Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

What are Fairies?

Where is Fairyland?

A—Abatwa to Aziza

B—Baba Yaga to Bwca

C—Cabyll Ushtey to Cyhyraeth

D—D’Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine to Dzunukwa

E—E Bukura e Dheut to Ezerinis

F—Fachan to Fyglia

Connecting with Fairies

G—Ga-Gaah to Gytrash

H—Habetrot to Hyter Sprites

I—Iansan to It

J—Jack in Irons to Just-halver

K—Kabibonokka to Kumiho

L—Lady of the Lake, the to Lutins

Elementals and Flower Fairies

M—Maahiset to Muse

N—Nab to Nymphs

O—Oakmen to Owl Woman Monster

P—Padfoot to Pwca

Q—Qailertetang to Qutrub

Fairies in Literature and Legend

R—Rå to Rusalka

S—Saci to Syrene

T—Tah-Tah-Kle-Ah to Tylwyth Teg

U—Uncegila to Utukku

V—Valkyries to Vodyanoy

W—Wabun to Wraith

X—Xanthe to Xantho

Y—Yallery Brown to Yunwitsandsdi

Z—Zagaz to Zinkibaru

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Introduction

Boggles, Bloody Bones, brownies, black dogs, Shellycoats, barguests, Robin Goodfellows, hags, hobgoblins, dobies, hobthrusts, fetches, kelpies, mumpokers, Pans, sirens, nymphs, imps, incubuses, Kit with the Cansticks, Melsh Dicks, knockers, elves, Rawheads, Padfoots, pixies, dwarves, changelings, redcaps, colt pixies, Tom Thumbs, boggarts, shag foals, brags, wraiths, waffs, gally-trots, Peg Powlers, Pucks, fays, selkies, Cauld Lads, sylphs, nixies, cluricaunes, kobolds, leprechauns, banshees, Lhiannan Shees, Gabriel Ratchets hounds, trows, sprites, and spunkies …

Welcome to the wonderful and diverse world of fairies.

These are just some of the fairy creatures listed in a series of nineteenth-century folklore pamphlets by a Yorkshire tradesman named Michael Denham, later published as The Denham Tracts, edited by James Hardy (London: Folklore Society, 1892–1895).

This snapshot of the fairy realm in the British Isles of the not-so-distant past introduces us to a world in which nursery bogies, such as Bloody Bones, lurked in the cupboard under the stairs, and mischievous pranksters Puck and Robin Goodfellow cavorted in the countryside, likely to transform at any moment into flickering lights and lead unwary travelers on a merry dance through briars, ditches, bogs, and streams. Dobie, the helpful household fairy, lent a hand around the home, while the troublesome boggart delighted in upturning dishes, snatching bread and butter, and teasing members of the household with his tricks.

This brief peek into fairyland reveals a colorful cast of denizens, wildly different in appearance and characteristics, before we have even ventured further afield than the British Isles. Fairies have appeared in various guises in cultures around the world since ancient times, from the dryads and nymphs of ancient Greece to the noble Sidhe of Ireland, and from the Australian arawotya to the zinkibaru of Africa. Traditionally, fairies have assumed a number of different roles, as guardians, guides, gatekeepers, muses, and messengers, exerting an influence over human lives that may be by turns benevolent, malevolent, or mischievous, which makes pinning them down to definitions a tricky task.

Toward a Definition

Definitions are slippery things in the fairy world. Hard and fast rules have a habit of bending, blurring, or evaporating into thin air when applied to the capricious denizens of fairyland. The harder you try to pin down a fairy, the more likely it is to wiggle out of your grasp and vanish with a mischievous poke of the tongue.

As a rule of thumb, it is generally said that fairies belong to a race of supernatural beings possessing magic powers who sometimes meddle in the affairs of humans.

C. S. Burne, in The Handbook of Folklore (1914), describes fairies as beings somewhere between gods and men, not quite human yet not quite divine. They share the Earth with humans more or less invisibly. They may be messengers for higher powers or operate independently but interact in some way with the lives of humans.

In Native American folk beliefs, every aspect of the natural world is imbued with the universal life force, which goes by many names, including manitou, orenda, and wakanda. Fairies in the form of nature spirits are found in many other cultures, too.

Under these broad definitions we find fairies of all shapes and sizes. The ant-sized abatwa of South Africa are small enough to hide behind a blade of grass, while the Cornish spriggans, generally no taller than a person’s bootlaces, can rapidly increase to the size of giants to frighten away would-be thieves who attempt to steal their treasure. The German household spirit King Goldemar is invisible, but makes his presence known by the touch of his thin, froglike hands.

Shapeshifting is a common fairy attribute, and looks can be deceptive—a wizened old hag is likely to be a beautiful princess in disguise. Swan maidens and selkies transform from human to animal form and have been known to interbreed with humans—though unions between mortals and fairies seldom run smoothly. Other fairies manifest as animals in the shape of cats, dogs, birds, or hybrid creatures, part-human, part-animal, such as mermaids, merrows, and Lamia, or in humanlike form, whether tiny or larger than life.

The denizens of fairyland are eclectic, beautiful, beguiling, and often downright bizarre. The hebu of South America has a glowing posterior and eyebrows so bushy that she must stand on her head if she wishes to look at the sky. The Matshishkapeu, or “Fart Man,” of the Innu people in Canada is the source of much amusement, but also wields great power and serves a serious function in having dominance over animal masters as well as human behavior. In the fairy world, sometimes wisdom is found in the most unlikely of places. Grave seriousness mixes with playfulness and humor.

Already we have glimpsed many fairy creatures and there is hardly a pair of wings in sight. The winged fairies of children’s picture books are a relatively new addition to the fairy world, popularized during the Victorian era. The fairies you will find here are drawn from the folk beliefs of cultures around the world.

Sources

The work of folklorist Katharine Briggs provides a rich store of reference for fairy lore of the British Isles, while Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828) brings together fairy lore from many different cultures around the world. These, along with many other sources, have provided starting points for investigation. Where possible, the oldest sources of accounts have been tracked down. Material has been drawn from anthropological texts, journals, periodicals, encyclopedias and dictionaries of mythology, collections of folklore, folk tales, superstitions, customs, and letters.

In 1881, the Cornish folklorist Robert Hunt wrote that even then:

… old-world stories were perishing like shadows in the mist before the rising sun. Many wild tales which I heard in 1829 appear to have been lost in 1835 … I drank deeply from the stream of legendary lore which was at that time flowing, as a well of living waters … and longed to renew my acquaintance with the wild tales of Cornwall which had either terrified or amused me as a child.

How many more wild tales from around the globe must have been lost as the old stories were swept away by the march of progress? And yet the fairies are still with us. With a little digging, it is possible to unearth old tales and beliefs. In some places fairies still inhabit the here and now. Elsewhere the stream of legendary lore is buried deep underground and one must dig deep to find it. Yet still it flows.

Inevitably, there is not room here to include the many thousands of denizens of fairyland, and apologies are extended to those who do not appear between these pages. However, it is hoped that the fairies here, representing many cultures around the world, will spark interest for further exploration of the fairy realm.

A Note on Spellings

As beliefs have passed down the generations through oral tradition and spread to different locations, fairy names have taken on the dialects of different places. This means there are often many spellings of the same name, none of which is “correct.” Here, effort has been made to list the most commonly used names, along with common alternative spellings.

Using This Book

The A–Z listings contain entries for hundreds and hundreds of individual fairies, alongside some of the folklorists and fairytale collectors, such as the Brothers Grimm, whose work has contributed to what we know about fairy lore today. Words in bold cross-reference related entries, allowing you to hopscotch your way through the world of fairy.

You’ll find more information on specific aspects of fairy lore in the various sections. “What are Fairies?” explores theories on the origins of fairies, from a conquered pygmy race to fallen angels.

Fairyland has always exerted an irresistible pull on humans and “Where is Fairyland?” delves into the realms of fairy. Here you will discover entrances to fairyland, but tread carefully, for the path is often beset with danger, and that glittering pile of fairy gold is likely to turn into a handful of withered leaves in the light of day. Yet those who approach fairyland with a pure heart might be rewarded with a peek behind the veil of the everyday at the curious wonders of the fairy realm.

Fairies are well known for their capricious nature. Those wishing to make their acquaintance would be wise to ensure they have a protective piece of iron in their pocket before peering through a self-bored stone or picking a fourleafed clover. “Connecting with Fairies” looks at traditions and customs concerned with seeing fairies—and how to ward off unwanted attention from pernicious or mischievous fairies. Here you will also find tales of fairy encounters, a calendar of the times of year when fairies are at their most active, and information on fairy music and art.

One of the most commonly held beliefs about fairies, still widespread today, is that they are nature spirits, identified with flowers, trees, lakes, rivers, mountains, and other features of the natural landscape. “Elementals and Flower

Fairies” traces ideas about the elements of nature, from the alchemist Paracelsus via the Theosophists to Mary Cicley Barker’s flower fairy illustrations. Here you will find a rich variety of fairies of the earth, water, fire, and air from cultures around the world, as well as flowers and trees of fairy lore.

From larger-than-life magical heroes of Celtic legend to Shakespeare’s Oberon and Titania and J. M. Barrie’s Tinkerbell, fairies have undergone many transformations through the ages. “Fairies in Literature and Legend” takes a look at the changing face of fairies in English literature, from the mouths of storytellers via the quills of poets and playwrights right up to the present, as well as flits through some of the earliest-recorded fairy tales, from The Thousand and One Nights of Arabia to those related in the fashionable French salons.

Are you ready to begin your adventure in fairyland? Pick an entry at random, follow the trail of breadcrumbs, and see where you end up. Be warned, though: many who enter the land of fairy are never quite the same afterward.

After two years immersed in the world of fairies while compiling Italian Folktales (1956), the Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote, “The world about me gradually took on the attributes of fairyland, where everything that happened was a spell or metamorphosis.”

Capricious, amusing, fearsome, and delightful, the topsy-turvy look beyond the surface, to rediscover the magical in the everyday and glimpse the extraordinary in the ordinary. Prepare to venture into the fairy realm, where nothing is ever quite as it seems …

What are Fairies?

Quite simply, the answer to this question will depend on whom you ask. It’s like the story of the lady and the vicar, viewing the moon through a telescope, who see two shapes inclined toward each other. “Methinks,” says the lady, “they are two fond lovers, meeting to pour forth their vows by earth-light.” “Not at all,” says the vicar, taking his turn at the glass, “they are the steeples of two neighboring churches.”

What is seen is often determined by who is doing the looking.

So, what are fairies? Memories of a conquered race of pygmy people? Feared and venerated spirits of ancestors? Remnants of ancient mythology? Nature spirits? Depending on whom you ask, fairies are bound up with all—or none—of these things.

A Pygmy People

Some folklorists and anthropologists, mostly nineteenth-century ones, have suggested that fairy beliefs sprang from memories of conquered races of dwarvish people who lived in caves or mounds and used flint arrows. Stories about fairies, according to this theory, were the result of a clash of cultures. In Britain, this race of small people was conquered by the ancestors of the modern British, who had iron weapons. The conquered people retreated to the hills, or were driven into remote areas such as mountains and swamps, as the larger, more powerful, better-armed race advanced. Some hold this to be why iron is still used as protection against pernicious fairies today.

John Webster, writing in the same era as Shakespeare, expressed a view that was popular at the time:

… fairies are pigmy creatures which really exist in the world, and are and may be still in islands and mountains that are inhabited, and that they are not real daemons. But that either they were truly of the human race, endowed with the use of reason and speech, or, at least, that they were some kind of little apes or satyrs, having their secret and recesses and holes in the mountains.

Jakob Grimm, best known as one half of the Grimm brothers, who famously collected fairy tales throughout Germany and Europe, theorized that once there had been a widespread dwarf population across Europe, which had given rise to many traditions associated with supernatural elves and fairies.

David MacRitchie, a Scottish folklorist and antiquarian, popularized the “pygmy theory” in his controversial book The Testimony of Tradition (1890). In Fians, Fairies and Picts (1893), he used the science of archeology, which was then just developing, to provide evidence for his theory of an ancient dwarflike people. He argued that the Fians, the people preceding the Scots, and the Picts, of Irish and Scottish history, had been skilled in medicine, magic, music, and masonry, and had lived in hidden underground earth houses, which were later known as fairy hills or fairy forts, such as the chambered mounds of Maes-Howe in the Orkneys and New Grange at Boyne in Ireland. The fires that could be glimpsed at night through the tops of their underground dwellings were the “fairy lights” that appeared in folklore across Britain as lights that led humans astray. Stories of women, men, and children taken away by the “fairies” were in fact the result of stealthy raids carried out by the defeated race as acts of retaliation against their oppressors.

This belief was found in other Celtic regions too. In Cornwall around the end of the nineteenth century, the local secretary for the Society of Antiquarians believed the original inhabitants of the area to have been “a strange and separate people” who still lived in the Cornish wilds. Once thought to be witches and wizards, they were, he believed, really the descendants of the Pictish tribes, and thus the Picts had become pixies, or “piskies,” as the Cornish called them.

Spirits of the Dead

W. Y. Evans-Wentz, an American anthropologist and folklorist of Celtic descent who went on to translate The Tibetan Book of the Dead, explored the Celtic lands of Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany at the turn of the nineteenth century, collecting fairy stories, experiences, and beliefs from the people he met. He discovered a strong connection between fairies and the dead.

In Ireland, there was a belief that fairies were the spirits of the departed, returning with wisdom, warnings, or messages. The dead of the ancient tribes of Ireland are known as the Gentry. In Wales, the Tylwyth Teg, or Fair Folk, are ancestor spirits, often envisaged as being 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) tall. In Scotland, distinction was made between the Host, or Sluagh, and the Sith (Shee). The Sluagh, “hosts” of the spirit world, are the spirits of mortals who have died. According to one account in Evans-Wentz’ The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (1911), “they fly about in great clouds, up and down the face of the earth like starlings, and come back to the scenes of their earthly transgressions. No soul of them is without the clouds of the earth, dimming the brightness of the works of God, nor can any win heaven, till satisfaction is made for the sins of the earth.” The Sith, literally “people of the hills,” were fairy beings believed to dwell in the hollow hills or fairy mounds of Scotland. They were known as the Sidh, or Daoine Sidh, in Ireland.

Fairy ancestor spirits bestowed flags, banners, and gifts on Scottish clans, such as the famous “fairy banner” of the MacDonalds, the “fairy flag” of the MacLeods of Skye, and the Luck of Edenhall, a glass beaker decorated with enamel, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is said to have been crafted by the fairies and gifted to the Musgrave family of Edenhall in what is now Cumbria. “If this cup shall break, or fall/Farewell the luck of Edenhall” goes the famous saying. As yet, the glass remains intact.

In Cornwall, the story of The Fairy Dwelling of Selena Moor explains that fairies are the spirits of the dead not good enough for heaven, not bad enough for hell. They are shapeshifters and can take the form of beasts or birds, but every time they return to their proper shape, they are a little bit smaller than they were before. Over time, their senses and emotions dull, and they live on the memories of past feelings.

It was said, too [of the Fair Folk], that those who take animal forms get smaller and smaller with every change, till they are finally lost in the earth as muryans (ants) and that they pass winter, for the most part, in underground habitations, entered from cleves or carns. And it is held that many persons who appear to have died entranced are not really dead, but changed into the fairy state.

“The Fairy Dwelling of Selena Moor” in William Bottrell, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (Vol. II, 1873)

Fallen Angels

Folk and religious beliefs, including beliefs about fairies, became intermingled with the coming of Christianity, and in Carmina Gadelica (1900), a collection of charms, incantations, prayers, poems, and songs from Gaelic-speaking regions of Scotland gathered by folklorist Alexander Carmichael (1832–1912), there is a vivid account of the belief in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland that fairies are fallen angels.

According to this, when the Angel Michael threw the Hosts of Satan out of Heaven, they were followed by an almost endless stream of angels who had been seduced by Satan’s cunning wiles. Seeing that the Shining Hosts of Heaven were rapidly diminishing, the Son cried: “Father, Father, the City is being emptied!” and God raised his hand and the gates of Heaven closed. The seduced angels stopped, bewildered, and remembered themselves. Some had already descended into Hell, and they became demons. But others were in the sky, on the mountains, in the woods, or in the sea, and they became the fairies of the air, the earth, the forests, the seas, and the rivers.

The Hidden People

In Scandinavia, there is a belief that fairies are the hidden children of Eve. The story goes that after the Fall, Adam and Eve settled down and had many children. One day when God was walking through the world He came to call on Eve and asked her to present her children to Him. Caught unawares, she had time to wash only half of them. Ashamed, she sent the unwashed ones to hide and brought out only the ones she thought presentable. But God wasn’t deceived. “Let those who were hidden from me,” He said, “be hidden from all Mankind.” And this was the beginning of the huldre, the “hidden people.”

In another version of the tale, the huldre were the offspring of Adam and his first wife, Lilith.

According to these stories, fairies were not creatures of another order, like angels, but were half human.

Diminished Gods

Some believe that fairies were once important deities, worshiped in pagan times as gods and goddesses of nature. With the coming of Christianity, these spirits were reduced, or tamed, and consequently reduced in stature from powerful beings to the status of folklore.

In Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann were once believed to be the children of the goddess Don, otherworldly beings with supernatural powers. Conquered by the invading Milesians, they took to the hollow hills and became the Daoine Sidh (pronounced Deeny Shee). They battled and mated with the warriors of the Fianna Finn and over the years dwindled in stature. Originally the same size or larger than humans, down through the generations they shrank to the size of children, or smaller.

This theory overlaps with ideas of the vanquished race, driven to live in the hills. As with all beliefs surrounding fairies, the boundaries are blurred and we are left to draw our own conclusions. Suffice to say, belief in supernatural beings, in various forms, who are neither gods, nor strictly speaking ghosts, and who can intervene in human lives is widespread across many ancient cultures and peoples, from the Far East, where they have long played a role in romances and stories, to the ancient Hindu tradition, where they inhabited Earth long before the creation of humanity, to Persia, where the peris lived in enchanted palaces and castles and fought the malevolent forces of the divs.

Nowadays it’s common to think of fairies as small or even tiny winged creatures. However, that hasn’t always been the case. In earlier times, they were often life-sized, or larger. The Irish Sidh were as tall or taller than humans. An Irish “seer,” one for whom fairies are visible, once described opalescent beings of about 14 feet (over 4 meters) in stature and shining beings of about human height, or a little taller.

From the Fates to the Fairies

The word “fairy” has been through nearly as many transformations as beliefs about the creatures themselves. It originates from the Latin root fatum, meaning “destiny” or “fate.” Fata, the plural of fatum, was the name given to the classical Greek and Roman female deities said to be present at a baby’s birth and to determine the future course of that life. These Fata, or Fates, the three daughters of the night, were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho spun the thread of each individual life. Lachesis shaped and twisted the thread. Atropos took her shears and cut the thread at the appointed time. In Spain, they were known as the Hadas, and in France as the Feés. In Albania, the Fatit rode in on butterflies three days after a birth to determine the course of the child’s life.

The belief in the Fates as guardian spirits who watch over us, especially at times of transformation such as birth and death, has endured over time and they have entered into popular fairy tales, such as the story of Cinderella, in the form of fairy godmothers.

From this root, we get the French verb faer, or féer, meaning “to enchant.” From that we get faerie, or féerie, which originally referred to a state of enchantment, but which also came to apply to the “enchanter” as well. By the seventeenth century, a whole host of names, including “fairfolks,” “farie,” “fairie,” “fairye,” “fairy,” and “faery,” seem to have been in use.

Fairy or Faery?

Today “fairy” and “faery” are most commonly used to talk about fairy creatures, and “fairyland” or “faery” or “faerie” to talk about the place where fairies live (which goes by many other names in different cultures too).

Some use “fairy” to refer to the small, winged creatures most associated with the Victorians and flower fairies, and “faery” to talk about the wider group of beings with roots that originate in ancient times and places, and reach out to include nature spirits—mermaids, hobgoblins, brownies, elves, and a whole host of related beings. There is no one “correct” use. Here, “fairy” is used to refer to the many wonderful and varied creatures that make up the diverse fairy world.

Names have always been a slippery issue when it comes to fairies. Out of deference, or fear of causing offense, humans have traditionally referred to them by other names and euphemisms, such as the little people, the good folk, the fair folk, or the good neighbors. There are many names for them in the British Isles alone. The Ad-hene Manx on the Isle of Man, meaning “Themselves,” is a name humans must get right and never take in vain. The Daoine Sidh in Ireland, the Sith in the Scottish Highlands, the piskies in Cornwall—the names go on and on.

Folklore gives us many examples of where finding out a fairy’s true name can bring power over the creature, such as in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, where a girl must guess the name of her mysterious helper to gain power over him and avoid a curse. The same is true in the Cornish and Scottish tales “Tarraway” (or “Duffy and the Devil”) and “Whuppity Stoorie.” Here you will learn the names of many hundreds of fairies.

