Chapter 5
The Fae inhabit two spheres: faeryland and the human world. We’ve already discussed what and where Faery may be; in this chapter we examine the places in this world that can be frequented by faeries, but also consider how everyday elements of the human environment can be imbued with faery glamour. This can mean that parallel forms may exist in the otherworld, or that ordinary plants and animals may take on special significance and powers or be filled with the faery presence.
Faery Plants
A range of plants have faery associations, both good and bad. If you’re concerned to contact the Good Folk, but wish to do so respectfully, or if you’re worried about faery influence and seek protection from it, these links are very important.
Trees
Later I’ll talk about the link between faeries and woodland, but certain species of trees are known to have strong links to faeries. The commonest trees with which faeries are associated are as follows:
• Hawthorn: These trees are considered to be magical throughout Britain and Ireland. For instance, Northumbrian faeries are said particularly to prefer dancing around thorns. From across the border comes a Scottish story of a man ploughing a field who made a special effort to protect an old hawthorn, known to be a faery meeting place, by leaving an unploughed circle of turf around it; he was rewarded with a faery banquet and a lifetime’s luck and wisdom in consequence.
• Elder: I mentioned the Old Lady of the Elder Tree earlier on. The tree was believed to have general magical properties. In Scotland it was thought to protect against evil, so that an elder cross would be placed in byres and stables to safeguard the livestock against faeries. So powerful was the elder, though, that on the Scottish island of Sanday, stepping over the elder tree growing in the church yard was said to ensure death within a year. On the Isle of Man, the faeries’ particular home is in elders, and in Ireland elder sap is believed to grant a second sight of the faery rade.89
• Oaks: That oak trees have a special status as places for faery dancing, or even as their homes, is widely known. In The Discovery of Witchcraft of 1584 Reginald Scot listed the many different types of faeries with which mothers would scare their children. He included “the man in the oke,” a supernatural whose characteristics and habits are now almost entirely lost to us, although a modern witness in Somerset has described them as small furry creatures with tails. Faeries have certainly been seen dancing under oaks in Lancashire, East Yorkshire, and in Mid- and South Wales. In the grounds of Downing House near Whiteford, North Wales, there is a large “faery oak.” When a child suddenly becomes peevish and is suspected of being a changeling, if it is left out overnight beneath the tree’s boughs, the faeries will have returned the human infant by the next morning. Cutting down oak trees can lead to faery retribution, either death or “a strange aching pain which admitted no remedy.” In South Wales the faeries liked to dance under crab apple trees as well as under oaks.90
• Walnuts: A walnut tree used to grow at Llandyn Hall, near to Llangollen in Wales, around which the faeries would assemble at night to hold their wedding ceremonies. It was cut down in the nineteenth century, sadly, although the faeries took their revenge for this, it was believed: one of the workmen involved in the felling was killed by a falling branch.
• Rowan or mountain ash: Rowan trees, in contrast, repel faeries. In this book, rowan will repeatedly be seen being used to guard against faeries and their depredations. Set over your door, it will allow you to watch the faery rade riding past without being drawn into their procession. A rowan cross worn about your person will prevent the faeries seizing you, and a rowan branch can be used to rescue a person trapped in a faery dance. The aversion of the Fae to rowan is amply demonstrated by one Scottish method of expelling a changeling, which involved putting the suspected faery infant in a sieve and holding it over a fire made of rowan wood.91 The protective power of rowan is demonstrated very clearly in a story from Middridge in Northumberland. There was an old quarry outside the village and it was said that riding around it nine times would put you in the faeries’ power. One reckless young man dared to do this and found himself pursued relentlessly by the faery who was conjured up. The boy only escaped because he had taken the precaution of filling his pockets with rowan bark. He strewed this behind him as he fled and the faery was slowed down by the fact that he had to pause to pick up all the handfuls of scattered bark. The dual role of the rowan—a spray of foliage can act as a charm against faery intrusion but also as a means of seeing the Good Neighbours passing—is another good example of the “contrary” nature of many faery things.92
• Gorse and holly: Both these thorny shrubs act as protective barriers to faeries around a home, although it has to be confessed that they keep out humans just as well! Conversely, faeries have been reported to shelter under holly and mistletoe leaves in the winter. In the west of Scotland mistletoe has been hung over doors during frosts deliberately to provide faeries with shelter from the cold. Showing good will toward the Good Folk may explain a curious custom from Herefordshire. In the villages of Kingstone and Thruxton, the practice used to be to put out trays of moss on May Eve, so that the faeries could dance on them. This custom is a little hard to explain: it may be that part of the intention was to provide an alternative for the Fae so that they didn’t invade the home, which—as we’ll see later—was very likely to happen otherwise.93
A variety of other timbers including elm, hazel, and birch protect against faeries. For example, birch hung over a doorway on May Eve will guard the household and stables from the faeries at one of the times of year when they are at their most powerful. Throughout the year, sprays or crosses of birch put over a stable door will prevent the faeries entering at night and interfering with the horses, which is a particular pastime of theirs.
A final interesting account relates to the Cornish faery that haunts the rock outcrop known as the Newlyn Tolcarne. The manner in which this spirit was summoned was to pronounce a charm whilst holding three dried leaves in your hand. These were one each from an ash, an oak, and a thorn. Now, as some readers will know, these are the trees invoked by Rudyard Kipling’s Puck in Puck of Pook’s Hill. We seem to have two entirely separate traditions here, one from Sussex, where Kipling wrote, and the other from the far west of Cornwall. If so, Kipling’s “right of Oak, Ash, and Thorn” may be a great deal older than has been suspected. Kipling’s faeries are “the people of the hills” and the Newlyn being lives under a cairn near the beach, so that what we have seems to be an affinity with these trees rather than residency within them. Interestingly, ash sap was once given to children as a protective against malign faery influence.94
Flowers and Herbs
The faeries are especially linked with yellow blossoms, flowers such as cowslips, broom, and primroses. Our difficulty is that there’s no consistency about whether they like, or hate, yellow blooms. For instance, ragwort stems are used for flight, rather like witches’ broomsticks. Conversely, on the Isle of Man homes are protected from faery intrusions with yellow flowers on Midsummer’s Eve. Gorse flowers are yellow and this—as well as their spikes—may be the reason they’re so effective as a barrier against the Fae.
