"To be Pixie-led was to experience the “uncanny,” it was to be taken across the border between the civilized and the wilderness, to have the familiar become strange and the known become “other”.” (152)
“Sometimes fiction writers thought of the experience of being pixie-led as therapeutic or consciousness expanding, as a sort of reunion, however traumatic, with the magic still inherent in Nature.” (153)
- Carole G Silver Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (1999)
For the last month I’ve been re-reading this in-depth, engaging study of fairy folklore in relation to 19th century literature and finding myself reflecting on its themes in a more engaged and critical way than I did during my first read in January. I was initially expecting ‘something else’ when I asked for this book as a Yule gifting; something more along the lines of the understanding of the faeryfolk[1] that I’d learnt during my adolescence, when I was a ‘practicing’ Neo-Pagan.
My first introductions to faery-lore led me to understand the faery peoples as a dignified and powerful ‘otherfolk,’ inclined to be benevolent, willing to associate with practitioners and others who were lovers of wisdom and protectors of Nature. The faery had to be treated with respect, as any person deserves. When accepted, they would encourage the practitioner toward better care of Nature and a deeper communion with the natural world, as well as encourage compassion and care for others. They were not to be ‘used’ for their magical powers or thought of as ‘one’s own.’ Well treated, one or more faery might associate themselves with you and join your ‘practitioner’s household,’ teach you their wisdom, at their discretion, and aid in your magical work. We thought of them as partners in our magical practices, and even as friends.[2] I never thought of them as tiny, insert-like beings with wings, but rather as descendants of mysterious ancient peoples, now living in a parallel world.[3]
This being how I first came to understand them, I have never thought of the faeryfolk – as they are referred to in a great deal of literature and folklore (as ‘fairies’) – as necessarily malevolent, hateful, murderous, or vindictive beings; more to be feared than befriended. Yet this is the picture I get from Carole Silver’s book, which illuminates and explores how they were seen and understood by many 19th century Victorians. _And this made it difficult for me to engage with this book on a first read. “Oh no_ more of this!” was my gut reaction.
On second read, I relish Silver’s book as well-researched, articulately reasoned and engaging, and, taking it as such, it is a great contribution to our understanding of the folklore and culture of the Victorian period. It explores the influence of the fairy-faith of the time on literature, poetry, art, drama and music, and I would encourage anyone who is into 19th century English novels and poetry – as I am – to consider reading it, as what it reveals backgrounds some of the standard literary texts of the period.
So_ my problem was not with the book, but with the incongruence between what I was reading and how I was introduced to the mythos of the Faeryfolk when I was a teenager and into Neo-Paganism. When your expectations are not met, it is always good to return to the text and engage with it as what it really is; hearing what it is really saying.
I.
“In different forms, the fairies have always been among us. They have inhabited the British Isles for at least fifteen hundred years; though sometimes forced underground, they have always re-emerged.” (9)
- Carole G. Silver Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (1999)
Over the years I have encountered stories of the fairies in a number of writers from the period, including William Butler Yeats – in his Irish Faery Tales and Folklore and The Celtic Twilight – and Lady Gregory – in her Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland – in which the fairyfolk are often portrayed as they are presented in Silver’s exploration of the relationship between, as her subtitle says, “Fairies and Victorian Consciousness.” I have found in my own reading about the fairyfolk, accounts of them as tricksters, kidnappers, and even cannibals, tales of women leading men astray and fairy men abducting mortal women. These themes were apparent to me long before I read Strange and Secret Peoples. I often wondered, reading such stories, just why the fairies were so often portrayed in these negative ways? What drove the folklore – and the cultural imagination, as well – in this direction?
