The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 9

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 Perths.h.i.+re.[29] 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 Sat.u.r.day, that being Mary's Day; nor on Sunday, that being the Lord's Day.

G.o.d 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.

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 s.h.i.+th_, '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 s.h.i.+th_, '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 sh.e.l.l of the blue valilla. In place-names _sith_, 'fairy,' is common. Glenshee, in Perths.h.i.+re, 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 house-work, or to thresh the farmer's corn or fan his grain. On such occasions they must not be molested nor interfered with, even in grat.i.tude. 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 rill 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 peats. She was aware of something whizzing through the silent air, pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 pa.s.sing. 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-s.h.i.+re, 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.[30]

'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 pa.s.sing 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. 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 hump-back which is so widespread. The fact that in Scotland the hump 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 ident.i.ty 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.[31]

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.[32]

'In Lewis libations are poured to the G.o.ddess [or G.o.d] of the sea, called _Shoney_,[33] in order to bring in seaweed. Until modern times in Iona similar libations were poured to a G.o.d 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-lorist 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 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.[34]

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 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 a.s.sociation 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.'