The primary protective plant against faeries is the (yellow) St. John’s Wort, which is hung around houses on Midsummer’s Eve (St. John’s Eve). Again, though, folk beliefs prove contradictory. On the Isle of Man, it’s said that if you picked the flower after sunset on this festival, a faery horse would appear and carry you away.
White flowers also have supernatural connections. Daisies have been said to be faery flowers and picking the greater stitchwort is a sure way to end up being pixy-led. The mugwort, with creamy-white blossoms, protected you from faerie harm, so that Manx farmers garlanded themselves and their cattle with these flowers at Midsummer. Vervain, with pinky-white florets, would be sewn into babies’ clothes and adults would make a tea from its leaves to protect themselves. Across the British Isles four- and five-leaf clovers can dispel glamour and enable you to see the Fae. In Scotland several plants, including both mothan (pearlwort) and clover, were used as protection against the Fae; the only stipulation was that these herbs only had potency if they were discovered “gun iarraid” (without searching). In other words, you had to come upon them as you walked without making deliberate efforts to find and collect them.95
Bluebells are protected by faeries, and lone children picking them in woods risk being abducted. Heather, with its purpley-blue colouring, is another ambiguous plant. The faeries use it to make ale—but it also seems to work as a protective against them.
The faeries are said particularly to favour red blooms. Foxgloves are known in Wales as menyg ellyllon, elves’ gloves, and their particular faery association is confirmed in one Perthshire tale in which two men are waylaid by a pair of lovely but sinister young faery women dressed in green and with foxgloves in their hair. Conversely, foxglove juice can expel a changeling and cure a child who is suffering from “the feyry”—that is, one who has been elf-struck.
Other red faery flowers include roses, campion, forget-me-not, scabious, wild thyme, and, more unusually, tulips. A strange tale from Devon describes how pixies near Tavistock loved to spend their nights in an old woman’s tulip bed and the flowers thrived from their beneficial presence. When she died her flowerbed was converted by the next residents of the cottage to growing parsley and the aggrieved pixies blighted it.96
Fungi
The linking of fungi with goblins and elves is known and of long standing. Perhaps the pairing derives in part from the dual nature of mushrooms—they may be edible or poisonous. Thus, in Wales, elf food (bwyd ellyllon) is the popular name for a poisonous toadstool. Fungi are, of course, linked to faery rings and indicate where the elves have been dancing. One type of faery fungi is the Faery Cake Hebeloma, which is poisonous; another is the highly edible Faery Ring Champignon. In Breconshire the belief is that gifts of bread by the tylwyth teg, if not eaten immediately and in darkness, will prove to be toadstools in the daylight.
Faery butter is a concept found across Britain. In Wales, the butter (y menyntylwyth teg) is an agreeable-smelling fungus found deep underground in limestone crevices. In Northumberland, faery butter is a soft orange fungus found around the roots of old trees. A slightly different species with the same name is also found growing on furze and broom.
It’s said that the faeries like to throw the butter at windows, doors, and gates during the night, trying to make it stick on them, and this nuisance was experienced very commonly in the North of England in North Yorkshire and Cleveland. If this is done at your home, it’s said to be a portent of good fortune. In the Lake District, unpalatable as it sounds, it was eating the fungus butter that was believed to bring luck; in Wales, the faery butter was rubbed on the body to treat rheumatism.97
The sudden appearance of toadstools may seem magical and mysterious and may partly explain the faery association. Their red colouring (notably the traditionally red and white spotted fly agaric toadstool) may link them to red faery clothes. Puffballs have been called “Puck’s fist” and, in his Faery Mythology, Thomas Keightley suggested that “Elf’s fist” was an old Anglo-Saxon name for the mushrooms found in rings.
The diminutive size of many fungi may also explain the association. Robert Herrick in his poem “Oberon’s Feast” imagines “a little mushroom table spread” for the tiny faery diners. In Sussex the red-cup moss is known as “faeries’ baths” and it’s said in Welsh folklore that the parasol mushrooms act as umbrellas to keep the faeries’ dance-sites dry.98
The most interesting faery use of fungi involves both magic and treasure and comes from the Isle of Wight on the English south coast. A man called John saw a strange light in Puckaster Cove and, on investigating, discovered child-size people dancing on the beach. They gave him a brown powder to inhale, which resembled snuff but which may well have been mushroom dust; certainly, it shrank him to their size so that he could join in with the dancing. After a while John sat down to rest on a puffball mushroom that burst, showering gold dust everywhere. The faeries gave him some of this dust and then restored him to his normal height.
So close is the link between faeries, dancing, and the phenomenon called faery rings that I’ll discuss them in detail separately. This association only serves to reinforce one undeniable fact: faeries and mushrooms or toadstools have become an inseparable pairing in the popular imagination. The earliest published picture I’ve found is an illustration from the 1734 edition of Round About Our Coal Fire, which incorporates all the key elements of the imagery (dancers, fly agaric, faery knoll, moonlight). Little has changed since, although arguably the connection has been strengthened considerably, first in children’s faery poetry and then during the middle of the last century when (it seemed) almost every children’s illustrator produced some variation on the theme.
Faery Rings
Faery rings are linked to faery dancing. If you read a lot of the British faery poetry, especially that of the nineteenth century, you would get the impression that dancing in rings is, in fact, pretty much all that faeries do; it’s their defining characteristic, their main habit, their primary purpose or occupation even. They come out at night—especially when the moon is bright—and dance in circles in grassy places. These are then marked by mushrooms springing up.
