Sir,

I have read with interest the recent letters from correspondents who claim to have seen fairies.

During the war we lived in the heart of the Welsh countryside, four miles from a town, and one afternoon in June, at the time of the hay harvest, the following incident occurred.

My mother and I were sitting in the garden with two maids. Suddenly she pointed to a neighbouring field, in which the hay had only just been cut. ‘How very early the farmer and his workers have started raking the hay,’ she said. ‘It cannot have had time to dry.’ I looked in the direction she indicated and I could see lines of figures going backwards and forwards, apparently busy raking the hay. We called the two maids, who also noticed the lines of figures.

That evening we met the farmer and asked him why the raking in that particular meadow had been started so early. He said we must be mistaken. He had walked past the field that afternoon, and there was no one there at all!

It seemed as if we had witnessed a kind of psychic phenomenon. From the earliest times fairies have been said to show a fondness for copying the work of human beings, and quite possibly it was some of these creatures we had seen.

Carmarthen, S. Wales                                                Doris G. Stephens

Stephens, Doris G. ‘Fairies Are Not Dead’, John O’London’s Weekly (11 April 1936), p. 65: for other John O’London fairy letters follow the link.