Many attempts have been made to categorize fairies. Thomas Keightley, the author of The Fairy Mythology (1828), divided the beings into “Fays or Fairies of Romance” (human-sized beings endowed with special powers) and “Elves or Popular Fairies” (diminutive beings). Characteristically, fairies have defied categorization—and you will find them all here.

Where is Fairyland?

Invisible lands across the sea, hollow hills that raise themselves up on legs at full moon, revealing the twinkling lights of the fairy homes within, underwater palaces and castles in the sky, streams, lakes, mountains, forests, woods, trees, and flowers, under a rock or at the bottom of the garden—fairyland, like fairies themselves, comes in many different guises.

In the county of Cornwall alone, descriptions of fairyland and fairy dwellings range from the fantastical to the everyday. In “The Lost Child” in Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England (1865), a little boy who follows the sound of exquisite music into the woods describes being led by a beautiful lady into a fabulous palace with glass pillars and glistening multi-colored arches hung with crystals. In contrast, another account states that one of the favorite haunts of the fairies are simply “places frequented by goats.”

From otherworldly palaces to mundane hillsides, fairyland is elusive, remaining always just around the corner—glimpsed briefly, disappearing in the twinkling of an eye.

Celtic tradition abounds with tales of mythical enchanted isles located somewhere across the western sea, visible only briefly to mortal eyes before disappearing again into the mists. Tir Nan Og, Land of the Ever Young, is where the Tuatha de Danann are supposed to have resided since being chased from the mainland by the Milesians. In Manx folklore, it is the Isle of Emhain, Land of the Women. To the Britons, the Isle of Man was a magical land. In “The Magic Legs” in Fairy Tales of the Isle of Man (1963), Dora Broome tells of the mist-hidden island that Mannanon, Son of Lir, could make invisible at will. In Wales, sailors told tales of isles of enchanted green meadows off the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

The land of Avalon is one of the most famous of the fairy lands across the sea. This is where some believe King Arthur lies sleeping, awaiting the hour when he will return to rule again.

In Old Norse mythology, there are Nine Worlds which are home to the various types of beings, including humans, elves, gods, and goddesses, that make up the Old Norse worldview. These worlds are held in the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Alfheim is the world of the elves. Asgard is the world of the Aesir tribe of gods and goddesses, located in the sky, invisible to human eyes but linked to the human realm by the rainbow bridge Bifrost. Midgard is the name given to the human world.

“Gard” is derived from the old Germanic idea of innangard and utangard. Literally meaning “inside the fence” and “outside the fence,” the terms applied to the physical or geographical location of a place as well as the mindset of its inhabitants. The human world’s name of Midgard, or “Middle Enclosure,” implied that humankind sat somewhere between the ordered, innangard world of the gods of Asgard, and the chaotic, utangard world of the giants of Jotunheim.

In-between Places

Just as fairies are often connected with thresholds and transitions in human lives, such as birth and death, so too fairy worlds are located at thresholds and borders. Woods and forests that mark the separation of a town or village from the wilderness of nature, seashores and mountaintops at the point between sea and land, land and sky—all of these are in-between places where fairies dwell. Domestic fairies traditionally make the hearth their home, which sits at the point of intersection between the cosy world inside the household and what lurks outside. Twilight, midnight, Samhain (Halloween), the times favored by fairies, are all in-between times, on the cusp of night and day, light and dark, summer and winter.

The Passage of Time in Fairyland

In many accounts of visits to fairyland, time operates differently there from in the human world. In some accounts, it takes on a dreamlike quality, expanding so that a year spent with the fairies is a mere few minutes in the mortal world. One such story is that of the Welsh boy who entered a fairy ring to dance and was transported to a glittering palace in a beautiful garden, in the middle of which was a well in which fish of gold and silver swam. His fairy hosts told him he could live in their realm as long as liked, providing he kept to one rule: he must never drink from the well. After a time, the desire to drink from the well grew until it became so strong, the boy could no longer resist and he cupped his hands and drank. Immediately, a cry shook the garden and he found himself standing back on the chilly hillside among his father’s sheep. Though it had seemed to him that weeks had gone by, hardly an hour of human time had passed.

More common are the tales of time passing so swiftly in fairyland that a person who thinks they have been away for only three days returns to find that 300 years have passed in the mortal realm. In the Japanese story of Urashima Tar, a fisherman who rescued a turtle was rewarded with a visit to the underwater realm of the dragon god, Ryu¯jin. He was a guest at his palace, Ryu¯gu¯-j¯o, but after three days, he asked to return to his village on land to visit his ageing mother. He arrived there only to discover that 300 years had passed. Then he opened a tamatebako, a special box, a gift from the underwater realm, which he had promised to keep shut, and released a cloud of white smoke. Instantly, his back bent, his beard grew long and gray, and old age and death fell upon him.

Adventures in Fairyland

The theme of old age and death coming to those who return from the fairy realm to the mortal one is common. The legends of Oisin and Bran are examples of two heroes who lived to tell the tale of their visits to fairyland. One was strong enough to survive the return to the human realm; the other had a lucky escape back to fairyland.

Oisin and Tir Nan Og

In Irish folklore, the story of Oisin is a famous example of how mere days or months in the fairy realm can add up to years in the human world.

Oisin was the son of Fionn mac Cumhaill and a fairy woman of the Sidhe. With fairy blood in him, it was no surprise that he was a great singer, poet, and warrior, and he lived through many great battles. The fairy princess Niamh of the Golden Locks invited him to go with her to Tir Nan Og, the mythical Land of the Ever Young that lay across the sea to the west of Ireland. There they lived happily together for what seemed to him a few months.

Oisin wished to see his father and his people, the Fianna Finn, to tell them that all was well with him. Niamh was reluctant to let him leave, but in the end gave him a white horse to ride back across the sea. She told him not to touch the earth of Ireland, for if he did, he would not be able to return to Tir Nan Og. He promised and rode away across the waves.

When Oisin arrived back in Ireland, however, he found everything changed. The hills seemed small, the forests and woodlands had shrunk, and the great fort of Tara was reduced to nothing more than a hill. There wasn’t even a single voice or face anywhere that he recognized.

In despair, Oisin turned his horse to return to Tir Nan Og, but came across a group of men, who seemed to belong to a smaller, less mighty race than the Fianna Finn. They were struggling to move a stone. Even though they tried with all their might, they could not shift it. Feeling compassion for their weakness and courage, Oisin stopped to help them. Remembering his promise, he didn’t dismount from his white charger, but bent down and lifted the stone with one hand. The men regarded the shining golden warrior with amazement. But at that moment, the saddle slipped and he fell to the ground. The white horse thundered away to the sea. Where the great warrior had fallen, there lay an old man, the weight of hundreds of years heavy upon him.

Unlike many returning from the fairy realm, Oisin did not crumble to dust on mortal soil, however, but lived on and told the new Irish race about the heroic days of the Fianna Finn.

Bran and the Land of Women

The passage of time works in a similar way in Emhain, the Land of Women. It is related in the story of Bran mac Febail, as told by Lady Gregory in Gods and Fighting Men (1904).

One day the Irish king Bran mac Febail heard the sweetest music. It lulled him to sleep and when he awoke he held in his hand a silver branch covered in white blossom. He brought it to the royal house, where a woman appeared in strange clothes and began to sing:

I bring a branch of the apple-tree from Emhain, from the far island around which are the shining horses of the Son of Lir.

A delight of the eyes is the plain where the hosts hold their games; curragh racing against chariot in the White Silver Plain to the south.

She went on to describe a shining, many-colored land of blossoms, birds, and sweet music, without grief, sorrow, sickness, or death. When she had finished her song, the silver branch leaped from Bran’s hands into hers and she vanished.

Next morning Bran set out with a fleet of curragh boats to row across to the sea to find the Isle of Emhain.

After two days and two nights, he and his men encountered Mannanon, Son of Lir, in his golden chariot. He told Bran he would reach the Land of Women before sunset.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long afterward that they reached the Isle of Emhain, where the chief woman welcomed them and pulled them ashore with a ball of thread. They went to a grand house where there was a bed for every couple and food and drink without end. There Bran and his men lived happily for what seemed to them a year.

Despite the beauty and delights of the Isle of Emhain, one of the company, Nechtan, grew homesick for Ireland and begged to return, just for an hour. The chief woman was loath to let them go and told Bran they must not touch the soil of Ireland and must talk to only their company on the boat. Bran promised, saying he would stay only a short while and return quickly.

They rowed away to Ireland, where the people gathered on the shore asked who they were. Bran asked if they had heard of Bran of Febal, but they replied that no such man was alive now, although their old stories told of a man who had rowed away to the Land of Women many hundreds of years before. On hearing that, Nechtan leaped from the curragh and waded to shore. As soon as his foot touched the soil, he turned to a heap of ash, as if he had been in the earth for hundreds of years.

Cautioned by his fate, the other men stayed aboard the curraghs. Bran rested long enough to tell of his voyage, then turned his fleet around and rowed back to the joys of the Isle of Emhain.

Oissin and Bran were lucky to escape the fate of death on returning to the human world. Like Nechtan, many who return from fairyland crumble to dust on touching human soil. This raises comparisons between fairyland and the Underworld, or the land of the dead.

Fairyland, the Underworld, Glamor, and Taboos

As in many stories of the Underworld, often there are taboos placed on eating and drinking in fairyland, and visitors would be wise to refuse any food or drink offered to them, no matter how appealing it appears. Fairies are known for using their glamor, or magic, to conceal the real nature of things.

The Legend of Innis Sark

Lady Wilde’s Legend of Innis Sark (1887) provides a cautionary tale against consuming fairy food and a lesson that all may not be as it seems in fairyland.

One November Eve (soon after Halloween), exhausted after a hard day’s work, a young man fell asleep under a haystack. He awoke to find himself in a fairy kitchen where, to his horror, he saw an old hag being chopped up and boiled to serve to the dinner guests.

The next thing he knew, he was being seated at a banquet table and a prince sitting on a throne at the head of the table was inviting him to eat. He looked around at the beautiful ladies and noblemen seated at the table, and then at the banquet. Fruit, chicken, turkey, butter, freshly baked cakes, and glasses of bright red wine filled the table.

Again, the prince invited the young man to eat. But, the scene from the kitchen still fresh in his mind, he declined. The prince persisted, insisting the young man taste the wine. Unable to resist the bright red liquid winking in a crystal cup offered to him by one of the beautiful ladies, the lad gave in and drank it down in one gulp. No sooner had he set down the empty glass than a clap of thunder shook the table, the lights went out, and he found himself alone in the dark night lying beneath the haystack.

Cherry of Zennor

In another tale, it is not food and drink but a special ointment that is taboo. This is a Cornish tale, “Cherry of Zennor,” collected by Robert Hunt in Popular Romances of the West of England (1865).

A few generations ago there lived a man known as Old Honey, such was the sweetness of his nature. He had a wife and several children and together they lived in a humble two-room cottage set on the cliffs at in the far west of Cornwall in a place called Trereen. Despite a simple diet of winkles and whelks and potatoes, they were a healthy, handsome family, and none more so than one of their daughters, Cherry.

When the miller’s boy visited to collect corn for the mill and left his horse tied to a furze bush, Cherry would climb onto its back and gallop off across the rugged cliffs and up onto the rough, rocky cairns that rose behind the little village.

Inevitably, this lively young lady soon became frustrated with the simplicity of her daily life and longed for a pretty frock to wear to the fair, or the church, or even to the preachings at the nearby villages of Morva or Nancledry. When one of her friends did just this and boasted of all the young beaus who had walked her home, she decided that she must leave home and look for work in the “low countries,” as the adjacent parishes were known. Her mother wanted her to go no further than Towednack, so she might still see her occasionally. But Cherry said, “No! I’ll never go where the cow ate the bell rope, and where they eat only fish and tatties and conger pie on Sundays.”

Old Honey saw that his daughter was determined and so one bright spring morning, Cherry put a few things in a bundle, waved goodbye to her family, and set off over the moors, heading south in the direction of Gulval and Ludgvan.

The path was steep and hard, and by the time she came to the crossroads at Lady Downs, she had to sit down to rest on a hard granite rock. She was tired and hungry and thirsty and began to regret her hasty decision. She hadn’t met a single soul on her journey, but now, quite suddenly, a gentleman appeared before her.

“Good morning,” he said. “Could you direct me to Towednack?”

Cherry pointed to the east and explained that she had left home to look for service, but was now resolved to return to Zennor.

“What great fortune smiles upon us both,” said the gentleman, “for I am looking for a good, clean girl to keep house for me, and here you are!”

He explained that his wife had died and he needed someone to look after his little boy, milk the cow, and tend to some light housework. He seemed a very kind gentleman and Cherry agreed to go with him.

They walked down from the moors and before long Cherry found herself in beautiful, gentle countryside such as she had never known before. Soft green trees shaded the lanes and pretty flowers carpeted the verges. The scent of honeysuckle and sweetbriar filled the air and ripe red apples hung from the trees.

Soon they came to a crystal-clear stream of water. Uncertain as to its depth, Cherry paused, not knowing how to cross. The gentleman lifted her and carefully carried her to the other side.

The lane became ever darker and narrower, almost like a tunnel through the trees, and they seemed to be going rapidly downhill, but Cherry felt safe in the company of this kindly man.

They came to a gate and when the master opened it, Cherry thought she must have entered into heaven. The garden was filled with flowers, fruit hung from the trees, the air was alive with birdsong, and a bright light shone everywhere, although the sun itself could not be seen. Cherry was reminded of the fairylands of which her granny had spoken, but here was the gentleman standing tall beside her and at that moment a little boy came running down the path crying, “Papa, Papa!” so, surely, these could not be fairies.

Before Cherry could greet the child, whose eyes were bright and direct, a bent and bony old woman appeared and took the boy back into the house. As she did so, the old hag stopped in the doorway and gave Cherry such a look that it felt as though a dagger was piercing her heart. However, when they entered the house, the old woman, who was called Aunt Prudence, laid the table with good food and drink, and Cherry soon recovered her good spirits.

Next, Aunt Prudence gave Cherry her instructions. She was to sleep in a bedchamber at the top of the house, where the child would also sleep. She was never to open her eyes at night, nor to speak to the boy. At daybreak, she was to take him to the spring in the garden to wash him and anoint his eyes with a special ointment that she would find in a crystal box beside the water. She was never to touch her own eyes with the ointment. After dealing with the child, she was to call the cow to get some milk for breakfast.

The next morning Cherry did all these things, then Aunt Prudence gave her a good breakfast and explained her household duties. Most of these were scrubbing and washing dishes and utensils and churning the butter and scalding the milk. She was warned not to wander about the house.

The following day, the gentleman asked Cherry to help him in the beautiful garden, picking apples and pears and weeding the leeks and onions. She enjoyed the work and the master gave her a kiss to show his appreciation of her diligence.

The days passed happily in this way and Cherry was quite content. Then, one day, Aunt Prudence took her into the rest of the house, which seemed dark and forbidding. She was told to remove her shoes and enter a room that had a floor as smooth as glass. All around it were stone statues of figures large and small, some distorted or limbless but all disturbingly lifelike despite their stony appearance. Cherry was frightened, but when Aunt Prudence insisted that she polish a wooden box as hard as she could, she did as she was told.

Suddenly, there came a terrible groaning from the box and poor Cherry fainted to the floor.

The master heard the noise and came angrily into the room. He gently carried Cherry down to the kitchen, where she soon revived. Aunt Prudence was dismissed from the house for taking Cherry into forbidden corners of the building.

Cherry recovered her vitality and curiosity and continued to live happily with the little boy and her master.

A year drifted by, but despite her contentment, Cherry could not help wondering about the boy, who she often thought saw more than she did with his bright, strange eyes, and even about her master, who sometimes disappeared for days on end or vanished into the depths of the house where Cherry was afraid to go.

One day, she could not resist touching some of the special ointment to her own eyes. Immediately, she felt a terrible burning sensation and splashed water from the spring to cool her eyes. As she did so, she was astonished to see hundreds of little people all dancing and playing in the pool. Among them was her gentleman, as tiny as the rest, dancing with the ladies. Cherry looked around the garden and everything was sparkling and bright, with tiny fairies and elves cavorting among the flowers and bushes and trees. She spent the rest of the day gazing at them in a trance of delight.

At dusk, her master rode up, restored to his normal self. He went to the enchanted room where Aunt Prudence had taken Cherry, and Cherry heard the sound of beautiful music floating on the soft night air.

Days passed and the master spent more nights in the private room. One night, Cherry’s curiosity overcame her fears and she crept to the door of the magic room and peered through the keyhole. What a sight met her eyes! The master was singing with many ladies in attendance; one in particular was dressed like a queen and playing on the wooden box that Cherry had polished. Cherry was filled with jealousy when she saw her master kissing this beautiful lady.

The next day the master stayed at home and asked Cherry to help him pick fruit in the orchard. After a time he bent to kiss her, but she drew back and slapped him, saying, “Keep your kisses for the fairy people!”

Realizing that she must have used the magic ointment, sadly the master told Cherry that she would have to go. That same night he called her and gave her a bundle of good clothes as payment for her services, and with a lantern to light the way, they set off into the lanes by which they had come so long ago. But now they were steep and dark and narrow and they only came onto the Lady Downs as the gray light of dawn slowly drove away the darkness.

The gentleman kissed Cherry goodbye and said he was sorry to leave her, but she had broken her word and he could no longer keep her in his service.

The sun rose over the moors and Cherry made her way back to Old Honey and her family. When they first saw her, they thought she must be a ghost, as they feared she had died. To begin with, they weren’t convinced by her story, but as time went by and she didn’t change a single word of it, they all came to believe her.

But Cherry longed for the life she had left behind, and on moonlit nights they say that you still may see the lonely figure of Cherry Honey wandering the Lady Downs in search of her long-lost fairy master.

Fairy Treasure

Humans have long been drawn to fairyland by tales of treasure and untold riches. But where fairy treasure is concerned, it is wise to tread carefully, for the path is often beset with glamor, curses, and taboos.

“The Old Wandering Droll-Teller of the Lizard, and his Story of the Mermaid and the Man of Cury,” collected by William Bottrell in Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1870), is a reminder of the old adage that all that glitters is not gold—especially when it is fairy gold.

In the story, a mermaid attempts to entice a mortal man, Lutey, into her underwater kingdom with promises of glittering treasures. Her description of the merpeople’s grottoes mixes the wondrous with the macabre, and reveals the fate that lies in store for many who are tempted to enter the fairy realm in search of riches:

“In our cool caverns we have everything one needs,” said she, “and much more. The walls of our abodes are encrusted with coral and amber, entwined with sea-flowers of every hue, and their floors are all strewn with pearls. The roof sparkles of diamonds, and other gems of such brightness that their rays make our deep grots in the ocean hillsides as light as day.”

Then, embracing Lutey with both her arms round his neck, she continued, “Come with me, love, and see the beauty of the mermaid’s dwellings. Yet the ornaments, with which we take the most delight to embellish our halls and chambers, are the noble sons and fair daughters of earth, whom the wind and waves send in foundered ships to our abodes. Come, I will show you thousands of handsome bodies so embalmed, in a way only known to ourselves, with choice salts and rare spices, that they look more beautiful than when they breathed, as you will say when you see them reposing on beds of amber, coral, and pearl, decked with rich stuffs, and surrounded by heaps of silver and gold for which they ventured to traverse our domain. Aye, and when you see their limbs all adorned with glistening gems, move gracefully to and fro with the motion of the waves, you will think they still live.”

In some cases, it is possible for the pure of heart to elude death and reap the reward of fairy treasure, providing specific conditions are met. In The Science of Fairy Tales (1891) Edwin Sydney Hartland describes the fairy island of Rügen in Germany, where long ago a king amassed piles of gold and jewels in the chambers beneath his castle. It is said that he still keeps watch over his treasure and occasionally he is seen wearing a golden crown and riding a gray horse around the lake, or glimpsed in the forest at night, wearing a black fur cap and carrying a white staff. At other times, he appears in the form of a black dog. The only way to get past his enchantment and win the fairy treasure is for a pure virgin on St. John’s Eve between 12 and 1 o’clock to:

… venture naked and alone, to climb the castle wall and wander backward to and fro amid the ruin, until she light upon the spot where the stairway to the tower leads down into the treasure chamber. Slipping down, she will then be able to take as much gold and jewels as she can carry, and what she cannot carry herself the old king will bring after her, so that she will be rich for the rest of her life. But she must return by sunrise, and she must not once look behind her, nor speak a single word, else not only will she fail, but she will perish miserably.

According to one tale, a princess whose chastity had been brought into question ventured to claim the treasure and prove her virginity. When she entered the vault the king bestowed the treasure upon her and sent servants after her laden with more riches. All went well until she turned to see if the servants were following behind her. At that point the king transformed into a black dog that leaped at her with a fiery throat and glowing eyes. The door slammed shut and she fell into the vault, where she has remained for 400 years. She awaits a pure youth who must find his way to her on St. John’s night, bow to her three times, and silently kiss her. The enchantment that keeps her there thus broken, he may then take her hand and lead her forth to be his bride—and they will inherit untold riches.

