Annesley F. - Some Thoughts About Fairies

There is a great deal of pleasure in turning out the contents of an old forgotten dusty cupboard, the hiding-place of ancient toys, childhood’s treasures. Broken odds and ends of every kind; the first boat made and launched with such glee and pride, the kite, battered and wind-tossed, side by side with armless dolls and legless animals in amicable confusion, all alike relegated to the limbo of forgotten things.

Finally old books, with well-thumbed corners, whose dim lettering and quaint pictures arouse tender memories of the keen delight they gave us before the matter-of-fact world had dulled our senses and made everything seem stale and common. And amongst these old books we find a volume of fairy tales, cast aside with these other relics of childhood as if only fit for that period. So soon do we shut one of the windows of the soul; indeed, modern childhood declines to look through this window at all, and regards the wonderful lore of the fairy world as a tangle of worn-out superstitious fancies, not to be tolerated in this science-loving age.

Let us forget for awhile modern enlightenment, and peep into this so-called realm of fancy, and try to appreciate the beauty and grace of it, and to discern the no less certain truth underlying the myriad tales and traditions of the world of fairy folk. In each element we find them; in our world atmosphere, radiant airy beings on airy wing cleaving the blue sky; resting on cloud banks, climbing the rainbow arch, and visible to those who will see them in the white beam of moonlight which makes a silvery path from earth to heaven.

Then on earth, fairy feet in forest or on moorland, hiding in dells, or dwelling on the scarred barren summits of mountains amid ice and snow. Making gay homes for themselves in ferny copses or under deep hedgerows, leaving their traces of fairy encampments in the dark green rings on meadow land, or amid the woods. Signs and tokens of their presence everywhere. They are diminutive creatures, tiny copies of men and women, varying in size from the airy speck that nestles in a lily cup, to that prankish elf of about a foot high whose mad exploits are related in the person of Puck. Gay frolicsome laughing little beings with as purposeless a life as the merest butterfly, never serious, full of fun and fantasy, destitute alike of tragedy and true comedy. Mere-bubbles of intelligent life, fleeting and evanescent; not powerful either for good or evil. They have, however, their beneficent aspect, as tales of the “good people” so amply prove. Dwelling side by side with men, and venturing into the sleeping drowsy homesteads on moonlit nights, cleaning and tidying for the careful thrifty housewife who rewards their kindly aid by entire belief in their existence.

Votive offerings of food and drink are, however, reserved for the mischievous ones who, unpropitiated, might work evil, and these are placed at stated intervals outside human dwellings, and act as charms in securing peace to the 383household. Though it is to be noted that the elves are said to appear in Yule-tide as mice, and cakes are placed for them.

To the elves is also given a power of alluring song, and whoso listens to it will invariably die. The story of the Erl-King is an example of this. But this weird music is more associated with water sprites and sirens than with the earth fairies.

Their worst recorded crimes are, however, the occasional theft of a human baby and an uncanny elf-like thing left in its place, which grieves the mother’s heart, though she never refuses nourishment and a certain amount of awed affection to the unwelcome stranger.

And whilst these fairy folk dwell on the earth or flit through the air, underground there are troops of somewhat similar forms, dwarfs, gnomes, trolls, cave-haunters, inhabitants of gloomy, sunless depths. These have no beauty of face or form, but are grim, fantastic, crooked; they delve in fairy mines and build their underground cities of crystal and stone. They fashion strange jewels and ornaments and forge magic swords which men have long since wielded, chains too, such as bound the fierce wolf Fennis of Norse legend. Rings have they wrought also of wondrous power, fateful and terrible.

And deeper still than these dwell the salamanders, spirits of fire, living intelligences born in and of that dread element. Who that has looked into the glowing heart of the fire can have failed to catch glimpses of fantastic shapes, leaping in the flames or crouching amidst red embers, their home and birthplace in the great central fires of our earth.

Look also at that other mighty element, water. Who has not felt the magic of the sea? That wild waste of never-resting ocean – full of ceaseless energy under the summer sunshine and the winter howl of the hurricane.

Amid its illimitable expanse and mystery the mind of man gains a better idea of infinity than in any wide-stretching breadth of earth or upward towering mountain.

