Chapter 6
Having discussed the places where we’re most likely to encounter faeries, we should consider when we’re most likely to make contact. Some times and seasons are more propitious than others; at certain points in the day and in the year, even the most ordinary places may be transformed.
Faery Days
Folk tradition is insistent upon the fact that there are certain days of the week when faeries are more likely to be abroad in the world. We can be certain, then, that there are more auspicious days for seeing our Good Neighbours—the practical problem for us is the absence of consensus over which days these might be.
The earliest account we have is from Wales, written by John Penry in his polemic The Aequity of an Humble Supplication in 1587. He asserts that certain soothsayers and enchanters claim “to walk on Tuesday and Thursday at night with the faeries, of which they brag themselves to have their knowledge.” Friday is the faeries’ day in South Wales and it is also when they have their special influence over the weather.140
In Scotland, Friday was also identified as the day when misfortune was in the air and faeries roamed the human world at their most powerful. To speak of them could attract them, as Sir Walter Scott, a Highlander, described in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
Will on a Friday morn look pale,
If asked to tell a faery tale.141
In fact, so great was the fear engendered by the superstition that even naming the day was to be avoided. Accordingly, Fridays were only mentioned as “the day of yonder town” and knives would never be sharpened on this day for fear of antagonising the sith. By way of contrast, it was believed that the faery folk could do no harm on Thursdays.
From Ireland comes evidence to confuse us if we believed some sort of pattern had been emerging from our evidence. One Irish researcher was told to avoid mention of the faeries on Mondays. Lady Wilde, though, was advised not to mention the sidhe folk on Wednesdays and Fridays, with the latter day being especially perilous. There’s a lot less evidence for England, but a collection of folklore from Northumberland and the Scottish borders records that Wednesday is “the faeries’ Sabbath or holiday.” 142
So, there we are: be on your guard for the Good Folk on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and/or Friday, but most especially on the latter day. We might add that, on Shetland if not elsewhere, Saturdays were also regarded as unfavourable as this was the day when the trows emerged and entered people’s homes. It seems like the only day on which you’re definitely safe is Sunday.
Faery Times of Day
Not only do the faeries have favourite days on which to venture forth, they also seem to favour certain times of day. Examined on suspicion of witchcraft in August 1566, Dorset healer John Walsh admitted that he had made contact with the local pixies by visiting the hills in which they dwelled “between the hours of twelve and one noon or at midnight.” Scottish sources confirm that faery influence is greatest at the hours of noon and midnight.143
It’s known to be hazardous to sleep on faery hills and this is doubly the case if you choose to slumber in the middle of the day. Here’s a salutary tale from Shetland:
A young woman was dangerously ill. She had a fever, caught by falling asleep at midday on top of a little hill. She died and her father insisted that the faeries had possessed her and left a stock in her place. He could not be convinced otherwise and smiled at the foolishness of those who denied the faeries.
It’s fair to add that another Scottish source records how a child who slept on a sithbruaich (faery hill) was not taken but was instead endowed with the second sight.144
In South Wales, the Reverend Edmund Jones’s account of the faery beliefs he found in Aberystruth parish in the 1770s echoed the English and Scottish evidence—to some extent. The faeries had been encountered by parishioners at all hours of the night and day, he recollected, but more at night than in the daytime and more in the morning and evening than at noon. The link between faeries and the nighttime is especially strong and well established, invoking as it does our fear of the dark as well as more benign images of faeries skipping in rings by moonlight.145
Faery Time and Human Time
The passing of time has always been a significant feature of many stories of faeryland, as I mentioned in Chapter 2. It’s known that time in Faery can pass at a different rate to time in the mortal world. A night spent under a faery knoll may turn out to have been a year, or ten, or a century in the “real” world.
As might be imagined, the consequences of this for the returning visitor can be disastrous and tragic. Family, friends, and familiar places may all have disappeared. And yet—this is not always a problem. Some visitors are able to come and go without ill effects: a midwife may be taken to attend a faery birth and return home the same night; a husband may go to rescue his wife from beneath the faery hill and will do so in “real time.” The faeries themselves may come and go from our world without difficulty. Faery time is flexible, we must conclude, with the faeries bending it largely for their convenience.
Faery Festivals
There are also certain times of the year when the Good Folk are more likely to be abroad in the mortal world, and when encounters are more likely—whether for good or ill. The faery festivals are generally significant dates in the human calendar as well, the reason for this being that these have long been recognised as times of year when we need to be on our guard and boost our magical protection.