In Hungary, too, there are tales of buried fairy treasures that can be obtained only under a specific set of circumstances. It is said that although the Hungarian fairies have disappeared from the surface of the Earth, they continue to live in caves under their castles, where their treasures lie hidden. According to The Folk Tales of the Maygars (1886), these subterranean habitations are:

… no less splendid and glittering than were their castles of yore on the mountain peaks. The one at Firtos is a palace resting on solid gold columns. The palace of Tartod, and the gorgeous one of Dame Rapson are lighted by three diamond balls, as big as human heads, which hang from golden chains. The treasure which is heaped up in the latter place consists of immense gold bars, golden lions with carbuncle eyes, a golden hen with her brood, and golden casks filled with gold coin. The treasures of Fairy Helen are kept in a cellar under Kovaszna Castle, where the gates of the cellar are guarded by a magic cockerel. This bird only goes to sleep once in seven years, and anybody who could guess the right moment would be able to scrape no end of diamond crystals from the walls and bring them out with him. The fairies who guard the treasures of the Poganyvar (Pagan Castle) in Marosszek even nowadays come on moonlight nights to bathe in the lake below.

In Brittany, at the Castle of Morlaix, there is no need to slip past a sleeping magic cockerel or wait until the guards are bathing beneath the moon. Thomas Keightley, in The Fairy Mythology (1828), states that:

… a number of little men, not more than a foot high, dwell under the castle of Morlaix. They live in holes in the ground, whither they may often be seen going, and beating on basins. They possess great treasures, which they sometimes bring out; and if any one pass by at the time, allow him to take one handful, but no more. Should any one attempt to fill his pockets, the money vanishes, and he is instantly assailed by a shower of boxes on the ear from invisible hands.

As is often the case with fairies, the modest, pure, and well-intentioned are rewarded, while the greedy are punished.

Entrances to Fairyland

In spite of—or maybe sometimes because of—the dangers, glamor, and taboos, fairyland has always exerted an irresistible pull on humans. While careless trespassers may face retribution from disgruntled fairies, those who approach and observe fairyland with respect may be rewarded with a glimpse beyond the veneer of the everyday world and into the curious wonders of the fairy realm.

Fairy Hills

In Celtic lore in particular, tales of fairy hills abound. Fairies are said to dwell beneath or within the mounds and hills in the countryside of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Circular ring forts, known as raths, are a favorite haunt of the Irish little people. In Scotland, the people of peace make their homes beneath hills or knolls called knowes. The Irish name for fairies is Daoine Sidh. Daoine means “folk” or “people,” and sidh means “hill” or “mound,” so Daoine Sidh is literally “people of the mounds.” This is often shortened simply to sidh.

There are many tales in which people have accidentally stumbled upon these fairy mounds and into the realm of fairy. It is said that walking nine times around the hill at full moon will reveal the secret entrance to the fairies’ abode.

In the British tale “Childe Rowland,” the eponymous hero enters Elfland via a hill to rescue his sister, Burd Ellen, from the Elf King’s Dark Tower. He circles a terraced green mound three times “widdershins”—in the opposite direction to the sun—saying, “Open, door! Open, door! And let me come in.” This grants him entrance to fairyland.

In Scandinavia, there are tales of fairy mounds being raised up on red pillars, so that the occupants can feast with their neighbors. In one Danish account, a lad named Hans saw three hills raised on pillars, with much merriment and dancing going on beneath. In Scotland, Robert Kirk recorded a similar belief about Scottish fairy mounds. According to Kirk, every quarter-year, with the changing of the season, the inhabitants of the Scottish hills moved from one place to the next. It was considered dangerous to walk about at night at these times, for the entrances to fairyland were open and the little people were abroad. The “fairy paths,” the well-trodden routes running in straight lines between fairy hills, were especially to be avoided at these times.

In America, the Sioux believe that dangerous spirits reside in a mound near the mouth of the Whitestone river, named the Mountain of Little People or Little Spirits. Humans are wary of visiting this hill, for the little people are said to be armed with sharp arrows, which they are skilled in using to defend their abode from human incursions—a reminder that human visitors are not always welcome to enter fairyland, and any attempts to do should be made with caution.

Fairy Rings

Circles of grass known as “fairy rings” mark the fields and meadows where fairies dance and cavort during their moonlit revels. In some places, these appear as bright, lush patches of grass, in others as bare circles of earth. Sometimes circles of mushrooms, known as Marasmius oreades, sprout from fairy rings, some of which are believed to be hundreds of years old. In Orkney, one such ring appears as a patch of bright green on bare moorland, which mushrooms sprout from at certain times of year.

Many are the tales of individuals who have stepped into a fairy ring, lured by the sound of pipes, harps, or fiddles and the irrepressible urge to kick up their heels and dance. Once inside the ring, one is swept up into the wild dance of the fairies, unable or unwilling to leave. Time takes on a different dimension and when a mortal stumbles out into the human world after what seems a single night of dancing, it is not unusual to find that many years have passed.

A Welsh tale collected in Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828) relates the dangers of stepping into the fairy ring to dance:

Rhys and his friend Llewellyn were farm laborers who worked in the mountains. One day they were returning to the farmhouse with their ponies when Rhys stopped and asked Llewellyn if he could hear music. Llewellyn could not, but Rhys insisted that he could and was eager to stay. He urged his friend to take his pony back to the farm so that he might linger a while and listen.

Llewellyn put the ponies in their stable, ate his supper, and went to bed. The next morning Rhys had not returned and Llewellyn informed their master of what had happened.

A search of the countryside ensued but to no avail: Rhys had vanished.

Suspicions grew that Llewellyn was responsible for his friend’s disappearance and he was put in jail, though there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.

An old farmer, well versed in matters of the fairy world, suspected he knew what had happened and asked whether Llewellyn and several others could accompany him to the spot where Rhys had vanished.

On arrival, they saw a circle of grass and Llewellyn heard sweet music. The old farmer asked the group to place one foot on the edge of the fairy ring and be sure to keep the other outside the circle.

As they did so, the music grew louder and, to their astonishment, they saw dozens of little people, the size of three or four-year-old children, dancing round and round. Rhys was among them. Llewellyn grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the circle. He pleaded to be allowed to finish the dance, convinced he had only been there five minutes. His friends managed to pull him back to the farm, but he took to his bed in a state of melancholy at leaving the revels and a couple of days later he faded away.

Barrows and Megaliths

Ancient standing stones, barrows, and cairns the world over have fairy portal associations. In Brittany, near Carnac, Ti Goriquet (House of the Gories) is composed of more than 4,000 large standing stones. According to local folklore, the ancient monument is the work of the crions or gories—little men between 2 and 3 feet (nearly a meter) high, who, despite their small stature, possess the strength of giants. Every night they are said to dance around the stones. Any traveler within their reach is forced to join in the dance, where he is whirled about until, breathless and exhausted, he falls down, amidst peals of laughter from the little people. In this instance, the visitor is offered only a brief glimpse of fairyland, for the fairies vanish with the break of day.

In India, some megalithic remains are also believed to be gateways to the realm of the little people. According to some accounts, certain stone cairns and tombs in southern India are believed to be the work of a race of bearded dwarves known as the Pandayar, who, like their European cousins, could move and handle the huge stones easily. It is said that the Pandayar built the monuments for the purpose of hiding their treasure and placed spells upon them to guard against marauders.

Fairy Rocks

In America, the Iroquois people summon spirits by knocking on a special stone. In Somerset, England, a fairy rock touched with the correct number of primroses opens the way to fairyland, but the incorrect number of flowers angers the fairies.

In the Scottish Borders, Habetrot, a spinning fairy, lived beneath a “self-bored” stone—a stone with a naturally formed hole through the middle. At sunset, she allowed visitors to enter via a hidden door in the side of the stone.

Caves

From the cavernous entrance to the Underworld of Greek and Roman mythology to humble holes in the cliff, caves repeatedly appear in folk tales as portals leading to other worlds and fairy realms.

In the classical tale of Psyche and Cupid, Psyche must enter the Underworld and bring back a box containing the beauty of the goddess Proserpine in order to win back her lover, Cupid. It is through a cave that she gains entrance to the Underworld to carry out her task.

In England, the legendary King Herla entered the fairy realm via a cave in a high cliff that led to a dwarf’s splendid palace. Returning to the mortal world, he discovered that hundreds of years had passed. According to a taboo placed upon them by the dwarf, he and his men were prevented from dismounting from their steeds and went on to roam the land as the wild hunt.

A down-to-earth account in William Bottrell’s Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1873) tells of a Cornish cliff cave as an entrance to fairyland:

A few days since, a woman of Mousehal told me that not long ago troops of small people, not more than a foot and a half high, used – on moonlit nights – to come out of a hole in the cliff opening onto the beach, Newlyn side of the village, and but a short distance from it. The little people were always dressed very smart; and if anyone came near them they would scamper away into to the hole. Mothers often told their children that if they went under the cliff by night, the small people would carry them away into ‘Dicky Danjy’s holt.’

Wells

In folk beliefs from around the world, wells and springs traditionally represent an entranceway to the spirit world. People from many different cultures have gone to such places to petition gods, spirits, or fairies, perform divination rituals, and make offerings. The idea of a “wishing well,” where a wish is granted in exchange for the offering of a coin, has roots that stretch back to ancient times.

Trees growing near a well or spring are often believed to possess special healing properties. “Cloutie trees” are still found in the British Isles today. Clouties—pieces of cloth—are tied to the tree to bring luck or good health. Traditionally, a piece of clothing was torn from the afflicted area of the body, for example to cure a bad back a piece of cloth was ripped from the back of a shirt or a dress. As the rag disintegrated, health was restored.

Wells that were once shrines to water fairies and water spirits have now often been rededicated to Christian saints, continuing the tradition of wells as portals to the spirit world.

Trespassers in Fairyland

Entranceways to fairyland tend to be rooted in the natural world—and sometimes humans have, unwittingly or otherwise, meddled with the territory of the little people. In such cases, the fairies have usually been quick to make their displeasure known and to demand that trespassers rectify their transgressions or face a punishment.

In Ireland, houses built blocking fairy thoroughfares have been subjected to fairy disturbances. In some cases, it is said that fairies have levitated buildings that blocked their path and moved them to a new position. So dwellings are now often built with the front and back doors opposite one another, and the doors are left open to facilitate the easy passage of fairy traffic. In recent years, a bypass was re-routed to avoid a thorn bush said to be frequented by fairies.

In Iceland, a member of parliament saved a 24-ton boulder from being buried during work on the national highway. Believing it to be home to three generations of elves, he had it and its inhabitants shipped to his own home, where it would be out of harm’s way.

The message here is for humans to be mindful of the impact of their interactions with the environment and to approach the fairy world with respect.

Fairy Places to Visit

In Welsh tradition, fairyland was once located in the Vale of Neath, in Glamorganshire. A certain steep and rugged crag there, Craig y Ddinas, bears a distinctly awful reputation as a stronghold of the fairy tribe. Its caves and crevices are said to have been their favorite haunt for many centuries, and some believe the last fairy court in Wales was held upon this rock before the Welsh fairies vanished.

Other fairy places include:

Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, where King Sil is said to be buried, wearing his golden armor and sitting astride his steed.

Bryn Yr Ellyllon, “Hill of the Goblins,” near Mold in Clyd Flint, Wales, where an apparition clad in golden armor is said to haunt the hillside. An archeological dig here in the 1800s unearthed a skeleton and gold corselet.

The Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire. The Oxfordshire fairies were last said to be seen here before they vanished.

Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, where St. Collen saw through the fairy glamor of Gwyn ap Nudd’s fairy palace.

Maes-Howe in the Orkneys and New Grange at Boyne, chambered mounds once home to Fians and Picts and later known as fairy mounds or forts.

Tomnahurich Hill, a round, tree-covered hill on the outskirts of Inverness, in Scotland, has long been famed as a haunt of the fairies. In Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland (1823), Grant Stewart recounts the tale of two fiddlers enticed into the fairy hill.

Two traveling fiddlers came to Inverness one Christmas seeking work. A strangely dressed old wizened gentleman requested that they perform at a gathering that evening and offered them handsome pay. They set out in high spirits, but when they arrived at their destination it appeared more like a rough tower than a fine castle. However, their host reassured them and persuaded them to enter.

Once inside, all misgivings vanished, for never had they seen a more sumptuously furnished hall or a more elegant assembly of guests. They played all night, never growing tired and performing a succession of jigs and reels for the eager dancers.

When morning came, they only wished the night had lasted longer, such was the revelry that they had enjoyed. Their host paid them well, thanked them, and bid them farewell.

But when the fiddlers left the great hall, outside everything was changed. To their consternation, they found that the great tower they had exited was no more than a low hill. When they made their way into Inverness, there were buildings where once there had been trees and fields, and the inhabitants of the town, dressed in strange, fantastical clothes, poked fun at their old-fashioned rags.

A crowd gathered around the musicians and an old man hobbled up and questioned them.

“I know who you are,” he declared, “you are the two men who lodged with my great-grandfather and who, it was supposed, were decoyed by Thomas the Rhymer to Tomnahurich Hill. Sore did your friends lament your loss, but a hundred years have passed since then, and your very names are forgot.”

The fiddlers believed the old man’s story and were glad to have come out from the fairy hill alive. The church bells began to ring and they went to church to give thanks for their safe return. However, when the minister uttered the first word of scripture, they crumbled to dust.

Some say that Thomas the Rhymer (see here), the mortal musician whisked away by the Queen of Elfland, still lives, or sleeps, beneath Tomnahurich Hill.

Rusalka Lake in the Czech countryside, near the town of Pribram, was the inspiration for the composer Dvorak’s opera Rusalka. Based on folk beliefs about the water sprite Rusalka, it tells the story of her unhappy love affair with a mortal man. The composer’s house, Vysoka mansion, is nearby, and is now a museum.

Yoro waterfall, located on the slopes of the Tagi mountain in Mino province, Japan, is known as a magical Fountain of Youth. According to Japanese legend, a woodcutter discovered the waterfall’s youth-giving properties.

The woodcutter lived with his elderly father the mountains. One cold winter’s day he was out looking for wood when he came across a golden waterfall. He drank from it and was surprised to discover that it was not water, but sake (rice wine). He filled his gourd and took it back to his elderly father, who drank it with delight and immediately felt many years younger.

News of the magical waterfall reached the Empress, and she journeyed to Mino to drink from it. She named it Yoro—water of life, or regeneration.

Other fairy places include the forest of Paimpont in France, which is all that remains of an ancient woodland thought to have once covered much of inland Brittany. Legend has it that it is home to Brocéliande, Forest of King Arthur, the Fountain of Youth, and the Val sans Retour (Valley of No Return), where Morgan le Fay enchanted her victims.

Transylvania is usually associated with vampires; however, in Hungarian folk belief it was inhabited by fairies. Transylvania, now part of Romania, and Csallóköz, now part of Slovakia, were traditionally identified as the Hungarian fairyland. Almas cave near Baraolt in central Romania is reputed to be a fairy haunt. The cold wind known as the Nemere is said to blow when the fairy in the cave feels cold. In one tale, when plague was raging in the neighborhood, the people ascribed it to the cold blast emanating from the cave, so they hung shirts before the cave mouth and it is said the plague ceased. Some say this is also the cave from which the children led away by the Pied Piper of Hamelin re-emerged.

The fairy mountain Ngongotaha stands on the North Island of New Zealand, overlooking the big blue lake of Rotorua. The peak is known as Te Tuahu a te Atua (the Altar of the God) and was said to be one of the principal homes of the patupaiarehe, the fairy people of New Zealand. The tribe that lived on Mount Ngongotaha were known as the Ngati-Rua, their chiefs were named Tuehu, Te Rangitamai, Tongakohu, and Rotokohu.

It is said that the Maori ancestor Ihenga became thirsty while exploring the mountain and a patupaiarehe woman offered him a drink from a calabash, which he accepted. However, when the fairy people began to crowd around him, curious at seeing a mortal, he became scared that they might attempt to capture him. Smearing himself with kokowai, a mixture of shark oil and red ochre, the stench of which offended the patupaiarehe, he repelled the inquisitive creatures and ran away down the mountain. Later, he went on to be on friendly terms with the patupaiarehe and named the mountain Ngongotaha, meaning “drink from a calabash.”

The Majlis al Jinn in Oman, “Meeting Room of the Spirits” or “Gathering Place of the Djinn,” is the second-largest cave chamber in the world. The colossal chamber is large enough to house over a dozen Boeing 747s or a 50-story skyscraper. Its name comes from the belief on the Arabian peninsula that djinn inhabit caves.

Trollkyrka (Troll’s Church) in Sweden is located in the heart of Tivden National Park. A trek up the trail to the “tower” of the church reveals a rocky outcrop where pagan fairy rituals took place in years gone by. A poem by folklorist Carshult describes the procession up into the troll hills, where a secret password was uttered, a fire was lit, and spirits summoned.

Abatwa

This race of tiny fairies from South Africa dwells with the ants. Small enough to ride an ant or hide behind a blade of grass, in all respects other than size, the abatwa resemble humans from the Zulu tribe. They are shy, elusive creatures, only occasionally seen by humans, most often wizards, children, or pregnant women. It’s believed that if a woman spies an abatwa in the seventh month of pregnancy she is sure to give birth to a boy.

Abbey Lubber

From the fifteenth century onwards, many British abbeys and monasteries gained a reputation for luxury and wantonness. Folk satires were spread about them, including stories of the abbey lubbers, mischievous spirits who tempted the monks and nuns into drunkenness, gluttony, and lasciviousness. They were most often to be found in the abbey wine cellar.

Absinthe

See Green Fairy, the.

Acalica

These Bolivian weather fairies have powers over the sun, wind, and rain. They live underground in caves and are rarely seen by humans. When they do appear, it is often as wizened old men.

Ad-hene

Manx name for the fairies, meaning “Themselves”—a name humans must get right and never take in vain.

Adlet

This mythical race is found in legends from Greenland and from Inuit tales of Labrador and northern Canada relating the union of a girl with a dog, from which the resulting ten offspring are five dogs and five Adlet, a creature half-dog, half-man.

In some legends the Adlet are sent inland for their safety and become the Native American tribes.

Adlivun

See Anguta, Sedna.

A. E.

“A. E.” was the pseudonym of George William Russell (1867–1935), an Irish poet, artist, and “seer”—one who had the “second sight” and was able to see fairies. A lifelong friend of W. B. Yeats, he was also an expert on agriculture and an eminent economist. His accounts of fairies in paintings and prose describe them as radiant, shining beings.

Aedh

In Irish mythology, Aedh was one of the sons of Dagda of the Tuatha de Danann.

Aeval

See Aibell.

Afanasyev, Aleksandr (1826–1871)

A Russian folklorist and collector of fairy tales.

After studying law at Moscow University, Afanasyev became a journalist and wrote about many of the literary figures of the seventeenth century. From 1850, he turned his attention to traditional folk tales and began making a systematic collection from oral testimonies as well as from the few publications available. He was familiar with the work of the Grimm brothers and applied the same methodology as they had done. Unlike the Grimms, however, he did not rework or embellish the tales and was committed to faithful reproductions of the original versions.

Narodnye russkie skazki (Russian Fairy Tales) was published in eight volumes between 1855 and 1863. Comprising 600 tales from various regions of Russia, it is one of the world’s largest collections of folk tales gathered by a single collector. Russian Fairy Tales for Children, which followed, contained a selection of humorous and magical tales from his collection suitable for children. Afanasyev’s collection of legends, Russian Folk Legends, was banned by Russian censors, who deemed the material to be blasphemous. The banned tales were eventually published anonymously in Switzerland under the title Russian Forbidden Tales.

Afanasyev’s work influenced many writers and composers, and is still in print today in numerous languages.

Agricultural Spirits

Traditionally, household spirits often watch over fields, crops, and animals as well as hearth and home, helping to gather the harvest or feeding up favorite beasts, especially cattle, although those of a more mischievous disposition have also been known to frighten cattle, causing their milk to dry up until placated with gifts of the finest cream or food. The Russian domovoi is particularly fond of cows that match his coloring. The Swedish tomte is a farm spirit who rewards farmers who show kindness to their animals and good husbandry. The Cornish pisky threshers help with the threshing of the grain in return for new suits of clothes.

Aguane

Shapeshifting female fairies of Italian and Austrian folklore who dwell in the hills and streams of the Alps. Described as beautiful women with bewitching voices and cloven hooves, they are guardians of streams. Those who try to harm them or enter the waters without their permission may meet with a watery end.

Aibell

(Also Aoibheall or Aeval.) The Irish fairy queen of north Munster, County Clare, part of the Tuatha de Danann, and guardian spirit of the O’Brien clan. Her name probably derives from the Gaelic aoibh, meaning “beauty,” or the proto-Celtic Oibel-a, literally meaning “burning fire.” She lived at Craig Liath (Gray Rock), where she held a midnight court to determine if husbands were satisfying their wives’ sexual needs. If found to be lacking, the man in question would be ordered to overcome his prudishness. The lover of Dubhlainn Ua Artigan, a young warrior from Munster, Aibell played a magic harp and it was said that whoever heard its music would not live long afterward. She appears in many works of Irish literature, including the eighteenth-century comic poem Cúirt an Mheáin Oíche, or “Midnight Court,” by Brian Merriman.