The sea teems with its own life, animal and vegetable in countless forms – but is this all? Does this mighty world of water contain no intelligent creature, other than a mere animal, abiding in its calm depths or revelling in the tossing waves on its sun-kissed surface? Here is space and enough for sea-fairy folk; so we have undines, mermaids and mermen, water-kelpies, nixies, strom-karls, creatures born of and in the water, some haunting mountain streams and lakes and still, quiet pools, and others dwelling in that larger world of sea-water.

A belief in intelligent beings in more or less human form, but not of human kind, has been almost universal, common to every race and country in every age. The same tales and traditions appear in varying forms and with every variety of detail, but all founded upon the same profound belief in, and unshaken conviction of, the existence of semi-material beings, mostly in human form, with more or less human attributes. At times beneficent to the human race, occasionally malignant, spiteful, elfish, working mischief and ill. Some have seen them, spoken with them, even lived with them, as the famous Thomas of Ercildoune, who lived for seven years in the under ground land and returned to earth under the condition that he should go back to fairyland if summoned. He was finally re-called and is still believed to be living with the fairies. There are various versions of this story in many lands.

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Two curious points to be noticed are: 1st, that those decoyed always return to the fairy folk. 2nd, that time, as we understand it on this earth, is of no account, years seeming to be but moments.

Now the chief arguments generally brought forward against the reality of this fairy world, may be divided as follows:

1st. No one has yet been proved to have either seen or conversed with a fairy.

2nd. Their existence is contrary to natural laws.

3rd. The belief in them is only to be found amongst uneducated people.

With regard to the first objection of no credible witness to the existence of a fairy – all the traditions and tales which have been alluded to are declared absolutely incredible. Those who bear witness to their truth have been classed as either self-deceived visionaries or wilful impostors, feeding the human love for the marvellous with the creations of their own morbid fancy.

That no fairy has ever yet been dissected under the microscope is of course to some minds a conclusive proof of non-existence, and those whose world is bounded by microscopic limits are very difficult to convince of anything outside their own narrow experience.

With regard to the second argument, that a fairy’s existence would be contrary to natural laws, we have only to put one or two questions. Has our modern very wise man absolutely become possessed of certain knowledge regarding all natural laws? Or is it within the bounds of possibility that natural laws exist of which he, as yet, knows nothing, and that the world of fairies may be subject to such unknown laws?

There is nothing super-natural, that is above or beyond the natural. It is a paradox. Everything is natural, and under laws, but we do not know entirely the bounds of nature, nor do we understand all the laws which govern it.

Finally, the argument that a belief in fairies is only held by uneducated people, is to be disposed of in two ways. 1st. It is not quite true, as many highly developed minds have believed in them.

2nd. Where it is true, it proves that the development of the logical or reasoning faculty tends to destroy the perceptive and intuitive faculty.

We find, then, that man has either perceived something external to himself on which he has founded his belief, or that he has created the image in his own mind.

It is incredible that the latter should be a fact, for if it is seriously maintained that all these tales are the growth of man’s own morbid imagination, a mere collection of superstitious fancies – then we have the curious spectacle of puny insignificant man peopling with his wondrous creative thought, void realms of air, earth, fire and water, left empty of intelligent life by the All-knowing, All-creating Intelligence, who has in every other way allowed no single inch of His marvellous work to remain untenanted and void of spirit incarnate. Can thought be more creative than He who created thought?

We may therefore dismiss this supposition on the ground that such a universal belief must have had at least some germ of truth and fact, and cannot be entirely the result of man’s unaided and creative fancy. If man has at some time or other perceived these intelligent beings, we must then proceed to enquire how he has become possessed of any knowledge of them.

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Knowledge of the external world is obtained by means of our five senses, and these have to be helped by mechanical agencies such as the microscope and telescope, and so assisted we can arrive at much knowledge which would otherwise remain hidden.

If thus our five senses are by no means adequate by themselves to acquaint us with the external material world, how powerless they must be to give us any knowledge of that more ethereal and intangible world of spirit.

Even the most material of all our philosophers will grant that there is something above and beyond matter, some subtle essence which eludes dissection under the microscope, and of which they therefore believe it impossible to obtain any information.