One basic sociological reason is the fact of the usual diminution of the ‘old gods’ in relation to the ‘new gods’ adopted by a culture. This has occurred throughout history; though not always to the same degree or in the same way. Christian culture and religion would have contributed to the ‘demonization’ of the fairy peoples over the centuries, as any dominant culture will vilify the mythological characters and supernatural beings of peoples they have conquered and who are under their power. The ‘gods’ of a former culture oft become some version of ‘devils’ in the minds of conquerors. One of the origin stories about fairies – mentioned in Strange and Secret Peoples – clearly illustrates this. In Christian belief they were sometimes understood as part of the horde of fallen angels who ‘didn’t quite make it all the way down to hell,’ perhaps because they weren’t fully in agreement with Lucifer? Yet this was not the only fairy ‘origin story.’ There were other, conflicting stories, bandied about during the Victorian period – in researched accounts and in popular culture – ranging from their being descendants of various misunderstood ethnic groups (e.g., the people known then as the “Lapps”[4]) to being spirits of the dead as well as acknowledging them as the old gods of a ancient culture now diminished in power.
The overall picture, however, that emerges from Strange and Secret Peoples – at least for me – is that while a great deal of speculation was going on concerning fairies, all through the 19th century – what they were, where they came from, whether or not they ‘really existed,’ how to deal with them, how to avoid dealing with them, what the signs were of being ‘fairy-touched’ or worse – the underlying factor seemingly present in and behind all of these speculations is fear and an associated loathing.
The expression of this fear is explored under the themes Silver examines in excellent chapters on the phenomena of changlings (the fear that a person or child has been taken away and replaced with a fairy), fairy brides (fairy women who seduce mortal men, or men who capture a fairy woman and force her to be their bride), fairy kidnapping (abductions of infants, children and adults by the fairies for various, usually nefarious, purposes), the phenomenon of being ‘away,’ and a chapter on what she calls ‘goblin men’ (involving and justifying the terrible demeaning of small statured people; maligned as ‘dwarfs’ and caricatured as villainous, hateful, spiteful, etc.)[5]
Most of these themes in the literature of the 19th century concerning fairies, Silver makes clear, carried ethnocentric, racist and sexist baggage. Just as one example, the fairy bride stories rankle with underlying fears of women becoming ‘too powerful.’ In these stories, the fairy woman was portrayed as capable of leaving her husband and even abandoning their children; usually after violation of some taboo the bride had established at or before their wedding. Silver points out that such tales may reflect a social fear consequent on women being given the right of initiating divorce. The mid-19th century in England was a time when women were being given more political and legal powers.[6] Laws were passed, for instance, allowing women to initiate divorce; others which curtailed a husband’s ‘right’ to beat his wife even if she ‘deserved it,’ while other laws allowed women to keep their own property after marriage, and even after a divorce (Silver, p. 89). It would seem that the fears evoked by these social changes got expressed – in some people, especially men –through fairy lore under the guise of the “fairy bride” stories.
Another example would be the stories of ‘goblin men,’ which, as well as reinforcing the societal prejudices against people of ‘less than’ (loaded term) ‘normal’ (another loaded term) stature, were also clearly linked to prejudices against people of colour. Silver reminded me that the ‘pygmies’ of central Africa were ‘discovered’ by white explorers in the middle of the 19th century, and – through a misapplication of Darwinian evolutionary theory to the sociocultural realm, came to be seen as ‘less evolved’ human beings; ‘lower’ therefore on the ‘evolutionary scale’ and not to be reckoned the ‘equals’ of white middle- and upper-class Victorians. ‘Dwarfs’ – a cultural ‘type signifier’ labelling those so-called as potential ‘outsiders’ – and who were already often despised and mistrusted in Victorian society – began to be seen as ‘throwbacks’ to a ‘lower rung’ on the ‘evolutionary ladder’ after the discovery of the ‘pygmies.’ The revelation that there were populations of human beings of smaller statue than ‘civilized’ people in the actual world, lent heft to the belief in fairies as living beings, and not merely figments of a superstitious imagination. Silver suggests that fairies, dwarfs and pygmies were often confuted in the late Victorian imagination. The loathing of the fairies comes, I suspect, from the fear of ‘others’ we do not understand or do not acknowledge as our equals; we often loathe what we fear. But where are the fear and loathing rooted?
Strange and Secret Peoples contains engaging analyses of these themes and many more; including fairy women who were vampires and fairy women from the sea (mer-seals and mer-maids) – as well as the use of these themes in various literatures, including the novels of the Brontës, George Elliot, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Instead of summarizing more of it here – as reading Silver’s book would be much more interesting – I’ll stop for now and turn back to the question of why the fairies were so pervasively portrayed in this negative way.