Aigamuxa

Demons in the Saan mythology of Namibia and South Africa. Cannibalistic and with eyes on the soles of their feet, they inhabit sand dunes and chase the unwary.

Aiken Drum

A name best known in the Scottish nursery rhyme:

There cam’ a man to oor toun To oor toun, to oor toun, There cam’ a man to oor toun An’ his name was Aiken Drum.

In more recent versions, the words have changed to “There was a man lived in the moon …” and Aiken Drum wears edible clothes: a cream cheese hat, a roast beef coat, and penny loaf buttons.

Aiken Drum is also the name given to the “Brounie [Brownie] of Blednoch” in the ballad by William Nicholson (1878). This fairy is naked except for a kilt made out of green rushes.

Aitahqa-a-nukumaitore

(Or Nuku-mai-kore.) Tree fairies of Maori mythology, whose name means “Not inclined this way.” Described variously as having large chests and waists and small heads, having no head at all and very short arms and legs, or as all hands, elbows, and shoulders, they dwell in trees and parasitical plants such as wharawhara and kiekie and are said to subsist on uncooked food, namely kumara, a type of sweet potato, and whale meat.

Aitvaras

A fiery household spirit in the folklore of Lithuania. The aitvaras is a shapeshifter who manifests in different forms according to his environment. He appears as a cockerel when inside the house and as a dragon when outside. Sometimes only his fiery, comet-like tail is visible. He brings prosperity to his owner, often at the expense of the neighbors, from whom he steals gold, milk, and food. In exchange for his endeavors, he requires only to be fed on a diet of omelets. However, employing the services of an aitvaras comes at a price: it is said that an aitvaras is obtained from the Devil, hatched from the egg of a seven-year-old cockerel, in exchange for one’s soul.

Here is one tale of an aitvaras:

A newly wed bride was given the task of grinding corn for her mother-in-law. No matter how much she ground, the corn basket remained full and her work was never done.

By the light of a consecrated candle from the church, she saw an aitvaras in the form of a cockerel spewing forth a constant stream of grain into the basket.

However, the aitvaras perished in the holy light of the candle, much to mother-in-law’s horror, for she not only lost her source of wealth but her soul went to the Devil in exchange for the loss of the “luck-bringer.”

Aka

(Or Akari.) According to Carib folklore in Guyana, Akari resides in the head and is one of many spirits inhabiting the body. Dreams and nightmares are considered to occur when the hairy bush spirit Yurokon captures Akari from the head of a sleeping person and takes him for a walk into the forest. As long as he remembers to return Akari to his rightful place, the person will experience it as a dream; if he forgets and leaves Akari in the forest, the person will die.

Akari

See Aka.

Akakasoh

Tree spirits, or nats, in Burmese folk beliefs. Similar to the hamadryads of Greek mythology, the akakasoh dwell in trees. They inhabit the uppermost branches and their presence can be detected by the rustling of a tree’s leaves.

Other types of tree-dwelling nat, such as the shekkasoh and the boomasoh, make their homes in other parts of the tree.

Alan

Part-bird, part-human spirits in the folklore of the Tinguian people of the Philippine Islands. Described as a human–bird hybrid with backward-facing fingers and toes, the alan dwell in the jungle, where they hang, batlike, from the trees to rest. When not suspended from the trees, they reside in houses made of gold.

According to Mabel Cook Cole in Philippine Folk Tales (1916), the Tinguian people often slighted or mistreated lesser spirits such as the alan.

In one tale, two hunters enlist the help of an alan to provide them with a fire over which to cook a swine. When the alan asks one of them to take the swine’s liver to feed her baby, he eats it on the way and throws the alan’s baby into a cauldron of boiling water.

The two hunters hide up a tree. When the furious alan comes looking for them, she tries to climb up a vine, but they slash it and she falls to her death.

The hunters then go to the alan’s house, where they find a jar of beads and jar of gold and return to the village with their bounty.

Alven

Also known as Otteermaaner, Alven are water sprites who dwell in the river Elbe. Light and wingless, they wrap themselves in bubbles in the water to move around. As the name Otteermaaner suggests, they are sometimes said to show themselves as otters. They are believed to be the protectors of night-blooming water flowers.

Alp Luachra

(Also Alp-luachra or Alpluachra.) Also known as Joint-eater or Just-halver, an Alp luachra is a greedy fairy from Irish mythology. When a person falls asleep beside a stream or a spring, the Alp luachra appears in the form of a newt and crawls into their mouth, feeding on the food that they have eaten.

In Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1691), the Joint-eater is described as a kind fairy that sits invisibly next to its victim, sharing their food, thus accounting for how someone with a large appetite—a Great-eater—can remain skinny:

They avouch that a Heluo, or Great-eater, hath a voracious Elve to be his attender, called a Joint-eater or Just-halver, feeding on the Pith or Quintessence of what the Man eats; and therefore he continues Lean like a Hawke or Heron, notwithstanding his devouring appetite.

Douglas Hyde’s Beside the Fire (1890) tells of how one poor soul was infested by a pregnant Alp luachra and her children. To get rid of the mother and her brood, he ate a large quantity of salted meat without drinking anything, then lay down by a stream with his mouth open. After a while the Alp luachra were forced to leap out into the water to quench their salt-induced thirst.

Amesha Spentas

The “Bounteous Immortals” in the Zoroastrian belief of Iran. They are the attendants of the Creator, Ahuru Mazda. Similar to the Muses of Greece, each of the six amesha spentas spirits ruled over a specific earthly quality: achievement, inspiration, wisdom, intellect, sensitivity, and love.

The six spirits are: Ameretat, “Long Life,” guardian of the Earth’s plants and trees, spirit of immortality; Aramaiti, “Holy Harmony,” guardian of the Earth’s fruitfulness; Asha, “Righteousness,” “Truth,” guardian of earthly fire and the sun; Vohumanah, “Good Thought,” guardian of the Earth’s benign creatures, especially the cow; Kshathra, “Rulership,” “Dominion,” symbol of the triumph of good over evil, guardian of the Earth’s metals; and Haurvatat, “Wellbeing,” “Wholeness,” guardian of the Earth’s water and the afterlife.

Ana

Queen of the Fairies in Romany gypsy folklore.

Ana lived in a mountain castle with her entourage, the keshalyi, the benevolent Romany fairies, until the king of the loçolico, evil earth-dwelling spirits, fell in love with her. When she spurned his advances, he sent his horde of minions to devour the keshalyi.

In order to save them, Ana agreed to marry him. She suffered many years of degradation and gave birth to a succession of monstrous offspring.

Eventually, she succeeded in negotiating her freedom. The loçolico king set her free on the condition that whenever a keshalyi reached a certain age, she must be given to his minions.

It is said that Ana retreated to her castle in shame, only occasionally venturing out in the form of a golden toad.

Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–1875)

Best remembered for his fairy tales, the Danish author Andersen was also a prolific writer of novels, plays, poems, and accounts of his many travels.

He was born in Odense to a family of meager means. He was to remain an only child. His father was keen to give him an education that nurtured the imagination and read many books to him, including The Arabian Nights. When his father died in 1816, Andersen’s formal education, albeit basic, was disrupted due to the need to find work to support himself and his mother. Ever since his first visit to the theater, aged seven, he had been hooked on the world of the stage, and at the age of 14 he traveled, alone, to Copenhagen, looking for employment as an actor. He was successful in the Royal Theatre as a soprano singer until his voice broke, and the theater’s director, Jonas Collins, took him under his wing and funded his university education.

Andersen wrote a few plays and novels, without much success to begin with, but soon his writing career took off. His first book of tales, Fairy Tales, Told for Children, was published in 1835. It was a compilation of tales from his boyhood memories and stories of his own invention. Further books followed and, as their popularity gradually grew, they were translated into numerous languages.

Among the most famous of Andersen’s tales are “The Little Mermaid” (possibly inspired by the sad love story of the water sprite Undine), “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Wild Swans,” and “The Red Shoes.”

Angus Mac Og

A Celtic god of youth, love, and poetic inspiration. One of the sons of Dagda of the Tuatha de Danann.

Anguta

The father of Sedna, Inuit sea goddess ruling the undersea Otherworld, Anguta is responsible for conveying souls from the land of the living to his daughter’s underworld realm of Adlivun, where he metes out punishment for their previous sins until they are purged.

Ankou

A personification of death in Breton mythology, the Ankou also appears in Cornish, Welsh, and Irish folklore. Also known as the grave watcher, he is a fairy version of the Grim Reaper and often appears as a skeleton wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe. In Ireland he is known to ride a black coach pulled by four black horses to collect the souls of those recently passed over.

According to Breton folklore collector Anatole le Braz (1859–1926), “the Bard of Brittany,” “The last dead of the year, in each parish, becomes the Ankou of his parish for all of the following year. When there has been, in a year, more deaths than usual, one says about the Ankou: ‘War ma fé, heman zo eun Anko drouk.’ (On my faith, this one is a nasty Ankou.)”

In a short story by Wyndham Lewis, The Death of the Ankou (1927), a tourist in Brittany perceives a beggar to be the embodiment of the Ankou. In fact, it is the tourist who acts as Ankou to the beggar, who subsequently dies.

Anthropophagi

From the Greek for ‘people-eater’, an anthropophage (plural anthropophagi) belonged to a mythological race of cannibals first described by Herodotus (c.440 B.C.). The word first appeared in English around 1552.

William Shakespeare brought these cannibalistic fairies into British public awareness in his plays The Wives of Winsdor and Othello. In Othello (Act I, scene iii), he famously described them as follows:

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

In popular culture, anthropophagi are often described as headless, with their mouths in the center of their chests. This is likely due to a misinterpretation of the line about men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders, which in fact refers to a separate mythical race called Blemmyes. However, the popular picture of the anthropophagi as headless cannibals with faces on their torsos has endured. According to Naturalis Historia, one of the world’s earliest encyclopedias, the anthropophagi were in the habit of drinking out of human skulls, and placing the scalps, with the hair attached, upon their breasts, “like so many napkins.”

Aoibheall

See Aibell.

Appletree Man

A guardian of the orchard, Appletree Man dwells in the oldest apple tree, where the fertility of the orchard is supposed to reside. He chases away fruit raiders, but may also take umbrage with genuine harvesters. In the traditional English cider counties such as Somerset, apple-pickers could harvest the fruit only at certain times of day. Customs such as wassailing, involving singing to the apple tree and pouring cider at its roots, are still performed in parts of Somerset to placate the Appletree Man in the hope of bringing about a good harvest.

See also Old Roger.

Apsaras

(Also apsarasa.) From Buddhist and Hindu mythology, a female spirit of the waters and clouds. English translations of the Sanskrit name include “nymph.” Aspsaras are described as beautiful, supernatural female beings. Known for their ability as dancers, they are often the youthful wives of the gandharvas, the court musicians of Indra, leader of the Devas and lord of Svargaloka, or heaven, in the Hindu religion. They dance in the palaces of the gods to the gandharvas’ music, entertaining, and sometimes seducing, gods and men. Sometimes compared to the muses of ancient Greece, each of the 26 apsaras at Indra’s court represents a specific area of the performing arts.

Like the Valkyries of Norse mythology, apsaras are the carers of fallen heroes. They are also associated with fertility rites. Sky-dwelling ethereal beings, they are often depicted taking flight and can be compared to angels, as well as to the nymphs, dryads, and naiads of ancient Greece, due to their association with water. Said to be able to shapeshift at will, they also rule over gambling and gaming. The best known are Rambha, Urvasi, Tilottama, and Menaka.

Apuku

A forest spirit in the folk beliefs of Suriname. Described as a short, dark figure with backward-facing feet, he dwells in shrubs deep within the forest. He falls in love with human females and is prone to jealous outbursts if a woman he has developed an attachment to is pursued by other men.

In local tradition, if a man is unsuccessful in wooing a woman, he prepares a special herbal bath to “tame the apuku” of the woman he desires.

Árák Sruk

Guardian or tutelary spirits in Cambodian folklore. Residing in the family home, or in a nearby tree, the árák sruk was regarded as an ancestor spirit whose advice could be sought in curing sickness. An annual festival honors the árák sruk spirits.

Arawotya

A spirit of the sky in the mythology of the Wonkamala people who inhabited the Lake Eyre region in South Australia. According to A. W. Howitt’s The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), the arawotya was originally a spirit of the earth who created deep springs and other sources of water in the otherwise arid regions of southern Australia and parts of western Queensland.

Arianhod

A magical female in Welsh mythology, daughter of the goddess Don. The fourth branch of the Mabinogion, the ancient epic stories of Wales, relates the story of Arianhod, her son, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, and Blodeuedd, the Flower Maiden.

Arianhod dwells in a palace named Caer Arianhod, which today is associated with a rock formation off the coast of Gwynedd, northwest Wales.

Math, King of Gwynedd, has to have his feet held by a virgin when he is not in battle. Arianhod’s brother, Gwydion, proposes her for the task, but when Math places his magic rod on the floor for Arianhod to step across in a test of her virginity, she fails the test and immediately gives birth to two sons.

The first is named Dylan, “Ocean Wave.” Arianhod refuses to name the second son, but Gwydion tricks her into naming him Lleu Llaw Gyffes, “Light or Fair One with the Sure and Steady Hand.” Arianhod proclaims that he shall have no bride of this Earth, so Gwydion and Math construct a bride for him out of oak, broom, and meadowsweet, and she is named Blodeuedd, or “Flower Face.”

Lleu and the beautiful flower maiden are married and live in wedded bliss for a short time, but Blodeuedd falls in love with another man, Gronw Pebyr. The lovers decide that they must murder Lleu before he discovers their affair. Blodeuedd knows Lleu to be almost invincible, but on the pretext of concern for his safety, she discovers that he can be killed with a spear made over the duration of a year, thrust into him when he is bathing with one of his feet touching a billy goat.

Despite the complicated conditions, the flower maiden and Gronw conspire to bring about Lleu’s demise. However, he transforms into an eagle and escapes.

Hearing of all that has happened, Math and Gwydion seek out Lleu in eagle form. Gwydion puts his wand to the bird and returns him to his human form. Gwydion turns Blodeuedd into an owl.

Her lover, Gronw, offers compensation to Lleu, but Lleu deems it fair that the blow that was meant for him should be returned. Gronw is permitted to hide behind a rock for protection, but Lleu throws his spear so hard that it passes through the rock and pierces the adulterer’s back.

Lleu Llaw Gyffes goes on to become Lord of Gwynedd.

Arianhod is remembered in the name of a constellation of stars. The Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, constellation is known in Wales as Caer Arianhod.

Arkan Sonney

Pronounced erkin sonna, Arkan Sonney, or “Lucky Piggy,” is the fairy pig of the Isle of Man. It is a beautiful little white pig believed to bring good luck to those who can catch it. Dora Broome’s Fairy Tales from the Isle of Man (1963) describes the Arkan Sonney as white, with red ears and eyes, like most fairy animals, and able to alter its size, but not its shape.

Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, and Moe, Jørgen Engebretsen (1812–1885), (1813–1882)

The Norwegian folktale collectors Asbjørnsen and Moe became friends as teenagers and shared an interest in folklore. As young adults, they collected various tales from different parts of Norway and embarked on a collaborative work. Their first collection of tales, Norske Folkeeventyr (Norwegian Folk Tales), was published in 1841 to great acclaim. A further edition, containing additional stories and published in 1852, proved to be equally successful.

One of the challenges Asbjørnsen and Moe faced was that of language and style. The Norwegian dialects used by oral storytellers were too localized to be understood by a wide audience, while the Norwegian literary style of the time was strongly influenced by Danish, making it unsuitable for a collection of national folklore. Adopting an approach similar to the Grimm brothers, Asbjørnsen and Moe opted to tell the tales using simple language in place of dialects, while retaining the national uniqueness of the tales. This helped form the basis for the Norwegian language as it is known today.

Between 1845 and 1848 Asbjørnsen published another collection of tales, Norwegian Fairy Tales and Folk Legends. George Webbe Dasent, a translator of folk tales and scholar of Norse studies, translated the first volume into English as East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

Asbjørnsen and Moe’s work is regarded as part of Norway’s national heritage and remains popular today.

Ashray

See Asrai.

Askafroa

The “Wife of the Ash Tree” in Scandinavian and Teutonic folklore. The guardian of the ash tree, she was considered to be a pernicious spirit. Regional variations include the Danish Askefrue and the German Eschenfrau.

Askefrue

See Askafroa.

Asojano Babaluaye

An orisha in Yoruba beliefs, a disfigured, pestilent outcast inspiring fear, a formidable presence inflicting plagues and disease, Asojano is a representation of all the world’s ills. In more modern times, his powers of destruction are tempered by an ability to heal and among other qualities he is a beneficient guardian of those suffering from AIDS.

Asrai

Asrai or ashrays are water fairies. In some accounts they appear as beautiful maidens, tall and lithe with translucent skin, although they are in fact hundreds of years old.

Two almost identical tales from Shropshire and Cheshire in England tell of a fisherman dredging up an asrai, which seems to plead to be set free, but its language is incomprehensible. In one tale, the fisherman binds the asrai, and the touch of its cold, wet hands burns him, marking him for life. In both stories, the fisherman covers the asrai with wet weeds while it lies moaning in the bottom of the boat, but its moans grow fainter, and by the time the fisherman has reached shore it has melted away, leaving only a pool of water behind.

Aughisky

Pronounced agh-iski, this is the Irish water horse. In the Scottish Highlands it is known as each uisge.

According to W. B. Yeats in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), aughisky were once common. They would come out of the water and gallop across the sands or fields, particularly in November. If you could manage to saddle and bridle them, they made the finest horses. However, you had to ride them inland, for at the first glimpse of salt water they would gallop headlong into it, taking their rider deep into the sea to devour them. It was also said that untamed aughisky devoured cattle from the fields.

Aveline

In Andrew Lang’s story of the Princess Minon-Minette in The Pink Fairy Book (1897), Aveline is an industrious fairy godmother to the princess, unlike Girouette in the same tale, who carelessly neglects her prince’s upbringing. It is due to the ever-vigilant and ingenious magic of Aveline that the prince and princess survive and literally rise above their ordeals, finally finding each other once again as they float through the air.

Awd Goggie

In Yorkshire, England, children were warned to keep away from orchards for fear that Awd Goggie, a wicked sprite who protected woods and orchards, would “get them.”

See also Appletree Man, Nursery Bogies.

Aziza

This forest-dwelling African race of fairies is from the kingdom of Dahomey, in the present-day Republic of Benin. The Aziza are benevolent, providing help and magic to hunters. Playing a role similar to that of Prometheus in Greek mythology, they are said to have imparted practical or spiritual knowledge to humans, including the use of fire. Living in anthills and silk-cotton trees, they are usually described as being hairy little people.

Baba Yaga

In Slavic mythology Baba Yaga is an ambiguous supernatural entity, residing deep in the forest in a hut supported by giant, yellow chicken legs. The hut has no windows or visible entrance until the phrase “Turn your back to the forest, your front to me” is uttered, when it revolves to reveal the door. Surrounding the hut is a fence on which skulls are impaled.

In Russian folk tales Baba Yaga is described as an ugly and deformed old hag with a long nose, iron teeth, and bony legs, who takes delight in frightening, and possibly devouring, children. Her bed is the enormous oven in which she supposedly cooks the children and she travels in a mortar, steering this strange craft with a pestle and sweeping away all traces of her passage with a silver birch broom.

The ambiguous nature of Baba Yaga is emphasized in some tales in which her wise words and helpfulness are sought. She is also portrayed as one of three sisters, all bearing the name of Baba Yaga. An altogether mysterious and controversial being.

Babi Ngepet

A demon boar in Javanese folk tales who is the manifestation of a human involved in the practice of the black arts, specifically in seeking to become rich by purloining the goods of neighbors in the guise of a pig.

The superstition is still current, as is evident in a recent news report on an Indonesian website concerning the arrest of a pig in Jompang, East Java, on suspicion of it being a babi ngepet (sindonews.com, June 2013). Discussion ensues on how to distinguish between a pig and an “imitation,” concluding that only by killing it can its identity become clear: if it transforms into another creature, it is certainly a babi ngepet.

Bacalou

A Loa, or Haitian Voodoo spirit, much to be feared.

Bäckahäst

A Scandinavian water creature manifesting as a beautiful white horse in folk tales. The comeliness of his appearance lures unsuspecting victims to jump onto his back and then, unable to escape, they are pitched into the nearest water to drown.

Badalisc

A mythical creature of the Lombardy region of northern Italy. The badalisc is a bad-tempered, gossipy monster with a large head and big mouth. Each year at Epiphany he is “captured,” with much drum-banging and a cast of traditional characters to accompany the procession. Afterward, he is led around the village and a speech is read out on his behalf in which the sins and misdemeanors of the locals are laid bare.

