Editor’s Note: This passage comes from the writing of English Christian mystic Daphne Chambers (obit 1991) who lived in Essex (Colchester) and believed herself in contact with fairies and gnomes. Here she has asked about fairy get-togethers.

To begin with, we all meet at some pre-arranged place and give out power until there’s a concentration rather like a big ball in the middle. We make it beautiful as we can, eachin adding his own colour and vibration so that it is all shades of the rainbow and full of life and movement.

During the party we enter the ball, either alone, with several friends or with a member of the opposite sex. We absorb the power and come out feeling wonderful. We try not to go into it too often though, because if we inhale too much of it, we’re unable to control our movements. Those fairies who can’t fly may find themselves floating over the tops of the flowers or even shrubs, and we who can will perhaps regain consciousness in a cloud. I did this once and I can assure you that it wasn’t nearly as attractive to be in as it looks from the ground. I became very wet and the power began to ooze out of me. I found that I couldn’t think properly and I was very frightened when I realized how far about the Earth I’d wondered. I began to drop much faster than I liked but I managed to pull myself together and as soon as I reached a few feet about the tops of the trees, I seemed to regin control and all was well. I swore that I’d never do it again but I have… not very often… but you just don’t know how irresistible that ball of power is (Chambers Forty Years 64)

Editor’s Note: This comes from the writing of the famous theosophist Dora van Gelder. 

For the purposes of  description, I shall take an ordinary fairy of the surface of the land, a common woods or garden fairy which we may consider the most typical of them all. This kind may be said to be in mid-stream of fairy evolution; it is  constant touch with mankind; it is found in various colors and sizes nearly everywhere on earth; it has been seen by many people. These fairies are, in fact, so common that it is easy to pick out an individual for analysis. This one happens to be a green fairy fo the New England Woods.

He is some two feet six inches tall, with a slender body and a head which is rather larger in proportion to his body and a head which is rather large in proportion to his body than is common among adult human beings.

His body is made of matter in a state much more like vapor than anything else we know of in our wolrd but the form is quite definite and lasting. The material of his body is as loosely knit as the vapor from the spout of a boiling tea kettle, and is somewhat of the nature of a cloud of coloured gas. In fact, it is exactly that, only the gas is finer than the lightest we know, and is less readily detected even than helium or dydrogen. But his does not prevent it from being held together in a form, for it is not a chemical but a living substance, which life saturates and holds together. In truth, his power over this matter as a living creatures is shown by the fact that his body is composed of two distinct densities of material. The body proper is a true emerald green and fairy dense, considering that stuff of which it is made; around this on all sides, both front and back, is a much thinner cloud of the same matter in which he is not so vividly alive. This thinner portion, which extends from all sides of his body proper, is a lighter green.

All this material is virtually the stuff of which feelings are made. It is vital matter. The movements of our friend are due to his desire to be somewhere or to do something. Since the matter of which he is made is itself of the nature of living emotion, instead of a complicated system of venins, muscles and nerves, when he feels an emotion his body responds immediately and directly.

I must explain that although I see through the thinner outer part of his body, and although the denser part or body proper is so tenous that one almost feels one sees into it, yet this does not prevent him from having some organic structure, although it is much simpler, I think, than any animal’s physical body could be. The principal inner organ appears to be what we might call his heart, whichis a glowing and pulsating center about where a human heart would be. This is golden light. It pulsates very much like a human heart, but simply in and out. When he is active it is rapid and when he is quiet it is slow. This organ is his center of vitality and it appears to circulate vital currents all over him, so he has a primitive system of circulation which is a kind of blood and nervous system combined. The head has a special structure, but is not much centred in his his head, for his principal experience is through feeling and life. On rare occasions, when he is curious or tries to think, his head glows a little also with the same sort of golden light from within. As he never eats, he has nothing like a digestive system, but he has a mouth and other facial organs. Before I pass to the latter, however, I must mention that this heart has one peculiarity. The fairy can control it, and that is how he gets into touch with things around him, particularly living beings. When he wants to respond to a plant, he makes his heart beat at the same pulse rate as the plant. This synchrony makes them unified. As said elsewhere, the secret of the fairy life rhythm. Each kind of fairy (whether water, land, air or fire) comes into the world with a limited and definite range of rhythmic power, according to his species and his own personal nature. Within this range he controls the rhythm of vitality by his desires and feelings.

