Very Olde Critters Again

(Still in Leprecat pp. 2-3 ... and whatever follows. "Trying to mop up the pre-1900s" I guess is the best way to characterize my frazzled approach to this.)

OFF WE GO AGAIN.

Well, it's a fine bunch of folks we have here.

ISLE of SKYE, UK 1870s.  The story comes from Katherine Briggs who, along with writing her many charming books about the fairy world, also did the field work of actual interviewing. In this incident it was the wife of one of the participants (deceased) that told her husband's encounter. 

When I began collecting these reports, it was a powerful hunch that the northwestern islands of Britain would be, along with Wales, the best shot one would have to have one's own encounter. Now, after looking into this case, places like the Isle of Skye scream "Faery" at a glance. The event to be described did not occur in quite so wild a place as the above pictured, but all of Skye seems touched with Faery green.

... see what I mean?

In a village on the island a young boy (the witness referred to previously) and his sister were being watched after by their grandmother, as their mother had to be away at the next village. A third child joined them and also another elderly woman dropped by to visit the grandma.  As the playtime wore on, the children were behaving somewhat "negatively" (tired and ornery)  outdoors. Grandma felt that she had to intervene before this got out of hand. And so did her visitor.

This visitor happened to be not just any visitor, but was what was then called a "Wise Woman." She might have been suspected of being a witch in former less-sane times, and she had "The Second Sight." She went to the children and asked them if they would like to see something unusual. And of course they would.

Hand-in-hand, the four of them went for a walk down a path and across a glen (maybe one of Skye's famous Fairy Glens), and sat down on the grass beside a stream. Shortly, across the stream there was a fire burning. It was dusk, and the fire seemed bright, and then, all around it, fairies appeared and began to do their circling dance. The Little People (their size is not described) were dressed all in green and their dance was enthusiastic ("merry"). 

I suppose that after a while the vision went away and the Wise Woman and the children went back home. The children returned to the site with others the next day but there was no sign that there had been a fire. The young boy, when older, and he a minister, told his wife that he felt that the only reason that they saw the fairy circle dance was because the Wise Woman was there and they all held hands. Whether that is true, who can say? 

But it is a pretty decent case.

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ISLE of MAN, 1884.  This one, I believe, is a bit of a gem. 

This tale was gathered by a lawyer who was visiting the Isle of Man, and following his passion for collecting folklore. He was a member of The Folk-Lore Society and was happy to write up the report in their journal in 1902. The incident happened in 1884, and the interview was taken by the lawyer three years later with the prime witness. That is a pretty good beginning in the credibility department (since our reporter also vetted the witness to a degree and thought the man "sober and honest.")

The story: The witness was a postal carrier. His typical job was to drive his horse-drawn cart from a central office around the small towns nearby and to collect the mailbags for their later delivery. This job was a late night affair, covering hours around midnight and the early morning period. 

He was well into his route and had many mail packages on board. He was due back at his home area at 1:30am but did not arrive until 5:30. Here's what happened: coming into his home stretch, only six miles from home, he came across a troop of fairies in the road. This troop was dressed sharply in red uniforms and many carried lighted lanterns. Whether they were offended by the entry of the mailman and his horse, or whether they were just looking to make mischief, they swarmed upon the cart, attacking the man and grabbing and throwing the mail bags all over the road. They began dancing around the bags riotously, and pushing the helpless postman around when he attempted to make them stop. 

This physical harassment went on for four hours, only ceasing when the Sun began to cast some dawn light at the horizon. It took the exhausted postman some time to regain his wits and he then began to retrieve his mail and go on with his route. With this the story ends. 

Hmmmm .... a good well-known witness, interviewed by an intelligent interviewer, neither or whom added any dazzling fairytale-like details to the story. In fact, this is a posterchild for the typical believable tale: an astonishing interaction which some other reality, which has the feel of an accidental intersecting of two lines of reality, and which contains no "profundity", or messages, or moral. 

A good one, I think.

.... neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet .... but watch out for that Gloom of Night stuff. 

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St. Ives, Cornwall. c. the late 1800s. 

The source of this story seems good, or at least probably good. Here's what I think that I know: The primary publication of this is in a book by AKH Jenkin. Cornwall and the Cornish, published in 1933. The prime witness is named as an old lady named Mrs Rebecca Noall, who had died in 1927. Jenkin was not the interviewer, but got the story from a lady named Mrs JH Hodge. Hmmm.... a tougher nut to crack than ideal.  I still think that the chain of investigation is OK; here's why: 

Jenkin had just finished a book on the history of Cornwall mining  and it was considered a good piece of work. He wanted to follow that up by a book on Cornish folklore (this book.) The locals seem to have felt that he was a good scholar, and the Introduction was written by a famous local lawyer and politician, Isaac Foot, who was also an expert in mining. Mrs JH Hodge was a member of a very well-known entrenched St. Ives family, and her husband (I believe) wrote a piece on folk culture in the regional journal of the time. Either Rebecca Noall or a relative also wrote such a piece. The picture that I get is one of a trusted author getting information from a good folklore source. 

So, with some confidence, the Tale: It was common in the day that many of the girls of Cornwall worked jobs late into the evening. Rebecca was no different. Her father usually came by at eleven or midnight or so to escort his daughter back home. Thus father and daughter were walking back to their home when the following occurred. 

At a lonely spot on one of the streets, they saw approaching a troop of Little People. These were marching on both sides of them, in precision as in some ceremony. They were arm-and-arm and dressed alike in scarlet cloaks with tall peaked black hats. They proceeded "with the greatest decorum and dignity." Rebecca's father whispered to her that she should remain absolutely silent and show no sign of recognition. Thus the trooping fairies passed "safely" by, and father and daughter went safely home. 

Again, seemingly a good one. Good witness (and apparently multiple); fine closeness of encounter; good if not full detail (ex. no specific size stated but "small"); and the feeling of an accidental intersection of lives. (with no grandiose message nor moral.) 

