Table of Contents
Introduction
The
connection between humans, fairies, and deities
Fairy
Classifications
Humans
who
become fairies
Fairies are
nature spirits
Wells,
Springs and Pools
Trees,
Forests, Glens and Plants
Fairies are
animals
Mountains,
Rocks, and Lands
Forces of
nature
House,
Hearth, and Field
Fairies are
the gods of the past
Fairies as
their own class of spirits
Common
fairy traits
Analysisi
of the fairies in fairy tales
Rumpelstiltskin
and Analysis
Briar Rose
Analysis of
Briar Rose
Puss in
Boots
Analysis of
Puss in Boots
The
Spindle, the Shuttle and the Needle
Analysis of The Spindle, the shuttle and the Needle
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Humans who become fairies
Note: this is a preview which
has been edited and condenced.
Fairies
are the Dead
Every step, every moment, every thought and deed leads us ever onward
towards another life, a life which may perhaps last for eternity. Thus,
from an immortal creature’s perspective, death might simply
be a
form of birth. The fact that some of our ancestors have indeed
become fairies gives us a shadowy window into understanding the
reasoning of the beings of this strange world. For the dead have an
obvious interest in the things they loved in life and in those things
they would love if they were still mortal. In the story of
“The
Three Spinners,” a woman is told to spin a room full of flax
in
order to be married. Unable to perform such an impossible feat, she
falls into despair when three old women appear to her and tell her that
they are her ancestors. At this point, they proceed to help her in
return for being invited to her child’s christening. (Grimm
and
Grimm, 1812) The fairies’ goal in helping the human girl in
this
story is clear. They seek, as many elders would, to help a grandchild
or a great niece in finding love and happiness.
Certainly, not all fairy motivations are so simple or clear as those of
the three spinners as not all fairies are in any way related to humans,
or their immortal life existing in nature has altered their perceptions
and shrouded their motivations in mystery. However, at the end of the
day, these three spinners and those fairies, who still clearly love
their descendants, will return to fairy land when they are through
helping their human decedents, where they will dance and speak with the
other fairies.
Ancestor worship is a common practice among the animist peoples
including the people of Europe's past. Mortals in many religions become
gods or spirits which protected their decedents from harm and from
their enemies. So many of the beings we would recognize as fairies are
in the spirits of peoples’ ancestors that walk the spirit
world
or remain behind to offer aid. In Russia there was no doubt
“That the souls of the families’ patriarchs watched
over
their children and their children's children; that the departed
spirits, especially those of the ancestors, ought always to be regarded
with pious veneration. When the family was in need, these ancestors
should be solicited or conciliated by prayer and sacrifice."
“When a Russian family moves from one house to another, the
fire
is raked out of the old stove into a jar and solemnly conveyed to the
new one, and the words ‘Welcome, Grandfather, to the new
home!’ being uttered when it arrived. All new animals are
introduced to this ‘Grandfather,’ and food is laid
out for
them at special occasions.”
Not all ancestor fairies are connected to the household, however. The
previously mentioned bannik lives within the bathhouse while others
live and aid in the fields and farm. Still others, such as the banshee,
appear to live in the moorlands coming out only to watch humans and
provide them with gifts or to mourn their passing. (Ralston, 1872)
“There is a legend told of the Macleod family: (that) Soon
after
the heir of the Macleods was born, a beautiful woman in wonderful
raiment, who was a fairy woman or banshee, (there were joyous as well
as mourning banshees), appeared at the castle and went directly to the
babe’s cradle. She took up the babe and chanted over it a
series
of verses, and each verse had its own melody. The verses foretold the
future manhood of the young child and acted as a protective charm over
its life. Then she put the babe back into its cradle and, going out,
disappeared across the moorlands.”