Evidence
The bulk of the evidence on festivals and seasons comes from Scotland and Ireland. There is a little from the Isle of Man, plus a couple of odd instances from England and Cornwall. From Wales all we really know is that there were three “spirit nights,” the teir nos ysprydnos, when it was believed that supernatural beings of all descriptions were abroad (these were May Day, Midsummer Eve, and Halloween). The faeries were especially busy stealing children on Midsummer Eve.146
Despite any deficiencies, the accounts are nonetheless consistent. Two festivals stand out across Britain and Ireland—these are May Day and Halloween.
May Day
On May Day, fires were lit to scare away the faeries. This was done in Ireland, Scotland, and on Man, where it was expressly the gorse that was burned. Both in Ireland and Man it was believed to be unlucky to give fire away to a neighbour on May Day—perhaps because the protection it gave against faeries was being dissipated. On Man, too, rowan, primroses, and green boughs were gathered and laid before the doors of houses, stables, and cattle sheds to exclude the faeries.
The reason for all these precautions seems to have been that this festival was the time when the faeries re-emerged after winter and held their first dances of the year. As they were freshly abroad in the world again, they were deemed particularly dangerous. It was said to be unwise to draw water from a well for a drink after sunset on May Eve. In Ireland, it was believed too that the sidhe would try to steal butter at this time of year, whilst in Scotland, they stole milk from the cows. Also, in Ireland, it was considered that cutting blackthorn at this season would attract ill fortune. In the worst cases, a sudden death would be regarded as an indicator of an abduction.
Halloween
It is at Halloween (Samhain) that supernatural forces again become particularity dangerous. This is the season of the year when “they were privileged, on that day and night, to do what seemed good in their eyes.” 147
On this night the faery folk are abroad on their last major excursion of the year and mortals have to take precautions. In Ireland it’s thought that the sidhe move home on this night, whilst in Scotland the faery court enjoys its last processional ride (or “rade”). The only way that a faery rade can be seen by a mortal without peril is to have rowan hung at their door. In Ireland offerings of food are left out near raths and other faery sites in order to deflect the sidhe folk’s enmity. Conversely, it’s said that this is the best time of year to rescue those abducted, as the doors of the faery hills will be open.
In the Outer Hebrides the season is said to be even more perilous as it’s the time of year when the faery hosts fight amongst themselves, whilst in England this is the season when the Wild Hunt rides through the nighttime skies of the South West. A person out on Halloween is in grave danger of being swept up with the faery throng.
Even if you don’t encounter the faeries, the countryside can be tainted. For this reason, in Cornwall and in Ireland the advice is not to eat brambles after the end of October. As in May, cutting blackthorn is discouraged in November. As at the start of the growing year, so at the end, torches are lit in the Highlands to keep the sidhe folk away.
Other Festivals
Other dates with faery links are Whitsuntide, when holy water was sprinkled inside Irish homes to ward off the sidhe, and Christmas Eve, when the faeries were invited into homes in Gloucestershire. The fire was banked up and water was left out for their annual bath and, it was believed, if this was done good luck would follow for the next twelve months.148
Midsummer (Beltane) was a particularly significant festival on the Isle of Man. Protective fires were lit and other measures, such as wearing certain plants and flowers, were employed to safeguard people and livestock from the island Fae.
Faery Seasons
There are other times in the human calendar, turning points of the year, which also seem to have faery significance and at which the boundaries between our two worlds are more porous.
Yule
During the whole season of Yule (Christmas and the New Year) on Shetland it was believed that the trows were granted special privileges to wander the islands and enter human homes. To counteract this, special measures had to be taken by the inhabitants to safeguard themselves and their property.
The Yule festivities began seven days before Christmas on Tulya’s Eve. Households would pluck two straws from their stacks and lay them in a cross shape at the entrance to their farmyard. A hair from the tail of each cow or horse would be plaited and hung over the byre door and a blazing peat would then be carried around all the outhouses. This “sained” or protected the farm’s stock.
On Yule Eve every person in a household washed and put on fresh (and ideally new) clothes to sleep in. They cleaned their hands and feet in water into which three pieces of burning peat had been dropped. This protected their limbs from being “taken” or paralysed by the trows. A steel blade would be placed conspicuously outside the door of the house to warn off approaching trows and any joints of meat in the larder would be left with a knife stuck in them to prevent theft. On the last night of the Yule season, Up-Helly-Aa, large fires would be lit to drive the trows back underground again for another year.149
Other Times of the Year
In fact, all the traditional quarter days of the year (Candlemas, May Day, Lammas, and Halloween) might be regarded as risky times when there was faery danger imminent. The Reverend Robert Kirk during the late seventeenth century recorded that the last night of every quarter was a time when the faeries danced; they were also abroad and dangerous on the last night of the year.