II.
“The Victorian study of fairy lore acts as an excellent reflector of both the dominant ideas and the concealed anxieties of the era. The specific areas and problems in fairy faith and fairy lore that preoccupied Victorian folklorists and believers are revelations of social and cultural concerns perhaps shown elsewhere, but never in such sharp relief.” (57)
- Carole G Silver Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (1999)
On this read I began to associate this ‘bias’ in the fairy lore that was collected in the 19th century with it being the century in which the British Empire was at the peak of its power. An association that was clearly suggested by a number of folklorists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and by Silver’s analysis, I recognized in this connection between fairies and colonialism a clue to the problem of why the fairies had so often been portrayed as dangerous, undesirable and ‘less than human’ or at least ‘other than’ human. Once I started reflecting on the various ‘bad behaviors’ attributed to the fairies in this way, the connection began to make sense. The trouble I have had with the representation of fairies, I then realized, may well stem from the sociocultural context in which the stories were culled from folk traditions and published as ‘scientific’ ethnographic and folkloric studies.
There were many behaviors attributed to the fairies that would seem to point to this explanation. The fairies would torment people for reasons connected with their treatment by mortals. They were thought to be vindictive, especially if you trespassed on one of the fields they still claimed as their own. If you stole from them, it was feared that they would repay you more-than-in-kind; often retaliating in a way out-of-proportion to your theft. It was thought that you shouldn’t talk with fairies, for you might say something to offend them, which could also result in some rebuke or retaliation. If you befriended them – which was seriously warned against – they might return your friendship_ and then take you away_ into their world! This was known as ‘being away.’ While with them, it was feared you would become ‘like’ them, and, if you ever returned home, you would most likely be an outsider in your own world. This theme reminded me of the idea of ‘going native’ (a pejorative term); i.e., identifying overmuch with a culture not ‘your own,’ making you an outcast in your own social group. If you damaged or desecrated – by cutting twigs or taking fruit from – one of their sacred trees; or worse yet – cut one down – the consequences could be loss of limb, health or even life for the perpetrator(s).
The fairyfolk were often thought of as a people – a ‘race’ or group of ‘races’ – who lived underground, were not generally seen, but who were ‘aways there,’ just in the periphery of your perception. They were the hidden people who are always present, yet unacknowledged – unless they had to be. Is this not like how minorities are sometimes experienced today by those in the dominant culture? As the 19th century passed, they also came to be associated with ‘mobs,’ as in the “Wild Ride” – hordes of fairy flying through the air in wind, rain and snowstorms, causing havoc, disease and death to those caught in the course of their traverse of the world. [7] These malevolent hordes, Silver says, reflected the Victorian fear of actual mobs (p. 143); revolutionaries, Marxists and other radicals who challenged the accepted norms of society.
This really spoke to me of the relationship between a dominant class and its subordinates, these themes having parallels in our world today. I suddenly saw the fairies as a representative in the Victorian psyche of all the various peoples around the world living under colonial rule. I was originally going to call this blog ‘Fairy Resistance’ as many of the retributive acts said to be committed by fairies against people in the above-ground world could be seen as a transference of the fear that the subjects of Empire around the world might someday rise-up against those in power. In the meantime, tricks, vandalism of property and theft could very well represent fairy acts of frustration derived from living under the power of the dominant class.
Another dimension of this idea occurred to me in reading Silver’s
discussion of the reasons why the fairies were said to be ‘leaving England’ in a
genre of story called “Farewell to the Fairies.” Stories of this ‘departure’ began in the late
Middle Ages, she says, and was reiterated – with different reasons – in every
century since. Some of the reasons for
their departure included (1) the abuse of the land by irresponsible agriculture
and industry, (2) the unwise and unchecked expansion of urban life more and
more into rustic areas, and (3) the pollution of land, air and water. Silver quotes Walter Besant and James Rice’s
novella Titania’s Farewell (1876), wherein Titania laments, giving
reasons for the departure of the fairies from England, pointing to the fact
that, as Silver says, “[T]he problem of the “two nations” has not been solved,”
(200):
“[T]he rich in this country grow ever richer, and the poor poorer! The struggle for life is harder, the temptations are greater, selfishness and greed increase; luxury grows more and more … and the sweet contentment is wholly gone. (p. 112 in Basant and Rice)
This complaint, unfortunately, is still one that can be uttered today. The problem of the ‘two nations’ has yet to be resolved into something more humanizing for all of the people of the world. Titania’s ‘farewell’ can be seen as representing the resolve of an oppressed people finally giving up their homeland and going out to seek a better place; where they can hope again to live as they once did—in communion with Nature and all of the forces – physical and mystical – of the Earth & Cosmos. This, too, has resonances with struggles going on around our world today.
