Etext of The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
by W.Y. Evans Wentz
1911

Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Environment (section I, chapter I)
Taking of Evidence (Section I Chapter II part 1)
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 2)
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 3)
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 4)
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 5)
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 6)
Anthropological Examination (Section I Chapter III)
People of the Goddess Dana (Section II Chapter IV)
Brythonic Divinities (Section II Chapter V)
Celtic Otherworld (Section II Chapter VI)
Doctrine of Rebirth (Section II Chapter VII)
Testimony of Archaelogy (Section III Chapter VIII)
Testimony of Paganism (Section III Chapter IX)
Testimony of Christianity (Section III Chapter X)
Science and Fairies (Section IV Chapter XI)

Dedication

THIS BOOK
Depends chiefly upon the oral and written testimony
so freely contributed by its many Celtic authors, -
The peasant and the scholar, the priest and the scientist,
The poet and the business man, the seer and the non-seer, -
and in honour of them

I DEDICATE 
it to
TWO OF THE BRETHREN IN IRELAND
A.E.,
whose unwavering loyalty to the fairy-faith
has inspired much that I have herein written,
whose friendly guidance in my study of Irish mysticism
I most gratefully acknowledge;
and
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS,
who brought me at my own alma mater in California
the first message from fairyland,
and who afterwards in his own country
led me through the haunts of fairy kings and queens.

Oxford
November 1911

Preface

'It remains for ever true that the proper study of mankind Is man;
and even early man is not beneath contempt, especially when he
proves to have had within him the makings of a great race, with its
highest notions of duty and right, and all else that is noblest in the
human soul.'

The Right Hon. Sir John Rhys.

'There, neither turmoil nor silence  
'Though fair the sight of Erin's plains, hardly will they seem so
after you have known the Great Plain...
'A wonder of a land the land of which I speak; no youth there
grows to old age....
'We behold and are not beheld.'

The God Midir, in Tochmarc Etaine.

**

DURING the years 1907-9 this study first took shape, being then
based mainly on literary sources; and during the latter year it was
successfully presented to the Faculty of Letters of the University of
Rennes, Brittany, for the Degree of Docteur-es-Lettres. Since then
I have re-investigated the whole problem of the Celtic belief in
Fairies, and have collected very much fresh material. Two years
ago the scope of my original research was limited to the four chief
Celtic countries, but now it includes all of the Celtic countries.

In the present study, which has profited greatly by criticisms of the
first passed by scholars in Britain and in France, the original
literary point of view is combined with the broader point of view
of anthropology. This study, the final and more comprehensive
form of my views about the 'Fairy-Faith', would never have been
possible had I not enjoyed during many months the kindly advice
and constant encouragement of Mr. R. R. Marett, Reader in Social
Anthropology in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Exeter
College.

During May 1910 the substance of this essay in its pan-Celtic form
was submitted to the Board of the Faculty of Natural Science of
Oxford University for the Research Degree of Bachelor of Science,
which was duly granted. But the present work contains
considerable material not contained in the essay presented to the
Oxford examiners, the Right Hon. Sir John Rhys and Mr. Andrew
Lang; and, therefore, I alone assume entire responsibility for all its
possible shortcomings, and in particular for some of its more
speculative theories, which to some minds may appear to be in
conflict with orthodox views, whether of the theologian or of the
man of science. These theories, however venturesome they may
appear, are put forth in almost every case with the full approval of
some reliable, scholarly Celt; and as such they are chiefly intended
to make the exposition of the belief in fairies as completely and as
truly Celtic as possible, without much regard for non-Celtic
opinion, whether this be in harmony with Celtic opinion or not.

As the new manuscript of the 'Fairy-Faith' lies before me revised
and finished, I realize even more fully than I did two years ago
with respect to the original study, how little right I have to call it
mine. Those to whom the credit for it really belongs are my many
kind friends and helpers in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales,
Cornwall, and Brittany, and many others who are not Celts, in the
three great nations   happily so intimately united now by
unbreakable bonds of goodwill and international brotherhood  
Britain, France, and the United States of America; for without the
aid of all these Celtic and non-Celtic friends the work could never
have been accomplished. They have given me their best and rarest
thoughts as so many golden threads; I have only furnished the
mental loom, and woven these golden threads together in my own
way according to what I take to be the psychological pattern of the
Fairy-Faith.

I am under a special obligation to the following six distinguished
Celtic scholars who have contributed, for my second chapter, the
six introductions to the fairy-lore collected by me in their
respective countries :  Dr. Douglas Hyde (Ireland); Dr. Alexander
Carmichael (Scotland); Miss Sophia Morrison (Isle of Man); the
Right Hon. Sir John Rhys (Wales); Mr. Henry Jenner (Cornwall);
Professor Anatole Le Bras (Brittany).

I am also greatly indebted to the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter, Principal
of Manchester College, for having aided me with the parts of this
book touching Christian theology; to Mr. R. I. Best, M.R.I.A.,
Assistant Librarian, National Library, Dublin, for having aided me
with the parts devoted to Irish mythology and literature; and to Mr.
William McDougall, Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the
University of Oxford, for a similar service with respect to Section
IV, entitled 'Science and Fairies'. And to these and to all the other
scholars whose names appear in this preface, my heartiest thanks
are due for the assistance which they have so kindly rendered in
reading different parts of the Fairy-Faith when in proof.

With the deep spirit of reverence which a student feels towards his
preceptors, I acknowledge a still greater debt to those among my
friends and helpers who have been my Celtic guides and teachers.
Here in Oxford University I have run up a long account with the
Right Hon. Sir John Rhys, the Professor of Celtic, who has
introduced me to the study of Modern Irish, and of Arthurian
romance and mythology, and has guided me both during the year
1907-8 and ever since in Celtic folk-lore generally. To Mr.
Andrew Lang, I am likewise a debtor, more especially in view of
the important suggestions which he has given me during the past
two years with respect to anthropology and to psychical research.
In my relation to the Faculty of Letters of the University of
Rennes, I shall always remember the friendly individual assistance
offered to me there during the year 1908-9 by Professor Joseph
Loth, then Dean in that University, but now of the College of
France, in Paris, particularly with respect to Brythonic mythology,
philology, and archaeology; by Professor Georges Dottin,
particularly with respect to Gaelic matters; and by Professor
Anatole Le Bras, whose continual good wishes towards my work
have been a constant source of inspiration since our first meeting
during March 1908, especially in my investigation of La L‚gende
de La Mont, and of the related traditions and living folk-beliefs in
Brittany Brittany with its haunted ground of Carnac, home of the
ancient Brythonic Mysteries.

W.Y. E. W.
Jesus College, Oxford
All Saints' Day, 1911

Introduction

'I have told what I have seen, what I have thought, and what I have
learned by inquiry.'
HERODOTUS. 

I. THE RELIGIOUS NATURE OF THE FAIRY-FAITH


THERE is probably no other place in Celtic lands more congenial,
or more inspiring for the writing down of one's deeper intuitions
about the Fairy-Faith, than Carnac, under the shadow of the pagan
tumulus and mount of the sacred fire, now dedicated by
triumphant Christianity to the Archangel Michael. The very name
of Carnac is significant ;(1) and in two continents, Africa and
Europe   to follow the certain evidence of archaeology alone (2)   
there seem to have been no greater centres for ancient religion
than Karnak in Egypt and Carnac in Brittany. On the banks of the
Nile the Children of Isis and Osiris erected temples as perfect as
human art can make them; on the shores of the Morbihan the
mighty men who were, as it seems, the teachers of our own Celtic
forefathers, erected temples of unhewn stone. The wonderful
temples in Yucatan, the temple-caves of prehistoric India,
Stonehenge in England, the Parthenon, the Acropolis, St. Peter's at
Rome, Westminster Abbey, or Notre-Dame, and the Pyramids and
temples of Egypt, equally with the Alignements of Carnac, each in
their own way record more or less perfectly man's attempt to
express materially what be feels spiritually. Perfected art can
beautify and make more attractive to the eye and mind, but it
cannot enhance in any degree the innate spiritual

(1) Quite appropriately it means place of cairns or Iumuli those
prehistoric monuments religious and funereal in their purposes.
Carnac seems to be a Gallo-Roman form. According to Professor
J. Loth, the Breton (Celtic) forms would be: old Celtic, CarnJco-s;
old Breton (ninth-eleventh century), Carnoc; Middle Breton
(eleventh-sixteenth century), Carneuc; Modern Breton, Ca,nec. 

(2) For we cannot offer any proof of what at first sight appears like
a philological relation or identity between Carnac and Karnab.

ideals which men in all ages have held; and thus it is that we read
amid the rough stone menhirs and dolmens in Brittany, as amid the
polished granite monoliths and magnificent temples in Egypt, the
same silent message from the past to the present, from the dead to
the living. This message, we think, is fundamentally important in
understanding the Celtic Fairy-Faith; for in our opinion the belief
in fairies has the same origin as all religions and mythologies.

And there seems never to have been an uncivilized tribe, a race, or
nation of civilized men who have not bad some form of belief in
an unseen world, peopled by unseen beings. In religions,
mythologies, and the Fairy-Faith, too, we behold the attempts
which have been made by different peoples in different ages to
explain in terms of human experience this unseen world, its
inhabitants, its laws, and man's relation to it The Ancients called
its inhabitants gods, genii, daemons, and shades; Christianity
knows them as angels, saints, demons, and souls of the dead; to
tin-civilized tribes they are gods, demons, and spirits of ancestors;
and the Celts think of them as gods, and as fairies of many kinds.

II. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FAIRY-FAITH

By the Celtic Fairy-Faith we mean that specialized form of belief
in a spiritual realm inhabited by spiritual beings which has existed
from prehistoric times until now in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man,
Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, or other parts of the ancient empire of
the Celts. In studying this belief, we are concerned directly with
living Celtic folk-traditions, and with past Celtic folk-traditions as
recorded in literature. And if fairies actually exist as invisible
beings or intelligences, and our investigations lead us to the
tentative hypothesis that they do, they are natural and not
supernatural, for nothing which exists can be supernatural; and,
therefore, it is our duty to examine the Celtic Fairy Races just as
we examine any fact in the visible realm wherein we now live,
whether it be a fact of chemistry, of physics, or of biology.
However, as we proceed to make such an examination, we shall
have to remember constantly that there is a new set of ideas to
work with, entirely different from what we find in natural sciences,
and often no adequate vocabulary based on common human
experiences. An American who has travelled in Asia and an
Englishman who has travelled in Australia may meet in Paris and
exchange travelling experiences with mutual understanding,
because both. of them have experienced travel; and they will have
an adequate vocabulary to describe each experience, because most
men have also experienced travel. But a saint who has known the
spiritual condition called ecstasy cannot explain ecstasy to a man
who has never known it, and if he should try to do so would
discover at once that no modern language is suitable for the
purpose. His experience is rare and not universal, and men have
developed no complete vocabulary to describe experiences not
common to the majority of mankind, and this is especially true of
psychical experiences. It is the same in dealing with fairies, as
these are hypothetically conceived, for only a few men and women
can assert that they have seen fairies, and hence there is no
adequate vocabulary to describe fairies. Among the Ancients, who
dealt so largely with psychical sciences, there seems to have been
a common language which could be used to explain the invisible
world and its inhabitants; but we of this age have not yet
developed such a language. Consequently, men who deny human
immortality, as well as men with religious faith who have not
through personal psychical experiences transformed that faith into
a fact, nowadays when they happen to read what Plato, lamblichus,
or any of the Neo-Platonists have written, or even what moderns
have written in attempting to explain psychic facts, call it all
mysticism. And to the great majority of Europeans and Americans,
mysticism is a most convenient noun, applicable to anything which
may seem reasonable yet wholly untranslatable in terms of their
own individual experience; and mysticism usually means
something quite the reverse of scientific simply because we have
by usage unwisely limited the meaning of the word science to a
knowledge of things material and visible, whereas it really means
a knowing or a knowledge of everything which exists. We have
tried to deal with the rare psychical experiences of Irish, Scotch,
Manx, Welsh, or Breton seers, and psychics generally, in the
dearest language possible; but if now and then we are charged with
being mystical, this is our defence.

III. THE METHOD OF STUDYING THE FAIRY-FAITH  

In this study, which is first of all a folk-lore study, we pursue
principally an anthropo-psychological method of interpreting the
Celtic belief in fairies, though we do not hesitate now and then to
call in the aid of philology; and we make good use of the evidence
offered by mythologies, religions, metaphysics, and physical
sciences. Folk-lore, a century ago was considered beneath the
serious consideration of scholars; but there has come about a
complete reversal of scholarly opinion, for now it is seen that the
beliefs of the people, their legends, and their songs are the source
of nearly all literatures, and that their institutions and customs are
the origin of those of modern times. And, to-day, to the new
science of folk-lore   which, as Mr. Andrew Lang says, must be
taken to include psychical research or psychical sciences,
archaeology, anthropology, and comparative mythology and
religion are indispensable. Thus folklore offers the scientific
means of studying man in the sense meant by the poet who
declared that the proper study of mankind is man.

IV. DIVISIONS OF THE STUDY

This study is divided into four sections or parts. The first one deals
with the living Fairy-Faith among the Celts themselves; the
second, with the recorded and ancient Fairy-Faith as we find it in
Celtic literature and mythology; the third, with the Fairy-Faith in
its religious aspects; and in the fourth section an attempt has been
made to suggest how the theories of our newest science, psychical
research; explain the belief in fairies.

