The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries

n, once so evident to the heroic races who preceded him. His legends and faery tales have connected his soul with t

airy-Tribes dealt with-Witnesses and their testimony: from Ireland, with introduction by Dr. Douglas Hyde; from Scotland, with introduction by Dr. Alexander Carmichael; from the Isle of Man, with introduction

RAL INT

ances of Fairies, seems equally unsatisfactory; for as soon as the details of folk-lore such as I am presenting are isolated from one another-even though brought together in related groups-they must be rudely torn out of their true and natural environment, and divorced from the psychological atmosphere amidst which they were first presented by the narrator. The same objection applies to any plan of dividing the evidence into (1) that which is purely legendary; (2) that which is second-hand or third-hand evidence from people who claim to have seen fairies, or to have been i

ondition, realm or place, very much like, if not the same as, that wherein civilized and uncivilized men alike place the souls of the dead, in company with other invisible beings such as gods, daemons, and all sorts of good and bad spirits. Not only do both educated and uneducated Celtic seers so conceive Fair

in schools or colleges. But when we hear legendary tales which have never been recorded save in the minds of unnumbered generations of men, we ought not on that account to undervalue them; for often they are better authorities and more trustworthy than many an ancient and carefully inscribed manuscript in the

sense.' This same class of critics used to make similar remarks about people who said there were ghosts, until the truth of another 'stupid superstition' was discovered by psychical research. So in this chapter we hope to correct this erroneous opinion about the Fairy-Faith, an opinion chiefly entertained by scholars and others who know not the first real fact about fairies, because they have never lived amongst the people who believe in fairies, but derive all their information from books and hearsay. In d

xpression. The method pursued in seeking the evidence has been to penetrate as deeply and in as natural a way as possible the thoughts of the people who believe in fairies and like beings, by living among them and observing their customs and ways of thought, and recording what seemed relevant to the subject under investigation-chance expressions, and legends told under various ordinary conditions-rather than to collect long legends or literary fairy-stories. For these last the reader is referred to the many excellent works on

Theory, must base their arguments, we consider it very adequate evidence. Nearly every witness is a Celt who has been made acquainted with the belief in fairies through direct contact with people who believe in them, or through having heard fairy-traditions among his own kindred, or through personal psychological experiences. And it is exceedingly fortunate for us that an unusually large proportion of these Celtic witnesses are actual percipients and natural seers, because the eliminations from the Fairy-Faith

ordinary man, and therefore no claim can be made in any case to infallibility of evidence: all the world over men interpret visions pragmatically and sociologically, or hold beliefs in accord with their own personal experiences; and are for ever unconsciously immersed in a sea of psychological influences which sometimes may be explainable through the methods of sociological inquiry, sometimes may be supernormal in origin and nature, and hence to be explained most adequately, if at all, through psychical research. Our study is a s

de, by Dr. Carmichael, and by Mr. Jenner in their respective introductions for Ireland, Scotland, and Cornwall. Nevertheless, the Fairy-Faith as the folk-religion of the Celtic peoples is still able to count its adherents by hundreds of thousands. Even in many cases where Christian th

'Fair-Family' or 'Fair-Folk', as the Welsh people call their fairies; about Cornish Pixies; and about Fées (fairies), Corrigans, and the Phantoms of the Dead in Brittany. And along with these, for they are very much akin, let us hear about ghosts-sometimes about ghosts who discover hidden treasure, as in our story of the Golden Image-abou

IN I

.A. (An Craoibhín Aoibhinn), President of the Gaelic

guistic and literary purposes) to its songs, sayings, ballads, proverbs, and sgéalta, which last are generally the equivalent of the German M?rchen, but sometimes have a touch of the saga nature about them. In making a collection of these things I have naturally come across a very large amount of folk-belief conversationally expressed, with regard to the 'good people' and other supernatural manifest

d, more or less conventional, and above all has its interest grouped around a single central figure, that of the hero or heroine. I may make this plainer by an example. Let us go into a cottage on the mountain-side, as Mr. Wentz and I have done so often, and ask the old man of the house if he ever heard of such things as fairies, and he will tell you that 'there is fairies in it surely. Didn't his own father see the "forth"[10] beyond full of them, and he passing by of a moonlight night and a

aps one time in ten, or if you induce the right vein, which you may do perhaps nine times out of ten, you will find him begin with a certain gravity and solemnity at the very beginning, thus, 'There was once, in old times and in old times it was, a king in Ireland'; or perhaps 'a man who married a second wife'; or perhaps 'a widow woman with only one son': and the

n pure and simple. Yet this off-hand condemnation does not always carry with it a perfect conviction. We do not doubt the existence of tree-martins or kingfishers, although nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every thousand pass their entire lives without being vouchsafed a glimpse of them in their live state; and may it not be the same with the creatures of the spirit world, may not they also exist, though to only one in a thousand it be

be no smoke without a fire, are we to hold that there would be no popular conception of the banshee, the leprechaun, or the Maighdean-mhara (sea-maiden, mermaid), and consequently no tales told about them, if such beings did not exist, and from time to time allow themselves to be seen like the wood-martin and th

ts-the only time during my entire American experiences in which such a thing happened-and each man of the four had a story of his own to tell, in which he was a convinced believer, of ghostly manifestations seen by him in Ireland. Two of these manifestations were of beings that would fall into no known category; a monstrous rabbit as big as an ass, which plunged into the sea (rabbits can swim), and a white heifer which ascended to heaven, were two of them. I myself, when a boy of ten or eleven

enticated, come crowding on her heels, so many indeed that they would point to a far more extensive world of different shapes than is usually suspected, not to speak of inanimate objects like the coach and the ship. Of course there is nothing inherently

mmon) rises gently a slope, which, owing to the flatness of the surrounding regions, almost becomes a hill, and is a conspicuous object for many miles upon every side. The old people called it in Irish Mullach na Sidhe. This name is now practically lost, and it is called Fairymount. So extinct have the traditions of the Sidhe-folk, who lived within the hill, become, that a high ecclesiastic recently driving by asked his driver was there an Irish name for the hill, and what was it, and his driver did not know. There took place a

rule the highest and most salient eminences, but I think more usually the pleasant undulating slopes or gentle hill-sides-and who lived there a life of their own, marrying or giving in marriage, banqueting or making war, and leading there just as real a life as is our own. All Irish literature, particularly perhaps the 'Colloquy of the Ancients' (Agallamh na

ght be accounted for as being a continuation of the tradition of the ancient Gaels, or a piece of heredity inherent in the folk-imagination. I mean, in other words, that the tradition about these handsome dwellers within the hill

en by Mr. Wentz's seer-witness (pp. 60 ff.), all the banshees and all the human figures, white women, and so forth, who are seen in raths and moats

lei as Germanic as the Kelpy is Caledonian. If we grant that all these are creatures of primitive folk-belief, then how they come to be so ceases to be a Celtic problem, it becomes a world problem. But granted, as I say, that

y to be convinced (on the mere evidence) that the existence of 'astral bodies' or 'doubles', or whatever we may call them, and the appearances of people, especially in the hour of their death, to other people who were perhaps hundreds of miles away at the time, is amply proven. Yet whatever may have been the case originally when man was young, I do not think that this had in later times any more direct bearing upon the belief in the Sidhe, the leprechauns, the mermaid, and similar beings than upon th

special beliefs. Any outsider, for instance, who may have read that powerful and grisly book, La Légende de la Mort, by M. Anatole Le Braz, in two large volumes, all about the awful appearances of Ankou (Death), who simply dominates the folk-lore of Brittany, will probably be very much astonished to know that, though I have b

st strongly, they also most strongly preserved the memory of those supernatural beings who were peculiarly their own. The Sidhe-folk appear to be pre-eminently and distinctively Milesian, but the geancanach (name of some littl

known in every part of it, there should still be, as I have said, supernatural beings believed in which are unknown outside of their own districts, and of which the rest of Ireland has never heard? If the inhabitants of the limited districts in

ture to throw out these considerations for what they may be worth, and I desire again to thank Mr.

Frenc

oscommon

mber

ry Folk

t the great Feast of Samain, to-day the fairy-folk of modern times hold undisputed sovereignty. And from no point better than Tara, which thus was once the magical and political centre of the Sacred Island, could we begin our study of the Irish Fairy-Faith. Though the Hill has lain unploughed and deserted since the curses

had led me from rath to rath and then right through the length of the site where once stood the banquet hall of kings and heroes and Druids, as he earnestly described the past glories of Tara

. I heard the music another time on a hot summer evening at the Rath of Ringlestown, in a field where all the grass had been burned off; and I often heard it in the wood of Tara. When

running his walking-stick through a thick clump), and you can't see them; and evil spirits are just as thick, too, and people don't know it. Because there are so many spirits knocking (going) about they must appear to some people. The old folk saw the good people here on the Hill a hundred time

om Kilmessa

essan, a village about two miles from Tara; and he, being one of the men of the vicini

t traditions, that some of these fairies are of the Fir Bolgs, some of the Tuatha De Danann, and some of the Milesians. All of them have been seen serenading round the western slope of Tara, dressed in ancient Irish costumes. Unlike the little red men, these fair

ges, and join the gangkena (?) or host of industrious folk, the red fairies. We were afraid, and our nurses always brought us home before the advent of the fairy procession. One of the passes used by this procession hap

ass. When he put the wood under the pot, though it spat fire, and fire-sparkles would come out of it, it would not burn. The man pined away gradually. In s

he south, encamped his army on the Rath or Fort of Ringlestown, to be assisted by the spirits of the mighty dead who dwelt within this rath. And it is believed that Gerald Fitzg

ssisted him. The Carrolls' house was built at the end of a fairy fort, and part of it was scooped out of this fort. Rose grew so peculiar that her folks locked

alley of

Righ, or 'the Wood of the Kings', though the ancient wood has long since disappeared; and as we sat looking out over the su

s made when the second child was born. At the birth of the third child the fairy queen came again and ordered one of her three servants to take the child; but the child could not be moved because of a great beam of iron, too heavy to lift, which lay across the baby's breast. The secon

May she be the greatest singer in the world"; and the third one said, "May she be the best mantle-maker in the world." Then the fairy queen said, "Your gifts are all very good, but I will give a gift of my own better than

t he stopped to listen; and, the song ended, he entered the house, and upon seeing the wonderful beauty of the singer asked her to marry him. The mother said that could not

the greatest singer and the best mantle-maker would be chosen as his wife. When he added that each lady must come in a chariot, the rat spoke to him and said that he must send to her home, on the day named, four piebald cats and a pack of cards, and that she w

once turned the cats into the four most splendid horses in the world, and the pack of cards into the most wonderful chariot in the world; and, as the chariot was setting out from the Moat for

out alone to meet it; but he could not believe his eyes on seeing the lady insid

with the mantle-making, and the young girl was the last to appear; but to the amazement of all the company the king had to give in (admit) that the st

olks when he was a boy, he told me many anecdotes about the 'good

to talk, I asked her, in due time, if any of the 'good people' ever appeared in the region, or about New Grange, which we could see in the field, and she replied,

ow could they disappear in that way? I knew of people,' she added, 'who would milk in the fields about here and spill milk on the ground fo

ony of an

g to offer the first opportunity to testify in behalf of that district to a scholarly priest of the Roman Church, for what he tells us is almost wholly the result of his own memories

an entrance to an underground world. It is a common opinion that after consumptives die they are there with the fairies in good health. The wasted body is not taken into the hill, for it is usually regarded as not the body of th

he wet thumb to make the sign of the cross on the thigh of the cow on the side milked, to be safe against fairies. And I have se

Also, after churning, the knife which is run through the butter in drying it must not be scraped clean, for what sticks to it belongs to

idered quite safe if one can get over some stream. I remember coming home on a dark night with a boy c

o wrong. Their animals will die, their children fall sick, and no end of trouble will come on them. When the house happens to have been built in a fairy track, the doors on the front and back, or the windows if they are in the line of the track, cannot be kept closed at night, for the fairies must march through. Near Ballinrobe there is an old fort which is still th

nd its owner will count on so many tons to the acre, but if when the crop is gathered it is found to be far short of the es

such things and make them unfit to eat. If one dares to eat them afterwards one will have serious illness. We firmly believed this as boys, and I laugh now when I think how we used

time, the fairies appeared as swarms of flies coming from every direction to that spot. Some came from Knock Ma, and some from South Ireland, the opinion being that fairi

teen, or twenty-one years. The mind of a person coming out of Fairyland is usually a blank as to what has been seen and done there. Another idea is that the person knows well enough all about Fairyland, but is prevented from communicating the knowledge. A certain woman of whom I knew said she had forgotten all about her exper

ony of a G

relative, or ancestor who appears to give a warning. 'The fairies', he says, 'never care about old folks. They only take babies, and young men and young women. If a young wife dies, she is said to have been taken by them, and ever afterwards to live in Fa