Usually it’s said that it’s the passing of faery feet that makes the tracks that are seen by people the next day. In Somerset the circles are called “gallitraps” and they are said to be made by the Fae riding colts in circles in the fields at night. Whether they’re dancing or racing, the faery presence can easily be proved: set up a stick in a ring overnight and it will be found knocked down by the Fae the next morning.99
The rings used to be much more widespread than today, and much more noticeable: it was said that every piece of common land had at least one fairy ring. They appeared in all types of fields except those sown with corn. Modern farming practices, with increased cultivation and use of fertilisers and pesticides, have drastically reduced the evidence, but we can get an idea of what our predecessors would have seen from the writings of naturalist Robert Plot. Discussing the English Midlands in the late seventeenth century, he described rings that were forty or fifty yards in diameter, often encircled by a rim between a foot and a yard wide. These rims might be bare, or might have a russet, singed colour. The grass within could also be brown but was more often dark green. Plot sought to explain the rings scientifically, blaming moles or penned cattle, but given their size and distinctness, it is unsurprising that others would readily suspect supernatural causation.100
A variety of faery beliefs attached to the rings. Charming as the sight of faeries tripping all in a circle might be, the rings themselves are places of danger. To sleep in one is especially risky—you are in considerable danger of being “taken” by the faeries. One Cornishman who crossed a faery ring without first turning his pockets inside out as protection experienced a curious punishment. The pixies caught him, pinched him, bound his limbs with threads of gossamer, and then touched his eyes with their green ointment. This meant he could see the feasting and revelry going on around him, but was powerless to join in—or escape.101
For people to spy on the dances in the rings, or join in with them, will definitely be perilous. These circles may even be traps, deliberately set to lure in humans and to abduct them for extended periods—or forever. Step into one completely and you will be in the faeries’ power; put one foot inside and you will be able to see the dancing but will still be able to escape. We must also recall here the disparity in the passage in time between Faery and the mortal world; the captive dancer spins at a different rate to the human globe and may quit the ring to find their old life has long passed.102
It was widely believed that the rings should never be damaged and should never be cultivated. Grazing them and, even more importantly, ploughing them, was strongly discouraged by those familiar with the phenomena: a traditional Scottish rhyme warned that
He wha tills the faeries’ green
Nae luck shall hae;
And he wha spills the faries’ ring
Betide him want and wae;
For weirdless days and weary nights
Are his ’til his deein’ day! 103
Anyone foolish enough to ignore such advice would find their cattle struck down with disease. In one Welsh story, even though the farmer realised his error and restored the damaged rings, a curse had been pronounced by the faeries—and was eventually visited upon his descendants one hundred years later.104
In any case, it was also widely believed that any attempt to eradicate the rings would fail. Ploughing could not remove them and they would return immediately, as was said to have happened with two rings in the churchyard at Pulverbatch in Shropshire. Just as those who interfere with rings will suffer, it was believed that those that cared for them would be rewarded: as the Scottish rhyme promised, “an easy death shall dee.” 105
An aura of magic and danger attaches itself to faery rings, therefore. Mostly the tendency is to avoid them: for example, at Market Drayton in Shropshire people used to be reluctant to use those parts of the church graveyard marked with rings.106
Nonetheless, there’s some good news as well—first, May Day dew collected from a faery ring is said to be excellent for preserving youthful skin. Secondly, it’s said that dancing three times around a ring will make a wish come true within the year and that, if you can run around a ring nine times without drawing breath, you will be rewarded by the Fae. Given the huge circumference of the rings just described, this would be no mean feat and entirely deserving of reward. Lastly, and despite what was said a little earlier, in some places in England it’s thought that building a house in a place marked with rings will prove fortunate for the inhabitants.107
To conclude, faery rings are the commonest and most immediate and tangible intrusion of Faery into the human world. They are a physical and permanent presence of the supernatural in the mortal sphere and as such rank alongside changelings and the household sprites for the light they can shed upon our relationship with the Good Folk.
Faery Animals
A number of domesticated beasts are associated with faeries, showing how often their society is seen as imitating or paralleling our own. This livestock may be imagined as being its normal size, so as to match human-size faeries; on other occasions the creatures are diminutive, just like their supernatural owners. Sometimes the creatures are larger than their counterparts in the human world, enhancing the fear associated with their unearthly origins. As we’ll see, there’s almost always something distinctive about faery animals, helping you to spot when you may be in the presence of the Good Folk.
Faery Goats
In the west of Britain, goats are often seen as mysterious faery beasts. For example, William Bottrell recorded that wherever goats preferred to graze would be certain to be places frequented by the Cornish pixies. In both Cornwall and the Perthshire Highlands, it’s believed that the faeries—and especially their babies and changelings—live on goats’ milk. Animals that were good milkers would be enticed away from a human herd by the appearance of mysterious billy-goats, who were actually pixies and faeries in disguise.
Some of the best evidence for the association of faeries and goats is from Wales. The bad-natured female faeries, the gwyllion, are closely linked with goats, which are themselves esteemed for their occult knowledge and powers. The tylwyth teg comb goats’ beards every Friday so as to make them presentable on Sunday (a curious notion that perhaps says more about Welsh religiosity than the faith of the faeries). In the tale of “Cadwaladr’s goat,” Jenny the goat turned out to be a faery maiden in disguise, who led Cadwaladr to the court of the faery goat king. The Highland tale of the “Tacksman of Auchriachan” is a story of faery theft. The tacksman (tenant farmer) overhears the faeries in their knoll planning to pilfer his farm whilst he’s absent. The faeries feel safe in their thievery as they know that he’s been led out on the moors, far away from his home, “in search of our allies, the goats.” 108
Faery Steeds
The faeries like hunting and parading and, for these pastimes, horses are nearly essential. In the poem “Sir Orfeo” the faery king arrives to seduce the knight’s wife with his ladies and retainers, “Al on snowe white stedes.” In the Scottish poem “Young Tamlane” the faeries process on black, brown, and white mounts whilst in “Thomas of Erceldoune” the faery queen appears astride a “palfrey.” We also hear of Welsh faeries hunting on grey horses and—from an old woman in the Vale of Neath in 1827—an account of faeries seen riding white horses “no bigger than dogs.” These Welsh faeries were said to ride in the air, never coming to ground. Appropriately, faery horses were renowned for their swiftness. In contrast to these generally small and pale-hued steeds, a horse that collected a midwife to attend a faery labour near Tavistock was coal black with eyes “like balls of fire.”
