Editor’s Note: This is a later nineteenth century account of memories stretching back into the mid-early part of the same century.

I was once paying a visit to one of my elderly parishioners who was not exactly ‘bed-fast,’ for she could get up from time to time, but being far past ‘doing her own tonns’ (turns), or little odds and ends of household work, was still house-fast, or unable to leave the house, even for the sake of a gossip at the next door. I found her, with her husband — a man who died a couple of years since at the age of ninety-seven — just sitting down to tea. As a rule, I carefully avoided meal-times in all my visiting from house to house; but on the occasion I refer to there was some deviation from the customary hour for the meal just mentioned, and the old couple were going to tea at the timely hour of about half-past two in the afternoon.

On finding them so engaged, I was going to retire and call in again later, or perhaps some other day. However, this did not suit the old lady’s views at all, and I had to sit down and wait until their tea was satisfactorily disposed of. Naturally we fell into talk, and as the old woman had lived in the district all her life, and most of it in the near vicinity, I began to ask her questions about local matters. Within a quarter of a mile from the house we were sitting in — one of a group of three or four — was a place commonly known by the name ‘Fairy Cross Plains.’ I asked her, Could she tell me why the said place was so called? ‘Oh yes,’ she replied; ‘just a little in front of where the public-house at the Plains now stood, in the old days before the roads were made as they were now, two ways or roads used to cross, and that gave the ‘cross’ part of the name. And as to the rest of it, or the name ‘Fairy,’ everybody knew that years and years ago the fairies had ‘a desper’t haunt o’ thae hill-ends just ahint the Public’.

I certainly had heard as much over and over again, and so could not profess myself to be such a nobody as to be ignorant of the circumstance. Among others, a man with whom I was brought into perpetual contact, from the relative positions we occupied in the parish — he was, and is, parish clerk — had told me that his childhood had been spent in the immediate vicinity of ‘the Plains,’ and that the fairy-rings just above the inn in question were the largest and the most regular and distinct he had ever seen anywhere. He and the other children of the hamlet used constantly to amuse themselves by running round and round in these rings; but they had always been religiously careful never to run quite nine times round any one of them.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Why, sir, you see that if we had run the full number of nine times, that would have given the fairies power over us, and they would have come and taken us away for good, to go and live where they lived.’

‘But,’ said I, ‘you do not believe that, surely, Peter.’

‘Why, yes, we did then, sir,’ he answered, ‘for the mothers used to threaten us, if we wer’n’t good, that they would turn us to the door (out of doors) at night, and then the fairies would get us.’

But to return to the old woman with whom I was conversing. I admitted that I had both heard of and seen the fairy-rings in question ; but what about the fairies themselves? Had anybody ever seen them? ‘Ay, many a tahm and offens,’ said she; ‘they used to come down the hill by this deear (door), and gaed in at yon brig-steean,’ indicating a large culvert which conveyed the water of a small beck underneath the road about a stone’s throw from the cottage. A further question elicited the reply that it was a little green man, with a queer sort of a cap on him, that had been seen in the act of disappearing in this culvert. Just here the old woman’s husband broke in with the query, ‘Wheea, where do they live, then?’

’Why, under t’ grund, to be seear (sure).’

‘Neea, neea,’ says the old man; ‘how can they live under t’ grund?’ The prompt rejoinder was, ‘Why, t’ moudi warps (moles) dis, an’ wheea not t’ fairies?’ This shut him up, and he collapsed forthwith. His wife, however, was now in the full flow of communicativeness, and to my question. Had she ever herself seen a fairy? the unhesitating reply was, ‘Neea, but Ah’ve heared ’em oftens.’ I thought I was on the verge of a tradition similar to that of the Claymore Well, at no great distance from Kettleness, where, as ‘everybody used to ken,’ the fairies in days of yore were wont to wash their clothes and to bleach and brat them, and on their washing nights the strokes of the ‘battledoor’ — that is, the old-fashioned implement for smoothing newly-washed linen, which has been superseded by the mangle — were heard as far as Runswick. But it was not so. What my interlocutor had heard were the sounds indicative of the act of butter-making ; sounds familiar enough to those acquainted with the old forms of making up the butter in a good-sized Dales dairy. These sounds, she said, she had very often heard when she lived servant at such and such a farm. Moreover, although she had never set eyes on the butter-makers themselves, she had frequently seen the produce of their labour, that is to say, the ‘fairy -butterì; and she proceeded to give me the most precise details as to its appearance, and the place where she found it. There was a certain gate, on which she had good reason to be sure, on one occasion, there was none overnight; but she had heard the fairies at their work ‘as plain as plain, and in the morning the butter was clamed (smeared) all over main part o’ t’ gate.’