:-'I saw a dog with a white ring around his neck by that hill there, and the oldest men round Galway have seen him, too, for h

r, is of more than ordinary value:-'There used to be an old piper called Flannery who lived in Oranmore, County Galway. I imagine he was one of the old generation. And one time the good people took him to Fa

of 'Old Pats

traw-thatched fishermen's homes called Oak Quarter. As 'Old Patsy' stood beside a rude stone cross near Oak Quarter, in one of those curious places on Aranmore, where each passing fune

y fairies, 'crowds of them,' said 'Old Patsy', and a single deer. They began to chase the deer, and followed it right over t

uck the cow a hard blow, and turning on the man cut his face and body very badly. The man might not have been so badly off, but he returned to the well after the first encounter and got five times as bad a beating; and when he reached home he couldn't speak at all, until the cock

they had one of their favourite abodes. But, he added, 'The rocks are full of them, and they are small fellows.' Just across the road from where we were standing, in a spot near Oak Quarter, another place was pointed out where the fairies are often see

of a Roman Cat

on concerning spirits and fairies as regarded by Roman Catholic theology,

gic is practised by carrying the Cross in Christ. Now evil magic has been practised here in Ireland: butter has been taken so that none came from the churning; cows have been made to die of maladies; and fields made unproductive. A cow was bought from an old woman in Connemara, and no butter was ever had from the cow until exorcism with holy wa

of the Town

nterest in the traditions of his native county, I am indebted for the following val

s Hill of the Plain, is said to be the palace of Finvara, king of the Connaught fairies. T

rts attributed the famine to disturbed conditions in the fairy world. Old Thady Steed once told me about the conditions then prevailing, "Sure, we couldn't be any other w

man who died here about thirty years ago was commonly believed to have been with the fairies during her seven years' sickness when she was a maiden. She married after coming back, and had children; and she was always able to see the good people and to talk with them, for she had the second

a person enters a house then, and churning is going on, he must take a hand in it, or else there

in Tuam, a woman was on trial for watering milk, and to the surprise of us all who were conducting the proceedings, an

t even by pigs. Such food is said to have no real substance left in it, and to let anything eat it wouldn't be thought of. The underl

have a living man among them, and he by knocking the fairies about turns the battle in case the side he is

the Testimony of

led while hunting the wild-boar. And this famous old mountain, honeycombed with curious grottoes ages ago when the sea beat against its perpendicular flanks, is the very place where the 'gentry' have their chief abode. Even on its broad level summit, for it is a high square tableland like a mighty cube of rock set down upon the earth by some antediluvian god, there are treacherous holes, wherein more than one hunter m

most-twilight at midday over the purple heather bog-lands at their base, and the rain was falling, I sat

et and silvery voice, "The seldomer you come to this mountain the better. A young lady here wants to take you away." Then he told us not to fire off our guns, because the gentry dislike being disturbed by the noise. And he seemed to be like a soldier of the gentry on guard. As we were leaving the mountains, he told us not to look back, and we didn't. Another time I was alone trout-fishing in nearly the same region when I heard a voice say, "It is -- barefooted and fishing." Then there came a whistle like music and a noise like the beating of a drum, and soon one of the gent

annel is very deep, and at the time there was a rough sea, with the tide running out, and I was almost lost. I shrieked and shouted, and finally got safe to the mainland. T

astles; and there are a good many branches of them in other countries. Like armies, they have

favour in our wars, that side wins. They favoured the Boers, and the Boers did get their rights. They told me they favoured the Japanese and not the Russ

ing that I think they could see through the earth. They have a silvery voice, quick and sweet. The music they play is most beautiful. They take the whole body and soul of young and intellectual people who are interesting, transmuting the body to a body like their own. I asked them once if they ever died, and they said, "No; we are always kept young." Once they take you and you taste food in their palace you cannot come back. You are changed to one of them, and live with them for ever. They are able to appear in different forms. One once appeared to me, and seemed only four feet high, and stoutly built. He said, "I am bi

ce fro

the olden times. Hugh knows English very imperfectly, and so what he narrated was in the ancient Gaelic which his fathers spoke. When Father Hines took me to Hugh's cottage, Hugh was in his usual silent pose before the fire. At first he rather resented ha

he market, was taken by the gentry, and often came back afterwards to her three children to comb their hair. One time she told a neighbour that the money s

he body of his wife all alone. He left the door open a little, and it wasn't long before his wife's spirit came in and went to the cradle where her child was sleeping. As she did so, the husband threw at her a charm of hen's dung which he had read

or's T

s-road hamlet less than two miles from Hugh Currid's home. His first story is a parallel t

am not badly off. If you want to get me back you must stand at the gap near the house and catch me as I go by, for I live near there, and see you, and you do not see me." He was anxious enough to get her back, and didn't waste any time in getting to the gap. Whe

red at the spot where the island is, and he thought they had fallen overboard and been drowned. Carr saw one of the same men in Connelly (County Donegal), some six months or so after, and with great surprise said to him, "Will you tell me the wonders of the world? Is it you I saw drowned near Innishmurray?" "Yes," he said;

tation of talking with the fairies came in the house to my father, who, though greatly disturbed over the dream, had told us nothing of it, and asked him, "Have you anything to tell? I couldn't but laugh at you," she added, and before my father could reply, continued, "Well, Jimmy, you won't tell the news, so I will." And then she began to tell about the

reason our dreams appear different from what they are is because while in them we can't

-witness from County Sligo, because it proved to be capable of opposite interpretations. Patrick Waters, however, like many of his neighbours, thoroughly supports Hugh Currid's opinion that our seer-witness 'surely sees something, and it must be the ge

had collected around the body said to him, "Why don't you do something for your brother Patrick?" "Why don't somebody ask me?" he replied, "for I must be asked in the name of God." So Jimmy McGowan went on his knees and asked for the honour of God that Father Dominick should bring Fat

d." "And where were you at the second whistle?" "I was coming over Corrick Fadda; and when you whistled the third time I was here at the

happened some fifty or sixty years ago. I heard this story, which I know is

near the sea-coast opposite Innishmurray, in which the ancient menhir containing the 'enchantment' used to stand; and, at another time, he said that a bronze wand covered with curious marks (or else interlaced

wn bodies are still under enchantment. I had such a Druid enchantment in my hand; it wasn't stone, nor marble, nor flint, and had human shape. It was found in the centre of a big rock on Innis-na-Gore; and round this rock light used to appear at night. The man who owned the stone decided to blast it up, and he found at

sloes; they let you cut no stick on the eleventh of November (the original November Day), or on the eleventh of May (the original May Day). If at such a time you cut a blackthorn, some misfortune will come to you. Pookas are black-featured fellows mounted on good horses; and are horse-dealers. They visit racecourses, but usually are

'Conner's

ms with a pair of scissors, and as I stopped to tell her how pretty a garden she had, she searched out the finest white bloom she could find and gave it to me. After we h

d and taken by the fairies, in the big drowning here during the herring season. She would pull the herb herself and prepare it by mixing spring water with it. Peggy could always talk with her dead relatives and

, as it happened, and in child-birth. When she was gone, her mother used to wail and cry in an awful manner; and one day the daug

f her eyes. She went home and thought no more about it. But one day she was at the fair in Grange and saw some of the same women who were in the castle when the baby was born; though, as she noticed, she only could see them with the one eye she had wet with the water from the basin. The nurse spoke to the women, and they wanted to know how she recognized th

it World

s one who knows much about the 'gentry' at first hand, and we can be sure that what he offers us is thoroughly reliable evidence. For many years, John McCann, born in 1830, by profession a carpenter and boat-builder, has been official mail-carrier to Innishmurray; and he knows quite as much abo

ng to her. She said they were the gentry; that the gentry are everywhere; and that my drowned uncles and grandfather and other dead are amo

he following story, which like this last has numerous Irish parallels, illustrates an ancient and world-wide animistic be

he house in Roscommon in which the Father was born; and Father Brannan never said anything more against Mike after that. Mike surely saw the gentry; and he was with th

y would come out like an army and march along the road to the strand. Very few persons could see them. They were thought to be li

him no fear. Once on such an occasion, one of them came up to him as he lay in bed, and giving him a green leaf told him to put it in his mouth. When he did this, instantly he could not see the gentry, but could still hear their music. Uncle Dan always believed

w of Ben Bulbin

ountain-side home to the lowlands to cut hay; and as we looked up at the ancient mountain, so mysterious and

ds and horsemen cross the road and jump the hedge in front of him, and it was one o'clock at night. The next d

cutting turf out on the side of Ben Bulbin when a strange man came to him and said, "You have cut enough turf for to-day. You had better stop and go home." The turf-cutter looked around in surprise, and in two second

ne dark night, about one o'clock, myself and another young man were passing along the road up there round Ben Bulbin, when we heard the finest kind of music. Al

ould come to talk about fairies his good wife induced me to enter another room where she had secretly prepared a great feast spread out on a fresh white cloth, while Pat and myself had be

ar midnight, I did have a sight: I set out from Bantrillick to come home, and near Ben Bulbin there was the greatest army you ever saw, five or six thousand of them in a

ame back riding on a horse of the good people, he saw some men in a quarry trying to move a big stone. He helped them with it, b

master's

rits of their departed relations and friends, who visit them in joy and in sorrow. On the death of a member of a family, they believe the spirits of their near relatives are present; they

before leaving the child alone, in order that the fairies should not change the child for a weakly one of their own. It was another cust

h Mystics in

oint by the country-folk-these beings can be seen and their wonderful music heard; and a well-known Irish artist has shown me many drawings, and paintings in oil, of these Sidhe people as he has often beheld them at those places and elsewhere in Ireland. They are described as a race of majestic appearance and marvellous beauty, in form human, yet in nature divine. The highest order of them seems to be a race

from the West as well as from the East, from India and Egypt as well as from Atlantis;[20] and Erin's mystic-seeing sons still watch and wait for the relighting of the Fires and the restoration of the old Druidic Mysteries. Herein I but imperfectly echo the mystic message Ireland's seers gave me, a pilgrim to their Sacred Isle. And until t

Mystic's

l serve to illustrate and to confirm what has just been said above about the mysticism of Ireland. To anthropologists this evidence may be of more than ordinary

ion

hich you have had of

me distinction in our world: I may close my eyes and see you as a vivid picture in memory, or I may look at you with my physical eyes and see your actual image. In

rwor

rld do you mean th

y be described as a radiant archetype of this world, though this definition does not at all express its psychic nature. In

tion of th

classify the Sidhe ra

which are opalescent and seem lit up by a light within themselves. The shining beings appear to be lower in the hierarchies; t

ns of Se

condition and where hav

st to see while I am there. I have always found it comparatively easy to see visions while at ancient monuments like New Grange and Dowth, because I think such places are naturally charged with psych

ining

scribe the sh

land, in County Sligo: I had been listening to music in the air, and to what seemed to be the sound of bells, and was trying to understand these aerial clashings in whic

lescent

ibe one of the o

sparent or opalescent air, and throughout the body ran a radiant, electrical fire, to which the heart seemed the centre. Around the head of this being and through its waving luminous hair, which was blown all about the body like livin

s or princes among the Tuatha De Danann; but since then I have seen so many beings of a similar character that I now no longer would attribute to any one of

of the '

s great beings; what stature do you ass

em as much taller than our race. The shining beings seem to be about our own stature or just a little taller. Peasant and other Irish seers do not usually speak of the Sidhe as being little, but as being tall:

s of the

of Sidhe beings inh

belong to the heaven-world. There are three great worlds which we can see wh

of the

state of these Sidhe beings supe

elves are certainly more beautiful than men are, and

ualized and so calm that I might have more varied thoughts in five hours than they would have in five years; and yet one feels an extraordinary purity and exaltation about their life. Beauty of form with them has never been broken up by the passions which arise in the developed egotism of human beings. A hive of bees has been described as a single organ

f the 'Sidh

of these Sidhe beings

s I could recognize. But the water beings, also of the shining tribes, I always dread, because I felt whenever I

ings Des

ribe one of the

hrone, and he breathed this fire into himself as though it were his life. As I looked, I saw groups of pale beings, almost grey in colour, coming down one side of the throne by the fire-fountain. They placed their head

ings De

cribe one of t

a shining silvery colour with a tinge of blue or

d Immortality o

the Sidhe able to reproduce th

not understand how they do so. I have seen some of them who contain elemental beings w

uch greater than ours. In time, however, I believe that they grow old and then pass into new bodies just as men do

ng the

tiation seem to prevail

le and female, and forms whic

and Huma

s have entered or could enter our plane of life by submitting to human birth? (2) On the ot

any one who thought much of the Sidhe during his life and who saw them fr

ization of t

mong water beings; is there therefore definite social organization am

d others, and who were held in reverence. This implies an organization, but whether it is inst

' as Nature

g; do you suggest thereby a resemblance between lower Si

e are, I think, the nature eleme

of the Hig

ished and kept alive by something akin to electrical fluids; d

o draw their life out o

isions of 'S

the various Sidhe beings in

uch visions on s

, the same Sidhe being was seen by our present witness and a friend with him, also possessing the faculty of seership, at a time when the two percipients were some little distance apart, and they hurried to each other to describe the being, not knowing that the explanat

ence as to th

Irish people, with whom also I have been privileged to discuss the Fairy-Faith. One is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, the other is

n progress, concerning the Celtic Fairy Kingdom:-'I am certain that i

vidence from

untry, or, as we have called it, the Sidhe world, in most essentials, and, what is most important, by independent folk-tes

ion, in watching for in-coming ships used to go up on the high hill among the Fairy Hills; and there he often saw the gentry going down the hill to the strand. O

little about the fairies he nevertheless always likes to talk of them. Then Owen began to tell me about a man's ghost which both he and Bran Reggan had seen at different times on the road to Sligo, then about a woman's ghost which he and other people had often seen near wh

m the fallen angels. At the back of this house the fairies had their pass. My neighbour started to build a cow-shed, and one wall

a noted fairy place. Men in building the house saw fairies on horses

the Greenlands. At first he thought they were coming from a dance, but there was no dance going then, and, if there had been, no human beings dressed like them and moving as they were coul

nds in regimentals like an army, and in daylight. He was a young man

oint) about forty years ago. It was afternoon. I first saw one of them like an officer pointing at me what seemed a sword; and when I got on the Greenlands I saw a great company of gentry, like soldiers, in red, laughing and shouting. Their leader was a b

ing testimony concerning the 'gentry':-'In olden times the gentry were very numerous about forts and here on the Greenlands, but rarely seen. The

lled all night as much as I have you wouldn't talk. I was away with the gentry, and save for a lady I couldn't have been back now. I saw a long hall f

some time, and then got back. Another man, whom I knew well, was haunted by the gentry

be heard:-'Three women were gathering shell-fish, in the month of March, on the lowest point of the strand (Lower Rosses or Wren Point) when they h

y of a Colle

land, and most of his statements are based on events which happened among his own acq

of his was taken by the fairies on her wedding-night, and she appeared to her mother afterwards as an apparition. She seemed to want to speak, but her mother, who was in bed at the t

ine who also, according to similar belief, had been taken by the fairies when only five years old. The child-apparition appeared beside its living sister

ways afraid of fairies, and were taught to say "God bles

a point to have clean water in th

ter dark it was necessary to say "Hugga, hugga salach!"