In response to Silver’s analysis, I am now seeing the characterization of fairies in 19th century ethnographic and folkloric works as symbolically standing in for the plight of displaced peoples; ‘races’ – in the common imagination – deprived of their lands and possessions; driven into less-than-viable environments. Thinking of them in this way, William Butler Yeats’ caution concerning disturbing the traditional fairy places in Ireland, in his Faery Tales and Folk Tales of Ireland (1973) – speaks to me anew. He said:
“The traditional respect for “forts,” raths, faery trees and other faery haunts, which farmer and hedger will not disturb, is perhaps a respect (as for the treasures in a tomb) due to what belongs, in some measure, still to its former owners. In usurping the earth which others tilled and loved, and above all their holy places, does it not behoove the living to tread softly? Has not our urban and profane civilization, in obliterating old landmarks, become impoverished as by a loss of memory?” (ix)
The green fields and primal forests in which they had dwelt were being progressively decimated and taken from them. The wild regions which were once their free home were being taken-over by in-comers; the world in which the fairy had once lived was being replaced with an agricultural, industrial and urban world in which they were unwilling – and possibly unable, even unpermitted – to live. The fairy had become a displaced people – like so many indigenous peoples around the world – losing their hold on their former places of dwelling and becoming un-rooted. Though I thought I had ‘known’ this at one level, for many years, reading silver’s book really brought the theme into the foreground and helped me sort out my ‘trouble with fairies.’
Perhaps it could be said that, before their ‘leaving,’ they were wont to take out their frustrations on those who had displaced them? From playing tricks on mortals to abducting them, their children or spouses, to leading them astray when they trespassed on or in what was still claimed to be a fairy plot of land, field or forest, to the killing or taking of cattle and sheep, the ruining of gardens or the blighting of fruit trees, might the fairy be thought of as engaged in acts of defiance against those who had displaced them?
Looking at this from a socio-psychological angle, I now better understand the fairy themes that so fascinated, enthralled and disturbed Victorians as expressing a subconscious fear of those peoples oppressed by Empire around the world; i.e., the fate which might unfold for the dominant culture if ‘those peoples’ rose up against the Victorians at home. There is always guilt to go along with the oppression and exploitation of others, even if it is not consciously acknowledged. Those who are oppressed, being human beings as well, like their oppressors, whether or not their humanity is acknowledged by the dominant group, often express their frustrations in acts of resistance, defiance and annoyance. And this gave me a key to understanding what the fairies were so often portrayed as doing in 19th century Victorian folklore.
While there are other sociocultural and subconscious forces at work in the Victorian psyche which led to them to fearing the ‘Gentry’ – a term of inverted ‘respect’ for the fairyfolk – the guilt of a dominant class and what it has done to an indigenous group of peoples – whether imaginary or actual living beings – seems to me to explain much of the ‘behavior’ of which the fairy peoples were accused, as well as the cautious ways in which mortals were warned to have to relate to the fairyfolk. This led me to also suspect that the very collecting of fairy stories by the first couple generations of amateur and professional ethnographers and folklorists, being also influenced by this subconscious guilt; as they were themselves members of the same Victorian culture—may have been biased by an unrecognized prejudice. I think it possible they unknowingly collected only stories that ‘agreed’ with their class- and cultural perspective. That is, if there even were stories of fairies doing ‘positive’ things for people, such as I was familiar with in my Neo-Pagan days – e.g., helping and befriending people and in other ways working with them in wisening ways_ rather than against them – might these collectors simply have discounted them as ‘anomalies?’ _Or perhaps not recognized them as ‘true’ accounts of the fairies? I think it possible, at least. What do you think?