A few years ago, I lived at an old lonesome farm, called ‘Peanock,’ up in the hills toward Blackstone Edge. At that time, a strong little fellow about twenty three years of age, called ‘Robin,’ was employed as ‘keaw-lad,’ or man-servant, at the farm. Robin used to tell me fearful tales of the witches and boggarts of the neighbourhood. The most notable one of them all was ‘Clegg Ho’ Boggart,’ which is commemorated by the late Mr. John Roby, of Rochdale, in his Traditions of Lancashire. This local sprite is still the theme of many a superstitious winter’s tale, among the primitive people of the hills about Clegg Hall. The proverb ‘Aw’m here again – like Clegg Ho’ Boggart,’ is common there, and in all the surrounding towns and villages. I remember Robin saying that when he had to go into the ‘shippon’ or cow-house, early on a winter’s morning, with a light, after opening the door, he used to advance his lantern and let it shine a minute or two into the ‘shippon’ before he durst enter himself, on account of the number of witches and other ‘feeorin’ which ‘swarmed up an deawn th’ inside i’th’ neet time.’ But, he strongly affirmed that ‘things o’ that mak couldn’t bide leet,’ for, as soon as his lantern glinted into the place, he could see ‘witches begin a scutterin’ through th’ slifters o’th wole by theawsans; like bits o’ leet’nin.’ He used to tell me, too, how that a dairy-lass at a neighbouring farm had to let go her ‘churn-pow,’ because ‘a rook o’ little green divuls begun a-swarmin up th’ hondle as hoo wur churnin’. And then he would glance, with a kind of unconscious timidity, towards a certain nook of the yard, in which direction there stood three old cottages connected with the farm; and in one of which there dwelt a very old and deaf man, of singular hahits and weird appearance, of whose supposed supernatural powers many of the people of that neighbourhood harboured a considerable degree of superstitious fear; and, as he glanced toward the corner of the building where the old man generally made his appearance, he would tell me in an undertone that the little Irish cow, ‘Red Jenny,’ which used to be ‘as good a keaw as ever whiskt a tad or gav a meal o’ milk, had never lookt up sin th’ day at ’owd Billy glented at hur through a hole i’th’ shippon wole one mornin as Betty wur milkin hur.’ Prejudices of this kind are still very common in thinly-peopled nooks of the Lancashire hills. Waugh, Sketches.

Editor’s Note: this passage relates to Dromintee, County Armagh in Ireland where Father Donellan was based. Evans-Wentz describes the father as a ‘friend’. This episode presumably relates to 1907-1909 when Evans-Wentz travelled through Ireland and ‘Celtic’ Britain.

Father Donnellan and I called next upon Thomas McCrink and his wife at Carrifamayan, because Mrs. McCrink claims to have seen some of the ‘good people’, and this is her testimony: — Nature of the ‘Good People’ — I’ve heard and felt the good people coming on the wind ; and I once saw them down in the middle field on my father’s place playing football. They are still on earth. Among them are the spirits of our ancestors; and these rejoice whenever good fortune comes our way, for I saw them before my mother won her land [after a long legal contest] in the field rejoicing. Some of the good people I have thought were fallen angels, though these may be dead people whose time is not up. We are only like shadows in this world : my mother died in England, and she came to me in the spirit. I saw her plainly. I ran to catch her, but my hands ran through her form as if it were mere mist. Then there was a crack, and she was gone.’ And, finally, after a moment, our percipient said: ‘The fairies once passed down this lane here on a Christmas morning ; and I took them to be suffering souls out of Purgatory, going to mass.’ Evans-Wentz, 1911, 75-75

Editor’s Note: This tale comes from one Billy Clarke via Evans-Wentz. It was presumably collected while Evans-Wentz was undertaking research 1907-1909 in the Celtic fringe of Britain and in Ireland. It is interesting because this is the only description (known to this author) of fairies fishing and because of the use of Manx, a language that was by then in terminal decline.