, it was not right to take it back, for the fairies wanted it. Many families are very serious about this even now. The luck

orn-trees. Many lonely bushes of this kind have their ghosts. For example, there

re did they go? They became spirits-and fairies. Second-sight gave our race power to see the inner world. When Christianity came to Ireland the people had no definite heaven. Before, their idea

rom County

ng against Cuchulainn the united armies of four of the five provinces of Ireland, and all on account of a bull which she covet

cottage on the roadside and found the good house-wife and her fine-looking daughter both at home. In response to Dr. Hyde's inquiries, the mother stated that one day, in her girlhood, near a hedge from which she was gathering wild berries, she saw a leprechaun in a hole under a stone:-'He wasn't much la

by. It passed about midnight, and she could hear the rushing, the tramping of the horses, and most beautiful singing, just like fairy music, but she could not understand the words. Once or twice she was brave enough to open the door and look o

iries of the region are rarely seen. The peopl

od people' live in the forts and often take men and women or youths who pass by the forts after sunset; that Mr. Gilleran, who died not long ago, once saw certain de

ccounts, a clear connexion between

ny of a Lou

has a local reputation for having seen the 'gentle folk', and so I called upon him. As we sat round his blazing tu

f six or eight of the gentle folk, and they dancing. When they saw us, a little woman dressed all in red came running out from them towards us, and she struck my cousin across the face with what seemed to be a green rush. We ran for home as hard as we could, and when my cousin reached the house she fell dead.

caves in the rocks, and in them rooms and apartments. These races were terribly plentiful a hundred years ago, and they'll come back again. My father lived two miles from here, where

rom County

near Irvinestown, I heard much about the 'wee people' and about banshee

aken to America on Hallow Eve Night; and they (the good people) made him look down a chimney to see his own daughter cooking at a kitchen f

t the work on Hallow Eve Night, and she wrote back that she was. He was sure t

from Coun

m, collected all the material he could find concerning the fairy-tradition in his part of County Antrim, and sent to

ing he would find the dressing which had been made ready for weaving so broken and entangled that it took him hours to put it right. Yet with all this drawback he go

r a doctor, when after passing through Glenavy he met just opposite the Vicarage two regiments of them (the fairies) coming along the road towards Glenavy. One regiment was dres

ountry: A Civil E

inn and the Red Branch Knights; and, later, under Patrick, Armagh itself, one of the old mystic centres of Erin, became the ecclesiastical capital of the Gaels.

iries, however, is different, as I discovered when I grew up. The old people in County Armagh seriously believe that the fairies are the spirits of the dead; and th

tructed dwelling the night before the time fixed for moving into it; and if the food is not consumed, and the crumbs swept up by the door in the morning, the house cannot s

pes of Sli

famous by the 'Cattle Raid of Cooley', I met John O'Hare, sixty-eight years old, of Longfield

said, 'are the people who have died and

and Mrs. Callaghan recognized the old woman as one who had been taken in confinement. A few nights later the same old woman appeared to Mrs. Callaghan and asked for charity; and she was offered some m

of two Dromint

he had told much about the 'gentle folk', she emphatically declared that they do exist-and this in the presence of Father Donnellan-because s

ace. A fairy has her house there by the lake, but she is invisible. She interferes wit

is wife at Carrifamayan, because Mrs. McCrink claims to have

on my father's place playing football. They are still on earth. Among them are the spirits of our ancestors; and these rejoice wh

nd she came to me in the spirit. I saw her plainly. I ran to catch her, but my hands ran through her form as if it were mere mist. Then there was a crack, and she was gone.' And, fin

y of a Dromi

woman, with white hair, clear complexion, and an expression of great natural intelligence, though now somewhat feeble from age. Her mind is yet clear, however; and her testimony is substantiated by this statement from h

her own home, on September 20, 1909, in answer to our

d looked at him; then came in three of them. One of them seemed to have something like a book, and he put his hand to the boy's mouth; then he went away, while others appeared, opening the back window to make an avenue

s just like feathers in my hand; there was no substance in him, and I knew he wasn't a living being. I don't know where they live; I've heard they live in the Carrige (rocks). Many a time I've heard of thei

r hand. I called out my daughter, but she saw nothing, though all the time the woman dressed in white was in the field, shaking the light and running

Lough Gur, C

the outer world by a circle of low-lying hills on whose summits fairy goddesses yet dwell invisibly, this region, famous for its numerous and well-preserved cromlechs, dolmens, menhirs, and tumuli,

ears like dry land to any one that is fortunate enough to behold it. At such a time of disenchantment a Tree is seen growing up through the lake-bottom-a Tree like the strange World-Tree of Scandinavian myth. The Tree is covered with a Green Cloth, and under it sits the lake's guardian, a woman knitting.[23] The peasan

terial, collected by him on the fairy-haunted Lough Gur estate, his ancestral home, and annotated b

d Knock Aine, Aine or Ane being the name of an ancient Irish goddess, derived from an, "bright." The other, the highest hill on the lake-shores, is called Knock Fennel or Hill of the Goddess Fennel, from Finnen or Finnine or Fininne, a form

. There are four of these phantom boats, and in each there are two men rowing and a woman steering. No sound is heard, though the seer can see the weird silvery splash of the oars and the churning of the water at the bows of the boats as they shoot along. It is evident that they are racing, because one boat gets

know of good habits, assures me that he also has seen this fair

Little Seat," on Knock Adoon (Hill of the Fort), which juts out into the Lough. The Bean-tighe, as I have heard an old peasant tell the tale, was once asleep on her Seat, when the Buachailleen[26] or "Little Herd Boy" stole her golden comb. When the B

eir names for the fairies. The leprechaun indicates the place where hidden treasure is to be found. If the person to whom he reveals such a secret makes

an" (a seeress), hearing about my doing this, told me that under no circumstances should I continue the practice, for fear of "Them People" (the fairies). One evening in particular

o the Saints, but if by any chance such prayers remain unanswered they then invoke other powers, the fairies, the goddess

rom a Count

rd, a native Irishman of County Kerry, I

right, resembling the light seen first. Suddenly each of these lights expanded into the same sort of yellow luminous flame, about six feet high by four feet broad. In the midst of each flame we saw a radiant being having human form. Presently the lights moved toward one another and made contact, whereupon the two beings in them were seen to be walking side by side. The beings' bodies were formed of a pure dazzling radiance, white like the radiance of the sun, and much brighter than the yellow light or aura surrounding them. So dazzling was the radiance, like a halo, round their heads that we could not distinguish the countenances of the beings

ic as to the existence of spirits; now I know that there is a spiritual world. My brother, a physician, had been equally sceptical until

on and psychical training one can come to see the spiritual world and its beings. We pass into the spirit realm at death and come back into the human world at birth; and we continue to reincarnate until we

IN SC

, Hon. LL.D. of the University of Ed

and Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they do in the Lowlands. But it still lives among the old people, and is privatel

[29] Another theory of the origin of fairies I took down in the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and, though I have given it in Carmina Gadelica, it is sufficiently interesting to be quoted here. During October 1871, Roderi

the Son called out, "Father! Father! the city is being emptied!" whereupon the Father ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates of hell should be closed. This was instantly done. And those who were in were in, and those who were out were out; while the hosts who had left heaven and had not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth,

een me and

ish and eve

hursday on

King that they

their lamps are lit, and the song and the dance are moving

seed of A

braham o

seed of the

orth fro

erground houses; miaran na mna sithe, 'the thimble of the fairy woman,' the fox-glove; lion na mna sithe, 'lint of the fairy woman,' fairy flax, said to be beneficial in certain illnesses; and curachan na mna sithe, 'coracle of the fairy woman,' the shell of the blue valilla. In place-names sith, 'fairy,' is common. Glenshee, in Perthshire, is said to have been full of fairies, but the screech of the steam-whistle frightened them underground. There is scarcely a district of the Highlands without its fairy knoll, generally the greenest hillock in the place. 'The black chanter of Clan Chattan' is said to

serve the ways of the fairies and to do as they did. The fairies took a journey upon them to go to Ireland, and the man took upon him to go with them. Every single fairy of them caught a ragwort and went astride it, and they were pell-mell, every knee of them acros

g at m

ross in

ests of t

Ire

k) did not know on earth how he would return to his native land, but he leapt upon the ragwort as he saw the fairies do, and he called as he hear

lacing iron about the bed, burning leather in the room, giving mother and child the milk of a cow which had eaten of the mothan, pearl-wort (Pinguicula vulgaris), a plant of virtue, and similar me

r's corn or fan his grain. On such occasions they must not be molested nor interfered with, even in gratitude. If presented with a garment the

repose, however active the brain and lithe the limb; and she can rouse to mirth and merriment, and to the dance, men and women, however dolorous their condition. From the bower could be heard the pipe and the song and the voice of laughter as the fairies 'sett' and reeled in the mazes of the dance. Sometimes a man hearing the merry music and seeing t

ns and daughters of men. The writer possesses one which was thrown at his own maid-servant one night when she went to the peatstack for peats. She was aware of somethin

almost dead, hastened by the shifting of population, the establishment of means of communication, the i

nbu

ber

he Country o

filled with stones, told me that Kirk was taken into the Fairy Knoll, which she pointed to just across a little valley in front of us, and is there yet, for the hill is full of caverns, and in them the 'good people' have their homes. And she added that Kirk appeared to a relative of his after he was taken, and said that he was in the power of the 'good people', and couldn't get away. 'But,' says he, 'I can be set free if you will have my cousin do what I tell him when I appear again at the chr

re displeased with him for prying into their secrets. At all events, it seems likely that Kirk was taken ill very suddenly with something like apoplexy while on the Fairy Knoll, and died there. I have searched the presbytery books, and find no record of how Kirk's death really took place; but of course there is not the least doubt of his body being in the grave.' So thus, according to Mr. Taylor, we are to conclude that if the fairies

ained, before the railway reached Aberfoyle, belief in fairies was much more common. Nowadays, he says, there is no real fairy-lore among the peasants; fifty to sixty years ago there was. And in his opinion, 'the fairy peop

Minister'

n Hebrides, where his calling has placed him. Because he speaks from personal knowledge of the living Fairy-Faith as it was in his boyhood an

lity and also the reality of these spiritual orders, but I wish only to know those orders which belong to the realm of grace. It

; but people in the Highlands having put as

ecame invisible though in the body; and, as the Scriptures suggest, I suppose we are oblig

er how an old woman pulled me out of a

ends over her babe's cradle, the fairies have no power ove

and then drop some of the cinders in a cup of water and give the w

chens on rocks after there has been a frost get yellowish-red, and then when they thaw and the moisture spreads out from

The story comes from one of the remote Western Hebrides, Benbecula:-'A man who was a hump-back once met the fairies dancing, and danced with their queen; and he sang with them, "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday," so well that they took off his hump, and he returned home a straight-bodied man. Then a tailor went past the same place, and was also admitted by the f

, to offer libations to the fairies.[31] The woman was later converted to Christ and gave up the

nds, and she is often seen. In pouring libations to her and her fairi

lled Shoney,[33] in order to bring in seaweed. Until modern times in

e Hig

e Fairy-Faith as it exists now in the Highlands round Tomatin, a small country village about twenty miles distant. We departed by an early train; and soon reaching the Tomatin country began our search-Dr. Carm

we decided not to call on them. Then we went on to see the postmaster, Mr. John MacDougall, and he told us that in his boyhood the country-folk round Tomatin believed thoroughly in fairies. He said they thought of them as a race of spirits capable of making themselves visible to mortals, as living in undergroun

of John Dunb

to believe about fairies. But at Invereen we discovered John Dunbar, a Highlander, who really knows the Fairy-Faith and is not ashamed to

had a premonition that their domains were to be violated by them. A story is told of a fight between the sheep and fairies, or else of the fairies hunting the sheep:-James MacQueen, who could traffic with the fairies, whom he regarded as ghosts or spirits, one night on his old place, which now is in sheep, was lying down all alone and heard a small and big barking of dogs, and a small and

hills over there (pointing), and I believe something was there. They were awful for music, and used to be heard very often playing the bagpipes. A woman wouldn't go out in the dark after giving birth to a child before the child wa

oom who was taken on his wedding-day was in Fairyland for many generations, and, coming back, thought it was ne

rtant factor for the Psychological Theory. And what follows proves the same ideas to be present to the mind of Mr. Dunbar:-'Some people after death are seen in their old haunts; no mistake about it. A bailiff had false corn and meal measures, and so after he died he cam