Can't help it --- I like it.

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I've run out of the original group of three illustrations, but let's go for another anyway. 

Mouth of the Bush River, Ulster, Northern Ireland, c. early-mid 1800s. 


This one is difficult to tie down as far as the story collector is concerned. Although seen in Elizabeth Andrews' Ulster Folklore (1913), the source is really the 1858 Ulster Journal of Archaeology Volume 6. The collector is unnamed due to a very puzzling (to me) and unhelpful cultural habit of authors remaining anonymous.
(I couldn't even find a set of initials.) The author says that he went to Ulster on the request of the editor of this journal to do just this sort of tale retrieval, so maybe it's OK. The witness was then an old man, but one of the two primary witnesses and the tale vivid and oft-told. 


The incident: There is a small village near the mouth of the Bush River (about six houses only) where lived farmers who also fished for salmon in the nearby Bush. Two young men were as usual looking after cattle grazing, and it was around dawn. They'd just gotten up to see after the cattle. The river was extremely high, far higher than almost any other time and in full flood. The whole atmosphere was violent with wind pushing tides up the mouth of the Bush with violence. 


"We stood looking at the wild picture before us, when all at once we saw the tall figure of a man standing on one of the pillars in the middle of the Bush, with a long grey cloak on him .... " Who did they think that he was?


There is a legend in this area of a giant from pre-mediaeval times who came to Ireland to fight with another giant of a man, Finn MacCoul. When Finn defeated his adversary, he invited another local giant to a feast, the Grey Man of the Path. I don't know a lot about this character, but he seems to present an awesome figure (7 to 9 foot tall) and a supernatural danger. 

This being, standing in the river on a stone pillar (which was under water), and facing into the tempest, was what the two young men thought they saw.  One was scared witless by the vision; he cowered. The other was shocked but still called out. The being didn't move at all. Somewhat later, it moved, but not yet to face the witnesses. The cowering witness demanded that they leave "Come away, Aleck, we're too long here!" 

They went home shaking. Both felt that they had seen the giant Grey Man. 

Did they see a folklore giant? If so, it's our first in this run of stories.

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Till next time, folks.
 

LEPRECAT 1, page two

Leprecat One, page two. (plus)

A bunch of Strange Critters indeed.

We have a variety of heights here from near-human to a mere six inches tall. Lots of apparently classic gnomes in the country, plus a small number of what seem to be apparitions rather than The Little People we are chasing. I have 16 of these (and other incidents of 19th century date) that are crudely illustrated via cartoons, so let's look at those. Among them (later) are two cases eerily similar which create a mystery for me. Let's just plow in. 

 Ah,  two not-so-friendly characters and a neutral. 

1. Lochan-nan-Deaan, Scotland.  The Story: The lake had an old tradition going back centuries. It was said to be the abode of a blood-thirsty "water spirit" which in olden times had demanded sacrifices. Such practices being, if ever, well into the past, the local men did not fear any of that. The lake was also said to be bottomless, but few believed it. Curiosity being what it is, many of the men of two nearby villages decided to drain the loch to discover if the remains of skeletons would be uncovered there. Arriving there with spades and mattocks to carve a way for the loch's waters to flow away, they had no sooner begun when their labors were interrupted by a loud screaming. 

This had erupted from a little "man" of gnomish dimensions who had burst up through the loch's surface.  The violence of his appearance and yelling scared everyone so that they dropped shovels and picks and began to run. The gnome exited the water, seized upon the implements, and threw them into the loch. He then almost burst the air with a thunderous roar as he plunged back into his loch, while the waters roiled in a blood-red swirl as he disappeared beneath them. Well .... that loch wasn't drained that day. 

I don't have the primary reference on this incident but the book pictured was nearly time twinned to it and has an apparently good telling.

Mackinlay's Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs is a superb source by the way. But if you go to it looking for Nessie, you won't find her there --- plenty of incidents of Waterhorses and Kelpies though.


The Primary source for the Lochan-nan Deaan incident comes from a well-known Scottish folklorist at the time, the Reverend Walter Gregor. Gregor was going throughout (mainly) NE Scotland interviewing and saving Scottish heritage for a series of studies printed in early numbers of the Folk-Lore Society. This one comes from The Folk-Lore Journal of March 1892, which I sadly do not own. One of you might go there and see if Gregor's writing sounds as if he interviewed anyone closer to the encounter himself, or if this was just local common knowledge. 

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Truro, Cornwall. 1810.  The story: This is a single witness claim. The reporter was a tailor of good repute and a well-known man. He was a friend of the writer-of-the-case's grandfather. He left the grandfather's home at around dusk to begin his walk home. He had to walk past the local graveyard and then the old church. As he came to the stile in the church fence, suddenly a troop of Piskies (pixies to us moderns) appeared. Startled he froze for the moment. The piskies were about a foot-and-a-half high, and composed a whole line of trooping fairies (as the Irish would say.) 


They were dressed alike with red cloaks and tall lumped-over sugarloaf hats. (black.) They moved in single file on the run. Descended a bank, ran up a hedge, and disappeared into the churchyard and the gloaming. Regaining his nerve, he climbed the fence and hurried after ... but no further sign of the troop was to be seen anywhere. Later he told everyone that he saw of the experience, and repeated this as true for many years. 

I don't have the original source but it is available online as the rather obscure journal, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Records. A researcher well-known to that society, one H. Michell Whiteley, was the "modern" reporter. 


I don't know about you folks, but this one seems pretty good to me.  
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Lostwithiel, Cornwall,  1816.  The story: this is a single witness claim. A well-known farmer in Lostwithiel had a pony which he liked a great deal and so would allow it to roam free outside the barn during good weather. During one stretch he began to notice that the pony seemed to have taken ill. At morning, the animal would look utterly exhausted but seemed to get better as the day went on. The next day: the same thing ... and on. Consulting with neighbors, the opinion was that the animal was being afflicted somehow by piskies.