Once while I was fishing from a ledge of rocks that runs out into the sea at Lag-ny-Keilley, a dense grey mist began to approach the land, and I thought I had best make for home while the footpath above the rocks was visible. When getting my things together I heard what sounded like a lot of children coming out of school. I lifted my head, and behold ye, there was a fleet of fairy boats each side of the rock. Their riding-lights were shining like little stars, and I heard one of the Little Fellas shout, ‘Hraaghyn boght as earish broigh, skeddan dy liooar ec yn mooinjer seihll shoh, cha nel veg ain’ (Poor times and dirty weather, and herring enough at the people of this world, nothing at us). Then they dropped off and went agate o’ the flitters. Evans-Wentz, 1911, 117-118

Editor’s Note: This extract first appeared in Hone’s Tableside Book in the early nineteenth century, though we have been unable to find the original reference. Grassington is in North Yorkshire.

You see, sir, as how I’d been a clock dressing at Girston (Grassington), and I’d staid rather lat, and may be gitten a lile sup o’ spirit, but I war far from being drunk, and knewed everything that passed. It war about eleven o’clock when I left, and it war at back end o’t year, and a most admirable beautiful neet it war. The moon war varra breet, and I never seed Rylstone Fell plainer in a’ my life. Now you see, sir, I war passin’ down t’ mill loine, and I heerd summat come past me – brush, brush, brush – wi’ chains rattlin’ a’ the while; but I seed nothing, and thowt I to mysel, now this is a most mortal queer thing. And then I stuid still, and luik’d about me, but I seed nothing at a’, nobbut the two stane wa’s on each side o’t mill loine. Then I heerd again this brush, brush, brush, wi’ the chains; for you see, sir, when I stuid still it stopped; and then, thowt I, this mun be a Bargest, that sae much is said about; and I hurried on towards t’ wood brig, for they say as how this Bargest cannot cross a watter; but lord, sir, when I gat o’er t’ brig, I heerd this same thing again, so it mud’ either hev crossed t’ watter or gane round by Spring Head [about thirty miles!]. And then I becam a valliant man, for I war a bit freetened afore; and thinks I, I’ll turn and hev a peep at this thing; so I went up Great Bank towards Linton, and I heerd this brush, brush, brush, wi’ the chains a the way, but I seed nothing; then it ceas’d all of a sudden. So I turned back to go hame, but I’d hardly reach’d t’ door, when I heer’d again this brush, brush, brush, and the chains going down towards t’ Holin House, and I followed it, and the moon there shone varra breet, and seed its tail! Then, thowt I, thou owd thing! I can say I’se seen thee now, so I’ll away hame. When I gat to t’ door, there war a girt thing like a sheep, but it war larger, ligging across t’ threshold o’ t’ door, and it war woolly like; and says I, ‘get up’ and it wouldn’t git up – then says I, ‘stir thysel,’ and it wouldn’t stir itsel! And I grew valliant, and I rais’d t’ stick to baste it wi’, and then it luik’d at me, and sich oies! (eyes) they did glower, and war as big as saucers, and like a cruelled ball; first there war a red ring, then a blue one, then a white one; and these rings grew less and less till they cam to a dot. Now I war nane feer’d on it, tho’ it girn’d at me fearfully, and I kept on saying ‘git up’ and ‘stir thysel,’ and t’ wife heer’d as how I war at t’ door, and she cam to oppen it; and then this thing gat up and walked off, for it war mare feer’d o’t’ wife than it war o’ me! And I told t’ wife, and she said it war Bargest; but I niwer seed it since, and that’s a true story!’ Cobley, 263-267

Editor’s Note: This is one of the John O’London fairy letters from 1936. For the whole collection see our bookshop page.

Sir, I have been deeply interested in recent letters from readers who claim to have seen fairies.