It’s been suggested that the faery horses might not be real at all, but just enchanted ragweed stems, which faeries very often use like broomsticks to fly through the air. This might indeed have been the case in the north of Scotland, at least, where the belief in this type of faery transport originates. On the whole, though, the faery horses seem real enough. A Manx man found himself surrounded one night by a herd of vicious faery steeds; he had to fend them off for hours with his knife until dawn came and they vanished.109
The faeries have their own horses, it’s clear, but they also like to take ours and to ride them, at the same time knotting their manes into “pixy rings” or tangling them with burdock seed pods. Undoing the knots can prove a considerable nuisance as they can be so entwined it takes half a day to unravel them. It should be noted in fairness that these “elf-knots” do not seem to be created out of pure mischief just to annoy the owners. The semi-wild ponies grazing Bodmin Moor in central Cornwall that were gathered in once a year for the Summercourt Fair would also be found to have badly tangled manes. The knots seem to function in part as stirrups and bridles; at the same time, they seem distinctively fae—a sign of faery presence. A Perthshire man taken from his garden by the faeries was returned three days later with his hair all in knots—visible, physical proof of his story of abduction to faeryland.110
Lastly, be warned: if the faeries want to go out riding and there are no suitable steeds to hand, they can use us instead. Especially on the Isle of Man, people have been known to be taken and ridden all night. They feel no weight on their backs during the experience, but they become tired for loss of sleep and thin and weak from their exertions. Wearing a flower or herb to scare off the faeries should be enough to prevent this.111
Faery Herds
Given their liking for dairy produce, it’s unsurprising that the Good Folk keep their own herds for milking as well as other livestock.
In the Highlands faeries were especially associated with the red deer and, indeed, it was believed by some that they were their only cattle. It was also alleged that faery women could transform themselves into deer and might be captured in this guise. A few Fae women certainly herded deer just like cattle, but the faeries had their own conventional livestock as well.
Irish faery cattle are identified by their distinctive appearance: they are white with red ears. In Britain, though, such distinctive characteristics are not so regularly recorded, although in Wales the “comely milk white kine” were definitely famed and there’s also reference to y fuwchfrech—a magical freckled cow. Most famous are the gwartheg y llyn, the “lake cattle,” that were frequently brought to marriages with human males by the beautiful and mesmerising lake maidens. Alternatively, the beasts might mingle and interbreed naturally with human herds (and so are clearly envisaged as being of normal proportions and appearance). If (when) the faery wife was later rejected or insulted by her human spouse, her departure would also inevitably mean the departure of the faery beasts from her husband’s herd. The same is bound to occur if the human farmer tries to slaughter the faery cattle, as this too will be interpreted as demonstrating a lack of respect for the cows’ true owners and their gifts. In the Scottish Highlands faery cattle typically were dun coloured and hornless, but on Skye they were red speckled and could cross the sea.
The faeries of the Isle of Man also keep pigs and sheep. The faery pig is identifiable by the fact that it’s white with a feathery tail rather like a fan, and has long, loppy ears and burning red eyes. Faery lambs are generally more appealing. Their fleeces are red and they might be equipped with a red saddle and bridle. Sometimes one will appear in a farm’s flock. When they do so they bring good luck, increasing the health and fertility of the normal sheep. It has been said that the Welsh faeries may appear in the shape of sheep, poultry, and pigs. It is not wholly clear from this whether these are faery animals or faeries in the form of animals. Whatever the exact situation, these creatures were often reported as being seen flying or rising from pastures up into the sky.112
Pixie Pets
The faeries also have their own versions of our domestic pets, although the descriptions given of them hardly make them sound like friendly beasts.
For the faeries’ great sport of hunting, hounds are required. Searching to recover his abducted wife, Sir Orfeo meets the king of faery riding out “with hundes berkyng.” Likewise, in the ballad “Thomas of Erceldoune,” the faery queen is met with “hir greye hundes” and “hir raches.” The latter are “rachets”—specially bred hunting dogs. The Cwn Annwn (roughly, the hounds of hell) of Welsh legend were bandogs employed for the pursuit of the souls of those who had died either unbaptised or unshriven. They dashed through the air on stormy nights, terrifying the mortals below. Daintier, perhaps, were the “milk white hounds” that accompanied the elfin ladies of the lakes.
The “people of peace” of the Scottish Highlands possessed terrifying dogs the size of bullocks, which were dark green (though paling toward their feet). These hounds’ tails either curled tightly on their backs or appeared flat, even plaited. Because of their look and their very loud barks, they were kept as ferocious watchdogs for the faery knolls and were said to move by gliding in straight lines. The unpleasant tempers of these dogs are found too in the faery dogs of the Isle of Man. Packs of them will chase people, and contact with them can leave you ill for months.
The Welsh faery dogs in contrast sound considerably less hostile. A woman in Denbighshire became very friendly with the local tylwyth teg and recalled that often, when she was out gathering rushes, one of their dogs would bound up and join her, just for the pleasure of her company. Sometimes the appearance of the faery dogs will foretell a death, especially if they’re seen in a churchyard.113
If you do come across a stray faery hound, the Welsh experience indicates that you should always take good care of it. A man who treated one badly was abducted by the Fae and carried through the air in punishment. A relative of his learned from his mistake and, when she found a stray, fed and cared for it well. She was generously rewarded by its faery owners when they came to retrieve it. They asked her if she’d prefer a clean or dirty farmyard. She chose dirty—and they doubled the number of cows she owned, giving her the best milk herd in the district.114
In Scotland, there are also faery felines, which were apparently the size of human dogs, black with a white spot on their chests, their backs constantly arched and their fur bristled.
In summary, there seem to be a number of common features to faery animals. They are very commonly pure white—a sure sign of supernatural nature—and quite frequently airborne (another obvious indication of their enchanted state). Although in many respects, their behaviour is identical with that of normal farm beasts, they are prone to appear and disappear unpredictably. As with all faery gifts, poor treatment of them guarantees their loss.
Woodlands
Today many people, if asked, would imagine elves and faeries gambolling in a woodland setting. This appears to have become a very strong convention within our popular visual culture, yet it is not traditional to British faery lore (despite the regular links between faeries and particular species of tree that have been described). How did this prevalent image come about?
Although the faery king Oberon is met in a forest in the thirteenth century romance Huon of Bordeaux, the primary source of our close modern association between faeries and forests is Shakespeare, both the “wood near Athens” that features in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in which Titania, Oberon, Puck, and the other faeries make their home; and the open woodland of Windsor Great Park that features in The Merry Wives of Windsor and that is the setting of Falstaff’s believed encounter with the faery queen and her train. Whilst their ultimate roots may lie with the dryads and hamadryads of classical myth, it was these theatrical presentations of faeries that first really fixed the woodland-dwelling elf in the English-speaking public’s imagination. Much subsequent literature and visual art has cemented the pairing to the extent that it appears inevitable, even though there is little trace of it in older sources or in British folklore. It might be added that this is, as well, a very English convention; in much of the rest of Britain there weren’t many wooded areas anyway.
