeats Twentieth Century Magus: An In-Depth Study of Yeats's Esoteric Practices & Beliefs, Including Excerpts from His Magical Diaries.'

Pamela asks: In the remscéla where the Morrigan meets Cuchulainn and has the one legged horse with chariot pole sticking through it's head, do you have any idea what that description is supposed to translate to the reader other than super otherworld weird?
My answer: The Tain Bo Regamna is one of my favorite stories. Often in mythology we see one eyed, one limbed beings as symbolic of cthonic forces - for example the Fomorians are described this way in some instances. We also see the corrguinecht or crane-wounding-magic being done in a position of standing on one foot with one hand behind the back and one eye closed. To me this indicates that not only is the horse clearly Otherworldly but it is also rather ill-aspected, either cthonic in nature or sinister. I suspect a person hearing the story told would have immediately identified this description with a being that is unsainly or otherwise of a dangerous Otherworldly nature, foreshadowing what happens later in the story. 

Two Book Reviews: The Winnowing of White Witchcraft and British Fairies

Today I'd like to offer two short book reviews of texts I've recently read that I enjoyed very much. They are extremely different books, but both valuable I think in their own ways.

The first book I'd like to review today is 'The Winnowing of White Witchcraft' by Edward Poeton, with an introduction by Simon Davies.

The book is a new release of a 17th century book that had never been published. It was written as an anti-witchcraft treatise in the 1630's (exact date unknown) but is aimed less at what we might expect [read: diabolism] and more at cunningfolk and similar folk practices in England. The author was a physician and had strong opinions about the healing practices of cunningfolk which he criticized through this treatise and by trying to equate cunningfolk directly to more diabolical witches. The text is set up as a dialogue between a cleric, doctor, and uneducated country man; the country man frequents cunningfolk and the other two are set in the text to persuade him to stop by convincing him such folk are just as bad as actual witches.

Although an argument against cunningfolk it provides a good amount of information about what such people were doing at the time, as well as giving a descriptive 14 point list of what activities a witch, specifically a white witch or cunningperson, could be identified by which included being observant of "good and bad dayes, and of lucky and unlucky howers"; identifying and aiding bewitched people; divining with personal objects [psychometry]; use of spells and charms that they term prayers; and reliance on omens. It also mentions a person having a familiar spirit which they first called an angel of God then admitted was a fairy. There are small bits of folk magic practices throughout the work. The text is heavily footnoted and annotated throughout and includes a wealth of valuable material for a person studying early modern witchcraft or cunningcraft.

If this subject interests you then I'd say it's a good read with some interesting information in it, particularly as it is an original 17th century source. It was published by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and it is very well done, with an exceptional introduction and footnotes throughout. The introduction does a wonderful job of setting the cultural tone that the text was written in and establishing who the author was, both essential points.
I will however add two caveats: at $45 it is very expensive for a 77 page book and you do need a working ability to read early modern dialects, particularly those meant to be intentionally archaic and rustic. Another review I had seen of this book (which actually motivated me to find a copy) gave the impression the third speaker in the text was nearly unintelligible and while I did not find this to be so other readers may have more difficulty with his sections. A small example to illustrate: "Cham zorry master doctor, that you shud ha zuch a conzete o mee: I tell ee truely (I thong God vort) I dee ze my prayers ery morning, whan I wash my vace an honns, An zo agen at night whan cham abed..."
[I am sorry master doctor that you should have such a conceit of me: I tell you truly (I thank God for it) I do say my prayers every morning, when I wash my face and hands, and so again at night when I am abed...]

The second book I'd like to review if 'British Fairies' by John Kruse.

I had recently become aware of a blog 'British Fairies' and then found out that the blog's author John Kruse had a book of his collected material under the same title, so I decided to seek out a copy. 

The book is divided into three parts; the first part further into three subsections. Overall there are 35 chapters and they are all fairly short and set up much as a blog article would be. This style lends itself to easier reading, which is good because the author has a more cerebral tone and approach to the subject that some readers may prefer in smaller doses. The first part is titled "the Character and Nature of British Fairies" with subsections on basic characteristics, attributes, and human relations. The second part looks at fairies in art and literature; the third focuses on "themes and theories" relating to fairies. 
The book is 186 pages and is well research and thoroughly cited and footnoted throughout.

This is a book that is going on my list of 'must reads' for fairylore. It is well written and thorough, and takes a much needed deeper look at specifically British fairylore focusing on primarily England, Cornwall, and Wales. The author touches on all of the vital areas one would hope to see in such a text, from questions about whether fairies have physical forms to how they came to be viewed as tiny childlike girls with wings. The chapters are really more like short essays on particular subjects, perhaps betraying its origins as a blog, and often include bullet point lists summarizing key points but this works to the book's advantage rather than detracting from it. One may choose to read the whole book through, read short sections at a time, or use the text as a reference for specific topics. 