Near my home in Co. Derry there is rich grazing plain of about eighty acres, which pastures annually a large herd of cattle. Three of its sides are fringed with a plantation, and the other by a thick wood.

On a certain summer evening about twenty years ago, five men, employees on this estate, were engaged in dredging the canal which runs through the middle of the plain. One of the labourers, who was a little in advance of his fellows, approached a thorn bush which grew on the side of the rampart, and there he had the unique experience of seeing a little man about 18 inches tall with a conical hat and a red coat come out of the side of the bank and dart off as quickly as a rabbit. The man shouted to his companions, who came running up in time to see their friend racing after the conspicuous figure in the red coat. The pursuer was a good runner, but the wee red-coat soon outdistanced him, and although he continued the pursuit with his companions behind him, it faded into obscurity at another rampart on the edge of the plantation. No further trace of it could be discovered.

These men had always been sceptical as regards the supernatural, yet to this day they swear that they actually did see a fairy.

J.H.Craigen, Moneymore, Co. Derry

Craigen ‘An Encounter‘

Editor’s Note: This is from Janet Bord’s superlative Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People, a book we’ve raved about elsewhere on this site. Thanks to Janet for giving us permission to use the extract.

A friend of mine [Janet Bord’s] also saw a nature spirit in a rose garden. Sylvia Pigeon was cutting roses in her garden in Hampshire when she looked down and saw a figure on the ground. ‘It was all sort of greenish, and light – light, airy – and I have a vague recollection of seeing a little sort of face of some kind, but I have no recollection of any limbs, any arms or any legs, but it was round in some way, and moving, very sort of carefully, almost as though it was looking where it was going.’ It was about twelve to eighteen inches tall, ‘misty and leaflike… it really seemed to me to be a spirit of the roses, and there were some draperies about it, but it was more like petals, you know curved and interwined, and flowing.’ At the time she saw the creature, Mrs Pigeon was thinking about the imminent wedding of her daughter, and the beauty of the roses, and she felt that somehow the appearance of the creature, the wedding and the roses were all linked. She felt ‘love and compassion’ coming from the creature, that it was ‘looking at me with some delight, I would say, some sort of love, friendliness, as though to say yes, how nice it is all is, all friends together, I had a feeling of loveliness and love really (53).

Editor’s Note: This is a particularly interesting and little researched case. If any readers know something about the characters involved or can help us track down the original Irish reports…

While people all over the world have been thinking and talking of wars and rumors of wars the inhabitants of certain villages in West Limerick have been chiefly occupied in watching for fairies, according to reports from Dublin. Crowds are assembling in the evening at cross-roads hoping to catch a glimpse of the ‘good little people’; boys and men have chased the fairies, while a youth named Keely says he actually held a leprechaun by the hand. Old people shaking their heads said it was a ‘bad omen’ to see so many of the ‘little people’ at one time and in broad daylight, as well as in the evenings. Many people— especially girls— are afraid to go out after dark according to the story. Describing the strange occurrences an Irish newspaper says: ‘John Keely a schoolboy, seeing a fairy alone, ran and told the Mulqueens about It. They sent him back to interrogate the little visitor, who admitted to Keely that he ‘was from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, In daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses. The little people allowed Keely to approach them and he actually took one of them by the hand and ‘set off along the road with him’ he said. (Anon, ‘Fairies Reported’, 1938)

Editor’s Note: Daniel O’Leary was a noted piper. Here is a delightful fairy story concerning him.

An idea generally prevails among the people of the southern districts, that O’Leary, in some midnight excursion by the border of a haunted stream or ancient rath, had overheard the witching song of the coelshee or fairy music, and thence was enabled to pour into his strain an almost articulate voice of melody, which every other performer would vainly seek to rival. Indeed, from the incomparable sweetness of his music, it is not strange that an opinion of his supernatural power over his chanter should be rife among a people superstitious and deeply sensitive to the impression of sweet sounds. He himself relates, with much graphic effect, how under the shade of a hawthorn in a secluded dell by the broad Blackwater, as he was playing that truly delightful air, the ‘Humors of Glen,’ a peasant stole upon him, attracted by what he conceived to be fairy music; and how, deceived by the piper’s strange appearance, he mistook him for a cluhiricaun, and had him fast clutched by the throttle and loudly demanding the ‘Sporran-na-Schilling’ [1] till the piper who, maugre his deformity of body [he was a hunchback], can deal a tremendous blow, felled the superstitious wight to the earth with a single application of his clenched fist (anon, ‘Daniel’ 1862].