Badb

(Also badhbh.) A collective name for the three Irish goddesses of war—Nemen, Macha, and Morrigu—possessing magical powers to create confusion, stir fury, and bestow courage to aid their chosen victors in battle. In The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (1911), the badb are described thus:

… this Irish war-goddess, the bodb or badb, considered of old to be one of the Tuatha De Danann, has survived to our own day in the fairy-lore of the chief Celtic countries. In Ireland the survival is best seen in the popular and still almost general belief among the peasantry that the fairies often exercise their magical powers under the form of royston-crows; and for this reason these birds are always greatly dreaded and avoided. The resting of one of them on a peasant’s cottage may signify many things, but often it means the death of one of the family or some great misfortune, the bird in such a case playing the part of a bean-sidhe [banshee].

Badhbh

See Badb.

Bakru

In South American tradition a bakru is a tiny, childlike creature formed from wood and flesh, with a very large head. Protected by its wooden body, and with no brain of its own, it is a spirit to be feared for its ruthlessness. In Suriname there are several varieties of bakru, one of which is created by evil magicians to bring harm and even death to its victims.

Ballybog

(Or peat fairy.) Protectors of the peat bogs in Ireland, these little creatures are extremely unprepossessing in appearance, with bulgy, no-neck bodies supported on spindly legs, a froglike mouth full of long, pointy teeth and, due to their location, unsurprisingly covered in mud.

Balor of the Evil Eye

See Fomorians.

Bannik

In Slavic folklore the bannik is the spirit of the banya, or bathhouse, an entity to be treated with the utmost respect and caution due to his violent tendencies if he and his demonic friends are angered or offended.

Banshee

(Or Bean-Sidh.) An Irish omen of death in the form of a weeping, wailing spirit, described, in the seventeenth-century Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, as “a woman in white … with red hair and pale and ghastly complexion: … to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much frightened, that my hair stood on end, and my night clothes fell off …” Lady Fanshawe was recounting her experience while staying with an old Irish family.

Tales of the Scottish banshee depict the banshee as deformed. In Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols, 1860–1862), J. F. Campbell describes an old mill that is haunted by a banshee:

She was sitting on a stone, quiet, and beautifully dressed in a green silk dress, the sleeves of which were curiously puffed from the wrists to the shoulder. Her long hair was yellow, like ripe corn; but on nearer view, she had no nose.

See also Bozaloshtsh, Caoineag, Caointeach, Cyhyraeth.

Baobhan Sith

A beautiful but evil fairy in Scottish folklore, a succubus whose purpose is to seduce her victim and suck their blood until they die.

Barbegazi

Mountain-dwelling, white-bearded gnomes of French and Swiss tradition, whose element is ice and snow. Their extremely large feet are advantageous for gliding over the snow-covered terrain. Their name is derived from barbe-glacée, meaning “frozen beard.”

Barguest

A hellish black hound of the northern English moors, eyes afire, on the hunt for its next victim. Only those doomed to die can hear the howl of the barguest and their only escape is to cross running water, for the hound cannot follow.

Bariaua

Benevolent nature spirits in the folklore of the Tubetube and Wangawga people of Melanesia. These intensely shy beings dwell in trees and dread being seen by humans. However, they have been known to borrow canoes belonging to mortals, for it is said they are not able to build their own seagoing craft.

In one account, two bariaua borrowed a canoe one night to go fishing. Returning to shore in the early hours of dawn, they were surprised by an early-riser, a man named Burea. They disappeared immediately, leaving their catch of fish and their net in the canoe.

Burea shared the fish with the other villagers and hung the net up in the potama, or clubhouse.

The next morning the net had gone, claimed back by the bariaua, but the kindly spirits did not inflict any punishment upon Burea for eating their haul of fish.

Baron Samedi

Depicted as a top-hatted, formally dressed corpselike figure in the Haitian Voodoo tradition, Baron Samedi has great powers over life and death, and represents both the hedonism and enjoyment of life and the inevitability of death.

Basile, Giambattista (c.1575–1632)

Born in Naples, Giambattista Basile was an Italian soldier, poet, writer, and collector of fairy tales. He is best known for his collection of Neapolitan tales, La Cunto de la Cunti (The Story of Stories) (1634, 1636), also known as Il Pentamerone, a collection of 50 stories based on traditional Italian folk tales. It was published posthumously by his sister under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. It includes the earliest recorded versions of many tales that are still familiar to readers today, including “Puss in Boots,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Cinderella.”

Basile’s collection influenced later fairytale writers and collectors, including Charles Perrault in France and the brothers Grimm in Germany.

Bathing Fairies

The curious phenomenon of a troop of fairies discovered bathing in the health-giving waters of Ilkley Wells in the north of England is recounted in the 1878 edition of the Folk-Lore Record. A local resident asks the villagers what kind of things these fairies were, and they usually maintain that they are active little beings and resemble the human form, that they are “lill folk, and always dressed in green, but so agile that no-one [can] ever come up to them.” The bathman, William Butterfield, who looks after the Wells, further describes how he came to open up the baths one morning and had great trouble with the door, until:

… with one supreme effort, he forced it perfectly open, and back it flew with a great bang! Then whirr, whirr, whirr, such a noise and sight! all over the water and dipping into it was a lot of little creatures, all dressed in green from head to foot, none of them more than eighteen inches high, and making a chatter and jabber thoroughly unintelligible. They seemed to be taking a bath, only they bathed with all their clothes on. He shouts, ‘Hallo there!’ then away the whole tribe went helter skelter, toppling and tumbling, heads over heels, heels over heads, and all the while making a noise not unlike a disturbed nest of young partridges.

The water is left “still and clear” and William Butterfield never sees them again.

Bauchan

(Or Bogan.) In Scottish folklore a type of hobgoblin. One example is described in J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860–1862) as the protector of a family on the Island of Skye, but otherwise as a violently hostile spirit. He appeared only in the hours of darkness, “and any stray man who passed was sure to become a victim, the bodies being always found dead, and in the majority of instances mutilated also … He was seldom, if ever, seen by women, and did no harm to either them or to children.” He was eventually caught and tucked under the arm of his captor, who wanted to see him in daylight. The bauchan had never been heard to speak, but began begging to be set free, swearing “on the book, on the candle, and on the black stocking” to be gone. He was liberated after this promise and flew off singing a mournful refrain.

Baumesel

Literally, “Ass of the Trees,” the Baumesel is a tree-dwelling goblin in the folklore of Germany.

Baykok

(Or Bakaak.) In the Ojibwe nation’s traditional beliefs, the baykok manifests as a malevolent skeletal presence who eats the liver of its victims. In Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha it represents death.

Bean Nighe

Another guise of the banshee in Scottish and Irish folklore is as the bean nighe, or washer woman, who is to be found beside lonely streams washing blood from the clothes of those soon to die.

On the Island of Skye the bean nighe is said to be “squat in figure and not unlike a small pitiful child,” according to J. G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900).

Bean-Sidhe

See Banshee; also Bean Nighe.

Bediarhari

Malaysian term for fairies, or the “good folk.”

Bela

A tree spirit in the folk beliefs of the Kolarian people of India. When the Kolarian people made a clearing in the jungle it was customary to leave a solitary tree standing for the spirits to take refuge in. These trees became shrines to the nature spirits of the jungle.

According to an account in the Annals of Rural Bengal (1868), a jungle shrine in Bengal consisted of a bela tree, where the spirit resided, along with a kachmula tree, and a saura tree. The Kolarian left earth, rice, and money at the foot of the bela tree as offerings to the tree spirit.

Belliegha

A Maltese water monster inhabiting, and controlling, wells and water sources; belliegha translates as “whirlpool.”

Bendith y Mamau

“The Mother’s Blessing,” the local name for fairies in Glamorgan, Wales, where, according to Sir John Rhys’ Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901):

… the parish was then crammed full of Bendith y Mamau, and when the moon was bright and full they were wont to keep people awake with their music till the break of day. The fairies of Llanfabon were remarkable on account of their ugliness, and they were equally remarkable on account of the tricks they played. Stealing children from their cradles during the absence of their mothers and luring men by means of their music into some pestilential and desolate bog were things that seemed to afford them considerable amusement.

Further accounts of their tricks include details of the underground secret passages leading to their dwelling and to caverns of stored gold where:

They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along this that they pass up and down. They have a little word; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him.

A farmhand accidentally gains access to the passage but is discovered by the fairies who take him to live with them and “… at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas.” However, he passes on the secret to a farmer, who accumulates great wealth:

… thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half-guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more.

Bendigeidfran

See Bran the Blessed.

Ben Varrey

“Woman of the Sea,” or mermaid, in Manx folklore, which has many tales of the half-fish, half-woman’s beauty enchanting young men and luring them into the sea. Mermaids from the Isle of Man are also portrayed as benevolent toward deserving mortals, warning fishermen of impending storms and thereby averting disaster.

One account of a mermaid who is captured by shore-dwellers and attended for three days with the utmost care tells of her eventual liberty and reunion with her own kind, whereupon she expresses her puzzlement as to why mortals should throw away the water in which they have boiled eggs.

Berkhyas

In ancient Persian folklore as retold in Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828), Berkhyas is described as a div (or demon) of enormous stature with eyes like pools of blood, a hairy body, and boar’s tusks for teeth. Pigeons nest in the serpentine tendrils of his hair.

Bertha, Frau

In Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1866), William Henderson writes:

German Folk-lore connects unbaptised infants with the Furious Host or wild hunt … the mysterious lady Frau Bertha is ever attended by troops of unbaptised children, and she takes them with her when she joins the wild hunstman, and sweeps with him and his wild pack across the wintry sky.

Bhoot

An unsettled, wandering spirit caused by a violent death, taking on the appearance of an animal or human in Indian mythology. Clothed in white and with backward-facing feet, it casts no shadow.

Biasd Beulach

In Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1902), J. G. Campbell relates a tale from the Island of Skye describing the malignant spirit of the Pass of Odail, which was “more awful that its character was not distinctly known.” It appeared in the dead of night sometimes in the shape of a deformed man and sometimes as a roaming beast, uttering unearthly howls and shrieks. It ceased to appear after the body of a man was found, with two wounds piercing his side and his leg, each bearing the imprint of a hand. It was considered impossible that these wounds could have been inflicted by a human.

Billy Winkler

A Lancashire nursery spirit similar to Wee Willie Winkie, who sprinkles magic dust or sand into the eyes of children to get them to sleep. In the 1908 novel The Blue Lagoon: A Romance by H. de Vere Stacpoole, Billy Winker is invoked as a similar figure to the Sandman: “‘Shut your eyes tight … or Billy Winker will be dridgin’ sand in them.’”

However, in a traditional folk song from Lancashire in John Trafford Clegg’s Sketches and Rhymes in the Rochdale Dialect (1895), Billy Winker is a drayman a little too fond of drinking the contents of the barrels of ale he delivers.

Biloko

(Also eloko.) Malevolent dwarves in the folklore of the Nkundo people of central Zaire. Bilokos used bells to bewitch humans, placing spells upon them that could result in death. These malignant creatures dwelled in hollow trees and subsisted on a diet of human flesh. They are described as having beards of grass and wearing garments of leaves.

In one tale a wife stays behind at the hut while her husband goes hunting. As he leaves, he warns her that if she hears the ringing of a bell she must pay no attention to it, for it portends death. However, later that day, when the woman is alone in the silence of the forest, she is charmed to hear the ringing of a little bell and invites the owner of the bell to join her at the hut.

A biloko dwarf emerges from the forest and joins the woman. She offers him some food cooked over her fire, but he tells her he eats only human flesh. By now the woman is under his spell and she offers him the flesh of her arm.

The next day, the bell rings again and this time the bewitched woman offers the biloko the flesh of her buttocks.

On the third day, suspecting some evil is afoot, the husband does not go hunting, but instead hides behind the hut. When the dwarf appears and holds a knife to the woman’s side, proclaiming he wants to eat her liver, the man fires an arrow at him.

Struck by the blow, the biloko falls down, driving his knife into the woman’s side, and killing her.

The husband drives his spear into him and beheads him, then invites the people from the village to see the vanquished dwarf.

Biriir ina Baroqo

A Somalian folk tale recounts the battle of two giants who each ruled half of the country. Habbad was cruel and wicked, but the benevolent giant Biriir ina Barqo came to hear of his despotic ways and defeated the oppressor in a battle, thus uniting the country under his peaceful rule.

Bisimbi

Nature spirits associated with waterfalls, pools, and also rocky outcrops, who are described in traditional Central African folk legends. They take on diverse names and attributes in other areas of the continent. Generally benevolent toward humans, they can be troublesome if generous offerings are not forthcoming and downright malevolent in their attempts to penetrate the brains of children. Mothers have devised a simple foil to this endeavor by placing a wooden sliver across the fontanelle on their babies’ heads.

Black Annis

A poem by Leicestershire poet John Heyrick, who lived in the eighteenth century, describes Black Annis thus:

Tis said the soul of mortal man recoil’d,

To view Black Annis’ eye, so fierce and wild;

Vast talons, foul with human flesh, there grew

In place of hands, and features livid blue

Glar’d in her visage; while the obscene waist

Warm skins of human victims close embraced.

This flesh-eating, blue-faced hag lived in a cave in the Dane Hills near Leicester. She was supposed to have excavated it with her bare hands, using only her long, clawlike iron nails. She was partial to a diet of children and lambs, and when she had devoured them, their skins were spread over the branches of the giant oak tree at the mouth of the cave.

Black Dogs

See Barguest, Capelthwaite, Cù Sith, Cwn Annwn, Yeth Hound.

Blodeuedd

Literally, “Flower Face,” taking her name from the Welsh blodeu, “flower” or “blossom,” and gwedd, “face” or “appearance,” Blodeuedd is one of the main female figures in the fourth branch of the Mabinogion, a collection of ancient epic Welsh stories, which relates how she was made from oak, broom, and meadowsweet as a magical bride for Lleu Llaw Gyffes, “Lleu the Fair of the Steady Hand,” son of Arianhod.

Bloody Bones

See Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

Blud

A malevolent fairy in Slavic mythology who causes confusion and disorientation.

Blue Burches

A folk tale from Somerset describes the pranks of Blue Burches (breeches), a hobgoblin of a mischievous but harmless disposition whose tricks were endured with forbearance by the cobbler in whose house he lived. In time, the local clergymen heard of the hobgoblin and came to the conclusion he was an incarnation of the Devil, whereupon they set out to exorcise him. The cobbler’s son unwittingly betrayed Blue Burches in the guise of an old white horse grazing nearby and the parsons cried out, “Depart from me, you wicked—!” The hobgoblin dived into the duck pond and was gone.

Blue-Cap

A spirit of the mines in the north of England, manifesting as a small, flickering blue flame. The diligent blue-caps expected and received their modest wages in a far-flung corner of the mine and were helpful to respectful miners, warning them of prospective dangers.

See also Coblynau, Knockers, Kobold.

Blue Men of the Minch

“The Blue Men of the Minch,” a tale relating particularly to that stretch of water in the Hebrides between Lewis and the Shiant Islands, is related in J. G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900), in which an eyewitness “who was very positive he had himself seen a one” describes his encounter: “A blue-coloured man with a long grey face and floating from the waist out of the water, followed the boat he was in for a long time, and was occasionally so near that the observer might have put his hand upon him.”

The Blue Men were held responsible for the stormy waters of the Minch, leaving their undersea cave-dwellings to swim toward passing ships to wreck them and only being thwarted in their intent by canny captains who could outwit them with rhyme and a sharp tongue. They are variously described as fallen angels or, as in D. A. Mackenzie’s Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Life (1935), as being based on historical accounts of captured Moors in Ireland, called “Blue Men,” who were abandoned in the ninth century by Norse seafarers.

Bodach

Literally, “old man” or “specter,” this name is found in numerous place names in Scotland. Tigh nam Bodach or “House of the Specter,” is an example of an ancient pagan site in a remote glen, where a “family” of curiously shaped stones bears the names of the Bodach, his wife Cailleach, and their children. These supernatural beings, as folk tales relate, were responsible for the fertility of the area and, being treated kindly by the local population, left the stones to be moved out of the shelter each year during the summer to ensure continuing abundance.

However, a different creature altogether, the Bodach Glas, or Dark Gray Man, is described in Waverley by Sir Walter Scott as being a gray specter warning of impending death or catastrophe.

Bodachan Sabhaill

A helpful barn brownie, the Little Old Man of the Barn “will thresh with no light in the mouth of the night” while the old farmer sleeps, according to a verse in D. A. Mackenzie’s Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Life (1935).

Bogan

See Bauchan.

Bogeyman

Tales of the Bag-man, or Man with the Sack, are told in many cultures to frighten children into good behavior. They generally portray him as a nebulous, threatening spirit carrying a bag or sack on his back in which he puts children who misbehave.

Boggart

There are many local tales of this mischievous, sometimes malevolent, brownie, either in the guise of a household spirit who steals the food from the table and torments the family or as a tricksy field-dweller.

In an old Lincolnshire story the boggart is described as “a squat hairy man, strong as a six-year-old horse, and with arms almost as long as tackle poles” who declares he is the rightful owner of the land a farmer has purchased; however, the farmer is cunning and agrees that they should share the disputed field, asking the boggart to choose whether he will take what lies above or below the earth. The boggart chooses to take what grows above ground, and the farmer promptly sets potatoes. Whichever choice the boggart makes, the farmer thwarts him, until the boggart leaves in disgust, telling the farmer he wants nothing more to do with his land. “And off he goes and nivver comes back no more …”

Bogies

A name encompassing a variety of troublesome spirits such as bug-a-boos, bugbears, boggarts, and bogles, whose aim is to sow discord and mischief among humans, although as in the tale of the boggart (see here), they can sometimes be outwitted by a quick mind and clever tongue.

See Awd Goggie, Churnmilk Peg, Gooseberry Wife, Jack in Irons, Jenny Greenteeth, Melsh Dick, Mumpoker, Nursery Bogies, Padfoot, Shellycoat, Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

Boginki

Supernatural female water spirits in Polish mythology, “little goddesses” who sometimes steal human babies, replacing them with changelings.

Bogles

In Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1866) by W. Henderson, bogles are described in one tale as possessing a rather better nature than most goblins, only bedeviling wrong-doers in a retributive manner; however, in another account a bogle haunts a household and can only be got rid of with the aid of a Bible, whereupon he hastily departs in the form of a gray cat. After many years he reappears as a death omen just before the man of the house is killed in the mines.

Another haunting tale is of Berry Well, in a village in Yorkshire, where a bogle takes on the shape of a white goose.

Bokwus

A Native American wild forest spirit of the Pacific northwest coast. Masks portray him as beetle-browed and with a beaklike nose, and he lures the spirits of the drowned to live with him in his forest dwelling.

Bongas

Spirits in the folklore of the Santal people of India. Bongas permeate every area of life in the form of ancestor spirits, household spirits, and nature spirits dwelling in hills, trees, and rocks. They are propitiated by elaborate ceremonies that often culminate in dances and the drinking of rice beer. Like their European fairy counterparts, they are capricious, choosing either to bring good or ill fortune to the humans whose affairs they take an interest in. They can assume human form, and there are many tales of bonga girls or maidens wedded to human grooms, who bring either happiness or torment to their mortal husbands.

The kisar bonga is a household spirit; similar to a Scottish brownie, he brings prosperity to his master if treated with due respect, but is quick to take offense and withdraw his help.

Booman

In the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland, the Booman hobgoblin is variously described as a “good fairy,” by Edmonston in the nineteenth century, or in other folk tales as a frightening presence haunting lonely roads. Today he is remembered mainly in a traditional game which involves enacting a funeral while singing “Booman is dead and gone” and in other folk songs.

Boomasoh

Tree spirits, or nats, in Burmese folk beliefs. They reside among the tree’s roots. Other types of tree-dwelling nat, such as the akakasoh and the shekkasoh, make their homes in other parts of the tree.

Bottrell, William (1816–1881)

Writer and folklorist William Bottrell was born near St. Levan, a few miles from Land’s End in Cornwall, England. He was educated at Penzance Grammar School until 1831 and later at Bodmin School. His grandmother told him traditional Cornish stories from a young age and was a great influence on his future writings. These stories had been handed down for generations.

Bottrell traveled extensively and bought some land in the Basque region of Spain, where he gathered more traditional folk tales. The land was later confiscated and he returned, ruined, to Cornwall. He settled on a smallholding near Lelant where he gathered more stories from the tin miners of the area. He recounted these tales to Robert Hunt, who used them in his own publications. Bottrell was encouraged by the editor of the Cornish Telegraph to write and publish the tales himself and the first of these writings appeared in that newspaper in 1867. He also wrote for the periodicals One and All and the Reliquary.

Bottrell’s tales tell of giants, mermaids, witches, and Cornish fairies such as buccas, knockers, and spriggans (apparently he had a black cat named Spriggans). The tales were compiled into three volumes, the first of which was Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall vol. I (1870); the second volume was published in 1873, and the third, Stories and Folklore of West Cornwall, in 1880.