The farmer decided to stay out of sight that next evening and keep watch. That evening the pony was assaulted by five little beings no more than a half foot high. These creatures were what I would call boggarts rather than proper members of the Faery folk, resembling small hairy dark ape-men, rather than a "self-respecting" well-clothed Coballos or gnome. The things were naked and wild. When on their feet in the field, they merrily attacked one another in wrestling modes, trying to toss each other on their backs. The winner of this free-for-all got the privilege of jumping on the pony, dancing on it and harassing it and "singing very obscene songs" while its defeated comrades howled obscenities back, terrifying the pony further ... until it galloped crazily around the field finally collapsing to the ground. 

The farmer and his local farrier decided that it was not wise anymore to allow the pony outside at night, and left it behind closed barn doors "protected" from piskie intrusions by placing pieces of the elder tree over those doors. 

Well, that was fun. I have no idea what to make of it. The story type is not unusual for the old people to tell, except that the piskies here are much cruder and smaller than "normal." The big problem is the source. The incident, quoted by AK Hamilton Jenkin in his Cornwall and the Cornish, comes originally from a Cornish newspaper which is WAY beyond my scope to obtain and read. Why bother? Because it is only by reading a bunch of this publication that I could even guess as to its level or seriousness. Did they print just anything? Could random folks just write a letter? I have no idea, therefore I have no idea of the credibility. 

But it was (despite the crudity) a great deal of fun, and I'd kind of like it to be true ... but ... deep Gray Basket. 


Lets call it a day. Tomorrow or the next I'll try at least three more encounters of the 19th century ... and maybe a little more light might dawn. 

Peace and Health.

Did Henry Hudson See American Fairies??

HUDSON RIVER, NY  1609 

This is one of the more attractive claims of a famous person contacting dwarf-like people. It is a claim which appears all over the internet. Did it happen? 

Here's the story as claimed: Henry Hudson was on early sailing missions to the New World, and ends up cruising the eastern seaboard and go up the to-be-named Hudson River looking for a passage to the "Northwest" and a shorter path to the Orient. While going up the Hudson, he and his crew allegedly encountered the North American version of the European dwarves. 

The claim is that Hudson and his men during the 1609 expedition encountered many native peoples along the Connecticut coast and day-by-day up the River. These people were sometimes friendly sometimes not. As the River narrowed, headway became basically impossible, and Hudson sent men on shore (he had done this previously) to see what he could learn. At the last stop, he encountered a dwarf people playing music, dancing around a fire, and drinking. They were small (c.2-3 feet tall) and dark complected, and quite hairy, especially regarding facial hair. After merry-making to no practical end, Hudson and his men turned back down river and ultimately returned back to Europe. The claim was that anyone could read this material in Hudson's own trip diaries.

Well, Great, eh? 

The trouble with this is that I can't find any source for the story which is credible. I ploughed through all of Hudson's diaries line-by-line and right up the river --- nothing.

I had a very bad memory which excited me about this thing before I dipped into it. I thought that it was a Janet Bord case, and so felt extremely confident that the research was good. But the excellent Ms. Bord was NOT the claim author. Who then was? 

I went to the internet hopefully. I looked at ten resources (it might have really been more.) The claim was all over. 8 of the ten came to the same source: some essay by a person named S E Schlosser. This person writes the tale in fine detail, leaving the reader to believe that this is definitely in Hudson's notes. I don't like to call names, so I'll leave it there. THE ALLEGED REFERENCE DOES NOT (TO MY READING) EXIST. 

The other two references go back to a legitimate source: Charles M. Skinner. MYTHS and LEGENDS of OUR OWN LAND. 1896. In THAT book there is still no listing/description  of a Henry Hudson interaction, but rather a linking of interactions with fairies with Rip Van Winkle, who is clearly a fiction character. Still, try as I might to coalesce the Rip Van Winkle tale with the Henry Hudson story (the resource clumsily smears the two awkwardly and obviously fictionally),  I can't see this as an excuse for the previously mentioned sloppy claims.

Good Lord I hate this sort of thing. Is there any way to save this post entry? I think that we can. I have, by an odd piece of good fortune, two somewhat unusual resources which could help.  The first is below: 

This is just a serendipity. In this volume of the Bureau of Ethnology is a long study by a great ethnologist named Frank Speck. Here he was (early in the 1900s and the late 1800s) studying a remnant of Native American persons in the New York and Connecticut region. One of the people he extensively interviewed was a very old woman, who was perhaps "the last of the Mohegan-speaking people." (Speck thought so)

Speck's passion was the preservation of the cultural histories and languages of "disappearing peoples." Finding the last surviving speaker of a language was the ultimate in his quest. That speaker was Fidelia Fielding.

 She lived alone on her small plot of land, tending her gardens and bemoaning the state of the world as she saw it. She kept a rudimentary diary in her near-extinct language, and, simplistic as most entries were, it was for me fascinating. This grand old lady had a direct and clear-eyed view of things and was willing to write bits of that down. 

It was, however, not in her diary, but in interviews conducted by Speck, that she informed him about the Little People who had frequented this area in older times. 

Speck was quite interested in all of this, and had collected other such tales from Native Americans of slightly different linguistic stocks living nearby. Perhaps, just perhaps, these memories of "dwarf indians" living or appearing nearby and even in these Hudson River locations reflect something about the Henry Hudson claims which began this post. 

I'm going to post Speck's map of the local remnant linguistic areas below, which show the various types of people reporting, and note that beyond the map to the northwest are areas of forested hills quite near and like the Catskills today, which abut the Hudson River valley. Then I'll try to describe these dwarves.