[1] The Sporran-na-Schilling was the purse of the leprechaun or cluhricaun that contained one shilling and when spent was magically replenished. If you caught a leprechaun/cluhricaun you had to threaten him to give you the treasure without once taking your eyes off the little man.

I owe this story to the kindness of Haunted Ohio Books.

Editor’s Note: This encounter with a pixy or strange auditory illusion took place in 1921 on Dartmoor. Thomas Wood was a noted composer. For more on fairy music…

That is what the scene is on the stage. But out on the open moor in sunlight two months before rehearsals began I had to imagine what it would be like; I could not know. The only way of fitting the music and the sense was to work by time and calculation. I had the text, the Family Bible and a stopwatch for tools, and for a guide the memory of Stanford’s harsh voice giving the advice that every composer for the theatre must lay to heart: ‘Pace it, me boy, pace it.’ Pace it I did, to and fro among the heather, conducting to the empty air. That section seemed all trim. Now time it. I got down again flat on my belly, set the stop-watch: go. Solo viola lead at the cue to ‘Will!’ Will’ – thirty one seconds – put repeat bars in for safety; violas again at ‘Let me pass’ – thirteen seconds; Portia’s harp entry – better have a pause at the second bar – four seconds; the ‘St Valentine’s Day’ for Orphelia – seven seconds. And just then I heard my own name called. ‘Tommy! Tommy!’ And once more nearer ‘Tom-my!’ There was no one in sight. I picked up the field glasses to make sure. The moor was as empty as the sky. Picknickers sometimes wanders along the Teign, behaving oddly, but this eyrie was out of their ken, hard to find; and even if the wind had been more than a fitful summer breeze the river was to leeward. And I had not dozed off. I was most certainly and completely awake, with a stopwatch ticking in my hand. Searching for intruders seemed futile, yet I did search irritably. I knew I should find nothing. That voice had sounded quite near. Within twenty yards. It was not the voice of anyone in camp. And no-one in camp called me Tommy. They knew better. Thomas, yes, or Tom; but no diminutives. That was agreed on. And no one I could bring to mind had a voice of this particular quality. It was  small, quite clear, faintly mocking, pitched high. Yet it was not a woman’s voice. It might even have been a man’s if he slipped easily into falsetto. Had I been honoured by a visit from a Pixie?… I went back to the same place next day. The weather was more steamingly hot than ever. Dartmoor was asleep; so were the bees, the hawks, the wind, and the tors filmy against the blue. Everything asleep but me. I kept most brilliantly and tenaciously awake, listening, prone by the rowan bush on top of the family bible and trying to work at the second part of the Masque. An hour went by; an hour and a half. The shadows lifted as the sun moved. No other change. And then I heard the last thing I could have expected to hear – music in the air as faint as breath. It died away; came back louder, hung over me swaying like a censer [inspired image!] that dips and swings, and is withdrawn. In all it lasted twenty minutes, which was a period of time quite long enough for me to settle that no human agency within my knowledge could bring music of that kind into that place; and more mature reflection still leads me to believe that this conclusion was right. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1921; heather-covered moor will not carry sound far and the day was a roaster; my field glasses again assured me that no picknicker was in sight, still less a gramophone, and what I heard could not possibly have been music of the mind extraverted into music for the ear. Nor was it music that resembled in the least the music that I had just written or even music that I wanted to write. The key, style and scoring of the two had nothing in common. It would be a fine and swaggering claim to assert that I made exact notes of what I heard, but it would be unscholarly and untrue. Taking down an unfamiliar tune at one hearing is not easy, and I have yet to meet the man who can take down a four-part harmony, played at speed, in such a way that he is completely certain of his accuracy. And this music was essentially harmonic. It was not a melody, an ‘air’. It sounded like the weaving together of various tenuous fairy strands.