I have set forth in the first section in detail and as dearly as
possible the testimony communicated to me by living Celts who
either believe in fairies, or else say that they have seen fairies; and
throughout other sections I have preferred to draw as much as
possible of the material from men and women rather than from
books. Books too often are written out of other books, and too
seldom from the life of man; and in a scientific study of the
Fairy-Faith, such as we have undertaken, the Celt himself is by far
the best, in fact the only authority. For us it is much less important
to know what scholars think of fairies than to know what the
Celtic people think of fairies. This is especially true in considering
the Fairy-Faith as it exists now.

V. THE COLLECTING OF MATERIAL

In June, 1908, after a year's preparatory work in things Celtic
under the direction of the Oxford Professor of Celtic, Sir John
Rhys, I began to travel in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany,
and to collect material there at first hand from the people who
have shaped and who still keep alive the Fairy-Faith; and during
the year 1909-10 fresh folklore expeditions were made into
Brittany, Ireland, and Wales, and then, finally, the study of the
Fairy-Faith was made pan-Celtic by similar expeditions throughout
the Isle of Man, and into Cornwall. Many of the most remote parts
of these lands were visited; and often there was no other plan to
adopt, or any method better, or more natural, than to walk day
after day from one straw-thatched cottage to another, living on the
simple wholesome food of the peasants.

Sometimes there was the picturesque mountain-road to climb,
sometimes the route lay through marshy peat-lands, or across a
rolling grass-covered country; and with each change of landscape
came some new thought and some new impression of the Celtic
life, or perhaps some new description of a fairy.

This immersion in the most striking natural and social
environment of the Celtic race, gave me an insight into the mind,
the religion, the mysticism, and the very heart of the Celt himself,
such as no mere study in libraries ever could do. I tried to see the
world as he does; I participated in his innermost thoughts about the
great problem of life and death, with which he of all peoples is
most deeply concerned; and thus he revealed to me the source of
his highest ideals and inspirations. I daily felt the deep and innate
seriousness of his ancestral nature; and, living as he lives, I tried in
all ways to be like him. I was particularly qualified for such an
undertaking: partly Celtic myself by blood and perhaps largely so
by temperament, I found it easy to sympathize with the Celt and
with his environments. Further, being by birth an American, I was
in many places privileged to enter where an Englishman, or a
non-Celt of Europe would not be; and my education under the free
ideals of a new-world democracy always made it possible for me
to view economic, political, religious, and racial questions in
Celtic lands apart from the European point of view, and without
the European prejudices which are so numerous and so greatly to
be regretted. But without any doubt, during my sojourn, extending
over three years, among the Celts, these various environments
shaped my thoughts about fairies and Fairyland   as they ought to
have done if truth is ever to be reached by research.

These experiences of mine lead me to believe that the natural
aspects of Celtic countries, much more than those of most
non-Celtic countries, impress man and awaken in him some
unfamiliar part of himself call it the Subconscious Self, the
Subliminal Self, the Ego, or what you will   which gives him an
unusual power to know and to feel invisible, or psychical,
influences. What is there, for example, in London, or Paris, or
Berlin, or New York to awaken the intuitive power of man, that
subconsciousness deep-hidden in him, equal to the solitude of
those magical environments of Nature which the Celts enjoy and
love?

In my travels, when the weather was too wild to venture out by
day, or when the more favourable hours of the night had arrived,
with fires and candles lit, or even during a roadside chat amid the
day's journey, there was gathered together little by little, from one
country and another, the mass of testimony which chapter ii
contains. And with all this my opinions began to take shape; for
when I set out from Oxford in June, I had no certain or clear ideas
as to what fairies are, nor why there should. be belief in them. In
less than a year afterwards I found myself committed to the
Psychological Theory, which I am herein setting forth.

VI. THEORIES OF THE FAIRY-FAITH 

We make continual reference throughout our study to this
Psychological Theory of the Nature and Origin of the Celtic
Fairy-Faith, and it is one of our purposes to demonstrate that this is
the root theory which indudes or absorbs the four theories already
advanced to account for the belief in fairies. To guide the reader in
his own conclusions, we shall here briefly outline these four
theories.

The first of them may be called the Naturalistic Theory, which is,
that in ancient and in modern times man's belief in gods, spirits, or
fairies has been the direct result of his attempts to explain or to
rationalize natural phenomena. Of this theory we accept as true
that the belief in fairies often anthropomorphically reflects the
natural environment as well as the social condition of the people
who hold the belief. For example, amid the beautiful low-lying
green hills and gentle dells of Connemara (Ireland), the 'good
people' are just as beautiful, just as gentle, and just as happy as
their environment; while amid the dark-rising mountains and in the
mysterious cloud-shadowed lakes of the Scotch Highlands there
are fiercer kinds of fairies and terrible water-kelpies, and in the
Western Hebrides there is the much-dreaded 'spirit-host' moving
through the air at night.

The Naturalistic Theory shows accurately enough that natural
phenomena and environment have given direction to the
anthropomorphosing of gods, spirits, or fairies, but after explaining
this external aspect of the Fairy-Faith it cannot logically go any
further. Or if illogically it. does attempt to explain the belief in
gods, spirits, or fairies as due entirely to material causes, it
becomes, in our opinion, like the psychology of fifty years ago,
obsolete; for now the new psychology or psychical research has
been forced to admit   if only as a working hypothesis the
possibility of invisible intelligences or entities able to influence
man and nature. We seem even to be approaching a scientific
proof of the doctrines of such ancient philosophical scientists as
Pythagoras and Plato,   that all external nature, animated
throughout and controlled in its phenomena by daemons acting by
the will of gods, is to men nothing more than the visible effects of
an unseen world of causes.

In the internal aspects of the Fairy-Faith the fundamental fact
seems clearly to be that there must have been in the minds of
prehistoric men, as there is now in the minds of modern men, a
germ idea of a fairy for environment to act upon and shape.
Without an object to act upon, environment can accomplish
nothing. This is evident. The Naturalistic Theory examines only
the environment and its effects, and forgets altogether the germ
idea of a fairy to be acted upon; but the Psychological Theory
remembers and attempts to explain the germ idea of a fairy and the
effect of nature upon it.

The second theory may be called the Pygmy Theory, which Mr.
David MacRitchie, who is definitely committed to it, has so dearly
set forth in his well-known work, entitled The Testimony of
Tradition. This theory is that the whole fairy-belief has grown up
out of a folk-memory of an actual Pygmy race. This race is
supposed to have been a very early, prehistoric, probably
Mongolian race, which inhabited the British Islands and many
parts of Continental Europe.

When the Celtic nations appeared, these pygmies were driven into
mountain fastnesses and into the most maccessible places, where a
few of them may have survived until comparatively historical
times.

Over against the champions of the Pygmy Theory may be set two
of its opponents, Dr. Bertram C. A. Windle and Mr. Andrew Lang.
(1) Dr. Windle, in his Introduction to Tyson's Philological Essay
concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients, makes these six most
destructive criticisms or points against the theory: (i) So far as our
present knowledge teaches us, there never was a really Pygmy race
inhabiting the northern parts of -Scotland; (z) the mounds with
which the tales of little people are associated have not, in many
cases, been habitations, but were natural or sepulchral in their
nature; (3) little people are not by any means associated entirely
with mounds; (~) the association of giants and dwarfs in traditions
confuses the theory; (5) there are fairies where no pygmies ever
were, as, for example, in North America; (6) even Eskimos and
Lapps have fairy beliefs, and could not have been the original
fairies of more modern fairy-lore. Altogether, as we think our
study will show, the evidence of the Fairy-Faith itself gives only a
slender and superficial support to the Pygmy Theory. We maintain
that the theory, so far as it is provable, and this is evidently not
very far, is only one strand, contributed by ethnology and social
psychology, in the complex fabric of the Fairy-Faith, and is, as
such, woven round a psychical central pattern the fundamental
pattern of the Fairy-Faith. Therefore, from our point of view, the
Pygmy Theory is altogether inadequate, because it overlooks or
misinterprets the most essential and prominent elements in the
belief which the Celtic peoples hold concerning fairies and
Fairyland.

The Druid Theory to account for fairies is less widespread. It is
that the folk-memory of the Druids and their magical practices is
alone responsible for the Fairy-Faith. The first suggestion of this
theory seems to have been made by the Rev. Dr. Cririe, in his
ScoUish Scenery, published in 1803. (2) Three years later, the
Rev. Dr. Graham published

(1) Andrew Lang, Kirk's Secret Commonwealth (London, 1893), p.
xviii; and History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1900-07).

(2) Cf. David MacRitchie's published criticisms of our
Psychological Theory in The Celtic Review (January 1910),
entitled Druids and Mound-Dwellers; also his first part of these
criticisms, ib. (October 1909), entitled A New Solution of the
Fairy Problem. 

an identical hypothesis in his Sketches Descriptive of Picturesque
Scenery on the Southern Confines of Perthshire. Mr. MacRitchie
suggests, with all reason, that the two writers probably had
discussed together the theory, and hence both put it forth. Alfred
Maury, in Les Fees du Moyen-Age, published in 1843 at Paris,
appears to have made liberal use of Patrick Graham's suggestions
in propounding his theory that the fles or fairy women of the
Middle Ages are due to a folk-memory of Druidesses. Maury
seems to have forgotten that throughout pagan Britain and Ireland,
both much more important for the study of fairies than Celtic
Europe during the Middle Ages, Druids rather than Druidesses had
the chief influence on the people, and that yet, despite this fact,
Irish and Welsh mythology is full of stories about fairy women
coming from the Otberworld; nor is there any proof, or even good
ground for argument, that the Irish fairy women are a folk-memory
of Druidesses, for if there ever were Druidesses in Ireland they
played a subordinate and very insignificant rOle. As in the case of
the Pygmy Theory, we maintain that the Druid Theory, also, is
inadequate. It discovers a real anthropomorphic influence at work
on the outward aspects of the Fairy-Faith, and illogically takes that
to be the origin of the Fairy-Faith.

The fourth theory, the Mythological Theory, is of very great
importance. It is that fairies are the diminished figures of the old
pagan divinities of the early Celts; and many modern authorities
on Celtic mythology and folk-lore hold it. To us the theory is
acceptable so far as it goes. But it is not adequate in itself nor is it
the root theory, because a belief in gods and goddesses must in
turn be explained; and in making this explanation we arrive at the
Psychological Theory, which this study   perhaps the first one of its
kind   attempts to set forth.

VII. THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING THE FAIRY-FAITH

I have made a very careful personal investigation of the surviving
Celtic Fairy-Faith by living for many months with and among the
people who preserve it; I have compared fairy phenomena and the
phenomena said to be caused by gods, genii, daemons, or spirits of
different kinds and recorded in the writings of ancient, mediaeval,
and modern metaphysical philosophers, Christian and pagan saints,
mystics, and seers, and now more or less clearly substantiated by
from thirty to forty years of experimentation in psychical sciences
by eminent scientists of our own times, such as Sir William
Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge in England, and M. Camille
Flammarion in France. As a result, I am convinced of the very
great value of a serious study of the Fairy-Faith. The Fairy-Faith as
the folk-religion of the Celts ought, like all religions, to be studied
sympathetically as well as scientifically. To those who take a
materialistic view of life, and consequently deny the existence of
spirits or invisible intelligences such as fairies are said to be, we
should say as my honoured American teacher in psychology, the
late Dr. William James, of Harvard, used to say in his lectures at
Stanford University, 'Materialism considered as a system of
philosophy never tries to explain the Why of things.' But in our
study of the Fairy-Faith we shall attempt to deal with this Why of
things; and, then, perhaps the value of studying fairies and
Fairyland will be more apparent, even to materialists.

The great majority of men in cities are apt to pride themselves on
their own exemption from 'superstition', and to smile pityingly at
the poor countrymen and countrywomen who believe in fairies.
But when they do so they forget that, with all their own admirable
progress in material invention, with all the far-reaching data of
their acquired science, with all the vast extent of their
commercialandeconomicconquests, they themselves have ceased
to be natural. Wherever under modern conditions great multitudes
of men and women are herded together there is bound to be an
unhealthy psychical atmosphere never found in the country   an
atmosphere which inevitably tends to develop in the average man
who is not psychically strong enough to resist it, lower at the
expense of higher forces or qualities, and thus to inhibit any
normal attempts of the Subliminal Self (a well-accredited
psychological entity) to manifest itself in consciousness. In this
connexion it is highly significant to note that, as far as can be
determined, almost all professed materialists of the uncritical type,
and even most of those who are thinking and philosophizing
sceptics about the existence of a supersensuous realm or state of
conscious being, are or have been city-dwellers usually so by birth
and breeding. And even where we find materialists of either type
dwelling in the country, we generally find them so completely
under the hypnotic sway of city influences and mould of thought in
matters of education and culture, and in matters touching religion,
that they have lost all sympathetic and responsive contact with
Nature, because unconsciously they have thus permitted
conventionality and unnaturalness to insulate them from it.

The Celtic peasant, who may be their tenant or neighbour, is if still
uncorrupted by them in direct contrast unconventional and natural.
He is normally always responsive to psychical influences as much
so as an Australian Arunta or an American Red Man, who also,
like him, are fortunate enough to have escaped being corrupted by
what we egotistically, to distinguish ourselves from them, call'
civilization'. If our Celtic peasant has psychical experiences, or if
he sees an apparition which he calls one of the ' good people', that
is to say a fairy, it is useless to try to persuade him that he is under
a delusion: unlike his materialistically-minded lord, he would not
attempt nor even desire to make himself believe that what he has
seen he has not seen. Not only has he the will to believe, but he has
the right to believe; because his belief is not a matter of being
educated and reasoning logically, nor a matter of faith and
theology it is a fact of his own individual experiences, as he will
tell you. Such peasant seers have frequently argued with me to the
effect that' One does not have to be educated in order to see
fairies'.