Bozaloshtsh

Literally, “God’s Plaint,” a banshee-like spirit in Wend folklore of eastern Germany. Like the Irish banshee, she is an omen of impending death and weeps in lament beneath the window of those about to die. In some accounts she is described as a small woman with long hair; in others she is associated with the elder tree and is described as a red-eyed woman clad in white with long, braided hair.

Brag

Described in folk tales from Northumberland and northern Britain, the brag is an irksome goblin taking on the appearance of a horse, a calf, or a headless man among others.

An old tale relates the misfortune that befell the wearer of an ill-fated white suit: meeting the brag in the form of a horse, the white-suited man unwisely leaped onto its back for a ride home and was promptly tossed into a pond, the horse laughing and neighing noisily as it galloped away.

Bran the Blessed

(Also Bendigeidfran.) Son of the Welsh sea god Llyr and brother of Branwen, Bran the Blessed, whose name means “raven” or “crow,” is featured in the ancient Welsh stories of the Mabinogion. He is described as a sea deity, a giant of such massive proportions that no house can accommodate him, a king of Britain, and the keeper of the magical cauldron of regeneration, which restores fallen warriors to life.

One of the most famous stories of Bran tells of his struggles with the Irish.

One day the Irish king Matholwch came to Bran the Blessed to make an alliance. Bran and his brother, Manawydan, agreed to grant the king their beautiful sister Branwen’s hand in marriage to forge a lasting peace between Britain and Ireland.

Branwen consented and a great wedding celebration was held in the open air, for no building was big enough to contain the godlike proportions of Bran. There was much rejoicing, until Bran’s half-brother, Efnisien, arrived back to discover that the wedding had taken place without his knowledge. Flying into a rage because he had been left out of the proceedings, he attacked and mutilated King Matholwch’s horses. This act of cruelty was intended as an insult and Matholwch was greatly offended.

In an attempt to make peace and appease his Irish guests, Bran offered various gifts of horses, silver, and gold, and eventually won them over when he promised to give them the magical cauldron of regeneration. King Matholwch accepted the gifts and returned to Ireland with his bride.

At first all was well. Branwen was well received in Ireland and bore Matholwch a son, Gwern. However, as time passed, anger at Efnisien’s insult grew among Matholwch’s people. Matholwch himself took his resentment out on Branwen, banishing her from his chamber to work in the kitchen. No Briton who visited Ireland was allowed to return home lest Bran hear how badly his sister was being treated. But while chopping wood in the yard, the resourceful Branwen tamed a starling and, after years of patient teaching, trained it to carry messages for her. She tied a message to the bird’s leg to take to Bran, telling him of her plight.

When the news reached Bran, he summoned a great fleet of ships and men to invade Ireland and rescue his sister. Too large to fit aboard any ship, he himself waded through the sea.

The Irish were confounded when they saw what looked like a huge forest and strange mountain moving through the sea toward them. When Matholwch asked Branwen about this strange vision, she knew it was her brother coming to save her. When she told Matholwch that the forest was a fleet of ships and the great mountain behind it was her brother, the people of Ireland were afraid. They retreated across the River Shannon, destroying the bridge behind them, but when Bran reached the river he stretched his great body across it, allowing his men to cross over his back like a bridge.

Backed into a corner, Matholwch sought to make amends. He offered his kingdom to Branwen’s son, Gwern, and proposed to construct a building large enough to house even Bran, where the Irish and British could meet to celebrate a lasting peace.

Finally, Bran agreed and the great meeting-house was built. But Matholwch wasn’t true to his peace offer and hid armed men in sacks that were hung up inside the mighty house.

When the two sides entered the house for the supposed peace meeting, Efnisien enquired what was inside the sacks. On being told they contained flour, he proceeded to squish the contents of each sack until all of the warriors were dead.

Matholwch had been caught out by his own sly trick and had no choice but to continue with the peace talks. Gwern was crowned king and was popular with both sides, except for Efnisien, who jealously thrust the boy onto the fire, shattering the peace and provoking an outbreak of fighting.

In the morning, the dead Irish warriors were placed in the cauldron of regeneration and rose to fight again.

Seeing the bodies of his kinsmen scattered dead on the ground, in an act of remorse Efnisien threw himself down among the bodies of his enemies. As he was thrown into the cauldron, he stretched out his body, rupturing the cauldron and bursting his heart in the process.

Once the cauldron was broken, Bran’s men gained the advantage, until the giant king was struck by a poisoned spear and mortally wounded. His dying wish was that his kinsmen cut off his head and bury it under the Gwyn Fryn, the White Mound or Tower near London, whence it would guard the land from invasion.

When Branwen set foot back in Britain, her heart burst at the thought that she had been the cause of so much sorrow and destruction and she dropped dead.

In Ireland, there were only five survivors, said to be pregnant women who gave birth to the five provinces of Ireland.

Seven warriors remained on the Welsh side and they carried out Bran’s request, but it took them many years to reach their destination. Eventually arriving at Gwyn Fryn, they buried the head of the giant king facing the European mainland, where some say it remains as a protective spirit guarding the land of Britain from attack.

Some believe that the Tower of London was built over the head. Today a legend that is sometimes associated with Bran’s remains is that as long as there are ravens in the Tower of London, the kingdom of Britain will not fall.

Branwen

Daughter of the Welsh sea god Llyr, sister of Bran the Blessed and Manawydan. Branwen, the “white raven,” is featured in the ancient epic stories of the Mabinogion, where she is described as one of the most beautiful women in the Isle of Britain.

When the Irish king Matholwch took her as his bride but subsequently maltreated her, much fighting ensued between the Irish and the Britons, and Branwen died of heartbreak at the death and destruction that she believed she had caused.

Briggs, Katharine (1898–1980)

English folklore scholar Katharine Mary Briggs is best known for her numerous and comprehensive collections of fairy lore and folk tales of the British Isles. She was born in Hampstead, London, the daughter of Edward Briggs and Mary Cooper. The family originated from Yorkshire, where they had invested, with success, in coal mining. Her father was a watercolorist who particularly enjoyed painting Scottish scenery, and in 1911 the family moved to Perthshire.

Briggs’ interest in stories began at an early age, possibly catalyzed by her father’s fondness for storytelling. She also heard many traditional tales recounted while living in Scotland. In 1918 she moved to Oxford, where she studied English at Lady Margaret Hall. She obtained her PhD after the Second World War with a thesis on folklore (Folklore in Jacobean Literature). She wrote extensively on the topic of folklore and her works remain among the most esteemed sources on British folklore and fairy lore today. Her publications include The Personnel of Fairyland (1953), the Anatomy of Puck (1959), Folktales of England (1965), the four-volume Dictionary of British Folk Tales in the English Language (1970–1971), and her comprehensive A Dictionary of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures (1976).

Briggs served as president of the British Folklore Society for three years; an award was named in her honor after her death in 1980.

Brighid

See Brigit.

Brigit

(Or Brighid.) In Celtic mythology Brigit is a daughter of the Tuatha de Danann in Ireland, a pagan goddess of poetry and smithcraft, possessing the powers of divination and healing.

Legends of her birth say she was bathed in milk and would take only pure milk from a fairy cow with white skin and red ears as her sustenance. Her birth is celebrated on the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc in February when, in Scotland, the old woman of winter, Cailleach, drinks from the Well of Youth and metamorphoses into Bride, who, with her white wand, heralds the growth and regeneration of spring. By the hearthside a bridie doll of corn is left with offerings of bread and milk to ensure protection and abundance.

Brolga

In the Dreamtime Aboriginal myths of Australia, Brolga was a girl who was famous for her graceful dancing. A malicious sorcerer desired her as a wife, but he was rejected. As she danced alone one day she was engulfed by a whirling dust storm, which left behind no trace of her—the spurned magician had exacted his revenge and changed her into a beautiful silver-gray bird whose dance imitated the elegant movements of her arms. The Brolga bird dances to this day in northern Australia.

Brollachan

In Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860–1962), J. F. Campbell describes the brollachan, from the Gaelic for a shapeless, deformed being, as having eyes and a mouth but no discernible shape and only the two words “myself” and “thyself” at his command.

The story tells of a lame young miller boy lying beside his fire in the mill when the brollachan enters and keeps him company. As the fire burns low, the boy throws on another peat and an ember jumps out onto the brollachan, who shrieks and howls loudly. His mother, a fuath (see Fuathan), bursts into the room and demands to know who is responsible for burning him. The brollachan can only reply, “Myself and thyself,” with which she has to be content, while the crippled boy hides beneath a sack and prays for his own safety. The fuath, not satisfied, chases a lone woman to her home and, just as she enters the door, tears off her heel in revenge. The woman is left lame for the rest of her life.

Broonie

In Shetland the tale is told of the King of Trows. His name was Broonie and he was responsible for guarding the corn. Farmers were glad of his benevolent spells as he sped from farm to farm, but Broonie liked to be left alone and would scatter the corn stooks hither and thither if he was disturbed. As the nights became colder, the good folk decided to make him a gift of a cloak and hood, and placed them so he would find them. But Broonie scorned the kind gift and left the neighborhood forever.

Brother Mike

In a Suffolk tale, a tiny “frairy” (the local dialect word for fairy) is caught in a farmer’s barn and cries out the name of Brother Mike in despair while struggling to escape.

Brown Man of the Muirs

A dwarf dwelling near the Keeldar Stone on the lonely moors of Northumberland. He is dressed all in brown and of a squat and stocky appearance, with a head of wildly curling red hair and glowing eyes. He is a jealous guardian of wild creatures and fiercely defends his territory from huntsmen trespassing on his land.

Brownie

A household spirit in the folklore of Scotland and northern England, generally described as a shaggy-haired little man about 3 feet (1 meter) tall, sometimes dressed in shabby brown clothes and sometimes naked. Meg Mullach, or Hairy Meg, is an example of a female brownie, but in most accounts they are male.

Brownies attached themselves to a particular household or farm. They came out at night to complete tasks left unfinished by servants or farm laborers, tending to livestock, threshing grain, reaping crops, cleaning the house and barns, churning butter, and taking care of numerous other chores. In return, housewives left out treats, placing a bowl of cream, or a tidbit of freshly baked bread or cake where the brownie was likely to find it by chance. It was important not to offer a brownie direct payment for his services, as this invariably led to his departure. Some say this was because brownies were only bound to work until considered worthy of payment; others that the brownie was too much of a free spirit to accept the bondage of human clothes or wages. The Cauld Lad of Hilton is one of many examples of a brownie who ceased his services when he was given the gift of clothing. In Cornwall, a pisky sometimes performed a similar role to a brownie, helping with the threshing of the corn. But when the pisky threshers were given new clothes, they vanished, never to return. In one unusual case a Lincolnshire brownie was annually given a linen shirt. One year the farmer substituted a shirt of coarse hemp and the brownie took offense at the poor quality of the garment and left.

Criticizing a brownie’s work was another sure way to cause offense and turn him from an industrious helper into a troublesome, mischievous boggart. However, when treated with respect, a brownie was very loyal to the master or mistress of the household, chiding and scolding lazy servants and laborers, and even fetching the midwife when his mistress went into labor.

See also Aiken Drum, Bodachan Sabhaill, Boggart, Bongas, Brownie-Clod, Bwbachod, Bwca, Tom Cockle, Dobbs, Dobie, Fenodoree, Gruagach, Haltija, Hob, Hobgoblin, Kaboutermannekin, Killmoulis, Kobold, Kodinhaltia, Korrigan, Niagriusar, Nisse, Phouka, Portunes, Puddlefoot, Redcaps, Silkies, Urisk, Wag-at-the-Wa’.

Brownie-Clod

A brownie of the Scottish Highlands with a frolicsome temperament, always playing tricks and with a tendency to throw grass clods at passing strangers, hence his name. A simple being, he was tricked into taking on the task of threshing as much corn as two men for the whole winter by the promise of a cape and hood. The tricksters eventually relented when they saw how hard he worked and gave him the clothes, whereupon Brownie-Clod stopped work in a flash and made off with his gift.

Bucca

A Cornish spirit inhabiting the shoreline between high and low tide, to whom fishermen left offerings of fish in order to ensure a good catch in their nets.

The Cornish tales of William Bottrell in Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (2 vols, 1870–1973) name two buccas, Bucca-dhu (Black Spirit) and Bucca-gwidden (White Spirit) and Bucca-boo as a corruption of the former, meaning “Old Nick, or one of his near relations.”

Buggane

The Buggane is described in Manx Fairy Tales by S. Morrison (1911) as “a great big ugly beast” with a “thick gruff voice of a giant” who is so mad with rage at a woman baking after sunset that he captures her and carries her at great speed toward a waterfall. Just as she fears her end is nigh, she remembers the knife she carries, cuts the strings of her apron, and tumbles to the ground, while the Buggane’s headlong flight pitches him into the roaring waterfall instead.

Bugul-Noz

Described as “a colossal spirit called Teus or Bugelnoz, who appears clothed in white between midnight and two in the morning” in Legends and Romances of Brittany by Lewis Spence (1917), the Bugelnoz’s task is “to rescue victims from the devil, and should he spread his mouth over them they are secure from the Father of Evil.” However, later depictions of this Breton “Night Shepherd” portray him as so exceedingly ugly that he hides away in deep forests, a lonely and unhappy spirit.

Bullbeggar

In The Discoverie of Witchcraft by R. Scot, first published in 1584, bulbeggars are described as “terrifying goblins.” Elsewhere in old texts the bullbeggar is depicted as a cautionary bugbear, an ugly or deformed man useful as a threat with which to control misbehaving children.

See also Nursery Bogies.

Bunyip

A malevolent water spirit in Aboriginal mythology, taking many forms and haunting waterholes and rivers, and feared because of its huge size and predatory nature. A description in The Geelong Advertiser newspaper of 1845 says:

The bunyip, then, is represented as uniting the characteristics of a bird and an alligator. It has a head resembling an emu, with a long bill … Its body and legs partake of the nature of the alligator. The hind legs are remarkably thick and strong, and the fore legs are much longer, but still of great strength.

Ancient fossilized bones found by anthropologists and shown to Aborigine elders in the nineteenth century were instantly identified by them as bunyip bones, and drawings and cave paintings exist depicting the many fantastical embodiments of the bunyip.

Bushyasta

A daeva (demon) in Zoroastrian texts, a spirit of indolence and lethargy, who attempts to thwart the good energy of mortals by exhorting them to sleep away their lives.

Buttery Spirits

The fattest fairies, found in inns and taverns where the landlord is deceiving his customers by using inferior meat and watered-down beer. The only food the insatiable buttery spirits devour is either stolen or dishonestly presented as fine fare; in this way the portly spirits inadvertently prevent the landlord from profiting from his duplicity.

Bwbach

See Bwbachod.

Bwbachod

Also known as the bwca or bwbach, the bwbachod is a Welsh household spirit that belongs to the same family as the brownie.

The bwbachod rewards tidiness. To enlist the help of one, traditionally Welsh maids would sweep the kitchen, set a good fire last thing at night, leave the churn filled with cream on the whitened hearth, and leave a basin of fresh cream on the hob. In the morning, if she was in luck, she would find that the bwbachod had emptied the basin of cream and plied the churn-dasher so well that she had only to give a thump or two to bring out the butter in a great lump.

Bwbachod have a dislike of teetotallers and like to harass them. In British Goblins (1880), Wirt Sikes relates the story of a bwbachod who took an especial dislike to a preacher who was much fonder of his prayers than of good ale. Being in favor of people who sat around the hearth with a drink and a pipe, the bwbachod took to pestering the preacher, knocking the stool from beneath his elbows when he was praying, jangling the fire irons, or frightening him by grinning in at the window. He finally succeeded in frightening the preacher away by appearing as his double, which was considered to be an omen of death. The preacher mounted his horse the next day and rode away, looking back over his shoulder at the bwbachod, who was grinning from ear to ear.

Bwca

(Pronounced booka.) An industrious Welsh brownie, working at night on household tasks such as spinning, washing, and ironing in return for bread and milk. He is happy to work without being seen, or his name being known, but if he is spied on he will immediately depart, never to return.

See also Bwbachod.

Cabyll Ushtey

A Manx water horse said to frequent the banks of lakes after dark. There is some debate as to whether it is as dangerous as its Scottish counterpart, the greedy each uisge, but it is believed to seize cattle and occasionally steal children.

A pale gray water colt was reportedly sighted at Ballure Green in the Isle of Man in 1859.

It is said Glen Meay, a small village on the west coast of the Isle of Man, is haunted by a man who rode a cabyll ushtey and was drowned at sea. His ghost is now said to roam the wooded glen beneath the waterfall.

Some say the cabyll ushtey is one guise of the shapeshifting glastyn.

See also Aughisky.

Caillagh ny Groamagh

Manx weather spirit. Caillagh ny groamagh means “old woman of gloominess.” On St. Bride’s Day, February 1st, the Manx Caillagh ny Groamagh appears as a giant bird carrying sticks in her beak. If it’s dry, she comes out to collect sticks to keep her warm through the summer. If it’s wet, she stays in and in it’s in her interest to make the summer warm and dry. Therefore, a dry St. Bride’s Day portends a wet summer to come, while a wet St. Bride’s Day is a sign of a fine summer ahead.

See also Cailleach Bera, Cailleach Bheur, Jimmy Squarefoot.

Cailleach Beara

See Cailleach Bera.

Cailleach Bera

(Pronounced kill-ogh vayra.) (Also Cailleach Beara.) Irish hag, similar to the Cailleach Bheur of Scotland. She lived in the mountains and carried stones in her apron for building. When her apron string broke, the stones fell out, creating rocky peaks and crags.

The Hag’s Chair and the megalithic tomb Slieve na Calliagh are situated on top of Hag’s Mountain, Sliabh na Caillí, at Loughcrew in County Meath.

See also Caillagh ny Groamagh.

Cailleach Bheur

(Pronounced cal’yach vare.) Blue Hag, a weather spirit of the Scottish Highlands. The Blue Hag is the personification of winter. She is the daughter of Grianan, the winter sun. In the old Celtic calendar there were two suns. The “big sun” shines from Beltane (May Day) to Samhain (Halloween). The “little sun” shines from Samhain to Beltane. The Cailleach Bheur is reborn each Samhain, when she smites the earth with her staff to fight off spring. When Beltane comes, she throws her staff under a holly tree or gorse bush and turns into a stone.

She is the guardian spirit of deer, which she herds, milks, and protects from hunters. She is a friend to wild cattle, swine, and wolves, and sometimes assumes the shape of a wild boar. She is also a guardian of wells and streams.

One story concerning the creation of Loch Awe in Scotland, recounts how, tired after a long day herding her deer, Cailleach Bheur fell asleep while watching over a well. The well overflowed and water poured down the mountains and flooded the valley below, forming first a river and then the loch.

Cait Sith

(Pronounced cait shee.) Fairy cat of the Scottish Highlands. Believed by some to be a witch transformed into a cat rather than a fairy, the cait sith is described in J. G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900) as being black with a white spot on its breast, the size of a dog. When angry, it arches its back and bristles its fur.

After a death, Scottish Highlanders would keep watch over the body to prevent the cait sith from coming near it. They believed that the fairy cat could steal the soul from a corpse by jumping over it before the burial. Games, riddles, music, and wrestling took place at the watches, called Feill Fadalach (Late Wakes), which were designed to distract the cait sith and protect the soul of the recently deceased.

Campbell, John Francis (1821–1885)

Author of one of the most famous collections of Scottish folk tales, John Francis Campbell was born in Edinburgh, but brought up on the island of Islay (Inner Hebrides). The island had belonged to his family since the eighteenth century; he was also known as Campbell of Islay. His upbringing was unusual in that he was allowed to mix with the local children. This was rather unconventional at a time when social etiquette required everyone to keep to a strict code of conduct and “know their place.” He said of his education:

As soon as I was out of the hands of nursemaids I was handed over to the care of a piper. His name was the same as mine, John Campbell, and from him I learned a good many useful arts. I learned to be hardy and healthy and I learned Gaelic; I learned to swim and to take care of myself, and to talk to everybody who chose to talk to me. My kilted nurse and I were always walking about in foul weather or fair, and every man, woman, and child in the place had something to say to us. Thus I made early acquaintance with a blind fiddler who could recite stories. I worked with the carpenters; I played shinty with all the boys about the farm; and so I got to know a good deal about the ways of the Highlanders by growing up as a Highlander myself.

He was educated at Eton and at Edinburgh University, where he studied geology and photography. He later invented an instrument to record sunshine hours that is still in use today.

His interest in local folk tales was rekindled when one of his close friends returned from Stockholm, having met Jakob Grimm there. He was persuaded to collect tales from the Highlands and islands of Scotland and trained a team of Gaelic speakers who collected 800 stories. His Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Orally Collected (in four volumes) was published between 1860 and 1862.

Campbell, John Gregorson (1836–1891)

A collector of tales and traditions from the Scottish Highlands, J. G. Campbell pursued the same method of collection as J. F. Campbell, recording tales directly from Gaelic speakers, which were later translated into English.

Campbell was born in Argyllshire, Scotland, and was first educated at the local school in Appin, where the family moved when he was three years old. His further schooling was in Glasgow, where he later attended the Andersonian University. While at university his passion for traditional tales grew and he met many storytellers and committed their tales to memory.