In another tale, the banshee of Grants Meg Moulach would stand beside
the head of the family and advise them on playing chess. (F.S. Wilde,
1887)
The Romans also believed that humans would often become fairies in
death: “M. A. Lefèvre shows that the Roman Lares,
so
frequently compared to house-haunting fairies, are in reality quite
like the Gaelic banshee. Originally, they were nothing more than the
unattached souls of the dead, akin to Manes; that time and custom made
distinctions between them. In the common language, Lares and Manes had
synonymous dwellings; and that, finally, the idea of death was little
by little divorced from the worship of the Lares so that they became
guardians of the family and protectors of life. On all the tombs of
their dead, the Romans inscribed these names: Manes, inferi, silentes,
the last of which, meaning the silent ones, is equivalent to the term
‘People of Peace’ given to the fairy-folk of
Scotland. Nor
were the Roman Lares always thought of as inhabiting dwellings. Many
were supposed to live in the fields, in the streets of cities, at
crossroads quite like certain orders of fairies and demons. In each
place these ancestral spirits had their chapels and received offerings
of fruit, flowers, and foliage. If neglected, they became spiteful and
were then known as lemures.” (Wentz, 1911)
This, however, leaves us to wonder; what is the catalyst? Why do some
human souls become banshees and domovoi while others don’t?
To
understand this we turn to an accounting of one of the closest
relations between a human and a fairy we have, that of Elspeth Reoch, a
young, Scottish girl who was trained in magic and becomes the lover of
a number of fairies. Elspeth Reoch’s first encounter with
fairies
occurred when she was 12 years old. At this time she was waiting beside
a loch for a boat when two men approached her, one in black and the
other in green tartan plaid. The man in plaid offered to teach her a
spell which would allow her to see things as they actually were in
return for a courtship which ultimately led to a brief sexual
relationship between her and the fairy. Her second encounter with
fairies occurred two years later just after she had a child by another
man. At this time a different fairy man comes to her. This second fairy
tells her that he is human who died as the sun was going down so that
he is now neither dead nor alive but is forever caught between heaven
and Earth. So it is that in this story that perhaps we have our answer
as to why some people become fairies when they die. People, according
to this story, become caught in the in-between world of fairies when
they die at a time of an in-between during sundown, for example.
(Purkiss, 2007)
Further, according to Diane Purkiss, Elspeth’s encounter with
fairies also occurs during a time of an in-between when she is on the
edge of the loch, at the boundary of two clans, between her family and
another land. It also occurs when she is in adolescence, between
childhood and adulthood. Her second encounter occurs when she has a
child born outside of marriage.
“Her encounters with fairies occur at the two most common
times
for such encounters; at the threshold of womanhood and after
childbirth.” (Purkiss, 2007)
This time of in-between is a constant theme among fairies. For example,
those who die in childbirth, another time of in-between, are some of
the most likely people to become fairies; also babies who die before
they can be named while they are still between the world of the womb
and the human world. Perhaps the reason fairies themselves often appear
so young is that many of them are those who died on the cusp of
adolescence between two moments of life. So just as the fairy Elspeth
first encountered, they are stuck forever between being alive and being
dead.
Beyond simply offering some clarity as to what circumstances cause
humans to become fairies, this story also offers some insight into the
simplicity of certain fairies’ goals. That they seek out
other
humans like themselves, humans who are on the fringes in order to
either make the humans like them by taking them away or in order to
copulate with them. Fairies then, at least those fairies that are the
dead, are attracted to two things: their decedents who they are trying
to help, or those humans who have become like them by being on the
margins finding themselves between two worlds. Of course, in the latter
case, not all such encounters are positive as the fairies often seek to
kill those just as they themselves died.
According to (W. W. Gibbing, 1889), people see among the trooping
fairies the:
“Faces of friends and relatives, long since doomed to the
battle
trench or the deep sea, have been recognized by those who dared to gaze
on the fairy march. The maid has seen her lost lover, and the mother
her stolen child, and the courage to plan and achieve their deliverance
has been possessed by, at least, one border maiden.”
So not only are the dead among the fairies, but it is possible at times
to bring them back to life. This can also mean that they are not truly
dead. T
Humans
who change into fairies
Humans do not have to die to become nature spirits or trooping fairies.
Humans are so close to fairies they can, in fact, be transformed into
fairies while still living. This should not be so surprising because,
as previously mentioned, humans are in essence just another form of
fairy.