Of course, by the 19th century, any more ‘positive’ view of the fairyfolk – had it ever existed – might have already passed from the rural culture in which it had once been known. On this, I would like to do more research. The influence of Christianity; the demonization of the ‘old gods’ and supernatural beings associated with them—long pre-dated Victorianism. If you accept the euhemerist view that the lore of the fairyfolk is a folk memory of an actual people, long ago, who were progressively dispossessed of their land by the incoming Celts, then the Anglo-Saxons and later the Normans, the fairyfolk had already lived as an ‘underclass’ for centuries before the Victorian Age. And then consider that as the oral informants who provided the stories that were recorded, published and disseminated in the 19th century, are now long dead, perhaps we will never know what other stories might have existed; passed over because of this cultural perspectival bias.
III.
“Revitalized, transmitted as part of our cultural legacy from our Victorian forebears, the fairies are still with us, and so, too, is our fascination with them. In a post-modern world that does not speak of “the reality” but of “realities,” the need remains to half-believe another race just might live side by side with mortals. Perhaps we do not wish to be alone.” (212)
- Carole G Silver Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (1999)
There are elements in Silver’s book which do touch on a hope that the kind of faery lore I was introduced to as a Neo-Pagan in the early 1970’s may still be viable and have value, at least within earth-centered spiritual, poetic and philosophical traditions. The epigraphs to this blog – referring to being ‘pixie-led’ – seem to refer to a more positive possibility in one’s interactions with the fairyfolk. And then, in the last section of the book, Silver makes it clear that by the turn of the 20th century, fairy-faith was functioning for a growing number of people as an imaginative ‘pressure valve’ that allowed them to criticize their own society’s faults and drawbacks. Silver notes that:
“Conservatives and radicals alike could find in such belief a cogent criticism of the age. For most it was an oblique form of social protest, implying as it did a rebellion against statistics and measuring, a liberation from the ordinary quantifications of logic.” (205)
I was particularly struck by this reference to Neo-Paganism:
“For some, including writers of fiction like Dunsany,[8] the neopaganism it [i.e., fairy faith] implied was liberating; to believe or half-believe in fairies was, by the turn of the [20th] century, an expression of revolt against complex urbanized society, so tightly conscious of its manners and morals.” (205)
Not only is this interesting as showing a mythic idea transfiguring from a source of fear into a source of social criticism – in hopes of a better, future world – it suggests to me perhaps why the Neo-Paganism I became familiar with as a teenager, the poetics of which I have continued to embrace in the decades since, was able to embrace the idea of Faeryfolk as it did; portraying them in a more ‘positive’ way. As Neo-Pagans we considered ourselves “of the Earth” and “for the Earth;” a clear ecological care for the planet and all its creatures underlay the mythic, magical and imaginative practices and beliefs that I learned. We were seeking to construct a way of life in-communion with Nature and also learning, as well as we could, how to live in harmony with Nature, which we saw was still being undermined in our own time.
Could it be that the Faery we imagined allying with us were willing to associate with us because we were not – or at least hoping/trying not to be – part of the problem; i.e., the using-up of the Earth, the pollution of our environment, the felling of more and more forests, and so forth—whether callously or just in ignorance of how harming the Earth undermines our own existence? Could it also be that, as Neo-Pagans, we were living outside the mainstream of our society—just as the faeryfolk were thought to be; marginalized by our beliefs and worldview—on the periphery of the known and accepted versions of the ordinary actual world. Perhaps they recognized in us a kindred spirit?
I learned to willingly and poetically ‘associate’ with ‘faeries’ as part of my imaginative magical practice; to share in the knowledge they offered, which meant to participate in the mysteries that life affords us; to become waeccan (i.e., existentially and spiritually ‘awake’) – in wonder and awe – to the beauty and sublimity of Nature, and thus to be not only ‘on Earth’ but ‘in’ and ‘of’ the Earth. The invitation was to wisen in the imagined company of Faery men and women. I was encouraged to invite one or more faery into my ‘practitioner’s household’ as willing associates in magical, divinatory and herbal practices. These individuals, I was told, were free to leave whenever they wanted; they were not ‘mine,’ they were not ‘servants’—though they might stay with me, in fellowship and friendship, for the rest of my mortal life, and even beyond_ continuing as my companions in my journeys in the Otherworld.