This heart thythm is a matter of vital contact with things around him, but his sensations and responses to a stimulus from without works whether or not he is in synchrony of identity with the person or creature. That is, he has something corresponding to our sensory mechanism. He is all sensation, and so he does not get sense impressions exclusively through specific organs or perception like eye or ear, but rather in a general and yet vivid way all over him. He saturates himself in things that give him a sensation. It is true, however, that this is rather more actue and specialized in certains parts of his body. For instance, he does have eyes of a kind, and he seems to turn in order to get a good look at a thing, but he can be well aware of something visible behind him because his whole body feels the radiation from it. His senses include a sense of smell – all over him – for he bathes in what is evidently the perfume of sweet-smelling flowers, but he also does the same thing with flowers which appear to me to have no fragrance at all. So he is more sensitive in this particular than we are, not less. He has not sense of taste, for being emphemeral he does not eat, but he certainly receives sound and responds to music, and here again, he response is all over his body. He has something like ear orifices, and sometimes pointed ears, but I think the soun actually is received all over him, and the ears serve for interpretation in some way.

In the average fairy the faeical features are rudimentary. The one sense which seems to be localized in a special organ is sight. For a fairy does not come and peer at one. The eyes are not well defined, and in most cases, have no lids or brows or lashes, for he has no need of such things. He often has a protuberance like a nose, and as a rule, suggestions of ears. His mouth is a line, within any wrinkles around it, and it curves a little to express feelings of amusement and pleasure (all of which his whole form expresses far more vividly), but he rarely opens his mouth and does not appear to have any teeth. When he does grin, the mouth draws back  and bcomes longer in an amusing way, but wrinkles form around it or around his eyes. His face is a soft tan and sort of furry looking mop of green mossiness surrounds it.

One singular fact is that when one looks at him sideways his head is nearly as thick from front to back ad his body, and he does not possess much of a neck. Anotehr thing about these common woods fairies is that they either have long legs and a short body or short legs and a long body. They seldom exhibit the proportions familiar to us.

When our green friend moves he does not woalk from place to place, but floats. His desire draws him, or his need to be at some spot. Of course, when he wants to he can hop abou tin lively fashion and jump up and down. He has legs and arms without much detail of fingers and toes, and a hand will often enough be like a foot. All the knotty muscles and sinews we see in the bodies of animals are lacking here. He is slender and graceful and quaintly agile (van Gelder 1977 20-24).

Editor’s Note: this comes from Geoffrey Hodson’s account of his visit to Cottingley in company with Frances and Elsie in 1921. Note the way that he refers to ‘visible to us’, i.e. to him and the girls. They considered him a fake. His writing suggest someone who was utterly sincere, though perhaps mistaken.

Cottingly [sic]: August, 1921

A bright radiance shines out over the field, visible to us sixty yards away. It is due to the arrival of a group of fairies. They are under the control of a superior fairy who is very autocratic and definite in her orders, holding unquestioned command. They spread themselves out into a gradually widening circle around her and, as they do so, a soft glow shines over the grass. Since two minutes ago, when they swung high over the tree tops and down into the field, the circle has spred to approximately twelve feet in width and is wonderfully radiant with light. Each member of this fairy band is connected to the directing fairy, who is in the centre and slightly above them, by a stream of light. Each member of this fairy band is connected to the directing fairy, who is in the centre and slightly above them, by a stream of light. These streams are of different shades of yellow deepening to orange, they meet in the centre merging in her aura, and there is a constant flow backwards and forwards along them. The form produced by this is something like an inverted fruit dish with the central fairy as the stem, and the lines of light, which flow in a graceful even curve forming the sides of the bowl.

Their continued activities were producing an ever-increasing complexity of form, when time, unhappily forced us to depart (Hodson 1982, 79).

Editor’s Note: This is not a leprechaun tale in the normal sense but it offers a window into leprechaun belief at the uneasy point of contact between traditional Ireland and the dominant Anglo-Irish class: the courtroom. 

The following dialogue is said to have taken place in an Irish court of justice, upon the witness having used the word Leprochaune (Crofton Croker, Fairy):

Court: Pray what is a leprochaune’? the law knows no such character or designation.

Witness: My lord, it is a little counsellor man in the fairies, or an attorney that robs them all, and he always carries a purse that is full of money, and if you see him and keep your eyes on him, and that you never turn them aside, he cannot get away, and if you catch him he gives you the purse to let him go, and then you’re as rich as a Jew,

Court: Did you ever know of any one that caught a Leprochaune? I wish I could catch one.

Witness: Yes, my lord, there was one…

Court: That will do!

Editor’s Note: Here are three account of what may conceivably be the same fairy relic, though we are speaking about different parts of Ireland. See also The Little Shoe. 

Crofton Croker wrote (84, 1824): A paragraph recently appeared in a Kilkenny paper stating, that a labourer, returning home in the dusk of the evening, discovered a Leprehaune at work, from whom he bore away the shoe which he was mending; as a proof of the veracity of his story it was further stated, that the shoe lay for the inspection of the curious at the newspaper office. The most prominent feature in the vulgar creed.