As I described earlier, faeries tend to be linked in folk traditions to individual trees rather than to bodies of trees. The securest traditional association between faeries and stands of trees actually involves the Good Folk in helping humans. Orchards are haunted by Old Goggy, a sprite whose main role is to bring life to the fruit trees and to protect the crop from thefts by children. Other names for the spirit include Lazy Lawrence, the Grig, and the Apple Tree Man. At harvest time a few apples should always be left behind for the faeries—an offering called the “pixy-word” (or hoard)—and, if this is done, they will bless the crop. Somerset pixies are believed to love apple trees and orchards above all places. There are also faeries who protect other fruit, such as the “nutnans” of Lancashire, who live in cobnut groves, and the Gooseberry Wife on the Isle of Wight, who takes the form of a large green caterpillar.115
The British faery, according to older writers, could be found in a variety of locations. They frequented mountains, caverns, meadows and fields, fountains, heaths and greens, the southerly side of hills and downland, as well as groves and woods. Generally, they were more likely to be found in “wild places.” Woods feature in these sources, it’s perfectly true, but they are far from the most commonly mentioned locations. For example, one fourteenth-century source tells us that elves are seen, “by daye much in wodes … and bi nightes ope heighe dounes …”—in other words, they frequent woody places in daytime (presumably for concealment from human eyes) but resort to open hilltops at night for their revelries.116
A particularly informative source is the Welsh minister, the Reverend Edmund Jones. In his 1780 history of the superstitions of Aberystruth parish he recorded the contemporary local views on the most likely locations for seeing faeries. They do not like stony, plain, or marshy places, he reported, but prefer for their dancing those sites that are open, dry, and clean and that are near to or shaded by the spreading branches of trees, particularly those of hazel and female oak trees. They also like to have easy access to adjacent hedges for hiding. Wirt Sikes also located the Welsh elves (ellyllon) in groves and valleys. In Wales at least, then, an open wooded landscape was believed in popular tradition to be the faeries’ preferred habitat and would be your best bet as a place for meeting them. Given the faeries’ predilection for dances, and for playing football and hurling, it only makes sense that they will prefer open to very enclosed locations.117
The Good Folk like to spend time in woodlands, definitely, and groves and glades may be excellent places for encountering them. All the same, they may not actually live in these areas and may be just as likely to be met elsewhere, as the rest of this chapter goes on to show.
Faery Islands
Throughout Britain, faeryland has been conceived as a separate, usually subterranean, country, with its own landscape, rivers, agriculture, buildings, and climate. This belief was especially strong in England and Wales during the Middle Ages (see for example the stories of “Elidyr and the Golden Ball” or of “The Green Children of Woolpit” mentioned earlier). Steadily, as human cultivation and industry expanded, the faeries’ realm has tended to shrink, until they have been squeezed into the corners of our world. In some parts of Wales, though, the idea of a separate faeryland has persisted in slightly altered form: Faery moved off-shore, so that it has remained credible and occasionally visible, albeit rarely accessible.
Magical islands have a long-established pedigree in Wales. Gerald of Wales described a lake atop Snowdon which was notable for a floating islet that blew from shore to shore. In a later account of this, a faery dimension was added. A maiden of the tylwyth teg had to separate from her human husband, yet she still contrived to see him from time to time, sitting on a buoyant turf whilst he sat on the shore of Llyn y Dywarchen.118
Floating islands are not unique to Welsh inland waters. In 1896 a sea captain reported seeing an unmarked isle, just below the waves, near to Grassholm in the Bristol Channel. He said he had heard tell from old people of just such a land, that rose and fell periodically. These supernatural islands are called “Green Spots of the Floods” and the “Green Meadows of the Sea” or “Gwerddonau Llion.” There’s a similar belief from across the channel in Somerset; there the mysterious isles are called “The Green Lands of Enchantment.” Their exact location isn’t fixed and it’s unclear how many enchanted isles are thought to exist between St. Davids and the Llyn Peninsula, but there are consistent reports of sightings of verdant lands which have appeared and disappeared from time to time.119
One account stated that a faery island off Milford Haven was reached by a tunnel. The faeries used this passageway to attend the markets at Laugharne and Milford. Comparable is the description of a lake island at Llyn Cwm Llwch in the Brecon Beacons, which could be reached by a passage leading from a shoreline rock. However, this rock only opened once a year whilst the “garden of the faeries” amidst the waves was invisible unless you stood in the correct spot. It might be noted too that little clumps of flowers growing in inaccessible spots on the cliffs near Land’s End were known as the “sea piskies’ gardens.” 120
Returning to the coastal isles, they too may only be seen by standing on a particular piece of turf taken from either St. David’s churchyard or from Cemmes parish. As soon as contact with the sod is broken, the vision is lost, so that the only sure way of reaching the islands is to sail with a piece of the turf on board; otherwise, the islands will be invisible to the boatmen. Such voyages are dangerous, though, as faery time notoriously passes much more slowly than on land. Generations might elapse in what seemed like mere days for the island visitors.121
The residents of these elusive islands are the tylwyth teg, more specifically the Plant Rhys Dwfn—the children of Rhys the Deep. His wisdom lay in protecting his land with magic herbs and in the strict moral code of honesty and good faith observed by his descendants.122
Magical islands are not uniquely a Welsh notion: the Reverend Robert Kirk in chapter four of his Secret Commonwealth remarks that Faery may be “unperceavable … like Rachland and other enchanted isles.” Rachland was believed to lie off the northwest coast of Scotland; its inhabitants were either faeries or the descendants of Vikings but, either way, it only became visible once every seven years (a typically magical period of time). Despite these problems of accessibility, some early navigation charts included the island’s longitude and latitude, in case you happened to be in the right place at the right time!
The motif of the enchanted isle is ideal for faeryland: it is a place that is periodically visible, familiar but enticing, near but always out of reach. Only the very fortunate or clever may be able to see it, so that its reality or illusory quality are very hard to prove.
Seaside Faeries
It’s generally (perfectly correctly) our assumption that faeries and elves prefer to frequent meadows and groves. They may from time to time be seen out on rough moorland (pixies and spriggans in South West England especially), or even in human homes and farm buildings (brownies), but we very rarely imagine them at the seaside. This is mistaken; from time to time they have been sighted on beaches and here I offer the scattered evidence for this.