Campbell continued his studies and read law, but his inclination was toward the Church and he was licensed by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1858. He continued to be a keen collector of stories. These were eventually compiled in Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and were published posthumously in 1900 and 1902 respectively.

Canotila

Native American tree spirits, literally meaning “they live in a tree.” From the mythology of the Lakota of North and South Dakota.

Caoineag

(Pronounced konyack.) Meaning “weeper,” caoineag is one of the names of the Scottish banshee. Her wail, heard in the darkness at a waterfall, heralds catastrophe for the clan. She is heard, but never seen. Unlike the bean nighe, she can’t be approached to grant wishes.

Caointeach

(Pronounced kondyuch.) Meaning “wailer,” the caointeach is another version of the caointeag, the Scottish banshee. She is local to Argyllshire, Skye, and the neighboring islands. She has a particularly lamentable and loud cry that rises almost to a scream. In appearance, she has been described as a very little woman or child wearing a high-crowned white hat, short green gown, and petticoat. She sometimes beats clothes on a rock, like the bean nighe.

James Macdougall and George Calder’s Folk Tales and Fairy Lore (1910) relates the story of the caointeach who followed the MacKay clan. When a death was going to take place, she would call at the sick person’s house with a green shawl around her shoulders and warn the family by wailing sadly outside his door. When the friends and family heard her lament, they lost all hope of the sick person getting better, for it was proof that the end was near.

The caointeach has ceased to give warning to the MacKays since one wet, cold, winter night, when she stood softly wailing outside a house and a member of the family took pity on her and offered her a plaid (blanket). She accepted the gift, but in the same way as when a brownie accepts a gift of clothes his spirit is “laid,” or set free, so too the caointeach has never come back to mourn for the MacKays.

Capelthwaite

In Westmorland, northwest England (now part of Cumbria), there was once a barn called Capelthwaite Barn, in which the Capelthwaite made its home. He was said to be able to assume any form at will, but his preferred shape was that of a black dog the size of a calf. He was friendly toward the owners of the barn, and helped them by rounding up their sheep and cows. However, when it came to strangers, he showed a mischievous and spiteful streak. In the end, the vicar of Beetham performed a ceremony and “laid” this supernatural black dog in the river Bela. It was not seen again, except for in one tale related in William Henderson’s Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1866), when a man returning from the local fair somewhat disheveled, without his cap or coat, persisted in blaming the Capelthwaite for his misadventure, telling his wife that the Capelthwaite had chased him and thrown him into the hedge.

Carmichael, Alexander (1832–1912)

A writer, antiquarian, and folklorist, Alexander Carmichael was born on the island of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland. He attended local schools and later became a civil servant in various locations in Ireland and Scotland. It was while he was on the Isle of Skye that he became a collector of stories for J. F. Campbell.

The strict methodology that was Campbell’s approach did not suit Carmichael’s artistic temperament, but nonetheless he learned to take notes on everything that interested him. He left Scotland and lived in Cornwall for two years before taking up a post in the Uists (the central group of islands of the Outer Hebrides). Here he continued collecting ballads, hymns, anecdotes, incantations, poems, and songs. From 1873 some of his lore was printed in the newspaper the Highlander.

He went on to work in various locations in Scotland and retire to Edinburgh, by which time he was considered by many to be a pillar of the Gaelic intellectual community. He then embarked on a more ambitious work and compiled Carmina Gadelica (1900), a treasure trove of culture, lore, and traditions from various Gaelic-speaking regions of Scotland.

Cauld Lad of Hilton, The

A domestic spirit, half-brownie, half-ghost. His story is as follows. Long ago at Hilton Hall in Northumbria, there lived a contrary spirit called the Cauld Lad of Hilton. Some say he was the spirit of a stable boy who had been killed by one of the past Lords of Hilton. Now he could be heard at night clattering about in the kitchen after the servants had gone to bed, putting sugar in the salt cellar, upturning chamber pots and setting everything topsy-turvy. If the servants left him a bowl of cream or a cake spread with honey, he would clean and tidy. Sometimes he could be heard sadly singing, lamenting that the person who would “lay” him to rest, or exorcise his spirit, was yet to be born:

Woe’s me! woe’s me!

The acorn’s not yet

Fallen from the tree,

That’s to grow the wood,

That’s to make the cradle

That’s to rock the bairn,

That’s to grow to the man,

That’s to lay me.

Woe’s me! Woe’s me!

However, the servants knew that the way to lay a brownie was to pay for its services in non-perishable goods such as clothes. So they left out a green cloak and hood for the Cauld Lad of Hilton. He dressed in them at midnight and frisked about in them until dawn, singing:

Here’s a cloak and here’s a hood,

The Cauld Lad of Hilton shall do no more good!

As the sun rose, he vanished, never to be seen again.

Ceasg

(Pronounced keeask.) A Scottish mermaid. Half-woman, half-grilse (a young salmon), she is also known as maighdean na tuinne, “maiden of the wave.” Her top half is that of a beautiful woman, while below the waist she has the tail of grilse. She may grant three wishes to anyone who catches her.

There are stories of marriage between ceasgs and humans. The male offspring of these unions are said to grow up to be excellent sea captains.

Like most sea maidens, the ceasg is also believed to have a darker, dangerous side. This is described in a story in J. F. Campbell and George Henderson’s The Celtic Dragon Myth (1911), in which the hero is swallowed by a ceasg.

An idea common to tales from the Scottish Highlands is that of the separable soul. Ceasgs are believed to keep their souls separately from their bodies, hidden in an egg or in a box. To destroy a ceasg, one must find and destroy her soul.

Ceni

See Zemi.

Changeling

In fairy lore throughout Europe and other parts of the world one of the fairies’ favorite tricks was to steal a human child, or sometimes a nursing mother, and take them away to fairyland. They replaced the human either with one of their own kind, known as a changeling, or with a stock or fetch, a “doll” representing the stolen child or woman, which by means of fairy glamor was given the semblance of life. The stock or fetch could take the form of a piece of wood or a bundle of grass and sticks, fashioned in the likeness of the abducted human.

Fairy changelings were sometimes sick or weak fairy children whom the fairies placed in the care of a human family so that they might have a better chance of survival. At other times they were elderly fairies who were being given the opportunity to live out their old age in comfort, cosseted and doted on by their new “parents.”

Typically, changelings were described as sickly, wizened, or otherwise abnormal in appearance, either never gaining the power of speech or displaying unsettlingly advanced language skills. In many tales, they had insatiable appetites and cried constantly. Occasionally, there were tales of parents who treated the changeling kindly in the hope that their own child would likewise be cared for. More often, suspected changelings were subjected to cruel tests and ordeals in an attempt to drive away the fairy and secure the return of the healthy human child. In many tales, these included dunkings in holy wells, beatings, or leaving the supposed changeling unattended in the woods, on a hillside, beneath a church stile, on a manure pile, or in an otherwise inhospitable environment. Sadly, many human children born with physical abnormalities or wasting diseases or who otherwise did not fit the norm endured sometimes fatal cruelties at the hands of parents and communities who labeled them as changelings.

Various reasons are given as to why fairies coveted human babies, ranging from the sinister to the benign. At the darker end of the spectrum, it was said that fairies had to pay a tithe or tribute to hell (as in the ballad of Tam Lin) and rather than spill fairy blood, they paid in the blood of humans. Alternatively, humans were taken to fairyland as slaves and put to work as servants or smiths. Beautiful golden-haired children were most prized by the fairies. Some said that they were sought after to improve the fairy stock; others simply that fairies thought these fair-haired children were particularly attractive and doted upon them like pets.

Nursing mothers were frequently sought to suckle fairy offspring. According to some tales, it seems that fairies wanted human milk to give their fairy children a human soul. An account in R. H. Cromek’s Remains of Galloway and Nithsdale Song (1812) relates the case of a nursing mother who was blessed and rewarded by a fairy for allowing her child to feed on human milk.

Various methods were employed to trick a changeling into revealing its identity. In many tales across Europe it is the mother’s unusual use of eggshells that compels the changeling to give itself away. In a German tale the mother cracks an egg in half and sets it on the stove to boil, forcing the changeling to exclaim from the cradle, “Well, I am as old as the Westerwald, but I’ve never seen anyone cooking with an eggshell!” As the changeling laughs, it shoots up the chimney and the human child is restored to the cradle.

Many Celtic changeling tales involve the “brewery of eggshell,” in which eggshells are set upon the hearth on the pretext of brewing beer in them. This strange behavior prompts the changeling to pass comment, uttering words to the effect: “I remember seeing an acorn having an oak, and I remember seeing a hen having an egg, but I don’t remember seeing anybody brew beer in the shell of a hen’s egg.”

Variations on this theme include an Icelandic tale in which a woman constructs a spoon handle out of twigs that is so long it pokes out of the top of the chimney, and a Danish tale in which the mother makes black pudding using an entire pig. This prompts the changeling to remark, “A pudding with hide! And a pudding with hair! A pudding with eyes! And a pudding with bones in it! Thrice have I seen a young wood spring upon Tiis Lake, but never yet have I seen such a pudding! The Devil will stay no longer!” It runs away, never to return.

In other tales, it is an old fairy changeling’s desire for music, merriment, and dancing that gives it away. There are many Celtic tales in which a traveling tailor plays an integral role in unmasking the changeling. Typically, the father goes out to work and the mother goes out on an errand, leaving the tailor to watch the “baby” as he works. When the two of them are left alone, the tailor begins to whistle as he stitches, at which the creature in the cradle jumps up with a glint in its beady eyes and demands that the astonished tailor strikes up a tune on the fiddle or pipes so that it might dance. In some versions it is the changeling itself who takes up an instrument and plays a lively tune, sometimes insisting on a dram of whisky to accompany the revels. When the parents return, the little creature returns to the crib, where it resumes its crying and wailing. The tailor informs the parents of their child’s true identity and they drive out the changeling by building a blazing fire and placing it upon it so that it is sent up the chimney and the true human baby returned in its place.

Throwing the changeling on the fire isn’t always sufficient to bring back the human child, however. In a Scottish tale collected by J. F. Campbell, “The Smith and the Fairies,” a 14-year-old boy, the son of a smith, is taken by the fairies and a changeling left in his place.

A wise old man, a friend of the smith, set about brewing beer in eggshells. The changeling burst out laughing, exclaiming, “I have lived 800 years and I have never seen the like of that before!” The smith threw it on the fire and it flew through the roof, but the boy wasn’t immediately returned.

The wise man instructed the smith to visit the fairy hill on a full moon, when the entrance would be open.

Taking a Bible, a cross, a dirk (dagger), and a cockerel, the last of which he hid in his coat, the smith went to the fairy mound, where he heard the sound of pipes, dancing, and merriment. Sticking his dirk in the earth as he crossed the threshold, he ventured inside, to find the fairies enjoying their revels while his son was slaving away at a forge.

The fairies became very agitated with the smith for intruding on their festivities, but couldn’t approach him because he carried the Bible and cross. When he demanded they return his son, they shouted and made such a noise that the cockerel crowed.

The smith grabbed his boy and they left through the door wedged open by the dirk just as the fairy mound closed and all became dark once more.

At first the boy was silent and pale and wouldn’t go about his work, but a year and a day after his rescue he made a rapid recovery, took up his tools, and went on to prosper as one of the land’s finest smiths.

The metal dagger, Bible, cross, and cockerel in this tale are common examples of items used as protection against malicious fairies. The Bible and cross are allied with Christian beliefs that equate fairies with demons. The crowing of the cockerel is a sign that dawn is imminent and therefore that fairy revels must end, for fairies are believed to be afraid of the light. Metal, specifically iron, was widely used to ward off the unwanted attention of fairies. Metal objects were often placed in babies’ cradles as protection against the children being snatched by the fairies. An open pair of scissors or a pair of tongs was considered particularly effective. They had the added benefit of forming the shape of the cross—considered a protective symbol even before the advent of Christianity. An item of the father’s clothing such as a waistcoat or a pair of trousers served the same function. According to E. S. Hartland’s The Science of Fairy Tales (1891), a right shirt sleeve or a left stocking was particularly favored, though quite why this should be so is not clear.

In Sweden it was said that the fire must be kept burning in the room of a baby who had not yet been baptized—unbaptized children being particularly at risk from the incursions of fairies was a common theme across many cultures. As protection, a piece of steel such as a needle should be attached to the child’s swaddling—the preferred color of which was red, to simulate fire—and the water the child was washed in should not be thrown out. In China, the ash of dried banana skin was used to draw the sign of a cross on an infant’s forehead and a fisherman’s net placed over the cradle to guard against evil spirits. In Egypt, it was widely believed that a human child left unattended was at risk of being swapped with a djinn child.

Many tales across cultures stated that babies were particularly at risk of being taken by fairies during the first six weeks of life and were most vulnerable during the first three days. It was advocated that a fire be kept lit near the child at all times and that the parents keep constant watch. This had obvious practical benefits in safeguarding the child against accident, injury, and disease. Of course, in modern-day childcare it is still important to keep a baby warm and under the watchful gaze of its parents—not for fear of fairies, but to ward off illness and because infants cannot conserve heat for the first four weeks of life.

Accounts of changelings continued to be reported into the late nineteenth century. In 1895 in Ireland a woman named Bridget Cleary was killed by her husband, family, and neighbors, who claimed that she was a fairy changeling. The ordeals she was subjected to in order to cast out the fairy and return the “real” Bridget resulted in her death.

Though reports of this type are thankfully a thing of the past, changelings continue to capture the imagination and appear in many works of art and literature. A famous example is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which revolves around a squabble between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies, over a changeling boy. W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” was inspired by Irish tales of children spirited away to fairyland. More recently, Maurice Sendak, children’s author and illustrator and creator of Where the Wild Things Are (1963), drew on changeling lore in his book Outside Over There (1981), in which Ida’s baby sister is taken by goblins and replaced with a changeling made of ice. Ida must go the goblin realm and rescue her sister by playing her horn. Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth (1986), developed in conjunction with renowned fairy artist Brian Froud, acknowledges Sendak as an influence. Featuring David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, it tells the story of Sarah, who must rescue her baby brother from the domain of the goblin king.

Changeling stories deal with themes that continue to resonate, such as panic when a child goes missing, the fear that a child is sick or weak, or—from the point of view of the changeling—the feeling of not fitting in. Perhaps this is why changelings continue to be a source of inspiration for films, art, and literature today.

Chin Chin Kobakama

Japanese fairies. A Japanese fairy tale, written down by T. Hasegawa in Chin Chin Kobakama (1903), tells the story of a lazy little girl who ate plums and hid the stones under the matting on her bedroom floor. Eventually this angered the fairies and they punished her. Every night at 2 a.m., known in Japan as the Ox Hour, the fairies rose up from the matting as tiny women dressed in bright red robes, singing:

Chin-chin Kobakama,

Yomo fuké soro,

Oshizumare, Hime-gimi!

Ya ton ton!

“We are the Chin-chin Kobakama, the hour is late, sleep, honorable noble darling!”

Though the words were kind enough, they were sung to taunt the little girl and the fairies pulled faces as they sang.

After many nights of this, the girl became tired and frightened. So, one night her mother sat up with her to see the fairies. When the little women appeared, she struck at them and they fell to the floor—as plum stones. So, the girl’s laziness and naughtiness were discovered. After that she was a very good little girl and never dropped plum stones on the floor again.

Churnmilk Peg

Guardian of Yorkshire nut thickets and orchards, she disapproves of laziness in humans, but takes a fairly laid-back approach to her duties, passing the time by smoking her pipe while protecting nuts and fruit from human hands. Melsh Dick carries out the same task.

Cipenapers

Welsh version of the word “kidnappers,” sometimes used to talk about fairies.

Clap Cans

Lancashire bogie that can be heard but not seen, so-called because of the sound it makes, like that of banging together cans or pots. It is one of the less frightening of the bogies.

Cloud Master, the

See Nuberu, El.

Cloud People, the

Spirits of the clouds in the mythology of the Pueblo peoples of North America. According to Hopi legends, the Rain Cloud clans performed ceremonies to the Cloud People to bring rainfall. They sang songs until a mist began to form, then heavy rains fell and frightful bolts of lightning came from the sky. After this display of power, the Rain Cloud clans were invited to join the Hopi pueblo.

The Cloud People were expert basket-makers. They introduced this skill to the Hopi people and were the originators of the basket dance, which is still performed at certain ceremonies.

The Hopi continue to perform rituals at the winter solstice and in the spring to ask to the Cloud People to bring rainfall to ensure a good harvest. In these ceremonies the Cloud People are represented by kachina masks.

Cluricaune

(Pronounced kloor-a-cawn.) Irish cellar-dwelling fairy, similar to a leprechaun. Irish folk-tale collector Thomas Crofton Crocker described him as wearing a red nightcap, a leather apron, long pale blue stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. In some tales he acts like a buttery spirit, beleaguering drunkards and frightening unscrupulous servants stealing from the wine cellar. If the victim attempts to escape the cluricaune’s taunts by moving house, the cluricaune hops into a cask and accompanies them.

Coblynau

(Pronounced koblernigh.) Welsh mining fairies, similar to the Cornish knockers and English blue-cap. In British Goblins (1880), Sikes describes them as grotesquely ugly, about 18 inches (45 centimeters) tall, and dressed like miners. They helped miners by indicating where to find good lodes of ore. In Germany, these mine spirits were known as Kobolds.

Tom Cockle

An Irish household brownie who stayed with the same family for generations. When the family relocated to America, they were sad to bid farewell to their helper. But on arriving in their new home, they were delighted to find food set out and a fire already burning brightly in the hearth, for Tom Cockle, their loyal brownie, had come with them.

Coco, El

A bogieman in many Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. The myth of El Coco is thought to have originated in Portugal and Galicia and spread to Latin American countries such as Mexico, Argentina, and Chile with Spanish and Portuguese colonization. The name “Coco” is related to the Portuguese and Spanish for “skull” and the bogieman is sometimes represented as a coconut or a carved pumpkin. Like a dark counterpart to a guardian angel, he is said to take the form of a dark, shadowy figure, often sitting on the roof, where he watches over a child, ready to pounce at any sign of disobedience or bad behavior and spirit them away.

Coleman Grey

A little pisky boy who was adopted by humans, as related in Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England (1865).

Colepexy

Pexy or colepexy are the names of a Dorset pixy. In Dorset, an area of southern England renowned for its fossils, belemite fossils are known as colepexies’ fingers, and fossilized sea urchins are also called colepexies’ heads.

Sometimes described as a fairy horse, the colepexy haunts woods, and coppices, acting as a guardian of orchards, leading travelers astray, and occasionally luring unsuspecting folk into mounting him, whereupon he embarks on a wild ride across the Dorset downs, through thorny thickets and wetlands before bucking off his rider, leaving them stranded in a stream or ditch.

William Barnes, in Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect (1844), describes the colepexy’s activities thus: “To beat down the few apples that may be left on the trees after the crop has been taken in; to take as it were, the fairies’ horde.”

See also Colt Pixy.

Colt Pixy

Fairy horse of Hampshire whose neighing tricks other horses and travelers into losing their way, leading them into bogs, similar to a brag or dunnie.

In Somerset, the colt pixy is an orchard guardian who chases away scrumpers (apple thieves), and may be a variant of the colepexy.

See also Lazy Lawrence.

Corrigan

See Korrigan.

Cottingley Fairies

When two girls in Bradford borrowed a camera to take photos of the fairies at the bottom of their garden, neither of them could have imagined the sensation that was about to follow. When the resulting images attracted the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the eminent writer with a keen interest in the supernatural, the Cottingley Fairies phenomenon had everybody talking. The excitement and speculation have rippled down through the years, sparking the idea for two films released in 1977, Photographing Fairies and Fairy Tale: A True Story, and the story continues to attract interest today.

It all began when cousins Elsie Wright, aged 16, and Frances Griffiths, aged 10, got into trouble for getting wet playing in the stream at the bottom of the garden at the Wrights’ home in Cottingley. The girls loved playing in the stream, not least, they said, because they saw fairies there. When their parents laughed at the notion of fairies at the bottom of the garden, dismissing it as fanciful, or merely an excuse for splashing in the stream, the girls set out to prove the grown-ups wrong. They persuaded Elsie’s father, a hobbyist photographer, to let them borrow his camera and set off for the stream. They returned triumphantly, in great excitement.

When Elsie’s father developed the photographs in his darkroom, he dismissed the initial picture—of Frances watching four fairies dancing on a bush—as the girls fooling around with paper cut-outs. However, a couple of months later the girls went on to produce a second photograph, of Elsie sitting on the lawn with a gnome.

In 1919 Elsie’s mother showed the photographs at a meeting of the Theosophical Society at a lecture on “Fairy Life.” A few months later, the photos were displayed at the Society’s annual conference, where they caught the eye of Edward Gardner, an eminent member. His interest was piqued and he sent the images and the glass-plate negatives to a photography expert, who was of the opinion that the photographs were genuine. Gardner then used enhanced negatives to reproduce the images, which he used to deliver illustrated lectures around the country.