What were these creatures like? According to Mrs. Fielding, they were like "little indians" about the size of small boys. They were dark complected and hairier than local indians. They cared about nature. They would sometimes interact with humans, but usually did not want to. When they DID want to, it was to get some favor. If granted, they gave something back in return. In these latter ways, they were astonishingly like British gnomes or what Agricola would have called Coballos of the rural and forested areas. She called the dwarves "makiawisag" in the Mohegan language. Best translation?: The Little Boys or The Little People.



Can we say much more? Mrs. Fielding, although she cited actual people who had lived around her plot, stated that the people who had personally seen these little indians had passed away, and no one had probably seen the creatures for several decades. (including of course herself --- Mrs Fielding said that the only fairy-like thing that she perhaps had seen was a Will-o-the-Wisp like light which had moved slowly and mysteriously in the hills nearby.) But, maybe, there are other sources not in this volume.

John Roth is a marvel and a huge storehouse of Native American fairy lore. If you are interested in these matters, you should own a copy of his book. 


Roth classifies cultural groups as do the professionals, and then lists however many little people (and other related folklore) references he has been able to find --- which are always MORE than anyone can delve into. Under "The Algic of Southern New England", Roth not only lists the Mohegan culture and its neighbors, but also has (already) heard of Speck's talking with Mrs. Fielding. There is probably little that is factual that he does not know. 

It turns out that there are many folktales of Little People up and down the coast, and they differ in detail. This was interesting, but it gave me problems: did makiawisag equate to any of the others? I can't solve it. But I'll BS a try and then you can dive in and do better. 


If I was making my best guess as to a compromise appearance of these entities, it would be:
two to two-and-a-half feet tall, dark-complected Native American appearance, but stockier (i.e. more dwarf-like), clad in well-made skins, sometimes only to the waist, facial dark hair, perhaps slightly slimmer than British gnomes, living in hills or old stone pile/fort areas underground, not unkind but not particularly friendly either. 


Many of the other legends picture different looking beings, but I'm trying to center around Mrs. Fielding's opinions here, and add small amounts of cohering detail from elsewhere. THUS:
the following drawing is my cartoon pictorial for her makiawisag.

  ... and what else you should know is that this is another person's rendition of Little People from the American Central Great Lakes and Pacific coast areas. 

Is there any chance that Henry Hudson saw some beings like this? Who knows? There doesn't seem to be any real evidence for that claim. But might the ancestral neighbors of Mrs. Fielding have seen them? THAT is a lot more believable once all the rest of the more modern sightings come in. 

OK. Done again. Harder than I'd planned  ... again. At least this had a happier ending than the last. I might begin to do smaller and smaller chunks of this so I don't burn out. I'll post Leprecat page #2 next time and see if there is anything there worth writing/thinking about. 

Till then ... Bless and Keep you all.

LEPRECAT 1c ... "last"(?) really old stuff?

Still (happily) with the Olde Folks ..... 

Today let's try a few individual cases, take on the Enigma of Robert Kirk (I'll fail there), ask a question about Wings and Fairies (I'll BS profusely there), and exhibit extreme confusion about the claim that Henry Hudson saw Little People on his trip up the Hudson River looking for the Northwest Passage. 

Hmmm... that seems WAY too much to bite off, but let's at least start. (Yes. folks, I'm really just creating as I type these things --- I say "being spontaneous", a less kind person would say "winging it." Know at least that I have a couple of foot-thicknesses of notes and 300 folklore books nearby, so at least there's that.)  :=}

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Forfarshire/Angus Scotland, c. mid 1600s.

I may or may not have located the original of this claim. I first saw it in FATE Magazine, which, surprisingly, often has good things in it, but still is not the finest of reference points. FATE was reprinting a piece of work by HT Wilkins, also often OK, but not the finest source. Then there was someone named Charles John Tibbitts, in 1889 (Folklore and Legends of Scotland.) Better, but the two renditions did not exactly cohere. Finally, writing in the Edinburgh Review of 1818, under the pen-name of Agrestis, someone in a landed house in Angus, laid claim to this story. His telling agreed with Tibbits and not Wilkins ... so this is from what I believe is the original source. 

Agrestis says that he wants very much to help preserve the folklore of the olde times which is vanishing. He says that, among others, he has interviewed a very old woman, who for all her life, wished to do the same. His sittings with her were, apparently, in the mid-1700s, but that would still make the story a century old when she told it. This tale is therefore a memory of the local people, rather than a claim of original firsthand experience. But, here it is:

At a farm which adjoined that of the old woman's family, there was a farmer's work-hand who had the unprepossessing name of John Smith. One day he was sent to fertilize a field by casting turf upon it, upon which job he labored all day. A small stony hill or Crag stood nearby, called Merlin's Craig. From behind this hill walked a small woman, only about a foot and a half tall, and obviously one of the little people. ... a perfectly formed woman clad in a green dress and red stockings. She had long blonde hair. 

The lady was angry. John had been cutting out sections of turf in one area to haul them to the field to be fertilized, but to her, his actions were tantamount to carving off the roof of her and her family's house! John was stunned and fearful. She ordered him to place all his "divots" back where they belonged. This he promptly did, and raced back to the farmhouse. There he told the farmer what had happened with the expected incredulous response. John was ordered to re-fetch the divots in a cart, and bring them back to the farm. Reluctantly, this he did.

Nothing happened to John Smith nor the farmer in subsequent days, and the incident was nearly forgotten. But just a year from that day, John left the farm after work to return to his own home. He carried with him a "stoup" (flagon, stein, bottle) of milk as he went. But John Smith did not arrive. Instead he was absent some significant time (months? years? the story teller could not remember how long.) Finally he reappeared, the stoup still in his hand. 