It has been theorized that many of our fairy stories come from the
existence of indigenous peoples in England. People ostracized and
driven to the fringes of society or the underdogs who were mysterious
to those who rejected them. In Cornwall one man testifies that:
“Pixies were often supposed to be the souls of the
prehistoric
dwellers of this country. As such, pixies were supposed to be getting
smaller and smaller until, finally, they are to vanish
entirely.”
(Wentz, 1911)
This paints a much more terrifying picture of some of the fairies than
we often imagined. According to this account, the pixies who people
often think of as cute, little, playful fairies, are small because they
are shrinking into oblivion. What’s more, they have had to
live
for thousands of years with the knowledge that they will eventually
disappear and that those humans who would remain are the decedents of
the people who forced them into their horrible fate. It is no wonder
then that such beings are caught between human-like sympathy and
incredible bitterness because, while they must retain some human
emotion, much of this emotion must be anger at being driven into their
current state.
If we accept the presence of many of our ancestors among the fairies,
as we surely must given the large amount of evidence to support this,
we must also accept that there are other humans, often far angrier
humans, occupying the world of fairies. Further, there are very few
people who can claim to be the first inhabitants of their lands and
only two such people groups in Europe. So it would seem that only some
fairies would be the ancestors of any given set of humans especially
given that as with the pixies whole kingdoms of humans could become
fairies. This might explain why people in Europe were so afraid of the
wilderness. After they drove the original inhabitants of Europe into
the dark forests and mountains, these peoples and the fairies they came
to be had centuries to grow ever more bitter.
In Ireland, many people believe that the Tuatha De Danann were an
indigenous people who turned invisible and entered a parallel realm
when the Irish people invaded Ireland, as the Tuatha De Danann were
unable to defeat the newcomers in a test of arms because of the Irish
peoples’ powerful druids and deities. The Tuatha De Danann
now
reside in the hills and rocks of Ireland much as fairies do in other
parts of the Europe (Wentz, 1911).The Tuatha De Danann are mysterious
but also understandable because they still structure themselves much as
humans would with kingdoms and fortresses, wars, and a little bit of
both enmity and pity for the decedents of those that drove them into
the underground realm who are still stuck as suffering mortals despite
their apparent “victory.”
Lest we think that such myths are confined to Europe, we must consider
a more recent case of this “fairyification” process
which
comes from Hawaii, that of the Menehune. The Menehune are the
indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands. As the Samoan peoples moved
into Hawaii, they drove the Menehune deeper into the jungles from which
they mythologically emerged at night to build magical temples before
fleeing back to the jungles when the sun rose. Yet despite their
mythological status, they were a real people whose ancestors were
counted in the Hawaiian kingdoms first census and whose ancestors
likely still survive today.
Fairies also take humans into their world to join them. In Greece, a
fairy queen asked one girl:
"Would you not like to be a fairy?...and live with me in this garden
where the sun never ceases to shine and where it is summer all the
year?” (Gianakoulis, 1930) Then, despite the girl’s
apparent refusals, the fairies took her soul anyways to become one of
them leaving behind her body. This is not, however, an isolated
incident. Fairies often take humans away, offering them magical candy
that will transform them into fairies or items of clothing which can
transform them such as scarves and shawls. At times, this is done
because the fairies want a servant. Other times fairies want a sexual
partner. However, it would also seem that fairies are also after
friends and allies, or that they have some other purpose humans cannot
discern. Consider also that some fairies appear to be simply humans who
have some garment of clothing that makes them different and unique. In
Greek folklore, many fairies are made fairies by a handkerchief which
when stolen forces them to become human. In Scottland, selkies have a
seal skin which allows them to become ocean fairies or ghost-like
creatures which inhabit castles. (Briggs, 1967) Jacob Grimm points out
that in some cases, the immortality of fairies comes from the food they
eat in fairy land. Further, as previously mentioned, simply entering
fairy land and living there would turn some humans into fairies. Humans
can simply be fairies who do not live within the fairies’
world. |