The editor of the Spiritualist magazine Light drew the photos to the attention of renowned author and Spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He had been commissioned to write an article on fairies for the Christmas edition of the Strand magazine. He contacted Gardner to find out who had taken the photos and subsequently got in touch with the Wrights to ask for permission to use the two photos to illustrate his article. Impressed that such an eminent figure as Conan Doyle was interested, Elsie’s father agreed that the photos could be used, but refused to accept any money for them, stating that if they were in fact genuine, then they shouldn’t be sullied by the exchange of money.

Conan Doyle was preoccupied preparing for a lecture tour of Australia, so Gardner went to meet with the Wright family. Elsie’s father told him that he been convinced there was some trick involved in the photographs, but when he had searched the girls’ room for evidence—scraps of pictures or cut-outs—he had found nothing incriminating. As further verification of the photographs’ authenticity, Gardner returned to Cottingley with two cameras and some photographic plates, which had secretly been marked to reveal any tampering. Frances was invited to stay to see if the girls could repeat their feat and again take pictures of the fairies.

Insisting that the fairies would not show themselves if other people were watching, the two girls set off alone to the stream, where they took several photos, three of which appeared to show fairies. “Frances and the Leaping Fairy” showed Frances in profile looking at a winged fairy sitting on branch; in “Fairy Offering a Posy of Harebells to Elsie,” a fairy is offering Elsie flowers. The final photo, “Fairies and their Sun Bath,” showed the fairies, without either of the girls, frolicking in the sunshine.

Packed in cotton wool, the plates were sent back to Gardner, who wrote to Conan Doyle in Australia expressing his joy that the experiment seemed to have worked.

The Christmas edition of the Strand in which the original photos were published sold out in two days. Elsie and Frances’ names were changed to protect their privacy and they were referred to as Iris and Alice Carpenter. Conan Doyle concluded his article by writing he hoped that if the photographs helped to convince people of the existence of fairies it would jolt the materialistic twentieth-century mindset out of its rut and into acknowledging the glamor and mystery of life. It was his hope that the images would encourage people to open up to other psychic phenomena too.

Initial reactions to the images were mixed. Skeptics noted that the fairies conformed to the images in traditional nursery tales and sported suspiciously fashionable hairstyles, while others took the girls and their photos at face value, welcoming the images as evidence of the existence of supernatural beings.

Conan Doyle used the second batch of photographs to illustrate another article in the Strand in 1921. This article went on to form the basis of his book, The Coming of the Fairies, published in 1922.

In 1921 Gardner made a final visit to Cottingley, this time accompanied by a clairvoyant named Geoffrey Hodson. On this occasion neither Frances or Elsie claimed to see fairies; however, Hodson professed to observe many of the winged creatures. Frances and Elsie later denounced him as a fake.

Public interest in the Cottingley Fairies phenomenon gradually died down after 1921. Elsie and Frances married and lived abroad for many years. It was not until 1966 that the fairies—and Frances and Elsie—found themselves once again in the limelight, when a reporter for the Daily Express tracked down Elsie, now living back in England. In an interview, she admitted that the fairies might have been figments of her imagination, but said that what she saw in her mind had somehow been captured on the photographic plate. The article triggered more media interest and scientific investigations into the photographs, most of which concluded that they were fakes.

In 1983, in an article in the Unexplained magazine, the cousins admitted that the photos had been fabricated. However, they maintained that the fairies were real and they had genuinely seen them. Elsie, a skilled artist from a young age, had copied out illustrations of fairies from Princess Mary’s Gift Book (1914), a popular children’s book, which they had then made into cardboard cut-outs, being careful to dispose of all traces of anything that could be used as evidence. However, a question mark remains over the fifth and final photograph, “Fairies and their Sun Bath.” Both girls claimed to have taken it, and Frances always maintained that it was genuine.

In an interview on Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, Elsie explained that she and Frances had been too embarrassed to say anything after the highly esteemed Arthur Conan Doyle had championed the pictures as genuine evidence of fairies. What had started out as an attempt to prove their parents wrong had taken an unexpected turn that they could never have predicted. They had never thought of it as fraud, Elsie said, just two cousins having a bit of fun. She couldn’t understand how so many people—and very highly regarded figures at that—were taken in. She believed they had wanted to be taken in.

Prints of the photographs, two of the cameras the girls used, and watercolors of fairies painted by Elsie are displayed at the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Co-walker

An apparition of one’s double or doppelgänger. In the north of England it is known as a waff and portends death. In The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1691), Robert Kirk believes it to be a type of fairy that can be seen by those with second sight. This double resembles a person in every way, like a twin or shadow, and can be seen before and after that person is dead. It is often sighted eating at funeral banquets or bearing the coffin to the grave.

See also Fetch, Swarth.

Cowlug Sprites

In the villages of Bowden and Gateside, on the border between England and Scotland, the cowlug sprites haunt the villages on Cowlug Night. These strange sprites are aptly named, with ears said to be shaped like the ears of cows.

Crimbil

Welsh for changeling.

Crodh Mara

Scottish sea-dwelling fairy cattle. These hornless cattle sometimes bestow the gift of their milk on humans.

One story tells of the Hero of Clanranald, who lived with his wife and their cow. The cow gave very little milk. One day the hero’s wife saw three crodh mara and went to milk them. That night she heard a voice that told her to spill some milk on the fairy hill. She did, and from that day on the cows appeared for her to milk every day. When she died, they never returned.

In another tale, a couple spotted crodh mara on an island at Lochmaddy. The milk from the fairy cattle supplied the couple with butter and cheese for half a year.

Croker, Thomas Crofton (1798–1854)

The antiquarian and folktale collector Thomas Crofton Croker was born in Cork, Ireland. After a sporadic local education, he joined a mercantile firm in 1813, but soon became more interested in artistic pursuits and developed an interest in the folk and fairy traditions of Ireland. In 1819 he obtained the position of clerk at the Admiralty in London, where he continued to work until his retirement.

His writings were influenced by visits to the province of Munster in the south of Ireland where he collected legends, folk songs, and tales. He wrote the first volume of Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland in 1825. The book proved to be very successful; it garnered praise from Sir Walter Scott and was translated into German by Jakob Grimm. The second and third volumes were published in 1828. Croker’s wife, Marianne, was a painter and provided the illustrations for the books. Croker himself is regarded as the first field-collector of folk tales in Ireland.

Croquemitaine

French bogeyman, literally, the “cruncher of mittens.” When French children misbehave, their parents threaten to send them to the croquemitaine, who will gobble them up.

Cú Chulainn

See Cuchullin.

Cú Cuchaind

See Cuchullin.

Cù Sith

(Pronouced coo-shee.) Scottish fairy dog. His dark green color marks him out as distinct from other Celtic fairy hounds. Other fairy dogs are generally described as either white with red ears, or black; the most common type in England are black dogs. As described by J. G. Campbell in Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900), the cù sith is the size of a young bull, with a shaggy coat and a long tail coiled or plaited on his back; his huge footprints can often be seen in the mud or the snow. He runs silently, gliding along in a straight line. Three loud barks, which can be heard by sailors far out at sea, are the signal that the cú sith is out hunting.

See also Yeth Hound.

Cuachag

(Pronounced cooachack.) A Scottish river sprite or fuath. It haunted Glen Cuaich and takes its name from this place. Like all fuathan, it is a pernicious spirit.

Cúchulainn

See Cuchullin.

Cuchullin

(Also Cú Chulainn, Cú Cuchaind, or Cúchulainn.) Hero of the Ulster Cycle, one of the first collections of Irish heroic legends, he also appears in Manx and Scottish folklore.

Cuchullin was born a mortal, his name was Sétanta, but he was the son of the god Lugh of the Long Arm and even as a child he displayed great strength. When he was seven years old he killed Culain the Smith’s fierce hound, who guarded the King of Ulster’s court. To make amends he offered to guard Ulster until his death. He was given the name Cuchullin, “Culain’s Hound.”

From the outset, Cuchullin’s striking appearance set him apart as different. He had seven toes on each foot, seven fingers on each hand and seven pupils in each eye. His red shock of hair was dark brown at the roots, light blond at the tips. He wore 100 strings of gems on his head, his chest glittered with a hundred brooches, and he had many admirers. However, he was prone to fits of battle frenzy. During such fits, he transformed into a monster, turning himself around inside his skin, so that his feet and knees faced backward and his calves and heels faced forward. Each strand of his hair stood up on his scalp with rage, a flame leapt from his mouth, and a jet of black blood spouted from the top of his head. His eyes displaced themselves, one to his cheek, the other the back of his skull. He fought from his chariot, driven by Laég, his faithful charioteer, drawn by his gray and black horses Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend. In this fevered, crazed state, he had to be dipped into three vats of ice-cold water to return him to normal temperature.

When he was 17 years old, he single-handedly defended Ulster against Queen Medhb in the epic battle of the Cattle Raid of Cuailane. Eventually it was Queen Medhb who brought about his demise. Cuchullin bound himself to a pillar or standing stone so that he might stand up and fight his enemies to the very end and thus he died a hero.

See also Lug, Raven.

Curupira

Brazilian guardian spirit of the forest. In Brazilian mythology he is most often depicted as a red-headed boy, with the distinguishing feature of backward-facing feet. The name comes from curu, meaning “boy,” and pira, meaning “body,” in the language of the Tupi people of the Brazilian rainforest. Curupira safeguards trees, plants, and animals from the destructive activities of humans, using his backward feet to confound hunters who try to follow his tracks.

Cutty Soams

A mischievous coal-pit bogle from the north of England, also known as Old Cutty Soams. Putters were mine workers—sometimes girls—responsible for pushing the wooden wagons that transported coal or ore out of the mine. “Soams” were the ropes that attached the putter to the wagon. Cutty Soams was known for severing these ropes. According to an account in the Monthly Chronicle (1887), when the men went down to work in the morning, it was not uncommon for them to find that Cutty Soams had been busy during the night, and every pair of soams in the colliery had been cut to pieces. Though fond of causing mischief, Cutty Soams was also known to bring about good, at times pouncing upon an unpopular overseer to give him a sound thrashing, much to the delight of the miners.

Cwn Annwn

(Pronounced koon anoon.) Welsh hell hounds. Similar to the Gabriel Ratchets, the wish hounds, and the Seven Whistlers, they are harbingers of death. To hear them is a sure sign that someone’s time is up. Their howls are said to grow softer as they approach; close by, their yelping sounds like the cries of small beagles, yet far away their growling is a loud wild lament.

See also Yeth Hound.

Cyhyraeth

(Pronounced kerherrighth.) Welsh form of the Scottish caoineag, the “weeper.” She is rarely seen, most often manifesting as an invisible, disembodied voice. Her groaning is an omen of death, especially multiple deaths that are the result of a disaster or an epidemic. Like the Irish banshee, she wails for locals who have died in foreign lands away from home. Accompanied by a corpse light or will o’ the wisp, her cries have been heard on the sea off the Welsh Glamorganshire coast before shipwrecks, foretelling the path a corpse would take to the churchyard.

In Wirt or W. Sikes’ British Goblins (1880), her wailing is described as doleful and disagreeable, like the groaning of a dying person. As well as foretelling death, it is often a portent of foul weather. First it is heard at a distance, then closer, then near at hand, offering three warnings of death. “It begins strong, and louder than a sick man can make; the second cry is lower, but not less doleful, but rather more so; the third yet lower and soft, like the groaning of a sick man almost spent and dying.”

D’Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine (c.1650–1705)

French countess and writer who published Les Contes de Fées (Fairy Tales) in 1697 and Contes Nouveaux ou les Fées à la Mode (New Tales or Fairies in Fashion) in 1698. She was one of the most influential writers in the French salons, fashionable gatherings of literary and artistic figures popular in the seventeenth century.

Like many of her contemporaries, such as Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy drew on tales from oral folk tradition and retold them in a literary style. Her tales include “Le Prince Lutin,” translated into English as “The Imp Prince,” “Yellow Dwarf,” and “The White Cat” among others.

Dagda

King of the Tuatha de Danann, the immortal fairy people of Ireland.

Human invaders known as Milesians forced the Dananns to hide under “hollow hills” or mounds. However, they still controlled the natural growth of wheat and grass, essential for bread and milk, and so persuaded the Milesians to make a treaty with their king, Dagda.

Dagda had four great palaces underground and he gave two of these to his sons Lug and Ogme, keeping the other two for himself, the greater of these being Brugh na Boinne. A third son, Angus Mac Og, returned from his travels and was angry to find he had been left out. He asked Dagda if he could have the Brugh for a day and a night, and this was agreed. But at the end of that time Angus claimed the Brugh forever, as a day and a night following on from one another represented all time. Although a great warrior, Dagda wasn’t the sharpest knife in the box and could be conquered by cunning, and he allowed Angus his claim.

Dagda then took his fourth son, Aedh, to his last palace, near Tara. There they were visited by Corrgenn of Connacht and his wife. Corrgenn suspected Aedh of adultery with his wife, and promptly killed him. In turn it was expected that Dagda would kill him. However, feeling that he had been to some extent justified in his actions, instead he laid upon him a geasa, or curse: Corrgenn had to carry the body of Aedh with him until he found a stone of the exact size to cover it.

After many miles, eventually Corrgenn found a suitable stone on the shore of Loch Feabhail. He dug a grave on a hill and laid the body in it before carrying the stone up to cover it. All this was too much for him, however: his heart burst and he died. Dagda had a wall built around the tomb and this place has been called the Hill of Aileac, or Hill of Sighs, ever since.

Daji

See Huli Jing.

Dame Hirip

A child-stealing fairy woman of Hungarian folklore, one of the tündér, the Hungarian fairies.

According to an account in The Folk Tales of the Magyars (1889), Dame Hirip lived in a castle on the Varoldal mountain in Gyergyószentmiklós. She had two sons whom she sent down the mountain to rob travelers passing through of their gold and silver, and to kidnap human girls. She herself would stand on the tower of the castle, clutching a wreath in anticipation of her sons’ return.

One day, the sons encountered the sweethearts of two of the girls they had kidnapped. The two heroes, clad in mourning for their brides-to-be, fought the sons and were victorious, whereupon Dame Hirip, stationed at her lookout on the castle tower clutching her wreath, faded away.

Dame Rapson

A fairy woman of the tündér, the Hungarian fairies. The tündér were said to dwell in mountain castles that they inherited from giants or constructed themselves, often with the assistance of magical helpers. The Folk Tales of the Maygars (1889) relates how Dame Rapson enlisted the help of a magical cat and cock to construct her mountain abode.

The cat and cock carried materials to dizzying heights up a sheer-sided mountain face with which to build Dame Rapson’s castle.

To construct the road leading to the castle, the fairy enlisted the help of the Devil, who demanded as payment a valley of silver and a mountain of gold.

After the road had been built, the Devil demanded his wages. The cunning fairy presented him with a gold coin, which she held between her fingertips, and a silver coin, which she placed on her palm, explaining that the gold coin was the mountain and the coin was the valley.

The Devil flew into a rage at being outwitted and destroyed the road. It is said that remnants of it are still visible in the snow-clad Gorgeny mountains near Paraja where it is still known as Dame Rapson’s Road.

Dana

(Pronounced thana. Also Danu.) One of the great mother goddesses in Irish mythology. Particularly associated with the Tuatha de Danann, she was also worshiped in other countries under different names. As mother of the gods, she has similarities with the mother figure Don, who features in the Welsh Mabinogion stories. In Lady Gregory’s account of how the Tuatha de Danann came to Ireland, in Gods and Fighting Men (1904), special mention goes to Dana, whose power goes beyond that of all the other great queens.

Danu

See Dana.

Daoine Mainne

See Daoine Sidh.

Daoine Sidh

(Pronounced theena shee or deeny shee.) (Also Daoine Mainne.) The fairy people of Ireland. They are said to dwell in hollow hills and the name literally means “people of the mounds.” They are often referred to by euphemistic names such as the Little People, the Gentry, the Wee Folk, the Good People, or the People of that Town, so as not to cause offense. They are generally supposed to be the diminished gods of the Tuatha de Danann, the early inhabitants of Ireland. Celtic legends tell of fairy ladies and heroic fairy knights who spent their time hunting, fishing, riding, and dancing.

Daphne

According to Greek myth, she was a beautiful mountain nymph who attracted the attention of the great god Apollo. But she rejected him and so that she could escape his pursuit, her mother, Gaea, the Earth Goddess, transformed her into a laurel tree.

At the Pythian Games, held every four years at Delphi in honor of Apollo, a wreath of laurel gathered from the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly was given as a prize. The laurel wreath is still regarded as a symbol of success.

Nay, Lady, sit. If I but wave this wand,

Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,

And you a statue, or, as Daphne was,

Root-bound, that fled Apollo.

Milton, Comus (678–681)

Deevs

See Divs.

Dennison, Walter Traill (1826–1894)

Walter Traill Dennison was a farmer, antiquarian, and folklorist. He was a native of the Orkney island of Sanday, where he collected local folk tales. He published these, many in the Orcadian dialect, in 1880, under the title The Orcadian Sketch-Book. His collection of Oracadian tales includes an account of an encounter with the fearsome Nuckelavee.

Derrick

Fairies in the folklore of Devon and Hampshire. In Devon they are considered to be ill-tempered, while in Hampshire they are regarded as friendly. In one account a farmer’s wife described how she had lost her way on the Berkshire Downs when a little man dressed in green with a round smiling face appeared and told her which path to take; a local of Hampshire suggested he was a derrick.

Devas

(Also known as the “Shining Ones.”) Benevolent supernatural beings in Hindu belief. Some devas represent the forces of nature, while others represent moral values. In the Rigveda, the ancient Indian collection of sacred hymns, Indra is the leader of the devas.

See also Apsaras, Gandharvas.

Diana

In Roman mythology she is the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and birth, and is associated with wild animals, the wilderness, and the forest. She was said to dwell in the Forest of Nemi with the nymph Egeria. In Greek mythology she became identified with the goddess Artemis.

Diana is also a key figure in witchcraft, particularly the Italian witchcraft tradition Stregheria. Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (1899) describes Diana as the great spirit of the stars who made all men, giants, and dwarves, and relates how one night a poor orphan boy saw a thousand little white figures dancing under the full moon. When he asked them who they were, they replied:

“We are moon-rays, the children of Diana.

We are children of the moon;

We are born of shining light;

When the moon shoots forth a ray,

Then it takes a fairy’s form.”

Dinny Mara

(Pronounced dunya mara.) Manx merman. The dinny mara has a gentler temperament than the English merman. In Dora Broome’s story “The Baby Mermaid,” he is described as an affectionate father who played with his baby and gave her presents. This contrasts with the Cornish legend “Lutey and the Mermaid,” in which the mermaid of Cury herself was harmless enough, but feared that her husband would eat their children if she didn’t get home to feed him.

See also Ben Varrey.

Direach, the

(Pronounced jeeryuch.) The Direach Ghlinn Eitidh is a type of fachan described in J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860–1862). Fachans were particularly ugly creatures that had one hand protruding from their chest and a tuft of hair sprouting from the top of their head. The Direach was described as a giant woodcutter with one leg and one eye in the middle of his forehead.

Divs

(Or Deevs.) Demons of Persian mythology, who are in constant battle against the peris, the good spirits or fairies. According to the Koran, they are gigantic, ferocious spirits ruled over by the evil spirit Eblis. William Finch, in Purchas’ Pilgrims, describes them thus:

At Lahore, in the Mogul’s palace, are pictures of Dews and Dives with long horns, staring eyes, shaggy hair, great fangs, ugly paws, long tails, and such horrible deformity, that I wonder the poor women are not frightened.

See also Berkhyas.

Djinn

(Also jinn, jinni, genie.) Shapeshifting spirits of Arabian mythology. There are many regional variations on the spelling; here djinn is used to indicate both singular and plural. Female djinn are named with the honorific title lalla.

Djinn are described in Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828) as spirits formed from smokeless fire, or the hot, dusty Simoom wind that blows across the Sahara and the Arabian peninsula. This fire is their life force and will erupt from their veins if they are injured, reducing them to nothing but ashes.

They can appear as gigantic and terrifying beings, such as the evil spirit in the tale of “The Fisherman and the Djinn” in The Thousand and One Nights, who takes the form of an Ifrit, one of the classes of djinn, or in human forms of great beauty, although it is said that a djinn disguised in the form of a beautiful woman can be recognized by certain tell-tale signs: vertical pupils in the eyes, or the hooves of a goat or a camel instead of feet.

According to Islamic tradition, the djinn rebelled against the powers of good, like the Fallen Angels of Christian belief. Azazel grew up among the angels, but when he refused to bow to Adam, he was transformed into the fearsome Iblis, father of the Sheytans, or evil spirits, and led the djinn in battle against the angels.

Djin or Diju is the name the occultist Elephas Levi used to refer to the ‘sovereign’ of the elementals of fire, known as salamanders.

Beliefs about djinn vary from region to region. In Egypt, malignant djinn pelted travelers with stones and were wont to steal food and women. Zoba’ah, or “dust devils,” tall whirlwinds of sand in the desert, were said to indicate the path of a malevolent djinn

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