Western

yle to the Isle of Skye, an old man with whom I talked on the docks said this about Neill Mackintosh, of Bl

rom the Is

folk, contributes, from Edinburgh, the evidence which follows. The first two tales were told in the parish of Minginish a number of year

the point of lifting it off the nurse's lap, when the third exclaimed:-"Oh! let us leave this one with her as we have already taken so many!" "So be it," replied the senior of the party in a tone of displeasure, "but when that peat now burning on the hearth shall be consumed, her life will surely come to an end." Then the thr

ents of all the keeping-places in the house, and came at last to the chest containing the peat ember. In her haste, the good mother had that day forgotten the key of the chest, which was now in the lock. At the bottom of the chest the girl found a curious packet containing nothing but a morsel

ent, and immediately found herself a prisoner in the hillock. She was led to an apartment containing a chest full of meal and a great bag of wool, and was told by the fairy that when she had eaten all the meal and spun all the wool she would be free to return to her home. The prisoner at once set herself to eating and spinning assiduously, but without apparent result, and despairing of completing the task consulted an ol

a herd-boy, had heard the fairies singing a "waulking" song in Dun-Osdale, an ancient and ruined round tower in the parish of Dùirinish, and not far from Heléval mhor (great) and Heléval bheag (less)-two hills occasionally alluded to as "Macleod's Tables". The youth was lying o

ff on her marriage-day, and on whom they cast a spell which rendered her invisible for a day and a year. She came regularly every day to milk the cows of her sorrowing husband, and sang sweetly to

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 mel

those verses as the fairy woman had sung them. After a time the song was forgotten, but at a later period i

Miss Tolmie states:-'As a child I was not permitted to hear about fairies. At twenty I was seeking and trying

imes came the loss of folk-ideals. The classical and English influences combined had a killing effect; so that the instinctive religious feeling which us

as well as a bad one. They were not aerial, but had bodies which they could make invisible; and they could make human bodies invisible in the same way. B

arra,[38] Wes

e ancient life is lived yet, and where the people have more than a faith in spirits and fairies. And no one of the Wester

well as obliged on account of the Scotch Gaelic, to let him act on my behalf in all my collecting on Barra. Mr. Buchanan is the author of a little book called The MacNeils of Barra Genealogy, published in the year 1902. He was the official interpreter before the Commission of Inquiry which was appointed by the British Parliament in

Neil's T

has known John MacNeil all his life, for they were boys together on the island; and there is not much difference between them in age, our interpreter being the younger. Then the three of us sat down on a grassy knoll, all the world like a fairy knoll, though it

ra, and the young wife had her baby on her breast at the time. The first words uttered by the fairy woman were, "Heavy is your child;" and the wife answered, "Light is everybody who lives

ck fog coming on, they had to rest awhile. They then sat down upon a knoll and began to sing a walking (cloth-working) song, as follo

ppear so suddenly? The old people said they didn't know if fairies were flesh and blood, or spirits. They saw them as men of more diminutive stature than our race. I heard my father say that fairies used to come and speak to natural people, and then vanish

John Campbell, Ni

we met him coming on the road, with a cane in each hand and a small sack hanging from one of them. Michael saluted him as an old acquaintance, and then we all sat down on a big boulder in the warm sunshine be

a drink out of a spring well on the mountain-side. After he had taken a drink, he looked about him and saw a woman clad in green, and imagined that no woman would be clad in such a colour except a fairy woman. He went on his way, and when he hadn't gone

three children from the first marriage, and when married for the second time, a son and daughter. His second wife did not seem to be kind eno

d you get this splendid pair of bagpipes?" The boy replied, "An old man came to me while I was in the action of roasting pots in a pit-fire and said, 'Your step-mother is bad to you and in ill-will towards you.' I told the old man I was sensible that that was the case, and then he said to me, 'If I give you a trade will you be inclined to follow it?' I said yes, and the old man then continued, 'How would

more of the nature of spirits than of men made of flesh and blood, but that they so appeared to the naked eye that no difference could be marked in their forms from that of any human being, except that they were more diminut

s then and still is the custom after thatching a house to rope it across with heather-spun ropes, and, at the time, the man was busy spinning some of them; and he told his wife to take his place that night to spin the heather-rope, and said he would tak

of the air (the fairy or spirit hosts) are different from those in the rocks. A man whom I've seen, Roderick MacNeil, was lifted by the hosts and left three miles from where he was

ousekeeper, if it was possible that such beings or spirits as fairies were in existence. He said "Yes", and that they were those who left Heaven after the fallen angels; and that those going out after the fallen angels had gone out were so numerous and kept going so long that St. Michael notified Christ that the throne was fast

the mountain road in an opposite direction from us a

Piper's

t, one of the Western Hebrides north of Barra, and came to Barra in 1836, where he has lived ever since. In spite of being four years less than a hundred in age, he greeted us very heartily, and as he did not wish us to sit

s in the form of men and women. People who saw fairies can yet describe them as they ap

heard to say to the fairies outside the fold, "We cannot get anything to-night." The old men who were left behind in the hides of the animals taken, usually disappeared very suddenly. I saw two men who used to be lifted by the hosts. They would be carried from South Uist as far south as Barra Head, and as far north as Harris. Sometimes when these men were ordered by the hosts to kill men on the road they

ot her gird (belt), and he picked it up. In a little while she came back for the gird, and asked him to give it her, but he refused to do so. Thereupon she promised him that he should be made master of his trade wherever his lot should fall without serving further apprenticeship. On that condition he gave her the gird; and rising early next morning he went to the yard where the boat was a-building and put in two planks so per

the M

orth and south in the golden glow of a September twilight we saw the long line of the Outer Hebrides like the rocky backbone of some submerged continent. The scene and colours on the land and ocean and in the sky seemed more like some magic vision, reflected from Faerie by the 'good people' for our delight, than a thing of our ow

of Barra, and

azing peat-fire, she at once offered us some hot milk and biscuits, which we were only too glad to accept. And, as we ate, we talked first about our hard climb in the darkness across the mountains, and through the thick heather-bushes, and then about the big rock which has a key-hole in it, for it contains a secret entrance to a fairy palace. We had examined it in the twilight as we came through

here, for I was told that the Pass was a notable fairy haunt.' Then I said through Michael, 'Can you tell us something about what these fairi

about midnight. You'd hear them going in fine weather against a wind like a covey of birds. And they were in the habit of lifting men in South Uist, for the hosts need men to help in shooting their javelins from their bows against

he daughter as she was milking, but, knowing the father and daughter, he shot the cow instead. The next morning he went where the father was and said to him, "You are missing the cow." "Yes," said the father, "I am." And the man who had shot the cow said, "Are you n

are both spirits of the dead and other spirits not the dead. A child was taken by the hosts and returned after one night and one day, and found at the back of the house with the palms of its hands in the holes in the wall, and with no life

fairies was an obstacle she could not pass, for she said, 'When the fallen angels were cast out of Heaven God commanded them thus:-"You will go to take up your abodes in crevices, under the earth, in mounds, or soil, or

iry women spinning for a mortal, the second about

were so very desirous to get, they all set to work, and by midday of that morning the cloth was going through the process of the hand-loom. But they were not satisfied with finishing the work the woman had set before them, but asked for new employment. The woman had no more spinning or weaving to be done, and began to wonder how she was to get the women out of the house. So she went into her neighbour's house and informed him of her position in regard to the fairy women. The old man asked what they were saying. "They are earnestly petitioning for some w

l fashion. She fed him as usual on porridge and milk, but he wasn't satisfied with what seemed to her enough for any one of his age, yet every suspicion escaped her attention. As it happened, at the time there was a web of home-made cloth in the house waiting for the tailor. The tailor came a

en the child began to play. Immediately after the child began to play the chanter, the house filled with young fairy women all clad in long green robes, who began to dance, and the tailor had to dance with them. A

o be in that space of time. However, when the fairy women disappeared, the child had enjoined upon the tailor never to t

ore. A second time at the same hour of the day the child in the cradle, appearing more like an old man than a child, took the ch

child: he is an old fairy man. And to-morrow, at dead tide, go down to the shore and wrap him in your plaid and put him upon a rock and begin to pick that shell-fish which is called limpet, and for your life do not leave the shore until such a time as the tide will flow so high that you will scarcely be able to wade in to the main shore." The woman compli

ony of Mur

tories were being told, and when they were ended the spiri

de it a point to see Lachlann every night, and he being worn out with her began to fear her. Things got so bad at last that he decided to go to America to escape the fairy

he brown-ha

ann is on

and in his first letter home to his friends he stated that

ng the road was taken into it. No one could ever find the least trace of where he went, and all hope of seeing him again was given up. The man remained with the fairies so long that when he returned two generations had disappeared during the lap

st told by him) leads me to believe that the spirit and body [of a mortal] are somehow mystically combined by fairy enchantment, for the fairies had a mighty power of enchanting natural people, and could transform the physical body

more story to add, and she at

ent a messenger in all haste to the doctor for medicine. On his return, the day being hot and there being five miles to walk, he sat down at the foot of a knoll and fell aslee

I discussed the nature of fairies. Just before midnight we saw the welcome lights in Castlebay across the heather-covered hills, and we both entered the hotel to talk. There was a blazing fire ready for us and something to eat. Before I took my final leave of my friend and guid

's Deposition Co

men and women, except that they were smaller in stature. And I know equally that he, holding them to be spirits, thought they could appear or disappear at will. My own firm belief is that the fairies were or are only spirits which were or are seen in the shape of human beings, but smaller as regards stature. I also firmly believe in t

' Lament, an

ants of two generations ago, and into the then prevailing happy social environment under which their belief in fairies flourished. For our special use Dr. Alexander Carmichael has rendered it out of the original Gaelic, as this was taken down by him in various ver

We would dance there till we were seven times tired. A stream of sweat would be falling from us before we stopped-hairful little lassies and stumpy little fellows. These are scattered to-day! scattered to-day over the wide world! The people of those times were full of music and dancing stories and traditions. The clerics have extinguished these. May ill befall them! And what have the clerics put in their place? Beliefs about creeds, and disputations about denominat

airies themselves that had the right to the dancing, and not the children of men! Bell-helmets of blue silk covered their heads, and garments of green satin covered their bodies, and sandals of yellow membrane covered their feet. Their heavy brown hair was streaming down their waist, and its lustre was of the fair golden sun of summer. Their skin was as white as the swan of

n the fairies. Seed unfortunate they! They went away from the Paradise with the One of the Great Pride. When the Father commanded the doors cl

knee of my beloved mother. Bles

THE ISL

rrison, Hon. Secretary of

s fairy legend. Sir Walter Scott said that the 'Isle of Man, beyond all other places in Britain, was a peculiar depository of the fairy-traditions, which, on the Island being co

s of 'The Little People' (Mooinjer veggey), or, in a more familiar mood, of 'Themselves', and of 'Little Boys' (Guillyn veggey), or 'Little Fellas'. In contradistinc

a certain dread of them; and, to my knowledge, two old ladies of the better class yet leave out cakes and wat

gether I heard what sounded like a lot of children coming out of school. I lifted my head, and behold ye, there was a fleet of fairy boats each side of the rock. Their riding-lights were shining like little stars, and I heard one of the Little Fellas s

ears the fairies singing and playing up the Glen o' nights. I have heard

mes seen coming over the mountain towards the keeill, ringing a bell, just about the hour when church service begins. Keeill

great Tuatha De Danann god, in his true nature, as a spiritual being, a Lord of the Sea, and as belonging to the complex fairy hierarchy. This prayer was given to me by a Manxwoman nea

c y Leirr, fer

s nyn maatey,

share lesh bio as

son of Leirr, who

our boat, w

with living and dea

int arrow-heads and scrapers which are like toys to us. No such tradition exists at the present day in the Isle of Man, but one might have filtered down from the far-off ages and become innate in the folk-memory, and now, unknown to the Manx peasant, may possibly suggest to his mind the troops of Little People in the shadowy glen or on the lonely mountain-side. Again, the rustling of the leaves or the sough of the

e feel 'There's Powers that's in'. These Powers are not necessarily what the superstitious call 'supernatural'. We realize now that there is nothing supernatural-that what used to be so called is simply something that we do not understand at present. Our forefathers would have thought the telephone, the X-rays, and wireless telegraphy thin

d, in knowledge of which we have not gone so very far after all, may exist in forms as yet entirely unknown to us. After all, beings with bodies and personalities different from our own may well inhabit the unseen world around us: the Fair