He told the following story: 
On approaching Merlin's Craig that fateful day, he became ill, and slumped to the ground. He fell asleep until perhaps midnight or later, he was awakened by a crowd of male and female fairies dancing in a ring. He was given a pretty girl as a partner and he, feeling cured, joined the dance. They danced together three times 'round the Faery ring, and away somewhere a cock crowed. The fairies (knowing that this presaged dawn) rushed with him towards the Crag, whereupon a doorway opened and all rushed in. 

He met there the older blonde fairy woman that he had originally encountered. She informed him that the turf above her house that he had cut away had recovered and was again green. She forgave him on the promise that if he would say nothing of his time spent underground with the fairy people, they would release him. He swore an oath to this (which he kept for some time, but not eternally apparently) and found on his release that much time had passed (though the stoup of milk was still fresh in his hand.)

John Smith never walked close to Merlin's Craig again, and another laborer (a shepherd) when approached by these people (having fallen asleep and awakened by their dancing) refused to go with them. He was only saved by having a copy of The Lord's Prayer in his hat, which he grabbed and held tightly. 

Well, a great story. Not sure what else can be said. We don't have an interview with the witnesses nor anyone who directly knew them. We don't even have the real name of the reporter to the Edinburgh Review. This is a Gray Basket story. It's not simply a Throwaway Story. Proper exploratory behavior here is to set it aside and see if the rest of the exploration casts any light on it. These Little People are behaving "properly" for their alleged character, and are friendlier than we have been led to believe. You would not build your hypothetical house on cases like this, but lay them nearby in the Idea Field nevertheless. 

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 Shetland, Zettland, Orkneys, c. 17th century. 

A writer-scholar named John Brand made trips all over Scotland during the late 1600s and early 1700s collecting general data on the culture and economy of the areas. He laid special emphasis on the antiquities and the folklore. 

As he did so, he came across many people willing to tell him about the Little People. The primary entity mentioned (alongside many tales of Mermaids and Merpeople) were the Brownies. These folk-folks were often distinguished by their antics within the homes of the peasantry, doing mainly "good works." I cite no specific case here because Brand doesn't talk about the subject that way.

The following is Brand's language --- Quote:
"Not above forty or fifty years ago, every family had a brownie, or evil spirit, so called, which served them, to which they gave a sacrifice for his service; as when they churned their milk, they took a part thereof, and sprinkled every corner of the house with it, for Brownie’s use; likewise, when they brewed, they had a stone which they called "Brownie’s stane", wherein there was a little hole into which they poured some wort for a sacrifice to Brownie. They also had some stacks of corn, which they called Brownie's Stacks, which, though they were not bound with straw ropes, or in any way fenced as other stacks used to be, yet the greatest storm of wind was not able to blow away straw off them."

So it's hard to know (feel?) what to make of such. I don't have the original source but I DO have a set of Brand's similar work. In these volumes he talks of similar matters concerning folkloric entities and it is easy to believe that he did in fact do the actual interviewing of many people. The other thing that you can get from the three volumes is that Brand is no lightweight. He's a serious intellectual and a good observer. The stories are astounding, that's for certain, but it's equally certain that Brand thought that the people were telling him what they truly believed. (I won't go into the Merpeople stories --- I covered that topic way back in the blog years ago.)




But it is SO hard for moderns like ourselves to consider. Is that their problem or ours? 

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John Beaumont (Visions or real world?): somewhere in England c. 1700AD. 

Beaumont wrote a thesis on Spirits, Genii, Apparitions and the like based upon information that he culled from classical writers, witch trials, and his own experiences. Much of this material seems very dream-like or otherwise non-normal consciousness. But he DOES seem to claim to have seen (several times) a kind of creature that one would only call members of the Little People. 

His words: "(these people) being of a brown complexion, and about three feet in stature; they had both black loose network gowns, tied with a black sash about their middles, and within the network appeared a gown of a golden color, with somewhat of a light striking through it; their heads were not dressed with topknots, but they had white linen caps on, with lace on them ... on over it they had a black lace network hood." 

Beaumont claimed to see these fairies dancing circle dances, singing and holding hands. He asked them about their nature and was told that they were superior to us, and were creatures who lived in the air. 

Well, if any of that were true, Beaumont should have either been talking to the aerial fairies or Sylphs (of which there are almost no reports at all,) or he was talking to the typical Agricola style coballos of the forest, field, and rural nature --- and they lied to him (as they are want to do.) 

A pretty weak case though ardently told. Janet Bord saw it this way as well. 

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 Newborough, Wales c. mid to late 1700s. 

I acquired a bit of a treasure not long ago  entitled Y CYMMRODOR. This was a run of the journal of the CYMMRODORIAN Society of London in the 1870s and 1880s. LOADED with Welsh cultural and folkloric matters. 

Blundering aimlessly through it, I discovered in Volume 7 (1886) a fairy encounter tale. 

This event had occurred about a century back to the lady who lived in the house nearby to the reporter's informant. It was a well-known and very local set of incidents. It was a Brownie type of tale, but in this case the Brownie (a little woman) lived outside the house not in, and each week would bring the lady a freshly baked loaf of bread. This was in exchange for the borrowing of the lady's bread-baking griddle that the lady herself ordinarily used. 

This unusual barter continued as long as the lady agreed not to watch how the fairy went away, so as to perhaps discover her residence.  Of course, the lady finally gave in to her curiosity and peeked. That ended the Brownie barter, sadly for all. The lady said that her peeking revealed that the Brownie (the informant being Welsh used the Welsh term meaning the Good People, or the Tylwyth Teg) went directly to the nearby lake and pliunged beneath the waters. 

 Perhaps a slightly better case, and surely charming.  
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Well, I've done it again --- completely gassed out. 

I'll get back on the horse in a couple of days, and stare Robert Kirk and Henry Hudson in the eyes then.    Till then, may the Wind be always at your back.  
 

Leprecat 1a

Leprecat: a "Missing" page 1A.
After the work with some of the usual older cases, a few sources (some common, some rare) passed across my research eye and seemed to demand their place in all this. So, here is some of that.