The period of seventeen days around the spring equinox and the feast of the Annunciation were believed in Scotland to be a vulnerable time when the spirits travelled about in whirls of dust, stopping the plants growing. To protect themselves people had to approach the eddies backward with their eyes and mouths closed whilst repeating a protective verse. People found sleeping in the tracks of these whirlwinds might be carried along for a short distance, though seemingly without other ill effects.150
Whereas the evidence on days and times of day was rather less conclusive, it is possible with some certainty to point to festivals and seasons of the year, liminal turning points in the calendar, during which the portals to the supernatural open, or at least become more porous, allowing far greater access from one side to the other. Although, as we’ll see, the evidence on the nature of the faeries’ religion (if they have any) is uncertain or compromised, it is unarguable that they have ceremonies and observances associated with the major solar and lunar events and transitions of the natural year.
Faery Weather
Throughout this and the last chapter, the basic assumption has been that if you go to the right places at the right times you will have a much-improved chance of finding a faery. This all assumes that you can actually see them—and the Good Folk are very good at arranging the climatic conditions so that this is either difficult or impossible.
Whether we see them as rural dwellers, or as elemental beings and nature spirits, it is universally accepted that faeries live close to nature and the environment. Intimately bound up with this is an ability to affect the weather—a power of intervention in our world that is recognised the length of Britain. For example, in South Wales
Friday is the faeries’ day, when they have special command over the weather; and it is their whim to make the weather on Friday differ from that of other days of the week. “When the rest of the week is fair, Friday is apt to be rainy or cloudy; and when the weather is foul, Friday is apt to be more fair.”
In North East Scotland, it was said that when it rained it was a sign that the local faeries were baking. Perhaps the smoke from the ovens hung about the knolls like mist or low cloud.151
The Welsh faeries are only seen when the weather is a little misty. They prefer days when visibility on the mountains is poor, when a fine drizzly rain called gwithlaw covers the land. It’s not clear to what extent the tylwyth teg are responsible for these conditions, but it is known that such murky days are the best times to encounter them. A shepherd living beside Llyn y Gader became infatuated with a beautiful faery woman whom he’d first met on just such a misty day, and a maid living at Cwm Glas near Llanberis used to leave a jugful of fresh milk and a clean towel for the tylwyth teg on dark and misty mornings, receiving money in return. Children were warned that it was on such days that people were abducted and carried through the air by the faeries, so doubtless the respective parents must have been very alarmed when some children in Denbighshire in the 1880s reported watching a crowd of diminutive people dressed in blue, who ran in and out of the clouds wreathing the top of a local hill.152
The tylwyth teg may have been taking advantage of murky days, or they may have engineered them. Certainly, in Cornwall the small people create the weather; the spriggans in particular are felt to have control over the elements. When a man went digging for buried gold on Trencrom Hill, he first saw the sky darken, heard the wind begin to roar and, on looking up at the flashing lightning of the looming storm, realised that hundreds of spriggans had emerged to chase him away from his excavations, growing larger in size as they got nearer. Prudently, he fled. On the Cornish moors and on Dartmoor, the pixies are said to conjure fog purely to lead travellers astray.153
140. Sikes, British Goblins, 268; see also Jones, The Appearance of Evil—Apparitions of Spirits in Wales, para. 116.
141. Scott, Marmion, Introduction to Canto IV.
142. Leland Duncan, writing of Leitrim in Folklore, vol. 7, 174; Ancient Legends of Ireland, 72; Denham Tracts, 86 & 115.
143. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 534.
144. Edmondston, A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Isles, 77; J. MacDougall & G. Calder, Folk Tales and Fairy Lore in Gaelic and English, 183.
145. Jones, Aberystruth, 69; on nighttime, see my British Fairies, c. 17.
146. Owen, Welsh Folklore, 52 & 90.
147. Hogg, “Odd Characters,” 151.
148. Palmer, Gloucestershire, 145.
149. Saxby, Shetland Traditional Lore, 79–86.
150. Grieve, 202; Stewart, ‘Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe, 212; MacPhail, “Folklore from the Hebrides I,” Folklore, vol. 7, 402.
151. Sikes, British Goblins, 268; Gregor, Notes on the Folklore, 65.
152. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 33, 36, 91, 223 & 228; Owen, “Rambles over the Denbighshire Hills,” Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. iii, 5th series, no. 9 (1886), 72; Owen, Welsh Folklore, 100.
153. Hunt, Popular Romances, vol. 2, 245; & vol. 1, 48.