Isle o

mber

pes of Sou

it Manannan is said to have had his stronghold, and whence he worked his magic, hiding the kingdom in dense fog whenever he beheld in the distance the coming of an enemy's ship or

ck about eighty years since: She was in bed with her baby, but wide awake, when she felt the baby pulled off her arm and heard the rush of them. Then she mentioned the Almighty's name, and,

n a Snow-bou

he day was just the right sort to stir Manx memories, and it was not long before the best of stories about the 'little people' were being told in the most natural way, and to the great delight of the children. The grandfather, who is eighty

ear from the side of the tailor, and even in the midst of a conversation, as soon as they had crossed the burn in the field down there (indicating an adjoining field). And Taggart could not see nor hear Humphrey go. The next morning Humphrey would come back, but so worn out that he could not work, and he always declared that little men

n' (who Mr. T. Leece suggested was a witch) 'appear in the middle of the gorse and walk right over the gorse and heather in a place wher

use of a cold winter night, and my great grandmother and her daughters at their wheels spinning, when a little white dog would suddenly appear in the room. Then every one there would have to drop their work and prepare for the comp

f a Herb-Do

ing barefooted,' he said, using the duck simile, which is a popular Manx one; and he cited two particular instances from his own experience. But for us it is more important to know that John Davies is also an able seer. The son of a weaver, he was born in County Down, Ireland, seventy-eight years ago; but in ear

(the fairies) are as thick on the Isle of Man as ever they were. They throng the air, and darken Heaven, and rule this lower world. It is only twenty-one miles from this world up to the first heaven.[42] There are as many kinds of fairies as populations in our world. I have seen some who were about two and a half feet high; and some who were as big as we are. I think very many such fairies as these last are the lost souls of the people who died before the Flood. At the Flood all the world was drowned; but the Spirit which God breathed into Adam w

atever he may have seen has been very much coloured in interpretation by his devout

f a Ballasa

e ancient stone house wherein she was born, and in which

. If there came a strange sudden knock or noises, or if a tree took a sudden shaking when there was no wind, people used to make out it was caused by the fairies. On the 11th of May[43] we used to gather mountain-ash (Cuirn) with r

iven in a J

putation for knowing much about the fairies, and so I c

hedge just over there looking at a crowd of little people kicking and dancing. One of them came up and asked him what he was lo

ns I have heard the fairies. They were playing tunes not of th

house lit up, and they took him into it to a dance. As he danced, he happened to wipe away his sweat with a part of the dress of one of the two strange women who was his partner. After this adventure, whenever Mickle

went to look for her, and saw that crowds of fairies like little boys were with him. [St.] Paul said that spirits are thick in the air,

ype:-'A man named Watterson, who used often to see the fairies in his house at Colby playing in the moonlight, on one occasion heard them coming just as he was going to bed. So he went out to the spring to

r's Te

car of Malew parish, at his home near Cast

her daughter had been in Castletown during the day, she went out to the road at nightfall to see if her daughter was yet in sight, whereupon a whole crowd of fai

n's Te

nd especially for his kindness in allowing me to record what is one of the clearest examples of a coll

rently the horse, saw the same phenomenon at the same moment: one evening we were driving along an avenue in this parish when the avenue seemed to be blocked by a great crowd of people, like a funer

the name of God what are ye?" they immediately vanished. He was certain they were the fairies. Other old people speak of the fairies as the little folk. The tradition is that the fairies once inhabited this island, but were banished for evil-doing. The elder-tree, in Manx tr

there is present an instinct, as seen among all peoples, for communion with the other world, and t

es on Chr

nd. The day was bright and frosty, and much snow still remained in the shaded nooks and hollows, so that a seat before the cheerful fire in Mrs. Moore's cottage was very comfortable; and with most work suspended for the ancien

e the road. He got off his horse to get the baby, and, taking it home, went to give it to his wife, and it was only a block of wood. And

them broken and the other one whole, and said to the nurse: "Eat, eat; but don't eat of the cake which is broken nor of the cake which is whole." And the nurs

say, "We have no water, so we'll take blood out of the toe of the servant who forgot our water." And from the girl's blood they mixed their dough. Then they baked their cakes, ate most of them, and poked pi

If you'll not tell anybody when they come in, I'll play the fiddle for you." And the tailor and the idiot spent a very enjoyable afternoon together. But before the family came in from the fields, the poor idiot, as usual, was sitting in a chair by the fire, a big baby who couldn't hardly talk. When the mother came in she happened to say to the tailor, "You've a fine chap here," referring to the idiot. "Yes, indeed," said the tailor, "we've had a very fine afternoon together; but I think we had better make a good fire and put him on it." "Oh!" cried

n would do the threshing when all the family were abed. One time, however, just over here at Gordon Farm, the farmer saw him, and he was naked; and so the farm

hione, doogh

reeym, doogh

n toin, doog

lhiat Gor

at Glion re

e head, ala

e back, ala

he breech, ala

Gordon [far

he merry Glen

nt to Glen Ru

m the Keeper

ous old Peel Castle, within whose yet solid battlements stands the one true round tower outside of Ireland. I heard first of all about the fairy dog

hat one third of them fell into the sea, one third on the land, and one third remained in the air, in which places they will remain till the Day of Judgement. The old Manx people always believed that

r former husband and said to him, and the second wife overheard her: "You'll sweep the barn clean, and mind there is not one straw left on the floor. Then stand by the door, and at a certain hour a company of people on horseback

ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid), which were sounds like murmurs. They tho

ory of a M

anxmen who knew the Manx language really well, and the ancient traditions which it has preserved both orally and in books. In his kindly manner and with fervent loyalty toward all th

ooked, an old woman from among them came up to him and spat in his eyes, saying: "You'll never see us again"; and I am told that he was blind afterwards till the day of his death. He was certainly blind for fourteen years before his death, for I often had to lea

heard music down below in a glen, and saw there a great glass house like a palace, all lit up. He stopped to listen, and when he had the new tu

ut Manannan:-'It is said that Manannan was a great magician, and that he used to place on the sea pea-shells, held open with sticks and with sticks for masts standing up in them, and then so magnify them that enemies beheld them a

f a Farmer

witnesses, and the first one of these is James Caugherty, a farmer and fisherman

our family often used to hear the empty churn working in the churn-house, wh

had grown long in a minute. He remained that way a week. My father went to the boy's mother and told her it wasn't Robby at all that she saw; and when my father was for taking the tongs and burning the boy with a piece of glowing turf [as a changeling test], the boy screamed awfully. Then my father persuaded the mother to send a messenger to a doctor in the north near Ramsey "doing charms", to see if she couldn't get Robby back. As the messenger was returning, th

a Member of th

House of the Manx Parliament, very kindly dictated for my use the

re are the fairies. Did you ever see them?" I looked across the river and saw a circle of supernatural light, which I have now come to regard as the "astral light" or the light of Nature, as it is called by mystics, and in which spirits become visible. The spot where the light appeared was a flat space surrounded on the sides away from the river by banks formed by low hills; and into this space and the circle of light, from the surrounding sides apparently, I saw come in twos

conditions, and that they have heard their music. They consider the fairies a complete nation or world in themselves, distinct from our world, but having habits and instincts like ours. Social organization among th

a Past Provinci

t of Oddfellows, a resident of Douglas, offers the following account of

ere not human. When these four, who seemed to be connected with the invisible throng, came out of the Garwick road into the main road, I passed into a by-road leading down to a very peaceful glen called Garwick Glen; and I still had the same feeling that invisible beings were with me, and this continued for a mile. There was no fear or emotion or excitement, but perfect calm on my part. I followed the by-road; and when I began to mount a

passage across his watery domain, we now go southward to

IN

. of the University of Edinburgh; Professor of Celtic in the University of Oxf

it concerns the Fairies consists o

nces with the Little People for a long time, while he supposes

ry fairy maidens, and any one so led away is practically lost to his kith and kin, for

it her children. One of the conditions, especially in North Wales, is that the husband should never touch her with iron. But in the story of the Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach, in Carmarthenshire, the condition is that he must not strike the wife without a cause three times, the striking being interpreted to include any slig

hild might be recovered take numerous forms; and some of these stories suggest how weak and sickly children became the objects of systematic cruel

wn eyes with it, but owing to an unfailing accident she does, and with the eye so touched she is enabled to see the fairies in their proper shape and form. This has consequences: The fairy husband pays the midwife well, and discharges h

id who knows her business leaves a vessel full of water for them, and takes care that the house is neat and tidy, and she then probably finds in the

ngements, so it was not at all unusual for them to come

t to stray away from their homes in that sort of weather, lest they should be kidnapped by them. These fairies were not Christians, and they were great thieves. They were fond of bri

of the imagination; but generally speaking, the fairies are heterogeneous, consisting partly of the divinities of glens and fores

ollege,

ber

Tylwyth Teg, or 'Fair Folk' in the Isle of Anglesey or Mona, the ancient stronghold of the Druids, we shall see clearly that the testimony offered by thoroughly reliable and prominent native witnesses is surprisingly

of an An

y, a native bard who has taken prizes in

urely closed a house might be, the Tylwyth Teg had no trouble to get in. I remember how the old folk used to make the house comfortable and put fresh coals on the fire, saying, "Perhaps the Tylwyth Teg will come to-night." Then the Tylwyth Teg, whe

a field with him to catch a horse, but in catching the horse he threw the bridle in such a way that the bit touched the Tylwyth Teg woman, and all at once she was gone. As this story indica

rom Centra

lesey. Seven witnesses, two of whom were women, ranging in age from seventy-two to eighty-nine years, were thus interviewed, and each of them stated that in their childhood the belief in the Tylwyth Teg as a non-human race of good little people-by one witness compared to singing ange

m Two Anglese

iet life on their mountain-side farm overlooking the sea, in the beautiful country near Pentraeth, quite away from the rush and noise of the great world of commercial activity; and they speak only the tongue which their p

appeared only after dark; and all the good they ever did was singing and dancing. Ann Jones, whom I knew very well, used often to see the Tylwyth Teg dancing and singing, but if she then went up to them they would disappear. She told me they are an invisible peop

ome oil told him to wash the baby in it as soon as it was born. Then the fairy woman disappeared. The farmer followed the advice, and what did he do in washing the baby but get some oil on one of his own eyes. Suddenly he could see the Tylwyth Teg, for the oil had given him the second-sight. Some time later the farmer was in Llangefni again, and saw the same f

t night. He was like a little man. When I approached him he disappeared suddenly. I have heard about the dancing and singing of the Tylwyth Teg, but never have heard t

rom an Angl

, but the one my mother saw was ordinary human size.' At this, I immediately asked Mr. Jones if his mother was still living, and he replying that she was, gave me

understand this, and so tried to touch her repeatedly with the same result; there was no solid substance in the body, yet it remained beside me, and was as beautiful a young lady as I ever saw. When I reached the door of the house where I was to stop, she was still with me. Then I said "Good night" to her. No response being made, I asked, "Why do yo

rom a Profe

r, Mr. J. Morris Jones, M.A. (Oxon.), Professor of Welsh in the University College at Bangor,

appear. They were generally supposed to live underground, and to come forth on moonlight nights, dressed in gaudy colours (chiefly in red), to dance in circles in grassy fields. I cannot remember having heard changeling stories here in the

om North Ca

of Treborth I heard the same sort of folk-lore as we have recorded from Anglesey, except that prominence was given to a flourishing belief in Bwganod, go

ter; and he explained before the congregation that the Lord had given him a special vision which enabled him to see the Tylwyth Teg, and that, therefore, he had seen them time after time as little men playing along

om South Ca

ools at Afonwen, I am indebted for a summary

grass grew. As a rule, they were visible only at night; though in the day-time, if a mother while hay-making was so unwise as to leave her babe alone in the field, the Tylwyth Teg might take i

very fine cows such as he had never seen before. Not knowing where they came from, he kept them a long time, when, as it happened, he committed some dishonest act and, as a result, women of the Tylwyth Teg made their appearance in the pasture and, calling the cows by nam

from Meri

recalling the memories of many years

re the guests had all arrived, that the landlady was putting scythe-blades edge upwards up into the large chimney, and, wondering why it was, asked her. She told me that the fairies might come bef

ed as having the power of invisibility; and it was believed they could disappear like a spirit while one happened to be observing them. The world in which they lived was a world quite unlike ours, and mortals taken to it by them were change

es in Mont

Tylwyth Teg as he has known it intimately, I learned that this is essentially the

e or spiritual beings living in an invisible world of their own. The belief in the Tylwyth T

Congregational Church of Machynlleth; and, after a lifetime

y-time, within two miles from here, and he pointed out the very spot where they appeared. This was some twenty yea

ly seen. When I was a boy there was very much said, too, about corpse-candles and phantom funerals, and especially about the Bwganod, plural of Bwgan, meaning a sprite, gho

Roberts, of Llanbrynmair, who was quite a noted Welsh scholar, what he thought of the Tylwyth Teg, of hobgoblins, spirits, and so forth; and he said that h

e; and a Folk-l

Davies has spent many years in collecting folk-lore in Central and South Wales. He has interviewed the oldest and most intelligent of the old people, and while I write this he has in the press a

ey in return; but if not treated kindly they were revengeful. The changeling idea was common: the mother coming home would find an ugly changeling in the cradle. Sometimes the mother would consult the Dynion Hysbys, or "Wis

y some condition in the marriage contract which becomes broken, and, as a result, the fairy wife disappears-usually into a lake. The marriage contract specifies either that the husband must never touch

eshire along the sea-coast on enchanted islands amid the Irish Sea. I have heard of sailors upon seeing such islands trying to reach them; but when approached, the islands alwa

not looked upon as mortal at all. Many of the Welsh looked upon the Tylwyth Teg or fairies as the spirits of Druids

a Welshman Nine

ithout eye-glasses. Both Mr. J. H. Davies, Registrar of the University College of Aberystwyth, and Mr. J. Ceredig Davies, the eminent folk-lorist of Llanilar, referred me to Mr. John Jones as one of the most remarkable

any of the Tylwyth Teg, forming in a ring, would dance and sing out on the mountain-sides, or on the plain, and that if children should meet with them at such a time they would lose their way and never get out of the ring.