 
 Many of us have spent minutes of great fun staring at Olaus Magnus' 16th century map of the northern seas and lands. The adventuring Reverend was a type of latter day Pliny the Elder for his area of the world. Just as Pliny can be called the world's first broad-studying Fortean, Olaus can be credited as being similarly cut from that Fortean cloth. His map excites, while his accompanying book is an attempt at comprehensive description of what were at the time fairly unknown lands. In both we find the Little People.

Far to the north in Magnus' Greenland, we find the ancient echoes of modern day Iceland's insistence that their Trolls, their Little People, are real, and not terribly happy with us humans. 

Magnus inserts a confrontation between an armed troll and a similarly armed human, facing off over who is to occupy the land. This little drawing perhaps says much about the creatures that we are chasing in this blog today. The trolls are resident. We humans come and threaten to push them away. They aren't happy about it, and sort of oppose. In the end, the Human March keeps spreading out, driving the trolls away. 

Hidden in the story is why we succeed. It's not obvious. But something about us, or them, or both, allows the humans to inexorably "win" the land. We aren't there yet on this blog, but as cases go on, it seems as though the "other people" are limited with what they can do. ... at least in this physical world. We might be limited as to what we can do in interactions with them, but we can destroy anything in this physical world. Ultimately, in some sad sense, we "win" the world of physical nature. All of that is run-on philosophy and worth little scholarship-wise, but it remains a growing intuition. 

Elsewhere on Magnus' map is the other main form of human/troll interaction: the House Troll, or, as the Scotch/British would say: The Brounies. 

Magnus believed that everything that he placed on his map, and wrote in his book, was either obviously true, or at least credibly attested to by people that he knew or written by writers that he read and respected.  He wasn't just writing an entertaining Book of Wonders (though in many places it is surely that), he wanted to save all the character and detail of Northern Culture while educating other cultures to the south. He gave real numbers for the lengths of his prominent Sea Serpent and his River Orm, for instance.  Did he think that trolls still entered the household economies of persons that they chose to serve? Absolutely. And they did these services just as the Brownies in the British Isles were said to do. 

Magnus, I notice, maintains the concept of the Little Race of peoples of perhaps three-to-four feet in height. His map "brownie" has a dark red complexion, and is drawn as somewhat ugly, bordering on boggart ugliness. Like some traditions of British house-elves, his house troll seems to have no clothes --- remember the idea that a bound house elf can be liberated or, if they don't want to leave, can be forced to go, by giving them a piece of clothing --- thus JK Rowling's inclusion of this in the Harry Potter books. 

Although no descriptive words exist on the colorful map, brief descriptions of many things, often accompanied by engravings, appear in the book. Above, while magicians fly in the air, three vignettes of commonly experienced trolls appear. Note our boggart-looking house troll in the center,  while another controls the Winds at the right, and another mines ore in a cave to the left. These latter are the "knockers" of the mines. 

One other engraving, I believe, has some merit here. This one shows a Circling Dance of trolls. Some of these trolls have decidedly Faun-like appearances. (In this picture, one may say most do.) It reminds me greatly of a revel ruled by Pan. 

These tales/ reports/ beliefs are so commonly found in the British countryside (see Arthur Rackham's house brownie to the left) that they surely point to one of these things:

This is all one culture at its base. The common people all believe in the same constellation of beings and relationships growing from some ancient now-cloudy set of powerful ideas which made some important things in the world make sense.

OR ...

All of these geographically-close cultures were experiencing some profoundly TRUE set of real entities who behaved as one "culture" of related entities should do.

OR ... 

Both. 

Let's, as did the Curate in the John Aubrey case, try to stagger "forward" a bit, despite all that heady strangeness we just read/wrote above.

PANDEMONIUM: 1684 publication by Richard Bovet. (pretty much an idiot, but with a few surprising things included.) 

                                 Bovet's frontispiece with my arrows and circles drawn in.

We can see here at the beginning that Bovet believes in the reality of several anomalous things:
Witches, magicians, devils, "imps", flying dragon-like demons, forbidding locations, and fairies. With all of that, he is, strangely to us, relatively "normal" for his times. 

But he is still an idiot. 

Bovet was a violent anti-Catholic and a  fiery hater of atheists at the same time. Even as a good Catholic boy, I have to admit that neither of those assures candidacy for idiocy, though both are pretty unhelpful character traits in a truth-seeker (as are all biases.) Bovet is an idiot because he doesn't understand important basic things about his peasant countryfolk, despite moving among them and wanting to utilize some of those basic things in his book. 

Bovet is a witch-hunter born about a century late. He thinks that witchcraft, magic, spirits, and the Little People are all part of one demonic presence that opposes "true religion" and proper living. Well, whatever the definition of true religion and proper living may be, the common people didn't consider ANY of the four categories of things cited as even being related to any of the others. ALL FOUR were separate aspects of Creation. For sure the common people did not think that The Little People were "satanic." If devilry was involved, you MIGHT find it meddling in witchcraft, but in none of the other three. Even in witchcraft, some individuals seemed to "get their powers" through rituals containing Christian concepts and imagery. So, whatever else we might take from Bovet, his "philosophical beliefs" are way off.

But there turn out to be several things that we CAN take from him.

After his diatribes, suddenly this fierce dogma-infested person turns into a Fortean. Weird. Completely took me by surprise. Bovet wanted to find true reports from people which he hoped would buttress his book's attack on atheism. He was looking for things that in his mind would prove the existence of the world of the spiritual. That's kind of expected, but what wasn't was his apparent attitude during this search. He seems, very much so, like a wide-eyed explorer as he walks the paths of the Mysteries. I'd almost not mind being around him in this mode.

He finds several reports that he includes in his appendices. Some are fascinating. I'd like to note three that might be germane for our own adventuring. 