Unlike the natural mind of the uncorrupted Celt, Arunta, or
American Red Man, which is ever open to unusual psychical
impressions, the mind of the business man in our great cities tends
to be obsessed with business affairs both during his waking and
during his dream states, the politician's with politics similarly, the
society-leader's with society; and the unwholesome excitement felt
by day in the city is apt to be heightened at night through a
satisfying of the feeling which it morbidly creates for relaxation
and change of stimuli. In the slums, humanity is divorced from
Nature under even worse conditions, and becomes wholly
decadent. But in slum and in palace alike there is continually a
feverish nerve-tension induced by unrest and worry; there is
impure and smoke-impregnated air, a lack of sunshine, a
substitution of artificial objects f or natural objects, and in place of
solitude the eternal din of traffic. Instead of Nature, men in cities
(and paradoxically some conventionalized men in the country)
have 'civilization '   and ' culture'.

Are city-dwellers like these, Nature's unnatural children, who grind
out their lives in an unceasing struggle for wealth and power,
social position, and even for bread, fit to judge Nature's natural
children who believe in fairies? Are they right in not believing in
an invisible world which they cannot conceive, which, if it exists,
they even though they be scientists are through environment and
temperament alike incapable of knowing? Or is the
country-dwelling, the sometimes ' unpractical' and 'unsuccessful',
the dreaming, and 'uncivilized' peasant right? These questions
ought to arouse in the minds of anthropologists very serious
reflection, world-wide in its scope.

At all events, and equally for the unbeliever and for the believer,
the study of the Fairy-Faith is of vast importance historically,
philosophically, religiously, and scientifically. In it lie the germs of
much of our European religions and philosophies, customs, and
institutions. And it is one of the chief keys to unlock the mysteries
of Celtic mythology. We believe that a greater age is coming soon,
when all the ancient mythologies will be carefully studied and
interpreted, and when the mythology of the Celts will be held in
very high esteem. But already an age has come when things purely
Celtic have begun to be studied; and the close observer can see the
awakening genius of the modern Celt manifesting itself in the
realm of scholarship, of literature, and even of art throughout
Continental Europe, especially France and Germany, throughout
Great Britain and Ireland, and throughout the new Celtic world of
America, as far west as San Francisco on the great calm ocean of
the future facing Japan and China. In truth the Celtic empire is
greater than it ever was before Caesar destroyed its political unity;
and its citizens have not forgotten the ancient faith of their
ancestors in a world invisible.

Environment (section I, chapter I)

'In the Beauty of the World lies the ultimate redemption of our
mortality. When we shall become at one with nature in a sense
profounder even than the poetic imaginings of most of us, we shall
understand what now we fail to discern. ' FIONA MACLEOD.

Psychical interpretation   The mysticism of Erin and Armorica   In
Ireland   In Scotland   In the Isle of Man   In Wales   In Cornwall  
In Brittany.

As a preliminary to our study it is important, as we shall see later,
to give some attention to the influences and purely natural
environment under which the Fairy-Faith has grown up. And in
doing so it will be apparent to what extent there is truth in the
Naturalistic Theory; though from the first our interpretation of
Environment is fundamentally psychical. In this first chapter, then,
in so far as they can be recorded, we shall record a few
impressions, which will, in a way, serve as introductory to the
more definite and detailed consideration of the Fairy-Faith itself.

Ireland and Brittany, the two extremes of the modern Celtic world,
are for us the most important points from which to take our initial
bearings. Both washed by the waters of the Ocean of Atlantis, the
one an island, the other a peninsula, they have best preserved their
old racial life in its simplicity and beauty, with its high ideals, its
mystical traditions, and its strong spirituality. And, curious though
the statement may appear to some, this preservation of older
manners and traditions does not seem to be due so much to
geographical isolation as to subtle forces so strange and mysterious
that to know them they must be felt; and their nature can only be
suggested, for it cannot be described.

Over Erin and Armorica, as over Egypt, there hovers a halo of
romance, of strangeness, of mysticism real and positive; and, if we
mistake not the language of others, these phrases of ours but echo
opinions common to many Celts native of the two countries   they
who have the first right to testify; and not only are there poets and
seers among them, but men of the practical world as well, and men
of high rank in scholarship, in literature, in art, and even in
science.

IN IRELAND

If anyone would know Ireland and test these influences  
influences which have been so fundamental in giving to the
Fairy-Faith of the past something more than mere beauty of
romance and attractive form, and something which even to-day, as
in the heroic ages, is ever-living and ever-present in the centres
where men of the second-sight say that they see fairies in that
strange state of subjectivity which the peasant calls Fairyland   let
him stand on the Hill of Tara silently and alone at sunset, in the
noonday, in the mist of a dark day. Let him likewise silently and
alone follow the course of the Boyne. Let him enter the silence of
New Grange and of Dowth. Let him muse over the hieroglyphics
of Lough Crew. Let him feel the mystic beauty of Killarney, the
peacefulness of Glendalough, of Monasterboise, of Clonmacnois,
and the isolation of Aranmore. Let him dare to enter the rings of
fairies, to tempt the 'good folk' at their raths and forts. Let him rest
on the ancient cairn above the mountain-palace of Finvara and
look out across the battlefields of Moytura. Let him wander amid
the fairy dells of gentle Connemara. Let him behold the Irish Sea
from the Heights of Howth, as Fionn Mac Cumhail used to do. Let
him listen to the ocean-winds amid Dun Aengus. Let him view the
stronghold of Cuchulainn and the Red Branch Knights. Let him
linger beside that mysterious lake which lies embosomed between
two prehistoric cairns on the summit of enchanted Slieve Gullion,
where yet dwells invisible the mountain's Guardian, a fairy
woman. Let him then try to interpret the mysticism of an ancient
Irish myth, in order to understand why men have been told that in
the plain beneath this magic mountain of Ireland mighty warfare
was once waged on account of a Bull, by the hosts of Queen
Meave against those of Cuchulainn the hero of Ulster. Let him be
lost in the mists on the top of Ben Bulbin. Let him know the haunts
of fairy kings and queens in Roscommon. Let him follow in the
footsteps of Patrick and Bridgit and Columba. When there are dark
days and stormy nights, let him sit beside a blazing fire of fragrant
peat in a peasant's straw-thatched cottage listening to tales of
Ireland's golden age tales of gods, of heroes, of ghosts, and of
fairy-folk. If he will do these things, he will know Ireland, and why
its people believe in fairies.

As yet, little has been said concerning the effects of clouds, of
natural scenery, of weird and sudden transformations in earth and
sky and air, which play their part in shaping the complete
Fairy-Faith of the Irish; but what we are about to say concerning
Scotland will suggest the same things for Ireland, because the
nature of the landscape and the atmospheric changes are much the
same in the two countries, both inland and on their rock-bound and
storm-swept shores.

IN SCOTLAND

In the moorlands between Trossachs and Aberfoyle, a region made
famous by Scott's Rob Roy, I have seen atmospheric changes so
sudden and so contrasted as to appear marvellous. What shifting of
vapours and clouds, what flashes of bright sun-gleams, then
twilight at midday! Across the landscape, shadows of black dense
fog-banks rush like shadows of flocks of great birds which darken
all the earth. Palpitating fog-banks wrap themselves around the
mountain-tops and then come down like living things to move
across the valleys, sometimes only a few yards above the traveller's
head. And in that country live terrible waterkelpies. When black
clouds discharge their watery burden it is in wind-driven vertical
water-sheets through which the world appears as through an
ice-filmed window-pane. Perhaps in a single day there may be the
bluest of heavens and the clearest air, the densest clouds and the
darkest shadows, the calm of the morning and the wind of the
tempest. At night in Aberfoyle after such a day, I witnessed a clear
sunset and a fair evening sky; in the morning when I arose, the
lowlands along the river were inundated and a thousand cascades,
large and small, were leaping down the mountain-highlands, and
rain was falling in heavy masses. Within an hour afterwards, as I
travelled on towards Stirling, the rain and wind ceased, and there
settled down over all the land cloud-masses so inky-black that they
seemed like the fancies of some horrible dream. Then like massed
armies they began to move to their mountain-strongholds, and
stood there; while from the east came perfect weather and a flood
of brilliant sunshine.

And in the Highlands from Stirling to Inverness what magic, what
changing colours and shadows there were on the age-worn treeless
hills, and in the valleys with their clear, pure streams receiving
tribute from unnumbered little rills and springs, some dropping
water drop by drop as though it were fairy-distilled; and
everywhere the heather giving to the mountain-landscape a hue of
rich purplish-brown, and to the air an odour of aromatic fragrance.

On to the north-west beyond Inverness there is the same kind of a
treeless highland country; and then after a few hours of travel one
looks out across the water from Kyle and beholds Skye, where
Cuchulainn is by some believed to have passed his young manhood
learning feats of arms from fairy women,   Skye, dark,
mountainous, majestic, with its waterfalls turning to white spray as
they tumble from cliff to cliff into the sound, from out the clouds
that hide their mountain-summit sources.

In the Outer Hebrides, as in the Aranmore Islands off West Ireland,
influences are at work on the Celtic imagination quite different
from those in Skye and its neighbouring islands. Mountainous
billows which have travelled from afar out of the mysterious
watery waste find their first impediment on the west of these
isolated Hebridean isles, and they fling themselves like mad things
in full fury against the wild rocky islets fringing the coast. White
spray flashes in unearthly forms over the highest cliff, and the
unrestrained hurricane whirls it far inland. Ocean's eternally
murmuring sounds set up a responsive vibration in the soul of the
peasant, as be in solitude drives home his flocks amid the weird
gloaming at the end of a December day; and, later, when he sits
brooding in his humble cottage at night, in the fitful flickering of a
peat fire, he has a mystic consciousness that deep down in his
being there is a more divine music compared with which that of
external nature is but a symbol and an echo; 'and, as he stirs the
glowing peat-embers, phantoms from an irretrievable past seem to
be sitting with him on the edge of the half-circle of dying light.
Maybe there are skin-clad huntsmen of the sea and land, with
spears and knives of bone and flint and shaggy sleeping dogs, or
fearless sea-rovers resting wearily on shields of brilliant bronze, or
maybe Celtic warriors fierce and bold; and then he understands
that his past and his present are one.

Commonly there is the thickest day-darkness when the driving
storms come in from the Atlantic, or when dense fog covers sea
and land; and, again, there are melancholy sea-winds moaning
across from shore to shore, bending the bushes of the purple
heather. At other times there is a sparkle of the brightest sunshine
on the ocean waves, a fierceness foreign to the more peaceful
Highlands; and then again a dead silence prevails at sunrise and at
sunset if one be on the mountains, or, if on the shore, no sound is
heard save the rhythmical beat of the waves, and now and then the
hoarse cry of a sea-bird. All these contrasted conditions may be
seen in one day, or each may endure for a day; and the dark days
last nearly all the winter. And then it is, during the long winter,
that the crofters and fisher-folk congregate night after night in a
different neighbour's house to tell about fairies and ghosts, and to
repeat all those old legends so dear to the heart of the Celt.
Perhaps every one present has heard the same story or legend a
hundred times, yet it is always listened to and told as though it
were the latest bulletin of some great world-stirring event. Over
those little islands, so far away to the north, out on the edge of the
world, in winter-time darkness settles down at four o'clock or even
earlier; and the islanders hurry through with their dinner of fish
and oat-bread so as not to miss hearing the first story. When the
company has gathered from far and near, pipes are re-filled and lit
and the peat is heaped up, for the story-telling is not likely to end
before midnight. 'The house is roomy and clean, if homely, with its
bright peat fire in the middle of the floor. There are many present  
men and women, boys and girls. All the women are seated, and
most of the men. Girls are crouched between the knees of fathers
or brothers or friends, while boys are perched wherever   boy-like  
they can climb. The house-man is twisting twigs of heather into
ropes to hold down thatch, a neighbour crofter is twining quicken
root into cords to tie cows, while another is plaiting bent grass into
baskets to hold meal. The housewife is spinning, a daughter is
carding, another daughter is teazing, while a third daughter,
supposed to be working, is away in the background conversing in
low whispers with the son of a neighbouring crofter. Neighbour
wives and neighbour daughters are knitting, sewing, or
embroidering.' (1) Then when the bad weather for fishing has been
fully discussed by the men, and the latest gossip by the women,
and the foolish talk of the youths and maidens in the corners is
finished, the one who occupies the chair of honour in the midst of
the ceilidh (2) looks around to be sure that everybody is
comfortable and ready; and, as his first story begins, even the
babes by instinct cease their noise and crying, and young and old
bend forward eagerly to hear every word. It does

(1) Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (Edinburgh, 1900), i,
p. xix.

(2) The ceilidh of the Western Hebrides corresponds to the veill‚e
of Lower Brittany (see pp. 221 ff.), and to similar story-telling
festivals which formerly flourished among all the Celtic peoples.
'The ceilidh is a literary entertainment where stories and tales,
poems, and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, and songs are sung,
conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary
matters are related and discussed.'

Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, 1, p. xviii.

not matter if some of the boys and girls do topple over asleep, or
even some of the older folk as the hour gets late; the tales meet no
interruption in their even, unbroken flow. And here we have the
most Celtic and the most natural environments which the
Fairy-Faith enjoys in Scotland.

There are still the Southern Highlands in the country around Oban,
and the islands near them; and of all these isles none is so
picturesque in history as the one Columba loved so well. Though
Tona enjoys less of the wildness of the Hebrides furthest west, it
has their storm-winds and fogs and dark days, and their
strangeness of isolation. On it, as Adamnan tells us, the holy man
fought with black demons who came to invade his monastery, and
saw angelic hosts; and when the angels took his soul at midnight in
that little chapel by the sea-shore there was a mystic light which
illuminated all the altar like the brightest sunshine. But nowadays,
where the saint saw demons and angels the Islanders see ghosts
and 'good people', and when one of these islanders is taken in
death it is not by angels   it is by fairies.



IN THE ISLE OF MAN

In the midst of the Irish Sea, almost equidistant from Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales, and concentrating in itself the psychical and
magnetic influences from these three Celtic lands, and from
Celto-Saxon England too, lies the beautiful kingdom of the great
Tuatha De Danann god, Manannan Mac Lir, or, as his loyal Manx
subjects prefer to call him, Mannanan-Beg-Mac-y-Leir. In no other
land of the Celt does Nature show so many moods and contrasts,
such perfect repose at one time and at another time the mightiness
of its unloosed powers, when the baffled sea throws itself angrily
against a high rock-bound coast, as wild and almost as
weatherworn as the western coasts of Ireland and the Hebrides.

But it is Nature's calmer moods which have greater effect upon the
Manx people: on the summit of his ancient stronghold, South
Barrule Mountain, the god Manannan yet dwells invisible to
mortal eyes, and whenever on a warm day be throws off his magic
mist-blanket with which he is wont to cover the whole island, the
golden gorse or purple heather blossoms become musical with the
hum of bees, and sway gently on breezes made balmy by the
tropical warmth of an ocean stream flowing from the far distant
Mexican shores of a New World. Then in many a moist and
sweet-smelling glen, pure and verdant, land-birds in rejoicing
bands add to the harmony of sound, as they gather on the
newly-ploughed field or dip themselves in the clear water of the
tinkling brook; and from the cliffs and rocky islets on the coast
comes the echo of the multitudinous chorus of sea-birds. At sunset,
on such a day, as evening calmness settles down, weird mountain
shadows begin to move across the dimly-lighted glens; and when
darkness has fallen, there is a mystic stillness, broken only by the
ceaseless throbbing of the sea-waves, the flow of brooks, and the
voices of the night.

In the moorland solitudes, even by day, there sometimes broods a
deeper silence, which is yet more potent and full of meaning for
the peasant, as under its spell he beholds the peaceful vision,
happy and sunlit, of sea and land, of gentle mountains falling away
in land-waves into well-tilled plains and fertile valleys; and he
comes to feel instinctively the old Druidic Fires relit within his
heart, and perhaps unconsciously he worships there in Nature's
Temple. The natural beauty without awakens the divine beauty
within, and for a second of time he, out of his subconsciousness, is
conscious that in Nature there are beings and inaudible voices
which have no existence for the flippant pleasure-seeking crowds
who come and go. To the multitude, his ancestral beliefs are
foolishness, his fairies but the creatures of a fervid Celtic
imagination which readily responds to unusual phenomena and
environments. They will not believe with him that all beauty and
harmony in the world are but symbolic, and that behind these stand
unseen sustaining forces and powers which are conscious and
eternal; and though by instinct they willingly personify Nature they
do not know the secret of why they do so: for them the outer is
reality, the inner non-existent.

From the Age of Stone to the civilized era of to-day, the Isle of
Man has been, in succession, the home of every known race and
people who have flourished in Western Europe; and though
subject, in turn, to the Irish Gael and to the Welsh Brython, to
Northmen and to Danes, to Scots and to English, and the scene of
sweeping transformations in religion, as pagan cults succeeded one
another, to give way to the teaching of St. Patrick and his disciples
St. German and St. Maughold, and this finally to the Protestant
form of Christianity, the island alone of Celtic lands has been
strangely empowered to maintain in almost primitive purity its
ancient constitution and freedom, and though geographically at the
very centre of the United Kingdom, is not a part of it. The
archaeologist may still read in mysterious symbols of stone and
earth, as they lie strewn over the island's surface, the history of this
age-long panoramic procession of human evolution; while through
these same symbols the Manx seer reads a deeper meaning; and
sometimes in the superhuman realm of radiant light, to which
since long ago they have oft come and oft returned, he meets face
to face the gods and heroes whose early tombs stand solitary on the
wind-swept mountain-top and moorland, or hidden away in the
embrace of wild flowers and verdure amid valleys; and in the
darker mid-world he sees innumerable ghosts of many of these
races which have perished.

IN WALES

Less can be said of Wales than of Ireland, or of Scotland as a
whole. It has, it is true, its own peculiar psychic atmosphere,
different, no doubt, because its people are Brythonic Celts rather
than Gaelic Celts. But Wales, with conditions more modernized
than is the case in Ireland or in the Western Hebrides of Scotland,
does not now exhibit in a vigorous or flourishing state those Celtic
influences which, when they were active, did so much to create the
precious Romances of Arthur and his Brotherhood, and to lay the
foundations for the Welsh belief in the Tylwyth Teg, a fairy race
still surviving in a few favoured localities.

Wales, like all Celtic countries, is a land of long sea-coasts, though
there seems to be, save in the mountains of the north, less of mist
and darkness and cloud effects than in Ireland and Scotland. In the
south, perhaps the most curious influences are to be felt at St.
David's Head, and in St. David's itself   once the goal for thousands
of pilgrims from many countries of mediaeval Europe, and,
probably, in pagan times the seat of an oracle. And a place of like
character is the peninsula of Gower, south of Swansea. Caerphilly
Castle, where the Green Lady reigns now amid its ruined acres, is
a strange place; and so is the bill near Carmarthen, where Merlin is
asleep in a cave with the fairy-woman Vivian. But in none of these
places to-day is there a strong living faith in fairies as there is, for
example, in West Ireland. The one region where I found a real
Celtic atmosphere   and it is a region where everybody speaks
Welsh   is a mountainous country rarely visited by travellers, save
archaeologists, a few miles from Newport; and its centre is the
Pentre Evan Cromlech, the finest cromlech in Wales if not in
Britain. By this prehistoric monument and in the country round the
old Nevern Church, three miles away, there is an active belief in
the ' fair-folk', in ghosts, in death-warnings, in death-candles and
phantom-funerals, and in witchcraft and black magic. Thence on to
NewcastleEmlyn and its valley, where many of the Mabinogion
stories took form, or at least from where they drew rich material in
the way of folk-lore, (1) are environments purely Welsh and as yet
little disturbed by the commercial materialism of the age.

There remain now to be mentioned three other places in Wales to
me very impressive psychically. These are: ancient Harlech, so
famous in recorded Welsh fairy-romance   Harlech with its strange
stone-circles, and old castle from which the Snowdon Range is
seen to loom majestically and clear, and with its sun-kissed bay;
Mount Snowdon, with its memories of Arthur and Welsh heroes;
and sacred Anglesey or Mona, strewn with tumuli, and dolmens,
and pillar-stones   Mona, where the Druids made their last stand

(1) I am indebted for this information to the late Mr. Davies, the
competent scholar and antiquarian of Newcastle-Emlyn, where for
many years he has been vicar.

against the Roman eagles   and its little island called Holy-head,
facing Ireland.

However, when all is said, modern Wales is poorer in its fairy
atmosphere than modern Ireland or modern Brittany. Certainly
there is a good deal of this fairy atmosphere yet, though it has
become less vital than the similar fairy atmosphere in the great
centres of Erin and Armorica. But the purely social environment
under which the Fairy-Faith of Wales survives is a potent force
which promises to preserve underneath the surface of Welsh
national life, where the commercialism of the age has compelled it
to retire in a state of temporary latency, the ancestral idealism of
the ancient Brythonic race. In Wales, as in Lower Brittany and in
parts of Ireland and the Hebrides, one may still hear in common
daily use a language which has been continuously spoken since
unknown centuries before the rise of the Roman empire. And the
strong hold which the Druidic Eisteddfod (an annual national
congress of bards and literati) continues to have upon the Welsh
people, in spite of their commercialism, is, again, a sign that their
hearts remain uncorrupted, that when the more favourable hour
strikes they will sweep aside the deadening influences which now
hold them in spiritual bondage, and become, as they were in the
past, true children of Arthur.

IN CORNWALL

Strikingly like Brittany in physical aspects, Southern and Western
Cornwall is a land of the sea, of rolling plains and moorlands
rather than of high hills and mountains, a land of golden-yellow
furze-bloom, where noisy crowds of black crows and white
sea-gulls mingle together over the freshly-turned or new-sown
fields, and where in the spring-time the call of the cuckoo is heard
with the song of the skylark. Like the Isle of Man, from the earliest
ages Cornwall has been a meeting-place and a battle-ground for
contending races. The primitive dark Iberian peoples gave way
before Aryan-Celtic invaders, and these to Roman and then to
Germanic invaders.

Nature has been kind to the whole of Cornwall, but chiefly upon
the peninsula whose ancient capital is Penzance (which possibly
means 'the Holy Headland'), and upon the land immediately
eastward and northward of it, she has bestowed her rarest gifts.
Holding this territory embosomed in the pure waters of Ocean, and
breathing over it the pure air of the Atlantic in spring and in
summer calm, when the warm vapours from the Gulf Stream
sweep over it freely, and make it a land of flowers and of
singing-birds, Nature preserves eternally its beauty and its sanctity.
There are there ruined British villages whose builders are long
forgotten, strange prehistoric circular sun-temples like fortresses
crowning the hill-tops, mysterious underground passage-ways, and
crosses probably pre-Christian. Everywhere are the records of the
mighty past of this thrice-holy Druid land of sunset. There are
weird legends of the lost kingdom of Fair Lyonesse, which seers
sometimes see beneath the clear salt waves, with all its ancient
towns and flowery fields; legends of Phoenicians and Oriental
merchants who came for tin; legends of gods and of giants, of
pixies and of fairies, of King Arthur in his castle at Tintagel, of
angels and of saints, of witches and of wizards.

On Dinsul, 'Hill dedicated to the Sun,' pagan priests and priestesses
kept kindled the Eternal Fire, and daily watched eastward for the
rising of the God of Light and Life, to greet his coming with
paeans of thanksgiving and praise. Then after the sixth century the
new religion had come proclaiming a more mystic Light of the
World in the Son of God, and to the pious half-pagan monks who
succeeded the Druids the Archangel St. Michael appeared in vision
on the Sacred Mount. (1) And before St. Augustine came to Britain
the Celts of Cornwall had already combined in their own mystical
way the spiritual message of primitive Christianity with the pure
nature-worship of their ancestors; and their

(1) In the Gnosis, St. Michael symbolizes the sun, and thus very
appropriately at St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall, at Mont St.
Michel, Carnac, and also at Mont St. Michel on the coast of
Normandy, replaced the Great God of Light and Life, held in
supreme honour among the ancient Celts.

land was then, as it most likely had been in pagan days, a centre of
pilgrimages for their Celtic kinsmen from Ireland, from Wales,
from England, and from Brittany. When in later times new
theological doctrines were superimposed on this mysticism of
Celtic Christianity, the Sacred Fires were buried in ashes, and the
Light and Beauty of the pagan world obscured with sackcloth.

But there in that most southern and western corner of the Isle of
Britain, the Sacred Fires themselves still burn on the divine
hill-tops, though smothered in the hearts of its children. The
Cornishman's vision is no longer clear. He looks upon cromlech
and dolmen, upon ancient caves of initiation, and upon the graves
of his prehistoric ancestors, and vaguely feels, but does not know,
why his land is so holy, is so permeated by an indefinable magic;
for he has lost his ancestral mystic touch with the unseen   he is
'educated' and 'civilized'. The hand of the conqueror has fallen
more heavily upon the people of Cornwall than upon any other
Celtic people, and now for a time, but let us hope happily only for
this dark period of transition, they sleep   until Arthur comes to
break the spell and set them free.