The text retains a loose air of skepticism, never committing to belief or stating disbelief, however it does approach fairies through the lens of traditional folklore while tracing the shift into a very different modern understanding of who and what fairies are. The overall tone is one of exploration and seeking answers. I do not, of course, agree with everything the author believes but the material is well written and the arguments presented are persuasive and supported. There's a wealth of material in these collected essays and the format makes that material accessible while covering a lot of ground. 

I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the subject, particularly if your focus is more on England, Wales, or Cornwall.

The Elfin Knight: an Excerpt from 'Travelling the Fairy Path'

The following article is an excerpt from my forthcoming book 'Travelling the Fairy Path'. It looks at material from the ballad 'The Elfin Knight' and what we may learn from it as people interested in fairylore. I find it particularly valuable in what it may teach is about the importance of consent for witches when dealing with the Fair Folk in certain situations, particularly sexual ones. We see themes of such compulsion appearing in some of the stories we have in folklore, most often relating to female fairies like the selkie brides, so I thought this example of a human woman or girl compelling a male fairy was a good example to use here.
   In the context of the book it appears in a chapter discussing the ballad material more generally and what we can learn by analyzing it. Much of the book itself is focused on more practical and experimental material; this is the most academic chapter but I think offers a nice balance with the more practical and philosophical parts.

The Elfin Knight

This ballad is more familiar to most people in its later song form as ‘Scarborough Fair’ but in this older ballad the context is clearly supernatural. Later versions slowly lose this aspect and become a simpler song: in one example, variant I, about a woman trying to avoid marriage to an older man, and in others of one lover asking a person to remind another of them and ask them to complete impossible tasks. In the older versions the supernatural is clearly on display, telling the tale of a woman who wishes for an Elf Knight as her true love, and he responds by giving her a series of seemingly impossible tasks to complete to win him. She in turn gives him a series of equally impossible tasks to earn her as his wife. Below I will include one of the oldest versions which dates to 1670 (Caffrey, 2002). Then I’ll discuss some of the variations; as with many of the ballads there are multiple versions and some have significant differences.

The Elfin Knight Version 2B

1My plaid⁷ away, my plaid away

And over the hills and far away

And far away to Norway,

My plaid shall not be blown away.

The Elfin knight stands on yonder hill,

 Refrain: Ba, ba, ba, lillie ba

He blows his horn both loud and shrill.

Refrain: The wind has blown my plaid away

2He blows it east, he blows it west

He blows it where he likes it best

3 ‘I wish that horn were in my chest,

Yes and the Knight in my arms next!

4 She had no sooner these words said

Than the Knight came to her bed.

5 ‘You are too young a girl’, he said

‘Married with me that you would be.’

6 ‘I have a sister younger than I

And she was married yesterday’

7 ‘Married with me if you would be

A courtesy you must do for me.

8 ‘It’s you must make a shirt for me,

Without any cut or seem’, said he.

9 ‘And you must shape it knife- and sheerless,

And also sow it needle and threadless.’

 10 ‘If that piece of courtesy I do for you

Another you must do for me.

 11 'I have an acre of good untilled land,

Which lays low by yonder sea shore.

12  'It’s you must till it with your blowing horn,

And you must sow it with pepper corn.

13 ‘And you must harrow with a thorn

And have your work done before the morning.’

14 ‘And you must shear it with your knife

And not lose a stack of it for your life.’

15 ‘And you must stack it in a mouse hole

And you must thresh it in your shoe-sole.’

16 ‘And you must prepare it in the palm of your hand

And also stack it in your glove

17 ‘And you must bring it over the sea

Fair and dry and clean to me.’

18 'And when you've done, and finished your work,

You'll come to me, and you’ll get your shirt.'

19 ‘I’ll not abandon my plaid for my life;

It covers my seven children and my wife.’

20 ‘My maidenhead I’ll then keep still

Let the Elfin Knight do what he will.’

 (modified from Child, 1898)

This is a complex ballad and one that stands in stark contrast to others like Tam Lin and Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight. Like the latter though we see this one beginning with a young woman hearing an Elfin Knight blowing his horn and wishing aloud that she had him for her own, and like ‘Lady Isabel’ the elf seems compelled to immediately respond by going her. He does not seem to want to do this and we can gather his reluctance since his first comment is that she is too young for him, which she counters by saying that her younger sister was just married. In most versions the girl’s age is unspecified although she does seem to at least be of marriageable age; only in version D is her age given as the very young 9 years old and we may interpret his challenge to her there as a way to put her off until she’s older. In version A the Elf Knight says not only that she is too young but that ‘married with me you ill would be’ and in version C he asks her ‘Are you not over young a maid; with only young men down to lay?’ (Child, 1898). When she insists despite his concern over her age that she is acceptable – by referring to the marriage of her younger sister – he issues her a challenge, more kindly worded in version B above and more bluntly said in C ‘married with me you shall never be; until you make me a shirt without a seam [etc.,]’.