1. South Petherton, Somerset county. c. 1620AD. Bovet talked with relatives and friends of a former shopkeeper of this village, who had passed away somewhat recently. Many people repeated this tale as heard directly by them. 

The gentleman was selling goods at a local country fair. Home was still somewhat distanced, but "he had a good horse" and felt that he could make it before nightfall. He misjudged, and rode along in the dark. At a place alongside a high hedge, his horse suddenly started as if afraid and basically forced him up against the hedge. The horse was trembling violently. Ahead, making noises as if cracking the hedge came a strange thing. It was a ball or ring of light, light the dim color of dusk. It was the size of a wagonwheel in diameter. Inside the wheel or ball was the dark image of something like a bear. The creature was huge {if so, the shopkeeper must have felt that he was looking inside the wheel like an opening to another reality.} He described the thing as of the "proportion of a bear", but with fiery eyes. The exact description of what he saw we cannot know, but it was uncanny.

Report 2. Blackdown Hill, Tanton 1630. 

The bona fides of this report are almost exactly like the previous one: a respected fellow and merchant who had recently passed but who had told many persons of this experience. The added credibility here comes from the fact that many persons still alive told Bovet that they too had seen the Fairy Fair on the same hillside that the prime reporter had ridden right through. 

full disclosure: I REALLY like this one.

The witness was taking a trip across the local fields and up the hillside through a pass to other villages to sell his wares. As he rode towards the hillside, he saw there what appeared to be a country fair beside the road. This didn't make sense, as it was a wrong season for an open fair there. But what else could it be? He rode closer.

The fair was colorful, filled with booths selling all manner of things, colored flags and tents, and people in bright clothes of reds, greens, and blues, and frolicking in tall hats. Music and dancing filled the air. As the merchant grew close, he realized that the people were somewhat smaller than normal folks. They must have been the Little People. 

He didn't feel particularly threatened and he DID need to get over that hill, so he pushed on directly into the Fair. Then, just as he entered the space of the Fair, everything visually disappeared. Nothing to be seen except a dull atmosphere. But he FELT them. It was as if everyone and thing was still there, but unseen. He felt pressed or crowded upon. Then, as he got past the Fair's place, all returned to sight, and stunned, he went on his way. 

This encounter has a LOT in it. Many supportive witnesses who said that they had seen at different times the very same things but further away. The account is full of "normal" folk entity behavior, with a large dollop of very high strangeness. 

Report 3. Leith, Scotland. 1650. The "FAIRY BOY." 

This is another secondhand case, but one with many second hand supporters.  Whereas I greatly like Report 2, and genuinely like Report 1, this one is of such high strangeness claims that I'm nervous. Still, if it has any chance of reality, it's another world-breaker. 

This story claims that in the village of Leith there existed (not long before the "investigation") a peculiar young boy. This boy reminded me a bit of the character in Frank Sinatra's Nature Boy song --- a young child who seemed to know almost everything far beyond his years. 

He often astounded the persons who got to converse with him and could provide esoteric knowledge of things despite appearing no more than 10-11 years. He also said that he was a drummer and did indeed possess talent. He claimed that he became so good by drumming with the Fairies. He spoke of a people who lived beneath a local hill, into which he entered every Thursday night, to play his drums with their musicians. 

He then claimed to play at all their feasts, and sometimes they were all whisked away to other countries. He claimed to be able to see the future, and predict things. (The Second Sight.) During one meeting, when one of the witnesses decided to stay close to him so as to discover the means to enter the Fairy Hill, the Fairy Boy just disappeared, not to be seen again by him. 

(["There was a boy; a very strange enchanted boy. He said he came from very far, over land and sea. A little child, and sad of eye, but very wise was he. Then came that day, that magic day he passed my way. We sat and talked of many things, fools and kings. Then I heard him say:  
The Greatest Thing you'll ever learn, is just to Love, and be loved in return."])

Well, that case's tough to buy (though Frank Sinatra's lyrics are not), despite the witness earnest-ness. The other two: easier for me. You might feel differently. 

I'm going to stop here, and go on in a few days with more very early claims. I'm finding that trying to put out two postings in a week is a lot more work than I remember --- getting old. 
The business of putting in the extra mile to stir just a bit more fact, reference, and hypothesis into these stews takes it out of these old neurons. 

Back in a few (couple?) of days. Stay healthy folks.

leprecat page one

                                   

                                   LEPRECAT Page ONE

Well, let's start this thing. 

Leprecat is a crude compilation of cases that I've come across rather randomly. Some of these have been courtesy of a wonderful collection by Janet Bord, some from smaller collections by people like Diarmuid MacManus, some from Simon Young's Fairy Census. These things were and are high grade ore --- I resoundingly recommend them. Other sources have come almost one case at a time. Old folklore books. Old stories skewered away in lost literature; and new claims scattered throughout the Internet. My point is that I don't take these as some sort of professional scholarly creation and neither should you. It was done for adventure and fun, and I'm happy to share it with you. ... Maybe we'll even learn something as we go. 

The first page (above) has the very old cases in the catalog. I've bumped into others since making that page. Let's describe some of what's on that page, and then include some of the other stuff. Let's do it like eating popcorn. You can't go wrong with that.

 Chippenham England 1633. This is a story attributed to John Aubrey, a very famous intellectual and well-connected person in the 17th century. Aubrey was disturbed by the growing arrogance of the intelligentsia of his age towards the ideas of the peasantry and the simpler people, and what we today might call "anomalous happenings." 

Although this exact case doesn't appear in any of his formal writings (many other similar things do), it IS included in a later biography as a story told by him and passed down orally by him and then others who knew him best. It could even have been that this tale was discovered in some scribbles in his many unpublished notes. 

The incident: When Aubrey was an older schoolboy, the Curate of his school told him of the following  encounter with the fairies: It was near dawn, and the curate was walking over the downs alone when ahead he came suddenly upon a fairy dance. The fairies were numerous and dancing vigorously in a circle, making music and odd loud reveling noise. 