IN BRITTANY

As was pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, Ireland and
Brittany are to be regarded as the two poles of the modern Celtic
world, but it is believed by Celtic mystics that they are much more
than this, that they are two of its psychic centres, with Tara and
Carnac as two respective points of focus from which the Celtic
influence of each country radiates. (1) With such a psychical point
of view, it makes no difference at all whether one scholar argues
Carnac to be Celtic and another pre-Celtic, for if pre-Celtic, as it
most likely is, it has certainly been bequeathed to the people who
were and are Celtic, and its influence has been an unbroken thing
from times altogether beyond the horizon of

(1) In this connexion we may think of the North and South
Magnetic Poles of the earth as centres of definite yet invisible
forces which can be detected, and to some extent measured
scientifically.

history. According to this theory (and in following it we are merely
trying to put on record unique material transmitted to us by the
most learned of contemporary Celtic mystics and seers) there seem
to be certain favoured places on the earth where its magnetic and
even more subtle forces are most powerful and most easily felt by
persons susceptible to such things; and Carnac appears to be one
of the greatest of such places in Europe, and for this reason, as has
been thought, was probably selected by its ancient priest-builders
as the great centre for religious practices, for the celebration of
pagan mysteries, for tribal assemblies, for astronomical
observations, and very likely for establishing schools in which to
educate neophytes for the priesthood. Tara, with its tributary
Boyne valley, is a similar place in Ireland, so selected and so used,
as, in our study of the cult of fairies and the cult of the dead,
manuscript evidence will later indicate. And thus to such psychical
and magnetic, or, according perhaps to others, religious or
traditional influences as focus themselves at Tara and Carnac,
though in other parts of the two countries as well, may be due in a
great, even in an essential measure, the vigorous and ever-living
Fairy-Faith of Ireland, and the innate and ever-conscious belief of
the Breton people in the Legend of the Dead and in a world
invisible. For fairies and souls of the dead, though, strictly
speaking, not confused, are believed to be beings of the subjective
world existing to-day, and influencing mortals, as they have always
existed and influenced them according to ancient and modern
traditions, and as they appear now in the eyes even of science
through the work of a few pioneer scientists in psychical research.
And it seems probable that subjective beings of this kind, granting
their existence, were made use of by the ancient Druids, and even
by Patrick when the old and new religions met to do battle on the
Hill of Tara. The control of Tara, as a psychical centre, meant the
psychical control of all Ireland. To-day on the Hill of Tara the
statue of St. Patrick dwarfs the Liath Stone beside it; at Carnac the
Christian Cross overshadows dolmens and menhirs.

A learned priest of the Roman Church told me, when I met him in
Galway, that in his opinion those places in Ireland where ancient
sacrifices were performed to pagan or Druid gods are still, unless
they have been regularly exorcized, under the control of demons
(daemons). And what the Druids were at Tara and throughout Erin
and most probably at Carnac as well, the priests were in Egypt, and
the pythonesses in Greece. That is to say, Druids, Egyptian priests,
priestesses in charge of Greek oracles, are said to have foretold the
future, interpreted omens, worked all miracles and wonders of
magic by the aid of daemons, who were regarded as an order of
invisible beings, intermediary between gods and men, and as
sometimes including the shades from Hades.

I should say as before, if he who knowing Ireland, the Land of
Faerie, would know in the same manner Brittany, the Land of the
Dead, let him silently and alone walk many times in sun, in wind,
in storm, in thick mist through the long, broad avenues of stone of
the Alignements at Carnac. Let him watch from among them the
course of the sun from east to west. Let him stand on St. Michael's
Mount on the day of the winter solstice, or on the day of the
summer solstice. Let him enter the silence of its ancient
underground chamber, so dark and so mysterious. Let him sit for
hours musing amid cromlechs and dolmens, and beside menhirs,
and at holy wells. Let him marvel at the mightiest of menhirs now
broken and prostrate at Locmariaquer, and then let him ponder
over the subterranean places near it. Let him try to read the
symbolic inscriptions on the rocks in Gavrinis. Let him stand on
the Ile de Sein at sunrise and at sunset. Let him penetrate the
solitudes of the Forest of Broc‚liande, and walk through the
Val-Sans-Retour (Vale-Without-Return). And then let him wander
in footpaths with the Breton peasant through fields where good
dames sit on the sunny side of a bush or wall, knitting stockings,
where there are long hedges of furze, golden-yellow with bloom  
even in January   and listen to stories about corrigans, and about
the dead who mingle here with the living. Let him enter the
peasant's cottage when there is fog over the land and the sea-winds
are blowing across the shifting sand-dunes, and hear what he can
tell him. Let him, even as he enjoys the picturesque customs and
dress of the Breton folk and looks on at their joyous ronde
(perhaps the relic of a long-forgotten sun-dance), observe the depth
of their nature, their almost ever-present sense of the seriousness
of human life and effort, their beautiful characters as their mystic
land has shaped them without the artificiality of books and
schools, their dreaminess as they look out across the ocean, their
often perfect physique and fine profiles and rosy cheeks, and yet
withal their brooding innate melancholy. And let him know that
there is with them always an overshadowing consciousness of an
invisible world, not in some distant realm of space, but here and
now, blending itself with this world; its inhabitants, their dead
ancestors and friends, mingling with them daily, and awaiting the
hour when the Ankou (a King of the Dead) shall call each to join
their invisible company.

Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 2)

III. IN SCOTLAND

Introduction by ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Hon. LL.D. of the
University of Edinburgh; author of Carmina Gadelica. 

The belief in fairies was once common throughout Scotland  
Highland and Lowland. It is now much less prevalent even in the
Highlands and Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they
do in the Lowlands. But it still lives among the old people, and is
privately entertained here and there even among younger people;
and some who hold the belief declare that they themselves have
seen fairies.

Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of fairies and
as to the belief in them. The most concrete form in which the
belief has been urged has been by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister
of Aberfoyle, in Perthshire. (1) Another theory of the origin of
fairies I took down in the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and,
though I have given it in Carmina Gadelica, it is sufficiently
interesting to be quoted here. During October 1871, Roderick
Macneill, known as 'Ruaraidh mac Dhomhuil, then ninety-two
years of age, told it in Gaelic to the late J. F. Campbell of Islay and
the writer, when they were storm-stayed in the precipitous island
of Miunghlaidh, Barra : 

'The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of
heaven, where he had been a leading light. He declared that he
would go and found a kingdom for himself. When going out at the
door of heaven the Proud Angel brought prickly lightning and
biting lightning out of the doorstep with his heels. Many angels
followed him   so many that at last the Son called out, "Father!
Father! the city is being emptied!" whereupon the Father ordered
that the gates of heaven and the gates of hell should be closed.
This was instantly done. And those who were in were in, and those
who were out were out; while the hosts who had left heaven and
had not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth, like the
stormy petrels. These are the Fairy Folk   ever since doomed to live
under the ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when the
King permits. They are never allowed abroad on Thursday, that
being Columba's Day; nor on Friday, that being the Son's Day; nor
on Saturday, that being Mary's Day; nor on Sunday, that being the
Lord's Day.

God be between me and every fairy,
Every ill wish and every druidry;
To-day is Thursday on sea and land,
I trust in the King that they do not hear me.

(1) It was the belief of the Rev. Robert Kirk, as expressed by him
in his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, that the
fairy tribes are a distinct order of created beings possessing
human-like intelligence and supernormal powers, who live and
move about in this world invisible to all save men and women of
the second-sight (see this study, pp. 89, 91 n).

On certain nights when their bruthain (bowers) are open and their
lamps are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the
fairies may be heard singing lightheartedly : -

Not of the seed of Adam are we,
Nor is Abraham our father;
But of the seed of the Proud Angel,
Driven forth from Heaven.'

The fairies entered largely into the lives and into the folk-lore of
the Highland people, and the following examples of things named
after the fairies indicate the manner in which the fairies dominated
the minds of the people of Gaeldom : teine sith, ' fairy fire' (ignis
fatuus) ; breaca sith, 'fairy marks,' livid spots appearing on the
faces of the dead or dying; marcachd shith, 'fairy riding,' paralysis
of the spine in animals, alleged to be brought on by the fairy
mouse riding across the backs of animals while they are lying
down; piob shith, 'fairy pipe' or 'elfin pipe', generally found in
ancient underground houses; miaran na mna sithe, 'the thimble of
the fairy woman,' the fox-glove; lion na mna sithe, 'lint of the fairy
woman,' fairy flax, said to be beneficial in certain illnesses; and
curachan na mna sithe, 'coracle of the fairy woman,' the shell of
the blue valilla. In place-names sith, 'fairy,' is common. Glenshee,
in Pertbsbire, is said to have been full of fairies, but the screech of
the steam-whistle frightened them underground. There is scarcely
a district of the Highlands without its fairy knoll, generally the
greenest hillock in the place. 'The black chanter of Clan Chattan' is
said to have been given to a famous Macpherson piper by a fairy
woman who loved him; and the Mackays have a flag said to have
been given to a Mackay by a fairy sweetheart. The well-known
fairy flag of Dunvegan is said to have been given to a Macleod of
Macleod by a fairy woman; and the Macrimmons of Bororaig,
pipers to the Macleods of Macleod, had a chanter called 'Sionnsair
airgid na mna sithe', 'the silver chanter of the fairy woman.' A
family in North Uist is known as Dubh-sith, 'Black fairy,' from a
tradition that the family had been familiar with the fairies in their
secret flights and nightly migrations.

Donald Macalastair, seventy-nine years of age, crofter,
Druim-a-ghinnir, Arran, told me, in the year 1895, the following
story in Gaelic : ' The fairies were dwelling in the knoll, and they
had a near neighbour who used to visit them in their home. The
man used to observe the ways of the fairies and to do as they did.
The fairies took a journey upon them to go to Ireland, and the man
took upon him to go with them. Every single fairy of them caught
a ragwort and went astride it, and they were pell-mell, every knee
of them across the Irish Ocean in an instant, and across the Irish
Ocean was the man after them, astride a ragwort like one of
themselves. A little wee tiny fairy shouted and asked were they all
ready, and all the others replied that they were, and the little fairy
called out : 

My king at my head,
Going across in my haste,
On the crests of the waves,
To Ireland.

"Follow me," said the king of the fairies, and away they went
across the Irish Ocean, every mother's son of them astride his
ragwort. Macuga (Cook) did not know on earth how he would
return to his native land, but he leapt upon the ragwort as he saw
the fairies do, and he called as he heard them call, and in an instant
he was back in Arran. But he had got enough of the fairies on this
trip itself, and he never went with them again.'

The fairies were wont to take away infants and their mothers, and
many precautions were taken to safeguard them till purification
and baptism took place, when the fairy power became ineffective.
Placing iron about the bed, burning leather in the room, giving
mother and child the milk of a cow which had eaten of the mothan,
pearl-wort (Pinguicula vulgaris), a plant of virtue, and similar
means were taken to ensure their safety. If the watching-women
neglected these precautions, the mother or child or both were
spirited away to the fairy bower. Many stories are current on this
subject.

Sometimes the fairies helped human beings with their work,
coming in at night to finish the spinning or the housework, or to
thresh the farmer's corn or fan his grain. On such occasions they
must not be molested nor interfered with, even in gratitude. If
presented with a garment they will go away and work no more.
This method of getting rid of them is often resorted to, as it is not
easy always to find work for them to do. 

Bean chaol a chot uaine 's na gruaige buidhe, 'the slender woman
of the green kirtle and of the yellow hair,' is wise of head and deft
of hand. She can convert the white water of the nil into rich red
wine and the threads of the spiders into a tartan plaid. From the
stalk of the fairy reed she can bring the music of the lull of the
peace and of the repose, however active the brain and lithe the
limb; and she can rouse to mirth and merriment, and to the dance,
men and women, however dolorous their condition. From the
bower could be heard the pipe and the song and the voice of
laughter as the fairies' sett' and reeled in the mazes of the dance.
Sometimes a man hearing the merry music and seeing the
wonderful light within would be tempted to go in and join them,
but woe to him if he omitted to leave a piece of iron at the door of
the bower on entering, for the cunning fairies would close the door
and the man would find no egress. There he would dance for years  
but to him the years were as one day   while his wife and family
mourned him as dead.

The flint arrow-heads so much prized by antiquarians are called in
the Highlands Saighead sith, fairy arrows. They are said to have
been thrown by the fairies at the sons and daughters of men. The
writer possesses one which was thrown at his own maid-servant
one night when she went to the peatstack for peat's. She was aware
of something whizzing through the silent air, passing through her
hair, grazing her ear and falling at her feet. Stooping in the bright
moonlight the girl picked up a fairy arrow!

'But faith is dead   such things do not happen now,' said a
courteous informant. If not quite dead it is almost dead, hastened
by the shifting of population, the establishment of means of
communication, the influx of tourists, and the scorn of the more
materialistic of the incomers and of the people themselves.

EDINBURGH,

October 1910.

ABERFOYLE, THE COUNTRY OF ROBERT KIRK

My first hunt for fairies in Scotland began at Aberfoyle, where the
Highlands and the Lowlands meet, and in the very place where
Robert Kirk, the minister of Aberfoyle, was taken by them, in the
year 1692. The minister spent a large part of his time studying the
ways of the 'good people', and he must have been able to see them,
for he was a seventh son. Mrs. J. MacGregor, who keeps the key to
the old churchyard where there is a tomb to Kirk, though many say
there is nothing in it but a coffin filled with stones, told me that
Kirk was taken into the Fairy Knoll, which she pointed to just
across a little valley in front of us, and is there yet, for the hill is
full of caverns, and in them the 'good people' have their homes.
And she added that Kirk appeared to a relative of his after he was
taken, and said that he was in the power of the 'good people', and
couldn't get away. 'But,' says he, ' I can be set free if you will have
my cousin do what I tell him when I appear again at the
christening of my child in the parsonage.' According to Mr.
Andrew Lang, who reports the same tradition in more detail in his
admirable Introduction to The Secret Commonwealth, the cousin
was Grahame of Duchray, and the thing he was to do was to throw
a dagger over Kirk's head. Grahame was at hand at the christening
of the posthumous child, but ,was so astonished to see Kirk appear
as Kirk said he would, that he did not throw the dagger, and so
Kirk became a perpetual prisoner of the 'good people'.