Although in classical mythology the nereids and oceanids were marine nymphs, and although mermaids, selkies, and certain Scottish saltwater beasts will naturally be encountered near the tideline, there is only a little traditional British material locating supernaturals on the seashore. It was most probably Shakespeare, in The Tempest, who first created the association in the popular mind. Ariel famously sings
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there 123
Here we have the conventional faery circle dance transposed from a glade or other grassy place, where a faery ring springs up, to the strand—a novelty that appears to be almost entirely the playwright’s invention. Milton seems to have imitated this scene in Comus: “And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Faeries and the dapper Elves.” Without doubt, Shakespeare’s song has provided inspiration to painters ever since (for example Richard Dadd and Robert Huskisson), and it seems to have created a lasting acceptance that faeries might quite properly be encountered so far from their normal haunts. Scenes from The Tempest and, of course, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream were standard fare for Victorian faery artists, but we also find seashore sprites unconnected with these famous plays.124
From the early nineteenth century, we have the painting Faeries on the Seashore by Henry Howard. What exactly this tropical scene illustrates is uncertain; it may be his own idea, or it may be drawn from literature. Ann Radcliffe in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) wrote some lines about a sea nymph, who sings “Come when red sunset tints the wave, To the still sands, where faeries play …” Around the same time Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote an entire poem entitled “Fairies on the Sea Shore,” which features flower, rainbow, and music faeries as well as a sea faery riding inside a nautilus shell in the moonlight.
It seems likely that W. B. Yeats drew upon native Irish tradition, rather than any English literary or artistic works, when in 1889 he wrote his famous poem “The Stolen Child.” It is voiced by faeries who are abducting a human infant and they tempt the child to accompany them to where the moon shines on “the dim grey sands” where they dance all night. The scene of this verse is Rosses Sands in County Sligo, a place known as a “very noted fairy locality” according to Yeats himself. It would be easy enough to assume that these lines were simply the work of a great poetic imagination, but this would be mistaken. Yeats, like his friends George William Russell (who wrote under the pseudonym “AE”) and Ella Young, actually met faeries. In his collected letters Yeats tells of an encounter at the Rosses that took place about the time that the poem was composed, when he met and conversed with the queen of Faery and her troop. What’s more, faeries weren’t just to be found at this one spot on the Irish coast. There’s a story from Rossport, County Mayo, concerning a man called Patch Gallagher who met with a crowd of faeries heading for a hurling match. They recruited him to their team and the game turned out to encompass a huge length of the coastline.125
These poetic examples have been all about the faeries playing and dancing on the sand, very much like modern holidaymakers. The links could be much closer than this, though. The Cornish bucca was to be found living on the strand itself, for example, and in a story of a boy’s magical flight with the Polperro faeries, beaches are amongst the places they visit in their journeying. Some faeries will be found on the seashore for purely practical purposes—they are fishermen and they will be hauling in their boats or sorting their catch.126
Although many of the references given so far have come from literature, in the twentieth century we have actual sightings of faeries on the beach recorded, incidents which appear to replicate exactly the images of verse and art. In July 1921 Geoffrey Hodson saw some “little elf-like forms” playing on the beach at Blackpool. They had elvish faces, large heads and ears, little round bodies, short thin legs with webbed feet, and were three to six inches tall. They played amongst the seaweed and stones, but did not go in the water; they seemed unconcerned by the nearby presence of human holidaymakers. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies, published in the same year, he reproduced an account by Mrs. Ethel Wilson of Worthing, who saw faeries on the beach on sunny days; they were like little dolls with beautiful bright hair, she told him. Unlike Hodson’s elves, these beings played in the sea and rode on the waves, constantly moving and dancing about. These are fascinating sightings, though it is inescapable that the Fae seem to have travelled to the coast very much in tandem with British day-trippers.127
Part of the reason for the paucity of seaside sightings may be the fact that at least some of the Good Folk are unable to gain access to the shore. In the same way that some faeries can’t cross rivers—as we’ll see soon—some find the beach a barrier. In a story from the Scottish Highlands, a man called Luran stole a goblet from the sith and had to make an urgent escape from his angry pursuers. They were gaining on him and his prospects looked gloomy until he thought to make for the shore: once he had crossed the high-tide line, he was safe from the crowd chasing him. The Cornish tale “The Fairies of the Eastern Green” involves a related theme. One night some smugglers landed their illicit cargo of brandy at Longrock Beach, on Mount’s Bay between Penzance and Marazion. One of the crew went ashore to investigate some mysterious sounds, fearing it was the excise men lying in wait. Instead he stumbled upon a large number of spriggans, dressed in red and green and enjoying a dance in the sand dunes. As soon as they realised that they had been discovered, the crowd of dancers turned nasty and chased the smuggler with spears, slings, and bows. He raced back to his boat, calling on his companions to put out to sea again. The spriggans swarmed angrily onto the beach but could not harm the boat on the waves because “none of the faery tribe dare touch salt water.”
To conclude, the evidence is patchy, and most of it is literary rather than from folklore, but the indication is that faeries might be found in any natural scene, from the seashore to the mountaintop. If we conceive of them as nature spirits, this would of course be exactly what we would expect.
Faeries and Water
One curious aspect of faery lore is the contrary relationship that faeries have with water. They all seem to need it, just like humans, but, in some circumstances, they may have a deep antipathy for it, whilst others use it to achieve their magical aims.
Faeries, like humans, require water for their basic necessities. It’s pretty certain that they drink it; they are reputed to drink dew at the very least. Without doubt they use water for bathing: there are numerous folklore records of faeries expecting householders to leave out bowls of fresh water for them at night so that they and their children may wash. There’s also a story of faeries surprised one morning in a bathing spa in Ilkley.128
As well as human supplies of bathing water, the Fae will make use of natural sources. In Northamptonshire certain “faery pools” are known where the faeries swim at night; at Brington bathing faeries were seen by witnesses as recently as 1840. Other springs are identified where they wash their clothes and even their butter. A very special faery link with water is found in the Scottish bean-nighe (the washer woman) and the related Caointeach (the keener). Both foretell deaths by washing clothes or winding sheets at fords or in streams; plainly they are not in the least averse to contact with running fresh water. Moreover, it’s said that power can be gained over the bean-nighe if you are able to come between her and the stream, indicating that her magic potential in some way derives from the watercourse itself.129
Finally, it hardly needs to be said that certain faeries live in water and plainly cannot have any objection to their natural environment. Bodies of both fresh and salt water are inhabited. For instance, the queen of the Craven faeries apparently lives behind the waterfall at Janet’s Foss near Malham. Water itself is plainly not a problem.