This revel left him immediately stunned. He thought afterwards that he might have been "enchanted" and unable to run. He did not describe their clothing but said that their stature was that of "pygmies" or small people. Let's say that about 3-to-4 feet would be a reasonable guess. The Little People were not exactly happy about being disturbed or intruded upon. They rushed around him, making odd buzzing type hummings, and he dizzily fell down. They continued to harass him until the Sun rose, and repeatedly pinched him as he lay. With the Sun, he found himself suddenly alone. All about him was the trampled down grass of a fairy revel. 

The case has some obvious interest. If it was told to John Aubrey by his Curate, then it has some substantial credibility. It is not unlike the picture of a fairy revel (circle dancing) that was commonly expressed by the rural people of that and later times. It interests me as well due to the claim that these creatures were not extremely small --- the three to four foot tall "fairyfolk" seems to me at this early stage to be "right" for these sorts of entities. 

But we're only one case in. Let's go on. 

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 Ragunda, Sweden. 1660. This case is usually read about in Thomas Keightly (The Fairy Mythology, 1878.) Forgive my failing memory, but I believe that the story first entered the UK when it was sent to the famous writer and enthusiast for the anomalous, Jacob Grimm, who occasionally, I believe, visited Edinburgh. 

This incident had two witnesses, a clergyman and his wife. They were alone in their home when they encountered an entity, like a "small man" at their door. They labeled the small man with the Scandinavian term for most Little People, "Troll." The Troll had a dark complexion and rough old gray clothes. 

He pleaded with the two humans to aid him and his wife, who was very pregnant, and about to deliver her baby without help. The wife and the minister were deeply moved by the story, and she agreed to go to serve as midwife for the Little People. 

The trip was remarkable as, once outside, she and the troll were "carried by the wind" to the troll house. The wife did her good service overnight, and the baby was delivered. The trolls were truly grateful for the selfless service, and upon returning her home, the minister and his wife found a quantity of silver left, apparently in appreciation for the charity. 

Keightly seemed to think that this was too good to be true, and dismissed the story as some form of lie. This is almost angering to see, as one would have wished better from Keightly. The reason that I type this, is that Jacob Grimm had the actual affidavit of the minister and his wife swearing that their report was true. Keightly ignored this, or didn't see it. 

The affidavit to Jacob Grimm raises this report to at least some reasonable trust. The "trouble" is, of course, for both Keightly and ourselves, that the intensity of the interaction described is just too much for "moderns" to accept. Even in this short story, if these details really happened, our whole view of (limited) material reality would have to expand radically or explode. 

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The third case on the paper above ... I have no cartoon. But that gives me the opportunity to say this about the illustrations: I'm just doing the best that I can with these things. Almost NO reports have REALLY good descriptions of the beings. Why is this ? I have no real idea. I believe however that the Old People just knew what these creatures looked like and there was no need for a lot of describing. As later cases come in, we get an age of VERY poor interviewers, almost hit-and-run story-grabbers. And in recent times no one cares to take the time. This, by the way, drives this old UFO researcher crazy.  But onwards .... 

Isle of Man, c. 1720-1730. The case comes from Janet Bord, quoting British government agent, George Waldron.  I had not run across the original source yet, but I trusted Janet Bord completely on this, and I assumed that a professional British administrator is a trustworthy source. Then with some digging I found it: AW Moore,  FOLKLORE of the ISLE of MAN, 1891. This (irrationally) always makes me feel better. 

The witness was the neighbor of Waldron. He had been a dismissive skeptic until he saw the fairies himself. Walking in a field, the neighbor saw a number of "schoolboys" playing in a field. As this was a school day, he walked towards them to reprimand them on their playing hooky. He was riveted upon his  targets when, at twenty paces away, they simply disappeared before him. There was nowhere in this field to hide. ... it must have been the Little People.

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 Cae Caled, Wales 1757. 

OK. Full disclosure. This is the sort of case that I really like. 

This report comes from several sources and the oldest seems to be Elias Owen's Welsh Folklore (1884.) Owen's book is a treasure house of fairy lore. One wonders why it isn't better known. Many of the materials in it seem more "fairy tale" like, but reports of encounter cases also sprinkle all about. In this case, Owen informs us that he has received not only the autobiography of the witness involved, but is reading the witness' hand-written notes describing the incident, lying there just on his desk. 

Owen labels the case: The Elf Dancers of Cae Caled. 

The Reverend Edward Williams, then just a child, was playing in a field with three other children, one being his older sister. After a time of normalcy, the four saw not far away a frenzy of dancing small persons. These people were all dressed in red uniforms, with red cloths or scarves for hats. They were smaller than adults, and about the children's size or slightly smaller. "Dwarfs" or "Grim Elves", but surely the Little People.  "Dancing with Great Briskness", the elves or gnomes moved so quickly that it was hard to see small details clearly. There were seven or eight couples in their dance. These being no group of local dancers (such as visiting May or Morris Dancers), the children became very alarmed and rose to flee. One "grim elf" (Williams' words) spotted them, and with angry face began to run after them. 

The children barely made it to the fence and got through the stile. Williams was the smallest and the last, just eluding the grasp of the Grim Elf. (I categorize these beings as "gnomes" as Williams says that the closest one had an "ancient, swarthy, and grim complexion." The gnome stopped on its side of the fence, and the children ran home and told their story. The adults believed them enough to go together to the field to investigate --- of course finding nothing.

For me, a rocking good report: good witness, good detail, multiple witnesses, good context, no elaboration nor braggadocio. If I could myself read the actual handnotes for this case, I'd be largely sold. 

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I've run out of steam for this entry. In a day or two, I'll try again.
Peace --- and may The Elfin Road Rise Up To Meet You on this St Paddy's Day.