After having visited Kirk's tomb, I called on the Rev. William M.
Taylor, the present successor of Kirk, and, as we sat together in the
very room where Kirk must have written his Secret
Commonwealth, he told me that tradition reports Kirk as having
been taken by the fairies while he was walking on their hill, which
is but a short way from the parsonage. 'At the time of his
disappearance, people said he was taken because the fairies were
displeased with him for prying into their secrets. At all events, it
seems likely that Kirk was taken ill very suddenly with something
like apoplexy while on the Fairy Knoll, and died there. I have
searched the presbytery books, and find no record of how Kirk's
death really took place; but of course there is not the least doubt of
his body being in the grave.' So thus, according to Mr. Taylor, we
are to conclude that if the fairies carried off anything, it must have
been the spirit or soul of Kirk. I talked with others round Aberfoyle
about Kirk, and some would have it that his body and soul were
both taken, and that what was buried was no corpse at all. Mrs.
Margaret MacGregor, one of the few Gaelic speakers of the old
school left in Aberfoyle, holds another opinion, for she said to me,
'Nothing could be surer than that the good people took Kirk's spirit
only.'

In the Aberfoyle country, the Fairy-Faith, save for the stories about
Kirk, which will probably persist for a long time yet, is rapidly
passing. In fact it is almost forgotten now. Up to thirty years ago,
as Mr. Taylor explained, before the railway reached Aberfoyle,
belief in fairies was much more common. Nowadays, he says,
there is no real fairy-lore among the peasants; fifty to sixty years
ago there was. And in his opinion, ' the fairy people of three
hundred years ago in Scotland were a distinct race by themselves.
They had never been human beings. The belief in them was a
survival of paganism, and not at all an outgrowth of Christian
belief in angelic hosts.'

A SCOTCH MINISTER'S TESTIMONY

A Protestant minister of Scotland will be our next witness. He is a
native of Ross-shire, though he draws many of his stories from the
Western Hebrides, where his calling has placed him. Because he
speaks from personal knowledge of the living Fairy-Faith as it was
in his boyhood and is now, and chiefly because he has had the rare
privilege of conscious contact with the fairy world, his testimony
is of the highest value. 

Reality of Fairies. ' When I was a boy I was a firm believer in
fairies; and now as a Christian minister I believe in the possibility
and also the reality of these spiritual orders, but I wish only to
know those orders which belong to the realm of grace. It is very
certain that they exist. I have been in a state of ecstasy, and have
seen spiritual beings which form these orders. (1)

'I believe in the actuality of evil spirits; but people in the
Highlands having put aside paganism, evil spirits are not seen
now.'

This explanation was offered of how fairies may exist and yet be
invisible :  'Our Saviour became invisible though in the body; and,
as the Scriptures suggest, I suppose we are obliged to concede a
similar power of invisibility to spirits as well, good and evil ones
alike.' 

Precautions against Fairies. ' I remember how an old woman pulled
me out of a fairy ring to save me from being taken. 

'If a mother takes some bindweed and places it burnt at the ends
over her babe's cradle, the fairies have no power over the child.
The bindweed is a common roadside convolvulus.

'As a boy, I saw two old women passing a babe over red-hot coals,
and then drop some of the cinders in a cup of water and give the
water to the babe to drink, in order to cure it of a fairy stroke.' 

Fairy Fights on Halloween. ' It is a common belief now that on
Halloween the fairies, or the fairy hosts, have fights.

(1) The Rev. Robert Kirk, in his Secret Commonwealth, defines
the second. sight, which enabled him to see the 'good people', as 'a
rapture, transport, and sort of death'. He and our present witness
came into the world with this abnormal faculty; but there is the
remarkable case to record of the late Father Allen Macdonald, who
during a residence of twenty years on the tiny and isolated Isle of
Erisgey, Western Hebrides, acquired the second-sight, and was
able some years before he died there (in 1905) to exercise it as
freely as though he had been a natural-born seer.

Lichens on. rocks after there has been a frost get yellowish-red,
and then when they thaw and the moisture spreads out from them
the rocks are a bright red; and this bright red is said to be the blood
of the fairies after one of their battles.' 

Fairies and the Hump-back. The following story by the present
witness is curious, for it is the same story of a humpback which is
so widespread. The fact that in Scotland the bump is removed or
added by fairies as it is in Ireland, in Cornwall by pixies, and in
Brittany by corrigans, goes far to prove the essential identity of
these three orders of beings. The story comes from one of the
remote Western Hebrides, Benbecula :  ' A man who was a
hump-back once met the fairies dancing, and danced with their
queen; and he sang with them, "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday," so
well that they took off his hump, and he returned home a
straight-bodied man. Then a tailor went past the same place, and
was also admitted by the fairies to their dance. He caught the fairy
queen by the waist, and she resented his familiarity. And in singing
he added "Thursday" to their song and spoilt it. To pay the tailor
for his rudeness and ill manners, the dancers took up the hump
they had just removed from the first man and clapped it on his
back, and the conceited fellow went home a hump-back.' 

Libations to Fairies. ' An elder in my church knew a woman who
was accustomed, in milking her cows, to offer libations to the
fairies.' The woman was later converted to Christ and gave up the
practice, and as a result one of her cows was taken by the fairies.
Then she revived the practice.

'The fairy queen who watches over cows is called Gruagach in the
Islands, and she is often seen. In pouring libations to her and her
fairies various kinds of stones, usually with hollows in them, are
used. (2)

(1) In his note to Le Chant des Tr‚pass‚s (Barzaz Breiz, p. 507),
Villemarqu‚ reports that in some localities in Lower Brittany on
All Saints Night libations of milk are poured over the tombs of the
dead. This is proof that the nature of fairies in Scotland and of the
dead in Brittany is thought to be the same.

(2) 'In many parts of the Highlands, where the same deity is
known, the stone into which women poured the libation of milk is
called Leac na Gruagaich, "Flag-stone of the Gruagach." If the
libation was omitted in the evening, the best cow in the fold would
be found dead in the morning.'

ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL.

'In Lewis libations are poured to the goddess [or god] of the sea,
called Shoney,(1) in order to bring in seaweed, Until modern times
in lona similar libations were poured to a god Corresponding to
Neptune.'

IN THE HIGHLANDS

I had the pleasure as well as the great privilege of setting out from
Inverness on a bright crisp September morning in company with
Dr. Alexander Carmichael, the well-known folk-Iorist of Scotland,
to study the Fairy-Faith as it exists now in the Highlands round
Tomatin, a small Country village about twenty miles distant. We
departed by an early train; and soon reaching the Tomatin country
began our search   Dr. Carmichael for evidence regarding rare and
Curious Scotch beliefs connected with folk-magic, such as
blood-stopping at a distance and removing motes in the eye at a
distance, and I for Highland ghosts and fairies.

Our first experience was with an old man whom we met on the
road between the railway station and the post office, who could
speak only Gaelic. Dr. Carmichael talked with him awhile, and
then asked him about fairies, and he said there were some living in
a cave some way off, but as the distance was rather too far we
decided not to call on them. Then we went on to see the
postmaster, Mr. John MacDougall, and he told us that in his
boyhood the country-folk

(1) Dr. George Henderson, in The Norse Influence on Celtic
Scotland (Glasgow, 1901), p. 101, says :  'Shony was a sea-god in
Lewis, where ale was sacrificed to him at Hallowtide. After
coming to the church of St. Mulvay at night a man was sent to
wade into the sea, saying: "Shony, I give you this cup of ale hoping
that you will be so kind as to give us plenty of sea-ware for
enriching our ground the ensuing year." As  from Norse would
become o, andfn becomes fn, one thinks of Sjfn, one of the
goddesses in the Edda. In any case the word is Norse.' It seems,
therefore, that the Celtic stock in Lewis have adopted the name
Shony or Shoney, and possibly also the god it designates, through
contact with Norsemen; but, at all events, they have assimilated
him to their own fairy pantheon, as we can see in their celebrating
special libations to him on the ancient Celtic feast of the dead and
fairies, Halloween.

round Tomatin believed thoroughly in fairies. He said they thought
of them as a race of spirits capable of making themselves visible to
mortals, as living in underground places, as taking fine healthy
babes and leaving changelings in their place. These changelings
would waste away and die in a short time after being left. So
firmly did the old people believe in fairies then that they would
ridicule a person for not believing. And now quite the reverse state
has come about.'

THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN DUNBAR OF INVEREEN

We talked with other Highlanders in the country round Tomatin,
and heard only echoes, mostly fragmentary, of what their
forefathers used to believe about fairies. But at Invereen we
discovered John Dunbar, a Highlander, who really knows the
Fairy-Faith and is not ashamed to explain it. Speaking partly from
experience and partly from what he has heard his parents relate
concerning the 'good people', he said : - 

The Sheep and the Fairy-Hunting.- ' I believe people saw fairies,
but I think one reason no one sees them now is because every
place in this parish where they used to appear has been put into
sheep, and deer, and grouse, and shooting. According to tradition,
Coig na Fearn is the place where the last fairy was seen in this
country. Before the big sheep came, the fairies are supposed to
have had a premonition that their domains were to be violated by
them. A story is told of a fight between the sheep and fairies, or
else of the fairies hunting the sheep : James MacQueen, who could
traffic with the fairies, whom he regarded as ghosts or spirits, one
night on his old place, which now is in sheep, was lying down all
alone and heard a small and big barking of dogs, and a small and
big bleating of sheep, though no sheep were there then. It was the
fairy-hunting he heard. "I put an

(1) This, as Dr. Carmichael told me, I believe very justly
represents the present state of folk-lore in many parts of the
Highlands. There are, it is true, old men and women here and there
who know much about fairies, but they, fearing the ridicule of a
younger and 'educated' generation, are generally unwilling to admit
any belief in fairies.

axe under my head and I had no fear therefore," he always
repeated when telling the story. I believe the man saw and heard
something. And MacQueen used to aid the fairies, and on that
account, as he was in the habit of saying, he always found more
meal in his chest than he thought he had.' 

Fairies. ' My grandmother believed firmly in fairies, and I have
heard her tell a good many stories about them. They were a small
people dressed in green, and had dwellings underground in dry
spots. Fairies were often heard in the hills over there (pointing),
and I believe something was there. They were awful for music,
and' used to be heard very often playing the bagpipes. A woman
wouldn't go out in the dark after giving birth to a child before the
child was christened, so as not to give the fairies power over her or
the child. And I have heard people say that if fairies were refused
milk and meat they would take a horse or a cow; and that if well
treated they would repay all gifts.' 

Time in Fairyland.-.- ' People would be twenty years in Fairyland
and it wouldn't seem more than a night. A bridegroom who was
taken on his wedding-day was in Fairyland for many generations,
and, coming back, thought it was next morning. He asked where
all the wedding-guests were, and found only one old woman who
remembered the wedding.' 

Highland Legend of the Dead.  As I have found to be the case in all
Celtic countries equally, fairy stories nearly always, in accordance
with the law of psychology known as 'the association of ideas',
give place to or are blended with legends of the dead. This is an
important factor for the Psychological Theory. And what follows
proves the same ideas to be present to the mind of Mr. Dunbar : 

'Some people after death are seen in their old haunts; no mistake
about it. A bailiff had false corn and meal measures, and so after
he died he came back to his daughter and told her he could have
no peace until the measures were burned. She complied with her
father's wish, and his spirit was never seen again. I have known
also of phantom funerals of people who died soon afterwards
being seen on the road at night.'

TO THE WESTERN HEBRIDES

From Inverness I began my journey to the Western Hebrides.
While I waited for the steamer to take me from Kyle to the Isle of
Skye, an old man with whom I talked on the docks said this about
Neill Mackintosh, of Black Island:  'You can't argue with the old
man that he hasn't seen fairies. He can tell you all about them.'

EVIDENCE FROM THE ISLE OF SKYE

Miss Frances Tolmie, who was born at Uignisb, Isle of Skye, and
has lived many years in the isle in close touch with some of its
oldest folk, contributes, from Edinburgh, the evidence which
follows. The first two tales were told in the parish of Minginish a
number of years ago by Mary Macdonald, a goat-herd, and have
their setting in the region of the Koolian (1) range of mountains on
the west side of Skye. 

The Fatal Peat Ember.  'An aged nurse who had fallen fast asleep
as she sat by the fire, was holding on her knees a newly-born babe.
The mother, who lay in bed gazing dreamily, was astonished to see
three strange little women enter the dwelling. They approached the
unconscious child, and she who seemed to be their leader was on
the point of lifting it off the nurse's lap, when the third exclaimed : 
"Oh! let us leave this one with her as we have already taken so
many! " " So be it," replied the senior of the party in a tone of
displeasure, "but when that peat now burning on the hearth shall be
consumed, her life will surely come to an end." Then the three
little figures passed out. The good wife, recognizing them to be
fairies, sprang from her bed and poured over the fire all the water
she could find, and extinguished the half-burnt ember. This she
wrapped

(1) The following note by Miss Tolmie is of great interest and
value, especially when one bears in mind Cuchulainn's traditional
relation with Skye (see p. 4):  The Koolian range should never be
written Cu-chullin. The name is written here with a K, to ensure its
being correctly uttered and written. It is probably a Norse word;
but, as yet, a satisfactory explanation of its origin and meaning has
not been published. In Gaelic the range is always alluded to (in the
masculine singular) as the Koolian.

carefully in a piece of cloth and deposited at the very bottom of a
large chest, which afterwards she always kept locked.

'Years passed, and the babe grew into a beautiful young woman. In
the course of time she was betrothed; and, according to custom,
not appearing in public at church on the Sunday preceding the day
appointed for her marriage, remained at home alone. To amuse
herself, she began to search the contents of all the keeping-places
in the house, and came at last to the chest containing the peat
ember. In her haste, the good mother had that day forgotten the key
of the chest, which was now, in the lock. At the bottom of the
chest the girl found a curious packet containing nothing but a
morsel of peat, and this apparently useless thing she tossed away
into the fire. When the peat was well kindled the young girl began
to feel very ill, and when her mother returned was dying. The open
chest and the blazing peat explained the cause of the calamity. The
fairy's prediction was fulfilled.' 