follow them back into the lakes, and there marry one of them. If the husband wished to leave the lake he had to go without his fairy wi

spirits singing. Soon afterwards he and his brother in digging dikes in that field dug into a big hole, which they entered and followed to the end. The

u as long as you like.' Then they took him under the water and over the water into a cave underground, which opened into a great palace where the Tylwyth Teg were playing games with golden balls, in rings like those in which they dance and sing. The boy had been taken to the king's family, and he began to play with the king's sons. After he had been there in the palace in the full enjoyment of all its pleasures he wished very much to return to his mother and show her the golden ball which the Tylwyth Teg gave him. And so he took t

untry; and a V

a very careful study of the folk-traditions in his own parish and in other regions of

the Tylwyth Teg could transform good children into kings and queens, and bad children into wicked spirits, after such children had been taken-perhaps in death. The Tylwyth Teg were believed to live in some invisible world to which childre

er Mr. Wentz visited me on Thursday, September 30, 1909, I went to see Mr. Shem Morgan, the occupier of Cwmcastellfach farm, an old man about seventy years old. He told me that in his childhood days a great dread of the fairies occupi

precisely like those reserved for the Irish good people or for the Breton dead), and th

diviner showed him the fairies, and then when the diviner had consulted them he told the farmer to go home as soon as he could and that he would find the cattle in such and such a place. The farmer did as he was directed, and found the cattle in the very place where the dyn hysbys told him they would be.' And the third narrative asserts that a man in the parish of Trelec

om a Justice

ociety of Carmarthen, and who has sat on the judicial bench for

te. Often at night they danced in rings amid green fields. Most of them were females, though they had a king; and, as their name suggests, they were very beautiful in appearance. The king of the Tylwyth Teg was called Gwydion ab Don, Gwyd

heory:-'As aerial beings the Tylwyth Teg could fly and move about in the air at will. They were a special order of creation.

we shall record what Mr. Williams said about Druids, and here what he said about ghosts and apparitions:-'Sixty years ago there was hardly an individual who did

d for seeing phantom funerals. One appeared to him once when he was with a friend. "Do you see it? Do you see it?" the old man excitedly asked. "N

he belief in fairies and apparitions:-'There used to be much witchcraft in this country; and it was fully believed that some men, if advanced s

idence from C

, as supplementary to what has been recorded above, the following evidence, from his great-aunt, M

untry, fairies (Tylwyth Teg) are often call

hich lived a woman with twenty children. Feeling ashamed of the size of her family, she hid half of them from the sight of h

e; at the Pentr

years, our witness is as active as many a city woman of forty or forty-five. Since her girlhood she has heard curious legends and stories, and, with a more than ordinary interest in the lore of her native country, has treasured them all in her clear and well-trained memory. The first night, while this well-stored memory of hers gave forth some of its treasures, we sat in her own home, I and my

octor Harris died his books on witchcraft had to be burned in order to free the place where he lived from evil spirits. The fairies, too, are sometimes called the fallen angels. They will do good to those who befriend them, and harm to others. I think there must be an intermediate state between life on earth and heavenly life, and it may be in this that spirits and fairies live. There are two distinct types of spirits: one is good and the other is bad. I have heard of people going to the fairies and fi

orpse should be carried by exactly the same route; so the road was abandoned and the funeral went through the ploughed fields. Here is the description of the death-candle as the aunt gave it in response to our request:-'The death-candle appears like a patch of bright light; and no matter how dark the room or place is, everything in it is as clear as day. The candle is not a flame, but a luminous mass, lightish blue

and water, and to cleaning themselves. At daybreak they departed, leaving a pretty gift in return for the kindness. In this same house at another time, whether by the same party of little beings or by another could not be told, a healthy child of the family was changed because he was unbaptized, and a frightful-looking child left in his place. The mother finally died of grief, and the other children died because of the loss of their mother, and

m, for it was a dangerous and terrible ordeal. After consulting certain books which he had, he would draw a circle on the floor, and in a little while spirits like bulls and serpents and other animals would appear in it, and all sorts o

ll at once Mr. -- became very wealthy, and his servants seemed able to buy whatever they wanted. Everybody wondered, but no one could tell where the money came from; for at first he was a poor man, and he couldn't have made much off the farm. The secret only leaked out through one of the servants after Mr. -- was dead. The servant declared to certain friends that one of the ghosts, or, as he thought, the Devil, appeared to Mr. -- and told him there was an image of great value walled up in the room over the main entrance to the manor. A search was made, and, sure enough, a large image of solid gold was found in the very place indicated, built into a rec

ad of ghosts, fairies and demons are said to

Peninsula,

ation being by ancestry English and Flemish as well as Cornish and Welsh. Despite this race admixture, Brythonic beliefs have generally survived in Gower even among

to take some produce to the Swansea market, and when the time for departure arrived the pixies had come, but no one save the old woman could see them. She described them to me as like tiny men dan

from an Ar

, has passed many years in studying the antiquities and folk-lore of Gower, being the author of various antiquarian works

exists to some extent. One may also hear of a person being pixy-led; the pixies may cause a traveller to lose his way at night if he crosses a field where they happen to be. To take your coat off and turn it inside out will break the pixy spell.[60] The Verry Volk were always lit

of little beings, about one foot high, swarming all over his fat ox, and they were preparing to slaughter the ox. He was so surprised that he could not move. In a short time the Verry Volk had killed, dressed, and eaten the animal. The feast being over, they collected the hide and bones, except one ver

ong Gower

y recent times; and yet, as the above place-names tend to prove, in early days all these regions must have been Welsh. It may be argued, however, that this English-speaking population may be more Celtic than Saxon, even though emigrants from England. In any case, we can see wit

o the Swansea market in the early morning. They kept him dancing some time, and then said to him before they let him go, "Will dance well;

ry time they visited her house. For a long time she observed their request, and tol

of music and dancing. Sometimes they appeared dressed in bright red. The

clu

racter of Brythonic fairy-folk as we have found them. And we can very appropriately close this inquiry by allowing our Welsh-speaking witness from the Pentre Evan country, Pembrokeshire, to tell us one of the prettiest and most interesting fairy-tales in all Wales. The name of Taliessin appearing in it leads us to suspect that it may be the remnant of an ancient bardic tale which

, and then lifted it up. A narrow path with steps descending was revealed, and from it emerged a bluish-white light. 'Follow me,' said the old man, 'no harm will come to you.' The boy did so, and it was not long before he saw a fine, wooded, fertile country with a beautiful palace, and rivers and mountains. He reached the palace and was enchanted by the singing of birds. Music of all sorts was in the palace, but he saw no people. At meals dishes came and disappeared of their own accord. He could hear voices all about him, but saw no person except the old man-who said that now he could speak. When he tried to speak he found that he could not move his tongue. Soon an old lady with smiles came to him leading three beautiful maiden

dy believed that he had been killed by another shepherd. And thi

on, for that was the boy's name, and Olwen, for that was the girl's name, now wanted to marry; but they had to go about it quietly and half secretly, for the fair-folk dislike c

egan to ask for Olwen's pedigree, and as none was given it was taken for granted that she was one of the fair-folk. 'Yes, indeed,' said Einion, 'there is no doubt that she is one of the fair-folk, there is no doubt that s

t Brythonic country, Cornwall,

N COR

f Brittany; Fellow and Local Secretary for Cornwall of the Society

ints of contact with Cornish fairy legends, but they do not help to explain the fairies very much. Yet certain it is that not only in Cornwall and other Celtic lands, but throughout most of the world, a belief in fairies exists or has existed, and so widespread a belief must have a reason for it, though not necessarily a goo

d spring an

lin, elf

ust flit from th

ownie must

ently modern explanation, invented since the substitution of strange Scottish and Irish drinks for the good 'Nantes' and wholesome 'Plymouth' of old time, and it does not fit in with the phenomena. It was only last winter, in a cottage not a hundred yards from where I am writing, that milk was set at night for piskies, who had been knocking on walls and generally making nuisances of themselves. Apparently the piskies only drank the 'astral' part of the milk (whatever that may be) and then the neighbouring cats

is worship, offerings of fish are still left on the beach for him. His name is the Welsh pwca, which is probably 'Puck', though Shakespeare's Puck was just a pisky, and it may be connected with the general Slavonic word Bog, God; so that if, as some say, buccaboo is really meant for Bucca-du, Black Bucca, this may be an equivalent of Czernobog, the Black God, who was the Ahriman of Slavonic dualism, and Bucca-widn (White Bucca), which is rarer, though the expression does come into a St

it, is that they are the spirits of Jews who were sent by the Romans to work in the tin mines, some say for being con

xioned aboriginal folk who were supposed to inhabit the barrows, cromlechs, and allées couvertes, and whose cunning, their only effective weapon against the mere strength of the Aryan invader, earned them a reputation for magical powers. Now Pisky or Pisgy is really Pixy. Though as a patriotic Cornishman I ought not to admit it, I cannot deny, especially as it suits my argument better, that the Devon form is the correct one. But after all there has been always a strong Cornish element in Devon, even since the time when Athelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter and set the Tamar for their boundar

nuine examples of what would in Scotland be called 'Picts' Houses' just outside St. Ives in the direction of Zennor, though only modern antiquaries have applied that name to them. In the district in which they are, the fringe of coast from St. Ives round by Zennor, Morvah, Pendeen, and St. Just nearly to Sennen, are found to this day a strange and separate people of Mongol type, like the Bigaudens of Pont l'Abbé and Penmarc'h in the Breton Cornouailles, one of those 'fragments of forgotten peoples' of the 'sunset bound of Lyonesse' of whom Tennyson tells. They are a little 'stuggy' dark folk, and until comparatively modern times were recognized as different from their Celtic neighbours, and were commonly believed to be largely wizards and witch

answers to which do not matter, and I do not attempt to defend the terms, but you must call it something. This is the belief to which Scott refers in the introduction to The Monastery, as the 'beautiful but almost forgotten theory of astral spirits or creatures of the elements, surpassing human beings in knowledge and power, but inferior to them as being subject, af

d heard. Some such condition is perhaps described in the story of Balaam the soothsayer, in that incident when 'the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha', and possibly also in the mysterious 'sound of a going in the tops of the mulb

ons or magic eye-salve, yet with these stories are often mingled incidents that are not preternatural at all. How, when, and why this belief arose, I do not pret

essed in one of Hans Andersen's stories, that his departed friends are promoted to be 'angels'. There may be, perhaps, an idea, as there certainly is in the Breton Death-Faith, that the spirits of the faithful dead are all round us, and are not rapt away into a distant Paradise or Purgatory. This may be of pre-Christian origin, but does not contradict any article of the Christian faith. The warnings, apparitions, and hauntings, the 'calling of the dead' at sea, and other details of Cornish Death-Legends, seem to point to a conception of a 'plane' of the dead, similar to but not necessarily identical with that of the elementals. Under some quite undefined conditions contact may occur with the 'physical plane', whence the alleged inciden

rated traditions of a dark pre-Celtic people. These were not necessarily pygmies, but smaller than Celts, and may have survived for a long time in forests and hill countries, sometimes friendly to the taller race, whence come the stories of piskies wo

, Hayle,

y 1

are studying, and its folk-lore is therefore far from being as virile as the Irish folk-lore; nevertheless, through its people, racially mixed though they are, there still flows the blood and the inspiration of a prehistoric native ancestry, and among the oldest Cornish men and women of many an isolated village, or farm, there yet remains some belief in fairies and pixies. Moreover, throughout

Historian'

three miles from Falmouth; and Miss Gay, who has written a well-known history of Falmouth (Old Falmouth, London, 1903),

and, as such, I believe people have seen them. The 'astral plane' is not known to us now because our psychic faculty of perception has faded out by non-use, and thi

n the folk-lore. With its remnants of occult learning, magic, charms, and the like, folk-lore s

nce from the

s in the Crill region, and from one of them, Mrs. Ha

twenty years old, and was no larger when it died than when the piskies brought it. It was fretful and peevish and frightfully shrivelled. The parents believed that the piskies often used to come

ir in the fields near Breage, and that people saw them there dancing. I also remember her saying that it was customary to set out food for the piskies at night. My grandmother's great belief w

from Co

wife, two most excellent and well-preserved types of the passing generation of true Cornish stock. John began by telling me t

at Bosahan with a surveyor, and the two of them heard such unearthly noises in it

to thrash the farmer's corn. The farmer in payment once put down a new

ne and p

w will f

ay he neve

reat deal was said about ghosts in this place. Whether or not piskies are th

lways put such things to rest. The clergyman went to the farmer's house, and with his whip formed a circle on the floor and then commanded the spirit, which made its appearance on the table,

hael's Mou

, but none of them knew very much about ancient Cornish beliefs.) It is believed, though the matter is very doubtful, that Marazion was the chief mart for the tin trade of Celtic Britain, and that the Mount-sacred to the Sun and to the Pagan Mysteries long before Cae

undred and fifty years ago the belief in piskies and spirits was general. In my boyhood days, piskies were often called "the mites" (little people): they were regarded as little spirits. The word piskies is the old Cornish br

would go out at night and lose their way and then declare that they had been pisky-led. I think they meant by this that they fell under some spiritual influence-that some spirit led them astray. The piskies were

supposed to have great power over evil spirits. His immediate predecessor was a woman, called the "Witch of Wendron", and she did a big business. My father once visited her in company with a friend whose father had lost some horses. This was about seventy to eighty years ago. Th