Looking at this section several things are clear. The Elf Knight seems to have no choice in responding to the young woman when she hears his horn and wishes for his company. He also seems unable to simply refuse her advances when she expresses a desire to marry him, or at the least to have sex with him. Instead he responds to her insistence by giving her a list of things she must do to earn him as a spouse, in all versions this seems to include making a shirt that is not sown or cut, and not touched by iron. In several alternate version there are additional requirements including:

D: '…wash it in yonder well,

Where the dew never wet, nor the rain ever fell

And you must dry it on a thorn

That never budded since Adam was born.’

Or alternately from version C:

‘And you must wash it in yonder cistern

Where water never stood nor ran

And you must dry it on yonder Hawthorn

Where the sun never shone since man was born.’

In both of these we see the key to the additions being the idea of washing the shirt in water that is not ordinary water and drying it on an ancient thorn tree that has either never flowered or never seen the sun for as long as humans have existed.

The girl responds to these challenges with a set of her own which in most versions are more complex than what she has been asked to do and involve plowing, planting, harvesting and preparing an acre of land in ways that are just as impossible as the shirt she has been asked to make. In some versions the land is said to ‘lay low by yonder sea strand’ but in some others it is specifically ‘between the sea and the sand’ (Child, 1898). We may perhaps assume the challenges are more difficult and numerous because the Elfin Knight is assumed to have a greater ability to achieve the impossible tasks than the girl is.

In the later variations the ballad ends with the young woman telling the Knight that when he has completed his task and is ready to present the literal fruit (or at least grain) of his labor he can return for his shirt. However in the two earlier versions, A and B, the woman responding with challenges of her own seems to free the elf of the compulsion he was under (or at least a portion of it), as he replies to her telling him when to come for the shirt by saying he won’t ‘abandon his plaid for his life; it covers his seven children and his wife’. In other words he doesn’t want to give up his own bed and family for this young woman. She at least has the good grace then to reply that she will keep her virginity and he can do as he will, certainly setting him completely free at that point.

There are also variations of the refrain which is presented here in the oldest form of ‘ba ba ba lillie ba; the wind has blown my plaid away’ which is found in variants A and B; versions C, D and E are fairly similar with the second line saying ‘and the wind has blown my plaid away’ but the first line varies from ‘over the hills and far away’ to ‘blow, blow, blow wind blow’ except version E which uses the opening line of the refrain from versions A and B. the refrain for version F is ‘sober and grave grows merry in time; once she was a true love of mine’ and marks the first version with no mention of the Elfin Knight. G introduces the famous lines ‘Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; and you shall be a true lover of mine’ and H blends the previous two giving us ‘every rose grows merrier with thyme; and then you will be a true lover of mine’. I returns to the older version with ‘Hee ba and balou ba’ as the beginning but the reference to the wind blowing away the plaid to finish; J uses nonsense words. K’s refrain is ‘Sing ivy, sing ivy; sing holly, go whistle and ivy’ while L uses the variant ‘Sing ivy, sing ivy; sing green bush, ivy and holly’; finally M returns to a version of ‘Every rose springs merry in its time; and she longed to be a true lover of mine’. It is likely that the earliest refrains which rely on references to the wind blowing away the plaid are symbolic and that the plaid in this case was meant to represent either a loss of innocence or security. Caffrey in his article ‘The Elfin Knight Child #2: Impossible Tasks and Impossible Love’ suggests that the plaid is meant to have sexual connotations and that is certainly likely throughout the ballad. The other versions of the refrain include a selection of herbs: ivy, holly, rose, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Ivy was used in love magic and had protective qualities; holly is favored by fairies and also has protective qualities but interestingly was known as a plant that protected the heart against love (MacCoitir, 2006; MacCoitir, 2003). Rose not surprisingly has a long history as a symbol of love and also of beauty. Parsley is associated with lust and fertility; sage for fulfilling wishes; rosemary for love and lust; and thyme for love and attraction (Cunningham, 1985). All of these plants then have significance relating to the meaning of the ballad itself and for our purposes should be considered in the use of magic relating to working with or drawing the Fair Folk or love magic generally.

I think we can see from this that it is possible for a person to compel a Fairy being, particularly an Elfin Knight, if they hear his horn being blow and wish for him in that moment. However I think that this ballad along with ...‘Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight’ make it clear that it may be either unwise or dangerous to make such a wish. You may get what you wish for but in one case the result is a homicidal lover, while in the other it is a deeply reluctant one. Many of us may wish we had an Otherworldly lover or spouse but these ballads show us that forcing Fairy beings into these relationships does not work out well.

7A plaid is a length of cloth that can be worn as mantle but also serves as a bedcovering. In this context I might suggest the bedcovering meaning is intended although one might also see it as applying to a mantle being worn.

8In this version as well note that she does not claim that she has a younger sister who is already married but that she ‘has a sister eleven years old; and she to the young men’s bed has made bold’. This does not seem to be a persuasive argument for the Elf Knight however who continues to put her off.

References
Caffrey, N., (2002) The Elfin Knight Child #2: Impossible Tasks and Impossible Love

Child, F., (1898) The English and Scottish Popular Ballads

Cunningham, S., (1985) Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs

MacCoitir, N., (2003) Irish Trees

 --- (2006) Irish Wild Plants