Halloween and Faerie Folk
Halloween, along with Beltane/May 1st, is one of the two times of year when Faerie activity is most intense. The Faery Raide is seen on this night as the Good Folk move from their summer residences to their winter ones. Children born on Hallowe’en are gifted with the ability to see the Faeries, and for those of you brave enough, walking nine times anti-clockwise around a Faery Hill will grant you with the Sight too. This time of year is associated with gathering the harvest, but make sure you have had your pick of blackberries and fruits before sundown tonight, for the Faeries claim them from Hallowe’en onwards. Anyone eating the fruit after this date risks illness or falling under a Faery spell.
Filed under Faerylore | Comment (0)Horse and Hattock!
(…Or a Faery’s Guide to Flying)
In folklore faeries were never winged. These came later, partly as part of Victorian re-imaginings of how Faeries should look.
According to the 17th century folklorist John Aubrey, when the Fae wished to magically transport themselves from one place to another they would cry ‘Horse and Hattock’. They could also travel on cabbage stalks, rather like the popular portrayal of witches on broomsticks.
Katherine Briggs writes of a boy who finds himself lost in the woods. A bear leads him to a little cottage where the two little women who live there invite him in for supper. During the night he is awakened by the clock striking midnight. He witnesses his hosts put on white caps which were hanging on the bed. One says ‘Here’s off’ and the other ‘Here’s after’ at which the both disappear! The boy, not wanting to be left alone takes up another of the white caps and repeats ‘Here’s after!’ He finds himself transported to the fairy ring outside the hut where the women are dancing. So begins an adventure where the women take him to a house using the same formula of magic words. The night ends with the boy in the cellar of the house (having come down the chimney), where he drinks a bottle of wine and falls fast asleep. The servants find him, alone, the next morning, and being unable to explain how he got there he is condemned to hang. The day arrives and just as it looks like all is lost, one of the women rushes to the scaffold and puts a white cap on his head, saying ‘Here’s off!’ The boy quickly cries ‘Here’s after!’ and zips off to the hut in the woods. Here, the fairy woman explains that he displeased them by taking the magic cap, and not to take liberties with the fairies property in the future. This he promises and is allowed to go home. Again, here is an alternative method of flying to the usual wings.
Fairy Names and Euphemisms
Fairy, Faery or Faerie, however you spell it they are all accepted terms for the Fae. However traditionally it was thought unwise to refer to the Fae by actually as faeries as this would anger them – instead people used a variety of alternative names or euphemisms when talking about them.
For example:
Fair Family/Fair Folk
The Good Folk/Good Neighbours/Good People
The Green Men
Little People/Wee Folk
Lordly Ones/The Gentry
The Old People
Pharisees/Farisees/Feriers/Ferishers (Suffolk)
Frairies (Norfolk/Suffolk)
Fary (Northumberland)
Greencoaties (Lincolnshire)
Tylwyth Teg (Welsh ‘Fair Family’, though could also refer to a particular type of Faery)
Verry Volk (Wales)
The Grey Neighbors/Henkies (Shetland/Orkney names for Trows)
Klippe (Forfarshire, Scotland)
Li’l Fellas (Manx)
Sleigh Beggey (Manx language version of ‘Little Folk’)
People of Peace/Still-Folk (Highlands)
Wights (Anglo-Saxon)
Most areas in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales had regional names, and this is before we even got onto other countries! Things get confusing too when names begin to describe a particular type of Faerie as well as Faeries in general. Take Elves as an example, which used to be interchangeable with Faerie but now generally means either Norse or Teutonic faeries (or Santa’s little helpers depending on your inclinations!).
The word Faerie too is complex, again being an umbrella term Faerie creatures as well as the land of Faerie. Fairy is generally thought to mean the gossamer winged children’s fairies, but it is also an umbrella term like Faerie. The origins of both spellings are said to come from the Latin Fata (Fate) or French Fée. Fae-eerie, or state of enchantment gives us Faerie or Fairy.
Thyme
Long thought to be a Faerie favourite, Thyme (especially wild Thyme) is said to aid sightings of the Fair Folk. Thyme that grows on Faerie Mounds is the most potent – if you pick the flowers and lay them on your eyes it will allow you to see the Fae, and sprinkling dried Thyme on your windowsills and doorways will invite the Fae to enter your home. It is also one of the herbs listed as an ingredient for a magical ointment to see faeries in a 17th Century manuscript (now at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).
Filed under Faerylore | Comment (0)Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler
Two similar and equally nasty entities from English folklore are Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler. Both inhabit bodies of water, Jenny preferring stagnant pools while Peg haunts the river Tees in the North of England. Children who unwisely played too close to the waters edge would be dragged under by these spirits and drowned (or worse, devoured). The origins of these types of entities are probably cautionary tales to scare children away from playing near water, where the risk of drowning is all too real.
Filed under Faerylore | Comment (0)