An Architec

e the poetry and the mystic lore of Old Cornwall; and to no one of them am I more indebted than to Mr. Henry Maddern, F.I.A.S. Mr. Maddern tells me that he was initiated into the mysteries of the Cornish folk-lore of this region when a boy in N

ent belief, when I was a boy, that this sea-strand pixy, called Bucca,[67] had to be propitiated by a cast (three) of fish, to ensure the fishermen having a good shot (catch) of fish. The land pixy was supposed to be able to render its devotees invisible, if they only anointed their eyes with a certain gr

s of the ointment, she put it on her eyes with the wish that she might see where her master was. She immediately found herself in the higher part of the orchard amongst the pixies, where they were having much junketing (festivity and dancing); and there saw the gentleman whose child she had nursed. For a time she managed to evade him, but before the junketing was at a

uld make himself visible. When I was a boy it was said that he spent his time voyaging from here to Tyre on the galleys which carried the tin; and, also, that he assisted in the building of Solomon's Temple. Sometimes he was called "the Wandering One", or "Odin the Wanderer". My old nurse, Betty Grancan, used to say that you could call up the troll at the Tolcarne if while there yo

n offspring for human children; and the true child could only be got back by laying a four-leaf clover on the changeling. A winickey child-one which was weak, frail, and peevish-was of the nature of a changeling. Miner pixies, called "knockers", would accept a portion of a miner's croust (lunch) on good faith, and by knocking lead him to a rich mother-lode, or war

ld. I have heard my nurse say that she could see scores of them whenever she picked a four-leaf clover and put it in the wisp of straw which she carried on her head as a cushion for the bucket of milk. Her theory was that the richness of the milk was what attracted them. Pixies, like fairies, very much en

h Editor

has been deeply interested in the folk-lore of Cornwall, and has made excellent use of it in his poetry and other literary productions; so

c or pre-Celtic belief in spirits. Just as among some savage tribes there is belief in gods and totems, here there was belief in lit

olk-lorist'

k-lorist, who quite agrees with me in believing that there is in Cornwall a widespread

ling if a drowning is about to occur. I know of a woman who went to a clergyman to have him exorcize her of the spirit of her de

ce fro

egurtha gave the follow

sings and others curses; and to remove the curses people would go to the wells blessed by the saints. Whenever anything went wrong in the kitchen at night the pixies were

cures. And my mother knew of an actual case in which a changeling was put through the stone in order to get the real child back. I

nd fasted, and then commanded the spirit to teeme (dip dry) the sea with a limpet sh

born on St. Michael's Mount in 1825) told me this:-'The old people used to say the piskies were apparitions

st's Te

s own impressions concerning the pixies of Devonshire, where he has frequ

e are much given to belief in pixies and ghosts. I think they expect to see them about the twilight hour;

m the Histori

ebted for these remarks about the nature and present state

with too much they are said to exhibit almost fiendish powers. In a certain sense they are considered spiritual, but in another sense they a

an's T

ve years old; and most of his life has been passed on the ocean, as a fisherman, seaman, and pilot. After having told me the

h light as I never saw in my life; and when I woke up another light like it was in the room. Within three months afterwards we buried two grand-daughters out of this house. This was four years ago.' When this strange

housand mackerel, which put in at Arbor Cove, close to Padstow, on account of bad weather. The boat dragged her anchors and was lost.

y Two Land'

talked with two farmers who knew something about piskies. The

boy, but the boy got home. Then the pisky took him a second time, and again the boy got

e heard that they would come there from the moors. Little people they are called. If you keep quiet when they are dancing you'll see them, but if you make any noise they'll disappear.' Frank Ellis's wife, who is a very aged woman, was in the ho

om a Sennen

, a retired fisherman of Sennen Cove, off

re for them on stormy nights, because, as she said, "They are a sort of people wandering about the world with no home or habitation, and ought to be given a little comfort." The most fear of them was that they might come at night and change a baby for one that w

it. She didn't know about this, and so in washing her baby got some of the water in her eyes, and then all at once she could see crowds of little people about her. One of them came

from a Cor

t, where he has passed all his life, offers us from his ow

them, and they call them the small people. It appears that they don't like company, for they are always seen singly. The "

om King Arth

as far as possible, in the country between Camelford and Tintagel. At Delabole, the centre of this district, we find our first witness, Henry Spragg, a retired slate-quarryman, se

e say that he used to appear in this country in the form of a nath.'[74] This was all that could be tol

sed to say when I got home after dark, "You had better mind, or the piskies will carry you away." And I can remember hearing the old people say that the piskies are the spirits of dead-born childr

the very oldest men in King Arthur's country, and his wife; and all of Mr. Ma

selves jumping about in front of you; they are a race of little people who live out in the fields.' Mrs. Male had now joined us at the open fire, and added:-'Piskies always come at night, and in marshy ground there are round places called pisky beds where they play. Whe

ne and p

t a bright

w will r

it of another story: A pisky

ne, fai

I with a d

o eat and nu

d ghosts that I was then afraid to go out of doors after darkness had fallen. They religiously believed in such things, and when I expressed my doubts I was driven away as a rude boy. They thought if you went to a certain place at a certain hour of the night that you could there see the piskies as litt

the English Channel to Little Britain

IN BR

h Literature, University of Rennes, Brittany; autho

nslation of

Monsieu

nt la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université de Rennes, un de

us, à l'existence des

ec autant de phlegm

up de choses que vous n'avez pas vues, monsieur le professeur, et dont vous ne

vons baptisée de ce nom, mais, malgré tous ses beaux dons magiques, elle n'est qu'une humble mortelle. En revanc

. On continuait de l'appeler le 'chateau' de Lanascol, quoiqu'elle ne f?t plus guère qu'une ruine. Il est vrai que les avenues par lesquelles on y accédait avaient conservé leur aspect seigneurial, avec leurs quadruples rangées de vieux hêtres dont les vastes frondaisons se

feuilles mortes qu'elle retournait ainsi devenaient soudain brillantes comme de l'or et s'entrechoquaient avec un bruit clair de métal. Selon d'autres, c'était une jeune princesse, merveilleusement parée, sur les pas de qui s'empressaient d'étranges petits hommes noirs et silencieux. Elle s'avan?ait d'une

r elle cette cu

adjudication chez un notaire de Plouaret. Au jour fixé pour les enchères nombre d'acheteurs accoururent. Les prix étaient déjà montés très haut, et

francs

nne qui avait lancé cette surenchère, et qui ne pouvait être qu'une femme. Ma

a p

a même voix s

nascol!' ré

ait jamais présenté d'acquéreur, et voilà pourquoi, ré

amps ou des bois! La Bretagne est restée un royaume de féerie. On n'y peut voyager l'espace d'une lieue sans c?toyer la demeure de quelque fée male ou femelle. Ces jours derniers, comme j'accomplissais un pèlerinage d'automne à l'hallucinante forêt de Paimpont, toute hantée

ges, s'étant porté, une nuit, à l'aff?t du chevreuil, dans les environs de la Butte-aux-Plaintes, avait été surpris en flagrant délit par une tournée de gardes. Il voulut fuir: les gardes tirèrent. Une balle l'atteignit à la cuisse: il tomba, et il s'apprêtait à se faire tuer sur place, plut?t que de se rendre, lorsque, entre ses agresseurs et lui

paroles de la fée,' conclut

a religieuse Bretagne-vous le savez-

hé dans le bas de l'armoire, empêchait les vers de se mettre dans les pièces de lard suspendues aux solives. Il avait pareillement dans son lot le gouvernement des étables et des écuries: grace à lui, les vaches donnaient un lait abondant en beurre, et les chevaux avaient la croupe ronde, le poil luisant. Il était, en un mot, le bon génie de la famille, mais c'était à la condition que chacun e?t pour lui les égards auxquels il avait droit. Si peu qu'on lui manquat, sa bonté se changeait en malice et il n'était point de mauvais tours dont il ne f?t capable envers les gens qui l'avaient offensé, comme de renverser

br?le pas, si, tout à l'he

e présageait sa rencontre. Le plus souvent, on la redoute. Mais, comme l'observait avec raison une de mes conteuses, Lise Bellec, s'il est préférable d'éviter le Bugul-Noz, il ne s'ensuit pas, pour cela, que ce soit un méchant Esprit. D'après elle, il remplirait plut?t une fonction salutaire, en signifiant aux humains, par sa venue, que la nuit n'est pas faite pour s'att

ts différents. C'est tant?t un géant, tant?t un nain. Il porte tant?t un 'suroit' de toile huilée, tant?t un large chapeau de feutre noir. Parfois, il s'appuie sur une rame et fait penser au personnage énigmatique, armé du même attribut, qu'Ulysse doit suivre, dans l'Odyssée. Mais, toujours, c'est un héros marin dont la mission est de parcourir les plages, en poussant par intervalles de longs cris stridents, propres à effrayer les pêcheurs qui se seraient laissé surpr

de leurs exercices coutumiers consistait à déambuler de nuit le long des c?tes où ils avaient établi leurs oratoires, en agitant des cloch

ricains. A vrai dire, dans la conception bretonne, les morts ne sont pas morts; ils vivent d'une vie mystérieuse en marge de la vie réelle, mais leur monde reste, en définitive, tout mêlé au n?tre et, sit?t que la nuit tombe, sit?t que les vivants proprement dits s'abandonnent à la mort momentanée du sommeil, les soi-disant morts redeviennent les habitants d

tous les deux, par un singulier mélange de naturel et de surnaturel. Je n'ai voulu, en ces lignes rapides, que montrer la richesse de la matière à laquelle vous avez, avec tant de conscience et de ferveur, appliqué votre

nn

novembr

Fairies

his is very significant. It seems to indicate that among the Bretons-who are one of the most conservative Celtic peoples-the Fairy-Faith finds its chief expression in a belief that men live after death in an invisible world, just as in Ireland the dead and fairies live in Fairyland. This opinion was first suggested to me

there are almost always appear in folk-lore as little old women, or as the Breton story-teller usually calls them, Grac'hed coz

wish to try it,' they said, fearing to injure the good woman. 'All right, I'll do it then, watch me.' And Cado took his bow and let fly an arrow. The arrow went straight to its mark and split the jar without touching the little old woman; but the water wet her to the skin, and, in anger, she said to the skilful archer: 'You have failed, Cado, and I will be revenged on you for this. From now until you have found the Princess Blondine all the members of your body will tremble as

nes I have been fortunate enough to collect are much the same in character as those gathered in the C?tes-du-Nord by Luzel, and elsewhere by other collectors. Those I here record were told

d suffered long from leprosy was certain to die within a short time, when a woman bent double with age entered his house. She asked from what malady he su

orphans who had very unkind step-mothers. In their youth, Tanguy du Chatel and his sister Eudes were protected by a fée against the misfortune which pursued them; the history of Brittany says so. In Léon it is said that t