But why should man, with his insatiable craving for knowledge, be content to sit down with that hopeless cry, “We cannot know; thus far our learning will take us, but no farther.” No farther, certainly, whilst our five senses are the only methods used. No learned creature, armed with magnifying glass, with scalpel and forceps, soberly and scientifically investigating nature's marvels, is ever likely to dissect a fairy, nor even to behold the ethereal realm such a being inhabits.

But if the wise man will but, metaphorically speaking, turn himself inside out, he will find that he is the fortunate possessor of another sense.

He will, of course, be indignant at this very unscientific idea, and will probably be as little able to comprehend it as a blind man can be made to understand the sense of sight.

Imagine a man in possession of this sense, lecturing to a number of blind men on the wonderful gift of sight.

How could he, with argument or learned reasoning, set about convincing his audience? There they would be 50 or 100 against him, each blind man would corroborate his fellow in denying the sense of sight; all the balance of experience so far, would be against our lecturer, yet we, who can see, know what the blessed sense of sight means.

The blind man may believe that others see, but he cannot understand or appreciate the sense. The world of sky and mountain and water, the faces of his fellow men are dark, they have no existence visually. But our learned man is better off than the blind man. He has this sense if he will only use it; it may be dim and undeveloped, but it is there. One could not blame a blind man for not seeing, but what would one think of a man who by diligent trying could see, could make his capacity for seeing grow and develope, and yet chose rather to sit in the dark, shut his eyes, and deny that anyone could see?

It is very difficult to persuade people that they have this additional power of acquiring knowledge of the external world.

As a common instance of a perception of external circumstances by an inner sense, take the certain knowledge some people have of an approaching storm. This is a consciousness of change in material conditions, and man to a large extent shares this perception with the lower animals.

In the world of thought, however, there are numberless phenomena which are not to be explained solely by such change in material conditions.

We are told that thought results from certain definite changes in the matter composing the brain; but will this meagre explanation account at all for that wonderful 386thought transference, that mental telegraphy which nearly everyone now will admit to be a fact? Will material reasoning explain this thought-reading and transmission, and the power of second sight, so common with some people in some places? Will it explain epidemics of feeling, raging over multitudes? Religious excitement, loyal acclamation, mob-rage, fear, cruelty, lust and greed; almost all human passions passing at intervals over whole races at one or more periods in their existence. There is something subtle, mysterious here, beyond the capability of the five senses to grasp or explain.

Neither will the reasoning faculty of man explain this inner sense. It is in no way an outcome of the logical faculty, but often in direct opposition to it. For want of a better name we call it the sixth sense, the intuitive faculty, the eye of the soul.

With this eye man can gaze into worlds not realised, not present nor existing to his material vision, but more real, true, and living to his spirit than anything which appeals to his five senses alone.

What is it but this faculty that has taught man that there exists a something above and beyond matter, that brings his spirit into contact with the eternal spirit permeating all things.

In proportion to our own development of this spirit within us do we perceive, know, and recognise this same spirit in things outside of ourselves, hence it must be by the intuitive sense that we perceive the finer shades and gradations of intelligent and spiritual life.

There are nowhere in nature any great chasms between one form of life and another; everything is one link in the great chain, the gradual series of developing steps. But looking at the purely material aspect of forms of life there would appear to be a great and wide gulf between man and the lower animals; may not this gap in the long chain be filled by intelligent beings, akin to the animals in their apparent want of a moral life, akin to man in their intelligence, with perhaps also a dormant soul yet waiting for development? The gay delight in existence of these fairy beings is shared by them with the whole animal creation; their fresh, innocent, unmoral state betokens also an animal existence, but superadded to this is a greater power of thought and reasoning faculty, a certain cunning and capacity for mischief. Not conscious sin, for that implies a moral sense, and all the tales and traditions show us no conscience in the fairy folk. The tales of their love for mortals and the leading of a life with one of human kind for the sake of such love, point to their capacity for developing a soul in some after existence.

As to their materiality, there must be many and divers theories.

Fairy folk may have their being under totally different laws and on a different plane of existence from ours. But all matter is not visible, nor under certain attenuated conditions able to be perceived by any of the five senses. The air we breathe is not usually visible, the still more wonderful and intangible ether permeating all things is matter as far as we know it, but not visible nor ponderable.