This for me was always a very imaginative belief; an exercise in poetics rather than actual religious or supernatural ‘belief.’ It made me aware of my connection with Nature as being one of the many kinds of earthlings; denizens of this planet—along with all other humans and every living creature on this still green and blue planet. When I write my own stories involving Faeries, I am writing about mystery; the encounter with the unusual, the extraordinary and the mystical dimension in life (for more on this, see my earlier blog “Fantasy and the Faeryfolk,” 1 September 2019). They stand-in, for me, for all that is strange and thus wisening; for the more we know of the world and its strangeness, the wiser we may become.
Our Neo-Paganism also warned me, however, that if I ever disrespected these friends from the Otherworld that I imagined being in fellowship with, especially by betraying my connection with Nature; surrendering my desire to preserve and protect natural places—or by treating them as ‘my servants’ or ‘possessions’—they would leave me in a moment, and no doubt take out their frustration with me in some way. Such retributions are well-represented in traditional fairy lore, and I would hope never to give them any such reason to abandon me. What’s more, I would never want to hear from them any version of what Wendy says to grown-up Peter in the Robin Williams’ movie Hook: “So_ Peter, you’ve become a Pirate,” as this would indicate my having turned from Nature to embrace the more negative values that characterize the World in which we live.
To understand the Faery in this way enhances my respect, not just for the Faery, but for all people. They became in my maturing personal ethics a touchstone for how I would want to treat all people. This is one role of a mythos; a body of stories by which you live and in which you find empowerment and seek inspiration—having a mythic imagination can help one in life’s adventures to become ever-more-human. This element of my personal lore resonates with the stories we have inherited from the 19th century, and after the revelations I have had through reading Silver’s book, I am more awake to dimensions of those stories and what their deeper cultural meaning might imply.
So mote it be.
Merry meet, and merry part_ and merry meet again, dear reader!
“All under the Sun belongs to men, and all under the Moon to the Fairies.” (113)
-
Auerbach & Knoepflmacher Forbidden Journeys: Fairy tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women
Writers (1992)
[1] I use the old spelling of ‘faery’ in my own imaginative writing, over against ‘fairy,’ which I use to refer to the kind of cultural history and negative cultural portrayals of the fairyfolk as described in Silver’s book, as well as in many other sources, including the Victorian folklorists of the 19th century.
[2] After reading Silver, I discovered an interesting account of the role of fairies in Pagan spiritualities in Chapter 6 of Magic and Witchery in the Modern West (2019 in the series Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic) called “The Taming of the Fae: Literary and Folkloric Fairies in Modern Paganisms” by Sabina Magliocco. In it are confirmed several of the general parameters of what I had been taught and later discovered while pursuing Neo-Paganism in my own spiritual journey.
[3] This is called the ‘euhemerist’ view in folklore and ethnographic studies. It is expressed in various contemporary sources, including Caitlín & John Matthews’ Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom (1994) p. 388.
[4] “Lapps” was a term applied to peoples in the northern reaches of Scandinavia in the 19th century, known today by their own designation, as the Sámi; who prefer the name of their region to the name ‘Laplanders.’
[5] This prejudice unfortunately still persists, though I would hope, not in as extreme a form as in the 19th century. It can still be seen represented in various fictions in its more prejudicial expression as in, for instance, the portrayal of Tyrion Lannister in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, where – I am told by readers of the books – this bias against him is being implicitly critiqued by the narrative.
[6] e.g., The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act (1857), the Married Woman’s Property Act (1870), and an additional Married Woman’s Property Act (1882), among others.
[7] I was taught that the Wild Ride was an empowering experience of fantasy broom- or horse- riding, through the night, in the air, with fellow practitioners and their familiars. It was for self-empowerment, not about the destruction of property or the maiming or killing of those caught in a storm.
[8] Lord Dunsany, author of such works as A Dreamer’s Tales, 1910, The King of Elfland’s Daughter, 1924, and The Sword of Welleron and Other Tales of Enchantment, 1954.
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