Are you aware that, on this side of the channel [i.e in Ireland], we have so little doubt of the existence of fairies, that it is no uncommon occurrence to see shoes of fairy manufacture publicly advertised in the newspapers? If I tell you, that while crossing a field, in the purple light of the morning, the attention of a peasant was arrested by the sound of a shoemaker’s hammer; and that, upon leaving the path to discover the cause, he disturbed an elfin cobbler, who it seems was at his trade betimes, and mending his brogues by the side of the ditch; that the spirit of the air, anxious to escape from the prying eyes of mortal wight, leapt from the bank, and, in his haste, dropped both shoe and hammer: if I go on to tell you, that this story is most gravely related, and that the editor informs the public, that both shoe and hammer were carried to such a house, in such a street, in a certain town, in the county of Roscommon, and may there be viewed by any curious or incredulous persons; you will, I think, acknowledge that my tale has at least a better foundation than many which are related to our disadvantage, and but too readily swallowed by the credulity of our English friends (Blake 1825 118-119).

It was found by a farm labourer on the Beara Peninsula, south-west Ireland, in 1835. It is black, worn at the heel and styled like that of an eighteenth-century gentleman. But it is also only two and seven-eights inches long and seven-eights of an inch at its widest – too long and narrow even for a doll’s shoe. If it were an apprentice piece, say, how did it come to be found on a remote sheep track? Why was it made in the style of the previous century? Why is it such an odd shape? How did it come to be worn?… The man who found the shoe assumed it belonged to the ‘little people’ and gave it to the local doctor, from whom it passed to the Sommerville family of Castletownshend, County Cork. On a lecture tour of America, the author Dr. Edith Sommerville. gave the shoe to Harvard University scientists, who examined it minutely. The shoe had tiny hand-stitches and well-crafted eyelets (but no laces), and ‘was thought to be’ of mouse skin (Harpur 134-135).

On the banks of the river Fowey, near Lostwithiel, there yet lives a farmer who, possessing intelligence beyond his neighbours, was regarded, thirty years since, as the Solon of his parish, St. Veep. With this person I was spending some holidays; and he kindly placed at my disposal a very beautiful little pony,  on which, day after day, I explored the cultivated glades and wild moors of the neighbourhood. The pony was regularly, after having been fed, turned out into a fertile meadow at night. One morning, this little creature was discovered to be ill. It revived, however; and was thought towards evening to be again quite well. Morning after morning ‘pony’ was prostrate – suffering from some intermittent disease. The village farrier was called in; ho at once declared that the pony was ‘pixy ridden’, and it was resolved to watch the field at night. How the watch was kept I have forgotten; but well do I remember two men  informing my credulous host – who believed all they said – that they saw five little men like apes, the tallest of whom was not more than six inches high – go into the field and engage in wrestling. The contest was long, and for some time very equally maintained; but at length one of these small men succeeded in throwing, a fair back throw, each of the other four. The victor was then described as jumping on the back of the pony – dancing in the most grotesque manner – and singing very obscene songs; whilst the others, howling with wrath and pain, so terrified the poor animal that, in wild affright, it galloped furiously around the field for upwards of an hour – the little ape-like man in no respect diminishing his zeal, but continuing to dance most furiously, until the poor beast fell panting, exhausted, beside the hedge. Such was the tale believed by a respectable and, as education went in those days, an educated farmer. The pony was kept in the stable at night – the door of the stable being fastened with a green twig of the ‘scow’ (elder tree) to keep out all unnatural intruders: the result of which treatment was, as might have been expected, the gradual abatement of a disease due entirely to cold and exposure (Pixy Rider 1846).

Some half century ago [c. 1810?] there lived on the downs above Sparnick, an industrious hard-working tailor, well-known in all the district around, named William D—-. One evening after a long day’s work he set out from Calenick to walk to his home; it was then a far more lonely walk than now – over bare bleak downs, and through retired lanes – but he walked steadily on through the deepening twilight. As he approaches Kea churchyard, the night wind coughs dismally through the spreading branches of the pines with a weird eerie sound, and he redoubles his pace to pass the sooner the gloomy spot; when, as he nears the church stile, he is startled by seeing a troop of piskies suddenly appear; they were about eighteen inches high, and all dressed alike, with high, sugar loaf black hats, and little red cloaks. These wee folk descend the low bank from the open common at a run, rapidly cross the road in single file, ascend the hedge and disappear into the dim churchyard beyond. Startled by the sudden apparition, he pauses a moment, then dashes his heavy stick after the fairy crew, and climbs the fence, but no sign or vestige of the troop can anywhere be seen; they have vanished from sight as rapidly as they appeared. One long look around and then he hurries home hotfoot, to spread the tale to the wondering neighbours, which he often repeated, of how he saw the Piskies at Kea churchyard (Young ‘Three Cornish Fairy Notes’ 2012).