Results of Refusing Fairy Hospitality. ' Two women were walking
toward the Point when one of them, hearing churning going on
under a hillock, expressed aloud a wish for some buttermilk. No
sooner had she spoken than a very small figure of a woman came
out with a bowlful and offered it to her, but the thirsty woman,
ignorant of fairy customs and the penalty attending their
infringement, declined the kind offer of refreshment, and
immediately found herself a prisoner in the hillock. She was led to
an apartment containing a chest full of meal and a great bag of
wool, and was told by the fairy that when she had eaten all the
meal and spun all the wool she would be free to return to her
home. The prisoner at once set herself to eating and spinning
assiduously, but without apparent result, and despairing of
completing the task consulted an old man of very sad countenance
who had long been a captive in the hillock. He willingly gave her
his advice, which was to wet her left eye with saliva each morning
before she settled down to her task. She followed this advice, and
gradually the wool and the meal were exhausted. Then the fairy
granted her freedom, but in doing so cursed the old man, and said
that she had it in her power to keep him in the hillock for ever.' 

The Fairies' 'Waulking' (Fulling).  ' At Ebost, in Bracadale, an old
woman was living in a little hut, with no companion save a wise
cat. As we talked, she expressed her wonder that no fairies are ever
seen or heard nowadays. She could remember hearing her father
tell how he, when a herd-boy, had heard the fairies singing a
"waulking" song in Dun-Osdale, an ancient and ruined round tower
in the parish of DUirinish, and not far from Hel‚val mhor (great)
and Hel‚val bheag (less)   two hills occasionally alluded to as "
Macleod's Tables ". The youth was lying on the grass-grown
summit of the ruin, and heard them distinctly. As if with
exultation, one voice took the verse and then the whole company
joined in the following chorus: "Ho ! fir-e ! fair-e, foirm ! Ho !
Fair-eag-an an cl• ! (Ho ! well done ! Grand ! Ho ! bravo the web
[of homespun] ! " ' 

Crodh Chailean.  'This tale was related by Mr. Neil Macleod, the
bard of Skye :  "Cohn was a gentleman of Clan Campbell in
Perthshire, who was married to a beautiful maiden whom the
fairies carried off on her marriage-day, and on whom they cast a
spell which rendered her invisible for a day and a year. She came
regularly every day to milk the cows of her sorrowing husband,
and sang sweetly to them while she milked, but he never once had
the pleasure of beholding her, though he could hear perfectly what
she sang. At the expiry of the year she was, to his great joy,
restored to him." ' (1)

(1) Dr. Alexander Carmichael found that the scene of this
widespread tale is variously laid, in Argyll, in Perth, in Inverness,
and in other counties of the Highlands. From his own collection of
folk-songs he contributes the following verses to illustrate the song
(existing in numerous versions), which the maiden while invisible
used to sing to the cows of Colin :- 

Crodh Chailean ! crodh Chailean !
Crodh Chailean mo ghaoil,
Crodh Chailean mo chridhe,
Air lighe cheare fraoish. 

(Cows of Colin ! cows of Colin !
Cows of Colin of my love,
Cows of Colin of my heart,
In colour of the heather-hen.)

In one of Dr. Carmichael's versions, 'Colin's wife and her infant
child had been lifted away by the fairies to a fairy bower in the
glen between the hills.' There she was kept nursing the babes
which the fairies had stolen, until 'upon Hallow Eve, when all the
bowers were open ', Colin by placing a steel tinder above the lintel
of the door to the fairy bower was enabled to enter the bower and
in safety lead forth his wife and child.

Fairy Legend of the Macleod Family.  ' There is a legend told of
the Macleod family :  Soon after the heir of the Macleods was
born, a beautiful woman in wonderful raiment, who was a fairy
woman or banshee (there were joyous as well as mourning
banshees) appeared at the castle, and went directly to the babe's
cradle. She took up the babe and chanted over it a series of verses,
and each verse had its own melody. The verses foretold the future
manhood of the young child, and acted as a protective charm over
its life. Then she put the babe back into its cradle, and, going out,
disappeared across the moorlands.

'For many generations it was a custom in the Macleod family that
whoever was the nurse of the heir must sing those verses as the
fairy woman had sung them. After a time the song was forgotten,
but at a later period it was partially recovered, and to-day it is one
of the proud folklore heritages of the Macleod family.' (1) 

Origins and Nature of the Fairy-Faith.-  Finally, with respect to the
origin and nature of the Scotch Fairy-Faith, Miss Tolmie states : '
As a child I was not permitted to hear about fairies. At twenty I
was seeking and trying to understand the beliefs of my fathers in
the light of modern ideas. I was very determined not to lose the
past.

'The fairy-lore originated in a cultured class in very ancient times.
The peasants inherited it ; they did not invent it. With the loss of
Gaelic in our times came the loss of folk-ideals. The classical and
English influences combined had a killing effect ; so that the
instinctive religious feeling which used to be among our people
when they kept alive the fairy-traditions is dead. We have
intellectually-constructed creeds and doctrines which take its
place.

'We always thought of fairies as mysterious little beings

(1) In this beautiful fairy legend we recognize the fairy woman as
one of the Tuatha De Danann-like fairies one of the women of the
Sidhe, as Irish seers call them.

living in hills. They were capricious and irritable, but not wicked.
They could do a good turn as well as a bad one. They were not
aerial, but had bodies which they could make invisible; and they
could make human bodies invisible in the same way. Besides their
hollow knolls and mounds there seemed to be a subterranean
world in which they also lived, where things are like what they are
in this world.'

THE ISLE OF BARRA, (1) WESTERN HEBRIDES

We pass from Cuchulainn's beautiful island to what is now the
most Celtic part of Scotland   the Western Hebrides, where the
ancient life is lived yet, and where the people have more than a
faith in spirits and fairies. And no one of the Western Hebrides,
perhaps excepting the tiny island of Erisgey, has changed less
during the last five hundred years than Barra.

Our Barra guide and interpreter, Michael Buchanan, a native and a
life-long resident of Barra, is seventy years old, yet as strong and
active as a city man at fifty. He knows intimately every old man on
the island, and as he was able to draw them out on the subject of
the 'good people' as no stranger could do, I was quite willing, as
well as obliged on account of the Scotch Gaelic, to let him act

(1) It is interesting to know that the present inhabitants of Barra, or
at least most of them, are the descendants of Irish colonists who
belonged to the clan Eoichidh of County Cork, and who emigrated
from there to Barra in A. D. 917. They brought with them their old
customs and beliefs, and in their isolation their children have kept
these things alive in almost their primitive Celtic purity. For
example, besides their belief in fairies, May Day, Baaltine, and
November Eve are still rigorously observed in the pagan way, and
so is Easter   for it, too, before being claimed by Christianity, was
a sun festival. And how beautiful it is in this age to see the youths
and maidens and some of the elders of these simple-hearted Chris.
tian fisher-folk climb to the rocky heights of their little
island-home on Easter morn to salute the sun as it rises out of the
mountains to the east, and to hear them say that the sun dances
with joy that morning because the Christ is risen. In a similar way
they salute the new moon, making as they do so the sign of the
cross. Finn Barr is said to have been a County Cork man of great
sanctity; and he probably came to Barra with the colony, for he is
the patron saint of the island, and hence its name. (To my friend,
Mr. Michael Buchanan, of Barra, I am indebted for this history and
these traditions of his native isle.)

on my behalf in all my collecting on Barra. Mr. Buchanan is the
author of a little book called The MacNeils of Barra Genealogy,
published in the year 1902. He was the official interpreter before
the Commission of Inquiry which was appointed by the British
Parliament in 1883 to search into the oppression of landlordism in
the Highlands and Islands, and he acted in the same capacity
before the Crofters' Commission and the Deer-Forest Commission.
We therefore feel perfectly safe in allowing him to present, before
our jury trying the Fairy-Faith the evidence of the Gaelic-speaking
witnesses from Barra.

JOHN MACNEIL'S TESTIMONY

We met the first of the Barra witnesses on the top of a rocky hill,
where the road from Castlebay passes. He was carrying on his back
a sack of sand heavy enough for a college athlete, and he an old
man between seventy and eighty years of age. Michael Buchanan
has known John MacNeil all his life, for they were boys together
on the island; and there is not much difference between them in
age, our interpreter being the younger. Then the three of us sat
down on a grassy knoll, all the world like a fairy knoll, though it
was not; and when pipes were lit and the weather had been
discussed, there was introduced the subject of the 'good people '  
all in Gaelic, for our witness now about to testify knows no
English - and what John MacNeil said is thus interpreted by
Michael Buchanan :- 

A Fairy's Visit.  ' Yes, I have' (in answer to a question if he had
heard of people being taken by the 'good people' or fairies). 'A fairy
Woman visited the house of a young wife here in Barra, and the
young wife had her baby on her breast at the time. The first words
uttered by the fairy woman were, "Heavy is your child; " and the
wife answered, "Light is everybody who lives the longest." "Were
it not that you have answered my question," said the fairy woman,
"and understood my meaning, you should have been less your
child." And then the fairy woman departed.' 

Fairy-Singing.   'My mother, and two other women well known
here in Barra, went to a hill one day to look after their sheep, and,
a thick fog coming on, they had to rest awhile. They then sat down
upon a knoll and began to sing a walking (cloth-working) song, as
follows :  " It is early to-day that I have risen;" and, as they sang, a
fairy woman in the rocks responded to their song with one of her
own.' 

Nature of Fairies.  Then the question was asked if fairies were men
or spirits, and this is the reply :  ' I never saw any myself, and so
cannot tell, but they must be spirits from all that the old people tell
about them, or else how could they appear and disappear so
suddenly? The old people said they didn't know if fairies were
flesh and blood, or spirits. They saw them as men of more
diminutive stature than our race. I heard my father say that fairies
used to come and speak to natural people, and then vanish while
one was looking at them. Fairy women used to go into houses and
talk and then vanish. The general belief was that the fairies were
spirits who could make themselves seen or not seen at will. And
when they look people they took body and soul together.'

THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN CAMPBELL, NINETY-FOUR

YEARS OLD

Our next witness from Barra is John Campbell, who is ninety-four
years old, yet clear-headed. He was born on Barra at Sgalary, and
lives near there now at Breuvaig. We were on our way to call at his
home, when we met him coming on the road, with a cane in each
hand and a small sack hanging from one of them. Michael saluted
him as an old acquaintance, and then we all sat down on a big
boulder in the warm sunshine beside the road to talk. The first
thing John wanted was tobacco, and when this was supplied we
gradually led from one subject to another until he was talking
about fairies. And this is what he said about them :  

The Fairy and the Fountain.  ' I had a companion by the name of
James Galbraith, who was drowned about forty years ago, and one
time he was crossing from the west side of the island to the east
side, to the township called Sgalary, and feeling thirsty took a
drink out of a Spring well on the mountain-side. After he had taken
a drink, he looked about him and Saw a woman clad in green, and
imagined that no woman would be clad in such a colour except a
fairy woman. He went on his way, and when he hadn't gone far,
looked back, and, as he looked, saw the woman vanish out of his
sight. He afterwards reported the incident at his father's house in
Sgalary, and his father said he also had seen a woman clad in
clothes of green at the same place some nights before.' 

A Step-son Pitied by the Fairies.- ' I heard my father say that a
neighbour of his father, that is of my grandfather, was married
twice, and had three children from the first marriage, and when
married for the second time, a son and daughter. His second wife
did not seem to be kind enough to the children of the first wife,
neglecting their food and clothing and keeping them constantly at
hard work in the fields and at herding.

'One morning when the man and his second wife were returning
from mass they passed the pasture where their cows were grazing
and heard the enjoyable skirrels of the bagpipes. The father said,
"What may this be?" and going off the road found the eldest son of
the first wife playing the bagpipes to his heart's pleasure; and
asked him earnestly, "How did you come to play the bagpipes so
suddenly, or where did you get this splendid pair of bagpipes? "
The boy replied, "An old man came to me while I was in the action
of roasting pots in a pit-fire and said, 'Your step-mother is bad to
you and in ill-will towards you.' I told the old man I was sensible
that that was the case, and then he said to me, 'If I give you a trade
will you be inclined to follow it? ' I said yes, and the old man then
continued, 'How would you like to be a piper by trade?' 'I would
gladly become a piper,' says I, 'but what am I to do without the
bagpipes and the tunes to play?' 'I'll supply the bagpipes,' he said,
'and as long as you have them you'll never want for the most
delightful tunes.' " The male descendants of the boy in question
were all famous pipers thereafter, and the last of them was a piper
to the late Cluny MacPherson of Cluny.' 

Nature of Fairies.  At this point, Michael turned the trend of John's
thoughts to the nature of fairies, with the following result :  ' The
general belief of the people here during my father's lifetime was
that the fairies were more of the nature of spirits than of men made
of flesh and blood, but that they so appeared to the naked eye that
no difference could be marked in their forms from that of any
human being, except that they were more diminutive. I have heard
my father say it was the case that fairy women used to take away
children from their cradles and leave different children in their
places, and that these children who were left would turn out to be
old men.