Faeries and Flowing Water
Nevertheless, there is also evidence of faeries objecting to water that is flowing. There are many such stories, but one dramatic example of this aversion comes from North Yorkshire: in Mulgrave Wood near Whitby lived a bogle by the name of Jeanie. One day she chased a farmer who was riding by. He galloped desperately for the nearest brook to escape her; just as she caught up with him and lashed out with her wand, his steed leapt the river. Jeanie sliced the horse in half. The front part, bearing the rider, fell on the far side and was safe, whilst Jeanie had to make do with the hind legs and haunches. In a related case from Perthshire, a man was out hunting when a woman in a green gown accosted him. She tried to attract his attention and lure him near her by whistling, but given the colour of her dress he paid no attention and made haste to get away. She chased him until he leapt over a burn. She could not follow, but she had grabbed hold of his plaid, which she proceeded to shred into a powder. If she had caught him, she warned, there wouldn’t have been a sieve that would have held him.130
Any flowing watercourse will form an insurmountable barrier, it seems, but even more antithetical to the Fae is water that flows in a southerly direction. This is shown from a couple of accounts. In the North East of Scotland, one way of expelling a changeling and recovering a human child from the Fae was to wash the infant’s clothes in a south-draining spring and then lay them to dry in the sun; if the clothes disappeared it meant that the faeries had accepted them and the stolen child would have been restored. This technique was practised during the 1620s by Scottish witchcraft suspect Stein Maltman, from Leckie near Stirling, who advised the father of a sick boy to bathe him in a south-flowing well after they’d prayed over him. Maltman also treated a poorly woman by having her drink water taken from a southerly-running stream in which he had boiled an elf-arrow. Additionally, as we’ll see later, faery-inflicted illnesses were diagnosed by “girdle-measuring.” One practitioner of this, called Jennet Pearson, would wash the girdle in a south-flowing stream as part of the treatment she administered.
It may be the case that only bad faeries are obstructed by streams, whilst well-intentioned ones may pass over unhindered. Certainly, in one Scottish story a devoted brownie came and went daily to and from the home of the family he served by crossing a river on stepping stones.131
Sometimes, too, it appears that even plain water can repel our Good Neighbours. There’s a folktale from the Isle of Uist in the Scottish Highlands in which the faeries call at the door of a house for an oatcake to come out to join them; the inmates throw water on the cake, and it replies, “I can’t go, I am undone.” Perhaps the water in the house had been blessed; we can be certain, all the same, that at times of dire need a river or stream will provide an effective barrier between you and supernatural harm.132
Faery Water Magic
We have seen that faeries have an aversion to running water. In contrast, though, still water can have strong faery and magical properties. Bogles have been banished into wells and faeries have used them as a way of trying to abduct humans. Well water can have magical properties. On Dartmoor, near Princetown, you will find Fitz’s Well, the water of which is reputed to have the properties of dispelling faery glamour and enabling those who are pixy-led to find their ways again. In the ballad “Tam Lin,” well water is used as part of the magical release of a faery captive.133
I mentioned south-flowing streams in the last section and there’s also something particularly magical about wells whose waters run out toward the south. On the Isle of Anglesey, it’s said that such wells are “cursing wells.” The one at Penrhos could both inflict or cure cancer. Other directions might also have powerful properties, all the same. From Shetland there’s the story of a faery cup that was discovered as the result of a dream. It had curative properties if a complicated ritual was followed, central to which was water scooped from an easterly-flowing well.134
The goodwill of the faeries at wells might be invoked by showing them respect. Offerings of pins are made at Bradwell in Derbyshire on Easter Sunday, and at Wooler in Northumberland, whenever a person wants a wish to come true. At various sites in Scotland, buttons, small coins, and pins may be left for the “faery of the well,” perhaps the most famous of these being the so-called “Cheese Well” on top of Minchmuir, Peeblesshire, into which locals throw pieces of cheese for the guardian faeries.135
The wishes made at wells might be for wealth and love, but they can be for something as prosaic as simply ensuring a good water supply. In late 1971 Countryman magazine featured a letter that described how pixies had restored and maintained the water levels in the well of a remote Cornish cottage, all in return for the corners of Cornish pasties, broken off and laid around the well head on the night of a new moon. Unfortunately, when the owner went away and left the property in the hands of caretakers, they failed to keep up the offerings and the well dried up again.136
As well as granting wishes, many wells have health-giving properties, too. If a child has gone into a decline and is no longer thriving (it’s “shargie” and has been afflicted by “the faery”), one old remedy was leaving the infant overnight near a well. At Wooler, too, sickly children would be dipped in the well’s waters and bread and cheese left as an offering. If it was suspected that the child had in fact been substituted for a faery changeling, well water might form part of the remedy. At Chapel Euny in West Cornwall, the way to expel a changeling and restore a human child was to dip the suspect infant in the well on the first three Wednesdays in May. The days and the time of year are both particularly Fae, as will be described next.137
You might even meet a helpful faery near a well. For example, a young woman visited the “faery well” at Crowle in Worcestershire, where she encountered a woman who told her how to keep her face ever young. The technique is to get up nine successive mornings before the new moon and wash your face in dew that has not yet been touched by the sun.138
Given the supernatural properties of well water, it is unsurprising that it should be used to imbue the human children abducted by the faeries with Fae properties. This is mainly evidenced in literature rather than folklore, but an excellent example is in the Scottish verse “Kilmeny” by James Hogg. Kilmeny is dipped in the waters of life to ensure that her youth and beauty never fade. Although it’s not explained, this property of faery wells also seems to lie behind a Welsh story concerning a shepherd boy from Frenni Fawr in Pembrokeshire, who was lured into a dance and then taken to faeryland. He lived in the royal faery palace but was warned never to try to drink the water from a well in the palace garden. Eventually his curiosity overcame him and he scooped up some of the forbidden water—at which point the entire vision of Faery vanished about him and he found himself back on the moors with his sheep, at the very moment at which he’d been abducted.139
Summary
Faeryland cannot be easily described in human terms. It can be an anomalous location which doesn’t necessarily comply with our rules of time and space. For this reason—as well as a wish for privacy—Faery is kept apart from this world and the two only rarely intersect.