0. The fée was received; and before going to bed she predicted that the little daughter whom the mother was dressing in night-clothes would be found dead in the cradle the next

arded as good protecting spirits, almost like ancestral spirits, which originally they may have been; in the Cornouailles they are evil spirits; while in the third a

who was called --,[78] the mother of a family. When she had her first child, a very strong and very pretty boy, she noticed one morning that he had been changed during the night; there was no longer the fine baby she had put to be

e is a veritable demon; he often predicts the future, and has a habit of running abroad during the night. They call him the "Little Corrigan", and everybody

by a little hunchback. The second child was a most beautiful daughter. She was taken during the night and replaced by a little girl babe, so deformed that it resembled a ball. If her

n the cradle a little sprig of box-wood which has been blessed (by a priest), and the fée will no longer have the power of stealing your children." And when a fourth chi

nge hunchbacked infants. It is equally pretended that a mother who has had her child so changed need do nothing more than leave the little hunchback out of doors crying during entire ho

se Le Rouzic said about the transformation power of fées:-'It is said that the fée

k plays the part of a fairy (cf. how fairy women took the form of water-fowls in the tale entitled the Sick Bed of Cuchulainn (see our study, p. 345); in Pipi Menou et les Femmes Volantes (Pipi Menou and the Flying Women),[81] there are fairy women as swan-maidens; and then there are yet to be mentioned Les Morgans de l'?le d'Ouessant (The Morgans of the Isle of Ushant), who live under the sea in rare palaces where mortals whom they love and marr

her unveiled beauty. By day she slumbers amid the coolness of grottoes, and woe to him who troubles her sleep. By night she lets herself be lulled by the waves in the neighbourhood of the rocks. The sea-foam crystallizes at her touch into precious stones, of whiteness as dazzling as that of her body. By moonlight she moans as she combs her fair hair with a comb of fine gold, and she sings in a harmonious voice a plaintive melody whose charm is irresistible. The sailor who listens to it feels himself drawn toward her, without power to break the charm which drags him onward to his destruction; the bark is broken upon the reefs: the man is i

ove she had fallen, and who, according to belief, was no other than the Devil, St. Guenolé soon afterwards began to cry aloud, "Great King, arise! The flood-gates are open, and the sea is no longer restrained!"[83] Suddenly the old King Gradlon arose, and, leaping on his horse, was fleeing from the city with St. Guenolé, when he encountered his own daughter amid the waves. She piteously begged aid of her father, and he took her up behind him on the horse; but St. Guenolé, seeing that the waters were gaining on the

nds, concerning a maiden who married a dead man, shows us Fairyland as a world of the dead. It is a very strange legend, and one directly bearing on the Psychological Theory; for this dead man, who is a dead priest, has a palace in a realm of enchantment, and to enter his country one must have a white fairy-wand with which to strike 'in

ren of the fées (Saint-Cast). Near Saint-Briac (Ille-et-Vilaine) they are sometimes called Fions; this term, which is applied to both sexes, seems also to designate the mischievous lutins (sprites). Round the Mené, in the cantons of Collinée and of Moncontour, they are called Margot la Fée, or ma Commère (my Godmother) Margot, or even the Bonne Femme (Good Woman) Margot. On the coast they are often enough called by the name of Bonnes Dames (Good Ladies), or of nos Bonnes Mères les Fées (our Good Mothers the Fairies); usually they are spoken of with a certain respect.'[87] As the same authorit

paid for your buckwheat!' Thereupon the fions gave the woman a cupful of buckwheat, and promised her that it would never diminish so long as none should be given away. That year buckwheat was very scarce, but no matter how many buckwheat cakes the woman and her family ate there was nev

aste lands where there are great rocks, or about menhirs; and many other kinds of spirits lived in the sea and troubled sailors and fisher-folk. Like all fairy-folk of Celtic countries, those of Upper Brittany were given to stealing children. Thus at Dinard not long ago there was a woman more than thirty years old who was no bigger than a girl of ten, and it was said she was a fairy changeling.[90] In Lower Brittany the taking of children was often attributed to dwarfs

owed some of the fairy ointment to get on one of her own eyes. The eye at once became clairvoyant, so that she beheld the fées in their true nature. And, quite like a midwife in a similar story about the fées des houles,

the human body; and they were given to playing tricks on mortals, and always to taking revenge on them if ill-treated. In most ways the

teeth as long as a human hand, and with backs covered with seaweeds, and mussels, or other marine growths, as an indication of their grea

egion of the Mené, canton of Collinée, the old folk say that, after the angels revolted, those left in paradise were divided into two parts: those who

ées used to live in the billows or amid certain grottoes in the cliffs against which the billows broke, the opinion is that they disappeared at the beginning of the last century. The oldest Bretons say that their parents or grandparents often spoke about having seen fées, but very rarely do they say that they themselves have seen fées. M. S

rigan R

ves). Though the peasants both in Upper and in Lower Brittany may have no strong faith in fées, most of them say that corrigans, or nains, and mischievous house-haunting spirits still exist. But in a few localities, as M. Sébillot discovered, there is an opinion that the lutins departed with the fées,

nd such shape-shifting hobgoblins as are found in Wales:-'The lutins were little dwarfs who generally appeared at cross-roads to attack belated travellers. And it is related in Breton legends that these lutins sometimes transformed themselves into black horses or into goats; and whoever then had the misfortune to encounter them sometimes found his life in danger, and was always seized with great terror.' But generally, what the Breton peasant tells about corrigans he is apt to tell at another time about lutins. And both tribes of beings, so far as they can be distinguished, are the same as the elfish peoples-pixies in Cornwall, Robin Good-fellows in England, gobl

ntry; and they never miss an opportunity of enticing a mortal passing by to join them. If he happens to be a good-natured man and enters their sport heartily, they treat him quite as a companion, and may even do him some good turn; but if he is not agreeable they will make him

mpleting the enumeration of the days of the week. A corrigan having had the misfortune to permit himself to be tempted to add "Saturday",

ount having been given during January 1909 by Madame Marie Ezanno, of Carnac, then sixty-six years old:-'The corrigans are little dwarfs who formerly, by moonlight, used to dance in a c

utal towards a man who fell under their power, and if they had a grudge against him they would make him submit to the greatest tortures. The peasants believed strongly in the corr

window knitting, and her daughter was watching the savoury-smelling dinner as it boiled in great iron pots hanging from chains over a brilliant fire on the hearth. Large gleaming brass basins were ranged on a shelf above the broad open chimney-

to their song "Mercredi" (Wednesday). In amazement, the corrigans cried joyfully, "She has added something to our song; what shall we give her as recompense?" And they gave her a bracelet. A friend of hers meeting her, asked where the fine bracelet came from; and the young girl told what had happened. The second girl hurried to the church, and found the corrigan

e she had been, said, "I have travelled over water, wood, and hedges." And she related all she had seen and heard. Then one night, afterwards, the corrigans came into the house, beat her, an

ke most water-fairies, the Fée lives in a grotto, which, according to Villemarqué, is one of those ancient monuments called in Breton dolmen, or ti ar corrigan; in French, Table de pierres, or Grotte aux Fées-like the famous one near Rennes. The fountain where the Fée was seated seems to be one of those sacred fountains, which, as Villemarqué says, are often found near a Grotte aux Fées, and called Fontaine de la Fée, or in Breton, Feunteun ar corrigan. In another of Vil

olk; and dance in a circle holding hands, but at the least noise disappear. Their favourite haunts are near fountains and dolmens. They are little beings not more than two feet high, and beautifully proportioned, with bodies as aerial and transparent as those of wasps. And like all fairy, or elvish races, and like the Breton Morgans or water-spirits, they are given to stealing the children of mortals. Professor J. Loth

kinds of lutins, are believed to be evil spirits or demons condemned to live here on earth in a penitential state for an indefinite time; and sometimes they seem not much different from what Irish Celts, when talking of fairies, call fallen angels. Le Nain de Kerhuiton, translated from Breton by Professor J. Loth, in part illustrates this:-Upon seeing water boiling in a number of egg-shells ranged before an open fire, a polpegan-changeling is so greatly astonished that he unwittingly speaks for the first time, and says, 'Here I am almost one hundred years old, and never such a thing have

han, and throughout the C?tes-du-Nord. They were believed to be souls in pain condemned to wander at night in waste lands and marshes. Sometimes they were seen as dwarfs; and often they we

n Legend

nerals, and various death-warnings. As Professor Anatole Le Braz has so well said in his introduction to La Légende de la Mort, 'the whole conscience of these people is fundamentally directed toward that which concerns death. And the ideas which they form of it, in spite of the strong Christian imprint which they have received, do not seem much different from those which we have pointed out among their pagan ancestors. For them, as for the primitive Celts, death is less

behold the dead, on November Eve (La Toussaint) and on Christmas Eve they are most numerous and most easily seen; and no peasant would think of questioning their existence. I

in the power of the dead over the living in Lower Brittany, and how deeply the people can be stirred by th

ould die, who should carry the corpse, who the cross, and who should follow the cortège. Her predictions frightened every one, and made her such a terror to the country that the mayor had threatened to ta

o years old, and what she tells of things seen in this invisible world which surrounds her, might easily be taken for Irish legends about fairies. Knowing very little French, because she is thoroughly Breton, Madame Le Port described her visions in her own native tongue, and her eldest daughter acted as interprete

le who took part in it; but the person with me saw nothing. Another time, near three o'clock in the afternoon, and eight days before her death, I saw upon the same route the funeral of a woman who was drowned. And I have seen a phantom horse going to the sabbath, and as if forced along against its will, for it reared and pawed the earth. When Pierre Rouzic of Kerlois died, I saw a light of all colours between heaven and earth, the very night of his death. I have seen a woman asleep whose spirit must have been free, for I saw it h

ut any education, but let me tell you what I think concerning the dead. Following my own idea, I believe that after death the soul always exist

hing home, and as it was winter, and at that epoch there was no stage-coach, we were obliged to travel afoot. As we were going along, suddenly there appeared to my companion her dead relative whom we had buried that day. She

ront of different washing-places, always some way from the villages. According to the old folk of the past generation, when the phantom washerwomen would ask a certain passer-by to help them to wring sheets, he could not refuse, under pain of being stopped and wrung like a sheet himself. And it was necessary for those who aided in wringing the sheets to turn i

ate of popular beliefs as he finds them existing in the Carnac country now:-'There are few traditions concerning the fées in the region of Carnac; but the belief in spirits, good and bad-which seems to me to be the same as the

near the Pointe du Raz, Finistère, in 1842. Peter is a genuine old 'sea-dog', having made the tour of the globe, and yet he has not lost the innate faith of his ancient ancestors in a world invisible; for though he says he cannot believe all that the people in his part of Finistère tell about spirits and ghosts, he must have a be

no news from him; and, then one day while I was on the deck of a Norwegian ship just off Dover (England), my fellow sailors heard a noise as though of a gun being discharged, and the whirr of a shot. At the same moment I fell down on the deck as though mortally wounded, and lay in a

en a little girl, saw his spirit appear here in Lescoff, and she easily recognized it; but none of her girl companions with her at the time saw

nus, similar stories are current. And among the fisher-folk with whom I lived on

. And almost every man or woman one meets in rural Lower Brittany can tell many similar stories. If a mortal should happen to meet one of the dead in Brittany and be induced to eat food which the dead sometimes offer, he will never be able to return among the living,[105] for the effect would be the same as eating fairy-food. Like ghosts and fairies in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, in Brittany the dead guard hidden treasure. It is after sunset that the dead have most power to strike down the living,[105] and to take them just as fairies do. A natural phenomenon, a malady, a death, or a tempest may be the work of a spirit in Brittany,[105] and in Ireland the work of a fairy. The Breton dead, like the Scotch fairies described in Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, are capable of making themselves visible or invisible to mortals, at will.[105] Their bodies-for they have bodies-are material,[105] being composed of matter in a state unknown to us; and the bodies of daemons as described by the Ancients are made of congealed air. The dead in Brittany have forms more slender and smaller in stature than those of the living;[105] and herein we find one of the factors which supporters of the Pygmy Theory would emphasize, but it is thoroughly psychical. Old Breton farmers after death return to their farms, as though come from Fairyland; and sometimes they even take a turn at the ploughing.[105] As in Ireland, so in Brittany, the day belongs to the living, and the night, when a mortal is safer indoors than out, to spirits and the dead.[105] The Bretons take great care not to counterfeit the dead nor to speak slightingly of them,[106] for, like fairies, they know all that is done by mortals, and can hear all that is said about them, and can take revenge. Just as in the case of all fairies and goblins, the dead disappear at first cock-crow.[107] The world of the de

ous, for it is his nature to be so. And as Professor Le Braz has suggested to me, Carnac with its strange monuments of an unknown people and time, and wrapped in its air of mystery and silence, is a veritable Land of the Dead. I, too, have felt that there are strange, vague, indefinable influe

clu

re translated. M. Le Scour draws the whole picture from life, and from his own intimate experience. It will serve to give us some insight into the natural literary ability of the Breton Celts, to illustrate their love of

ed with a thin covering of snow which had fallen since sunset. Each comer reached on the run the comfortable bakehouse, wherein Alain Corre was at work k

hurried to get a place in order to hear Victor. My mother was already there, making her distaff whirr between her two fingers as she sat in the light of a rosin candl

fs to do him reverence. Then when silence was restored, after some of the older men had severa

a good-for-nothing sort of fellow; he gained his living easily, by cheating everybody and by robbing his neighbours; and being always well dressed he was much env

t to Paris; 'But I,' added Paol, 'am going to see the capital and amuse myself like a rich bourgeois.' At this, Yon offered to bet with Paol that in spite of infirmitie

el rapidly. He was obliged to beg his way, and being meanly dressed was compelled to sleep outdoors when he could not find a stable. At the end of a month he arrived in a big forest in the region of Versailles, and having no other shelter for t

he King, and no mortal will ever be able to cure her, and yet in order to cure her nothing more would be needed than a drop of water from this fountain.' The corrigan who thus spoke was upon two sticks[111] (crippled), and commanded all the

d, they finally prevailed upon the King to receive him; and then Yon told the King that he had come to cure the princess. Thereupon the King caused Yon to be fittingly dressed and presented before the sick-bed; and Yon drew forth his bottle of water, and, at his request, the princess drank it to the last drop. Suddenly she began to laugh with joy, and throwing her arms about the nec

e the day was over he discovered Yon in the great hotel of the city, and asked him how it was that he had been able to effect the cure; and Yon replied to his old rival tha

oping to overhear some mysterious revelation. Midnight had hardly come when a frightful uproar commenced: this time the crippled corrigan chief was swearing like a demon, and he cried to the oth

d the gnashing of his teeth, as he fought against death. Thus the evil and dishonest man ended his life, while Yon Rustik

upon Victor for this most marvellous story, by the happy gathering of country-folk in that cosy warm bakehouse in Lower

of the inquiry, apparently most of it can only be interpreted as belonging to a world-wide doctrine of souls. But before this decision can be arrived at safely, all the evidence sho

TIO

ING FAI