Man’s spirit, his personality, is clothed in matter, tangible, ponderable, perceptible by the five senses. It is not very difficult to carry this idea a little further and grant the existence of intelligent beings, personalities also, clothed in more ethereal, intangible matter; such a minute germ of spirit, for instance, 387as clothes itself in the tiny semblance of a human being, and dwells invisible to mortal eye in a flower cup; then the stronger spirit germ that attracts a larger amount of more ponderable matter and appears as a wood elf or water sprite, and so on through an infinitely graduated series, more or less ethereal, till we come to the changeling, so sufficiently visible and material as to deceive the mother, who is yet dimly conscious of the difference of spirit between her lost human baby and the weird personality which has taken its place. Again nearer still to man, the beautiful Undine, with yearning wish to develope a human soul, loving mankind because of that subtle attraction her own fast-developing soul has to the fully grown soul of a man. Such fairy beings have always been human in exterior form, tangible, passing amongst men and women as one of themselves, but with sufficient difference of spirit to mark them as of another kind of being. As the animal shows the evolution of man’s material self, so do the fairies help to point out the evolution in his spiritual self.

That mankind should have seen and described beings composed of such intangible matter as some of the inhabitants of the fairy world, seems difficult of belief, and yet the various aspects that certain traditional eerie forms have assumed to different eyes prove that though the human being in each case was seen to a certain extent, the seeing has been preceded by an inner perception and consciousness of the presence of an intelligent being, not human, and the strong perception has affected the physical organ of sight to such an extent that a visible embodiment of the perception has been produced.

The spectre, who by turns appears as a peasant to a peasant, as an armed knight to the armed knight in search of adventure, and in many another guise, shows how the individual mind of each seer has coloured the vision. Our argument, then, is that there are beings, intelligences, capable of being perceived by the inner sense of man, that from their very nature these cannot be seen first by the physical organ of sight, but only by this organ in proportion to the strength of the inner perception, and that the individual mind necessarily colours these visions according to its own nature.

Uneducated people, women and children, all those in whom the logical faculty is undeveloped and dormant, are much better able to perceive with this inner sense; their natures are more open to impressions, hence the colouring of the fairy world, as seen in tangible form, has always been more gay, innocent, bright and childlike than gloomy, and dark, and evil.

We are making a mistake, now, in our methods of developing the mind. We have looked so closely into the tiny space at our feet, that we have put out of focus the great world-picture which we should do better to try and understand more generally as a whole. In close scrutiny of details, and slavish devotion to microscopic truth, we are losing the larger truth, the fine sense of harmony in every part. And it is the inner sense alone that can help us to see things from this wider point of view.

And herein lies the true meaning of education, a drawing out, a development of the inner man, not forcing the surface of things into human minds and killing with merciless logic all efforts to use the soul’s eye.

There are the senses, instruments for the mind to use and develope, channels through which to gain knowledge of the external world, each to be used in turn, not one in its own place more than another, for it is the harmony of all that 388brings true knowledge, and within there is that blessed inner sense, transcending all the rest, sharpening them all to finer uses, turning the messages they bring into golden lessons of clearest truth.

And round the child’s mind let us build no walls, “This you can know – this you can see, but no further.”

So many steps on the road, and then a warning finger of prejudice – “Here stop; nay, go back!” And so the starving soul, hungry for knowledge, languishes on crumbs within sight of a feast. Or rather, the soul with striving pinions eager for flight is caught and prisoned in miserable cages of ignorance and unbelief, as if all the universe were not indeed lying open, ready, a clear, plain book wherein all may read who have eyes.

So in these glimpses into worlds not realized in a material sense, man may see a larger, fuller life possible for himself in the future. Matter irradiated with spirit, till both are identical, and the more man can perceive this light of the spirit shining through everything, the greater will be his own spiritual life and development.

And thus we plead for the fairies, not to revive belief in what has been judged a mere fanciful superstition cast aside on the lumber-heaps of the past, but as living actual present intelligences, capable of being perceived by the inner sense of man, one more means of attaining knowledge, one more proof of the reality of things not seen, one more link in the divine chain which binds our human spirits to the Great Spirit who gave them life.

Francis Annesley.

Footnotes