My late mother (1917-2001) loved pixies. She absolutely LOVED telling me stories about pixies painting autumn leaves. We had a fantastic issue of Ideal magazine with a perfect painting of pixies doing just that – painting leaves but in one of the moves, I felt I would never have anyone to share the issue with so I gave it away. Don’t you hate that? Usually a week to a month after throwing something out, you find you really need it back.
But there are so many wonderful websites and Facebook pages about the Fae now that I hope I’ll find that issue online again. No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a faerie, but I have definitely sensed a presence in flower gardens and forests. My whole life I’ve LOVED LOVED LOVED creeks (streams, brooks) – any body of water with stones so you can skip across and not get too wet.
Tinkerbell fascinated me when I first saw it. No! I’m not THAT old to have seen it when it was first released in 1953! But my great love was Peter Pan himself – and there’s the question – WHAT was Peter Pan? Certainly not a human child. If you want to ruin your mood, you can search the literary criticism section in a library but I suggest you avoid that and think of Pan as an elf or nature spirit of some sort. He is, afterall, a literary creation and NOT a REAL faerie!
Which brings me to the AMAZING body of work by Elysia who lives in India. I suppose I should not be surprised that I am typing right now during the Third Quarter Moon in Capricorn when Chandra-dev (if you’re in India) or Luna’s face is illuminated on the left side in the Northern Hemisphere while in shadow in the Southern hemisphere. The MIRROR image of the face in shadow on the right and on the left Down Under might REFLECT the very nature of faeries. Illusive, sometimes seen in broad daylight and sometimes only in shadow!
And who better to describe the many faeries and their worlds (realms) than Elysia who believes whole heartedly that she is a faerie who has incarnated or reincarnated or taken a rebirth as a human. She even has a SCHOOL where she teaches about everything faerie and an online shop. She speaks with the most charming voice and uses background music and illustrations that just lull you into her world. Her most recent video, I am a Fairy, living in a City (India) could, I think, win a short film award for cinematography.
I started my blog and had already announced to the world my intention to write about faeries when lo’ and behold Joshua P. Warren spent an entire hour on his March 23, 2021 I Heart Radio weekly podcast Strange Things to encounters with “Little People” . Josh doesn’t mess around with tales from books. Oh, NO, he reads emails he has received or relates first hand accounts he has been told in person. If you don’t have the time to listen any other podcasts Joshua has done, this one, is a MUST!
12 inch high to two foot high perfectly proportioned humans wearing brown or tan clothing and old fashioned hats! Or the account (notice I am deliberately avoiding the English word “story” as that is often fiction) by a lady who for years was haunted by seeing a little man. Then long after the Harry Potter movies had gone to VHS, she finally decided to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and freaked out during this scene in Gringotts Bank for the goblins created by the team at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop! For there on the screen in front of her was a creature that looked exactly like the one she had seen years and years before IN PERSON in the flesh or at least what we believe is flesh in 3D. But these “creatures” can fade out or blink out or just vanish into thin air as we say. So are they from another realm or dimension or parallel universe or another time?
I first discovered John Curtis Crawford and Bridget Wolfe while searching for something to watch on Amazon Prime. I think this was a suggestion and it was, no pun intended, MAGICAL! Gateways To Faerie – Discover A Hidden Realm of Mystery, Magic and Wonder is beautifully filmed in a forest in Oregon where you walk alongside Curtis as he talks about how he searches for stones and twigs and forest objects to use to build Fairy Houses. Not those cheap ones you can buy at a box store or even the pricey ones online that I bought for my garden and then couldn’t put them outside because I discovered fine print “not for outdoor use” once I got them home. NO NO! These cost hundreds of dollars but are masterpieces of craftmanship. Alas, by the time I found the film, Curtis had retired and was no longer hosting make a house workshops.
BUT you can browse their website and maybe create something like this!
The point is, this couple firmly believe they have seen faeries, live with faeries, and so do many, if not all, of the people who have attended their workshops. These fae are much loved. But what about the ones that have been vilified? Which brings me to an exchange I had during the Moonology Challenge with a lady I met through the comments. Somehow the word Siddhe came up. And a flood of memories came back about the film and the book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
I watched it on Amazon, I believe, with my two best friends. We were captivated and scared poopless. I sent for the book through Interlibrary loan the following week. The book took forever to get here and then I had to renew it twice. The hardcover is 782 pages and is quite heavy. It is 1,000 times darker than the film version and a lot gorier. In fact, it was a difficult slog at times because Susanna Clarke has a REALLY sadistic streak. The book still haunts me.
But it did not frighten everyone. E.C. Hibbs loved it and delves deep into the tale in the Gentleman and Fairy Folklore!
The Sidhe are portrayed as frightening but are they? This page takes a different view.
And then there is Edmund (Eddie) Lenihan who appears in a fascinating documentary called The Fairy Faith, a John Walker Production. I found a copy of it here if you cannot watch it on Amazon. The most interesting interview was with Eddie whose book, Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland, I do not own YET. However, a preview of the book yielded this list.
Over the years I used to have to hunt for films or even novels that featured the Fae. Now you can literally get lost on YouTube alone! When in one of our lessons, Anheke (Anni) Greystone instructed us to get a tarot deck so we could learn how to use it, I fixated on an out of print deck which I managed to buy brand new on Ebay far above the original price but it is GORGEOUS. You can still find listings like this one. I, luckily, did not pay $200 but it was still pretty expensive.
The deck is, not always, but at times it can provide a scary spot on reading – as in OMG run out of the room scary spot on reading if I ask THEM and not just the usual type of spread.
In Part Two I will leave Ireland behind and jump over to Iceland. See you there!
Librarian's Guide to the Multiverse! 