When there is contact between the supernatural and the human world, something that occurs at particular faery-frequented places in our world, the meeting of magical and non-magic realms, as well as the clash of cultures, may prove unexpected and unpredictable. This happens because faery versions of familiar animals don’t behave as we anticipate and because ordinary plants, trees, and landscape features become imbued with unanticipated faery powers. Even such basic qualities of our world as time and the weather may be affected—as we explore in the next chapter.
89. Dathen, Somerset Fairies and Pixies, 54; Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 401.
90. Scot, Book VII, chapter XV; Dathen, Somerset Fairies and Pixies, 21; Nicholson, Folklore of East Yorkshire, 82; Pennant, The History of the Parishes of Whiteford & Holywell, 5–6; Jones, Appearance no. 116 & 117.
91. Aitken, Forgotten Heritage, 12; given the contrary nature of the Fae, there are those who believe rowan to be a faery tree—see for instance Dathen, Somerset Fairies and Pixies, 41.
92. Grice, Folk Tales of the North Country—Drawn from Northumberland and Durham, c. 17.
93. Napier, Folklore or Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland Within this Century, 124 & 150.
94. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 176; Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill, 1906, chapter “Weland’s Forge” & “Tree song.”
95. Denham Tracts, Folklore Society, vol. 35, 142; Harland, Lancashire Legends & Traditions, 110; MacGregor, Peat Fire Flame, 274.
96. Murray, Tales from Highland Perthshire, nos. 190 & 173; Sutherland, Folklore Gleanings & Character Sketches from the Far North, 23.
97. Wright, Rustic Speech and Folklore, 208; County Folklore vol. 2, 130; Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, 53; Roberts Folklore of Yorkshire, 67; Rowling, Folklore of the Lake District, 32; Bord, Fairies, 27.
98. Gwyndaf in Narvaez, Good People, 180.
99. Tongue, Somerset Folklore, 115; Burne, Shropshire Folklore, Part III, 638; but see Daimler, Fairies, 133, where she suggests the faeries are drawn to dance by the mushrooms.
100. Plot, The Natural History of Staffordshire, paras. 17–27.
101. Richardson, Local Historian’s Table Book, vol. 2, 134; Harris, Cornish Saints and Sinners c. 19 (the same story is told of a Welsh farmer from Ffridd; W. Jenkyn Thomas, Welsh Fairy Book, “The adventures of three farmers”).
102. Tongue, Somerset Folklore 114–5.
103. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 324.
104. W. Jenkyn Thomas, Welsh Fairy Book, “The curse of Pantannas.”
105. MacGregor, The Peat Fire Flame, 2; Addy, Household Tales, 134; Burne, Shropshire Folklore, Part III, 638; J. McPherson, Primitive Beliefs in the North East of Scotland, 97; Chambers, Popular Rhymes, 324.
106. Burne, Shropshire folklore, Part I, 56.
107. Napier, Folklore 157; J. Udal, Dorsetshire Folklore, 260 & 330; Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal, 1845, vol. 12, 10.
108. Sikes, British Goblins, c. 4.
109. John Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands; Yn Lioar Manninagh, vol. III.
110. Leather, Folklore of Herefordshire, 18; Deane & Shaw, Folklore of Cornwall, 91; Murray, Tales from Highland Perthshire no. 219; Palmer, Folklore of Radnorshire, 225.
111. Roeder, Manx Folk Tales, 11–12.
112. Sikes, British Goblins.
113. Owen, “Rambles over the Denbighshire Hills,” Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. iii, 5th series, no.9, 73; Owen, Welsh Folklore, 124.
114. Jenkyn Thomas, Welsh Fairy Book, “A fairy dog.”
115. Dathen, Somerset Fairies and Pixies,15, 28 & 114; Tongue, Somerset Folklore, 119; Palmer, Worcestershire, 180.
116. South English Legendary (13th–14th century), line 256.
117. Jones, Aberystruth, 74 & 84 or Appearance, no. 57 & 116.
118. Gerald of Wales, Book II, c. 9; Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 93.
119. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 171–172.
120. Sikes, British Goblins, 9 & 10; Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 161 & 20–22.
121. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 161–72; Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith, 147.
122. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 158–160.
123. William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611), Act 1, scene 2.
124. John Milton, Comus, lines 116–117.
125. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, note to “The Stolen Child,” 59.
126. Courtney, Cornish Feasts & Folklore, 129; Thomas Quiller-Couch, “The Folklore of a Cornish Village,” Notes & Queries, no. 11, 398.
127. Hodson, Fairies at Work and Play, c. 1; Doyle, The Coming of the Fairies, c. 7.
128. Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends, 86; plenty of examples of bathing are in Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 56, 110, 151, 198, 221 & 240.
129. Sternberg, Dialect and Folklore of Northamptonshire, 136; Hill, Folklore of Northamptonshire, 149; Roberts, Folklore of Yorkshire, 64; County Folklore, vol. 2, 130.
130. Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 38; Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands vol. 2, 69; Murray, Tales from Highland Perthshire, nos. 127 & 202.
131. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands, 50; Simpson, Folklore in Lowland Scotland, 107.
132. Henderson, Survivals of Belief Amongst the Celts, 219.
133. Aitken, Forgotten Heritage 18; Crossing, Tales of Dartmoor Pixies, c. 9; Nicholson, Folklore of East Yorkshire, 79.
134. Edmondston, A view of the Zetland Isles, 215.
135. Addy, Household Tales, 115; Denham Tracts, 151; Gregor, Notes on the Folklore of the North East of Scotland, 59; Richardson, Table Book, 132; Grant, Myth, Tradition and Story from Western Argyll, 34.
136. Bord, Fairies,18.
137. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 538; Denham Tracts, 151; Courtney, Cornish Feasts, 126.
138. Palmer, Worcestershire, 180.
139. Davies, Folklore of West and Mid-Wales, 105; see too the references to well-dipping in c. 16 of my British Fairies.