'At Barra Head, a fairy woman used to come to a man's window
almost every night as though looking to see if the family was
home. The man grew suspicious, and decided the fairy woman was
watching her chance to steal his wife, so he proposed a plan. It was
then and still is the custom after thatching a house to rope it across
with heather-spun ropes, and, at the time, the man was busy
spinning some of them; and he told his wife to take his place that
night to spin the heather-rope, and said he would take her
spinning-wheel. They were thus placed when the fairy woman
made the usual look in at the window, and she seeing that her
intention was understood, said to the man, "You are yourself at the
spinning-wheel and your wife is spinning the heather-rope."

'I have heard it said that the fairies live in knolls on a higher level
than that of the ground in general, and that fairy songs are heard
from the faces of high rocks. The fairies of the air (the fairy or
spirit hosts) are different from those in the rocks. A man whom
I've seen, Roderick MacNeil, was lifted by the hosts and left three
miles from where he was taken up. The hosts went at about
midnight. A man awake at midnight is in danger. Cows and horses
are sometimes shot in place of men '(and why, will be explained by
later Witnesses). 

Father MacDonald's Opinions - We then asked about the late Rev.
Donald MacDonald, who had the reputation of knowing all about
fairies and Spirits when he lived here in these islands, and John
said :  ' I have heard my wife say that she questioned Father
MacDonald who was then a parish priest here in Barra, and for
whom she was a housekeeper, if it was possible that such beings or
Spirits as fairies were in existence. He said "Yes ", and that they
were those who left Heaven after the fallen angels; and that those
going out after the fallen angels had gone out were so numerous
and kept going so long that St. Michael notified Christ that the
throne was fast emptying, and when Christ saw the state of affairs
he ordered the doors of Heaven to be closed at Once, Saying as he
gave the order, "Who is out is out and who is in is in." And the
fairies are as numerous flow as ever they were before the
beginning of the world.'

(Cf. pp. 47, 53, 67, 76, 85, 109, 113, rx6, 129, 154, 205, 212.)

Here we left John, and he, continuing on his way up the mountain
road in an Opposite direction from us and round a turn,
disappeared almost as a fairy might.

AN AGED PIPER'S TESTIMONY

We introduce now as a Witness Donald McKinnon, ninety-six
years old, a piper by profession; and not only is he the oldest man
on Barra, but also the oldest man among all our witnesses He was
born on the Island of South Uist, one of the Western Hebrides
north of Barra, and came to Barra in 1836, where he has lived ever
since. In spite of being four years less than a hundred in age, he
greeted us very heartily, and as he did not wish us to sit inside, for
his chimney happened not to be drawing very well, and was filling
the straw thatched Cottage with peat smoke, we sat down outside
on the grass and began talking; and as we Came to fairies this is
what he said : - 

Nature of Fairies - I believe that fairies exist as a tribe of spirits,
and appear to us in the form of men and women.

People who saw fairies can yet describe them as they appeared
dressed in green. No doubt there are fairies in other countries as
well as here.

'In my experience there was always a good deal of difference
between the fairies and the hosts. The fairies were supposed to be
living without material food, whereas the hosts were supposed to
be living upon their own booty. Generally, the hosts were evil and
the fairies good, though I have heard that the fairies used to take
cattle and leave their old men rolled up in the hides. One night an
old witch was heard to say to the fairies outside the fold, " We
cannot get anything to-night." The old men who were left behind
in the hides of the animals taken, usually disappeared very
suddenly. I saw two men who used to be lifted by the hosts. They
would be carried from South Uist as far south as Barra Head, and
as far north as Harris. Sometimes when these men were ordered by
the hosts to kill men on the road they would kill instead either a
horse or a cow; for in that way, so long as an animal was killed,
the injunction of the hosts was fulfilled.' To illustrate at this point
the idea of fairies, Donald repeated the same legend told by our
former witness, John Campbell, about the emptying of Heaven and
the doors being closed to keep the remainder of its population in.
Then he told the following story about fairies :  

The Fairy-Belt.  ' I heard of an apprentice to carpentry who was
working with his master at the building of a boat, a little distance
from his house, and near the sea. He went to work one morning
and forgot a certain tool which he needed in the boat-building. He
returned to his carpenter-shed to get it, and found the shed filled
with fairy men and women. On seeing him they ran away so
greatly confused that one of the women forgot her gird (belt), and
he picked it up. In a little while she came back for the gird, and
asked him to give it her, but he refused to do so. Thereupon she
promised him that he should he made master of his trade wherever
his lot should fall without serving further apprenticeship. On that
condition he gave her the gird; and rising early next morning he
went to the yard where the boat was a-building and put in two
planks so perfectly that when the master arrived and saw them, he
said to him, "Are you aware of anybody being in the building-yard
last night, for I see by the work done that I am more likely to be an
apprentice than the person who put in those two planks, whoever
he is. Was it you that did it? " The reply was in the affirmative, and
the apprentice told his master the circumstances under which he
gained the rapid mastership of his trade.'

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS

It was nearing sunset now, and a long mountain climb was ahead
of us, and one more visit that evening, before we should begin our
return to Castlebay, and so after this story we said a hearty
good-bye to Donald, with regret at leaving him. When we reached
the mountainside, one of the rarest of Barra's sights greeted us. To
the north and south in the golden glow of a September twilight we
saw the long line of the Outer Hebrides like the rocky backbone of
some submerged continent, The scene and colours on the land and
ocean and in the sky seemed more like some magic vision,
reflected from Faerie by the 'good people' for our delight, than a
thing of our Own world. Never was air clearer or sea calmer, nor
could there be air sweeter than that in the mystic mountain
stillness holding the perfume of millions of tiny blossoms of
purple and white heather; and as the last honey-bees were leaving
the beautiful blossoms their humming came to our ears like low,
strange music from Fairyland.

MARIAN MACLEAN OF BARRA, AND HER TESTIMONY

Our next witness to testify is a direct descendant of the ancient
MacNeils of Barra. Her name now is Marian MacLean; and she
lives in the mountainous centre of Barra at Upper Borve. She is
many years younger than the men who have testified, and one of
the most industrious women on the island. It was already dark and
past dinner-time when we entered her cottage, and so, as we sat
down before a blazing peat-fire, she at once offered us some hot
milk and biscuits, which we were only too glad to accept. . And, as
we ate, we talked first about our hard climb in the darkness across
the mountains, and through the thick heather-bushes, and then
about the big rock which has a key-hole in it, for it contains a
secret entrance to a fairy palace. We had examined it in the
twilight as we came through the mountain pass which it guards,
and my guide Michael had assured me that more than one islander,
crossing at the hour we were, had seen some of the fairies near it.
We waited in front of the big rock in hopes one might appear for
our benefit, but, in spite of our strong belief that there are fairies
there, not a single one would come out. Perhaps they came and we
couldn't see them; who knows? 

Fairies and Fairy Hosts ('Sluagh') (1)   'O yes,' Marian said, as she
heard Michael and myself talking over our hot milk, 'there are
fairies there, for I was told that the Pass was a notable fairy haunt.'
Then I said through Michael,' Can you tell us something about
what these fairies are?' And from that time, save for a few
interruptions natural in conversation, we listened and Marian
talked, and told stories as follows : -

'Generally, the fairies are to be seen after or about sunset, and walk
on the ground as we do, whereas the hosts travel in the air above
places inhabited by people. The hosts used to go after the fall of
night, and more particularly about midnight. You'd hear them
going in fine. weather against a wind like a covey of birds. And
they were in the habit of lifting men in South Uist, for the hosts
need men to help in shooting their javelins from their bows against
women in the action of milking cows, or against any person
working at night in a house over which they pass. And I have heard
of good sensible men whom the hosts took, shooting a horse or
cow in place of the person ordered to be shot.

(1) 'Sluagh, "hosts," the spirit-world. The "hosts " are the spirits of
mortals who have died. . . . According to one informant, the spirits
fly about in great clouds, up and down the face of the world like
the starlings, and come back to the scenes of their earthly
transgressions. No soul of them is without the clouds of earth,
dimming the brightness of the works of God, nor can any win
heaven till satisfaction is made for the sins of earth.'

ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Carmina Gadelica, ii. 330.

'There was a man who had only one cow and daughter. The
daughter was milking the cow at night when the hosts were
passing, and that human being whom the hosts had lifted with
them was her father's neighbour. And this neighbour was ordered
by the hosts to shoot the daughter as she was milking, but,
knowing the father and daughter he shot the cow instead. The next
morning he went where the father was and said to him, "You are
missing the cow." "Yes," said the father "I am." And the man who
had shot the cow said, "Are you not glad your cow and not your
daughter was taken? For I was ordered to shoot your daughter and I
shot pour cow, in order to show blood on my arrow." "I am very
glad of what you have done if that was the case," the father replied
" It was the case" the neighbour said. 

'My father and grandfather knew a man who was carried by the
hosts from South Uist here to Barra. I understand when the hosts
take away earthly men they require another man to help them. But
the hosts must be spirits, My Opinion is that they are both Spirits
of the dead and other Spirits not the dead. A child was taken by the
hosts and returned after one night and one day, and found at the
back of the house with the palms of its hands in the holes in the
wall, and with no life in its body. It was dead in the spirit. It is
believed that when people are dropped from a great height by the
hosts they are killed by the fall. As to fairies, my firm opinion is
that they are Spirits who appear in the shape of human beings.'

The question was now asked whether the fairies were anything like
the dead, and Marian hesitated about answering. She thought they
were like the dead, but not to be identified with them, The fallen
angel idea concerning fairies was an obstacle she could not pass,
for she said, 'When the fallen angels were cast out of Heaven God
commanded them thus :- " You will go to take up your abodes in
crevices under the earth in mounds, or soil, or rocks." And
according to this command they have been condemned to inhabit
the places named for a certain period of time, and when it is
expired before the consummation of the world, they will be seen as
numerous as ever.'

Now we heard two good stories, the first about fairy women
spinning for a mortal, the second about a wonderful changeling
who was a magic musician : - 

Fairy-Women Spinners.  ' I have heard my father, Alexander
MacNeil, who was well known to Mr. Alexander Carmichael and
to Mr J. F. Campbell of Islay, say that his father knew a woman in
the neighbourhood who was in a hurry to have her stock of wool
spun and made into cloth, and one night this woman secretly
wished to have some women to help her. So the following morning
there appeared at her house six or seven fairy women in long green
robes, all alike chanting, "A wool-card, and a spinning-wheel."
And when they were supplied with the instruments they were so
very desirous to get, they all set to work, and by midday of that
morning the cloth was going through the process of the hand-loom.
But they were not satisfied with finishing the work the woman bad
set before them, but asked for new employment. The woman had
no more spinning or weaving to be done, and began to wonder how
she was to get the women out of the house. So she went into her
neighbour's house and informed him of her position in regard to
the fairy women. The old man asked what they were saying. "They
are earnestly petitioning for some work to do, and I have no more
to give them," the woman replied. "Go you in," he said to her, "and
tell them to spin the sand, and if then they do not move from your
house, go out again and yell in at the door that Dun Borve is in fire
!" The first plan had no effect, but immediately on hearing the cry,
"Dun Borve is in fire!" the fairy women disappeared invisibly. And
as they went, the woman heard the melancholy wail, "Dun Borve is
in fire! Dun Borve is in fire! And what will become of our
hammers and anvil? "   for there was a smithy in the
fairy-dwelling.' 

The Tailor and the Changeling.  ' There was a young wife of a
young man who lived in the township of Allasdale, and the pair
had just had their first child. One day the mother left her baby in
its cradle to go out and do some shearing, and when she returned
the child was crying in a most unusual fashion. She fed him as
usual on porridge and milk, but he wasn't satisfied with what
seemed to her enough for any one of his age, yet every suspicion
escaped her attention. As it happened, at the time there was a web
of home-made cloth in the house waiting for the tailor. The tailor
came and began to work up the cloth. As the woman was going out
to her customary shearing operation, she warned the tailor if he
heard the child continually crying not to pay much attention to it,
adding she would attend to it when she came home, for she feared
the child would delay him in his work.

'All went well till about noon, when the tailor observed the child
rising up on its elbow and stretching its hand to a sort of shelf
above the cradle and taking down from it a yellow chanter [of a
bagpipe]. And then the child began to play. Immediately after the
child began to play the chanter, the house filled with young fairy
women all clad in long green robes, who began to dance, and the.
tailor had to dance with them. About two o'clock that. same
afternoon the women disappeared unknown to the tailor, and the
chanter disappeared from the hands of the child also unknown to
the tailor; and the child was in the cradle crying as usual.

'The wife came home to make the dinner, and observed that the
tailor was not so far advanced with his work as he ought to he in
that space of time. However, when the fairy women disappeared,
the child had enjoined upon the tailor never to tell what he had
seen. The tailor promised to be faithful to the child's injunctions,
and so he said nothing to the mother.

'The second day the wife left for her occupation as usual, and told
the tailor to be more attentive to his work than the day before. A
second time at the same hour of the day the child in the cradle,
appearing more like an old man than a child, took the chanter and
began to play. The same fairy women tilled the house again, and
repeated their dance, and the tailor had to join them.

'Naturally the tailor was as far behind with his work the second day
as the first day, and it was very noticeable to the woman of the
house when she returned. She thereupon requested him to tell her
what the matter might be. Then he said to her, "I urge upon you
after going to bed to-night not to fondle that child, because he is
not your child, nor is he a child: he is an old fairy man. And
to-morrow, at dead tide, go down to the shore and wrap him in
your plaid and put him upon a rock and begin to pick that
shell-fish which is called l