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Don't Mess With The Fairies

There is a strong case that she made things up. Which is fine! her fairy stories are brilliant :D But she seems to have been unable/unwilling to differentiate between evidence she collected from another source (eg she was told as a child or something) and imaginings she created in a mind steeped in folklore and creativity.

It is, in retrospect, unfortunate that Katherine Briggs (who I think was president of the Folklore Society at the time) was a personal friend and believed in totally in the genuine natures of Tongue's work. This gave Tongue an authority she perhaps didn't deserve - and normal critical scholarly attention didn't happen until both had died. :(

It doesn't take away from the delight and wonder of her tales IMNSHO. It /does/ mean that the waters are muddied for data collection and further research though.

Have a look at this @Ghost In The Machine

https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/ruth-tongue.html
 
Good stuff @packshaud ! And then there is Margaret Murray and her Old Religion thesis which is now seen as unsupported by evidence.

The historiography of floklore studies is fascinating I think?
 
Good stuff @packshaud ! And then there is Margaret Murray and her Old Religion thesis which is now seen as unsupported by evidence.

The historiography of floklore studies is fascinating I think?
It can't be a bigger mess than the production of the Star Trek franchise. Nothing beats that.
Perhaps Dr. Who, but I never dug too deep into that.
 
If this comes from a source that isn't you, can you credit it please @Indrid Drood :)
Oh, sure. (I had previously pasted the passage quoted here into a text file for personal use without attribution; checking the quote out online, I found the following:)

How Fast Do Fairies Fly?

"This comes from a story told in the The Prince Edward Island Magazine (June 1902)"
 
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Yes but oddly we were watching it years back on a DVD that broke before the last bit so I have never seen the ending!

Talking of labrynths, we were at the City of Troy, the other day. My mate is buried in graveyard nearby in Terrington, and we stumbled on this last year when going to visit her. Apparently, it might be Victorian it could be way older...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Town
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One of my very favourite places. OH and I once spent a magical afternoon there (the Yorkshire Wolds are magical to me, anyway, but that place in particular). The following year, we attempted to share the magic with our children, but were unable to make our way back to it: all the roads leading to it were blocked off. I don't know what we must have done to upset the place...
 
From the list of the Top Ten Fairy Books made by Beachcombing,
[ http://www.strangehistory.net/2012/07/07/top-ten-fairy-books/ ]
I want to call your attention upon the book written by Mac Manus. Here is his small review of it:

A little known book describing fairy belief in Ireland in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. DMM was a friend of Yeats and himself a believer in fairies and pulled together here a series of peculiarly vivid accounts of rural fairy sightings at the end of Anglo-Irish ascendancy and then as De Valera’s Catholic ascendancy was shaking the last breaths out of the sidhe. The constant references to grandfather’s gardeners, cousins, friends, friends of friends is peculiarly Irish pre or post partition: the island is small, after all. But there is none of that saccharine nonsense (‘they had lovely rainbow wings…’) that infects later works on fairies: this is the only work on this list that will give you nightmares.

It is available at the Open Library (each patron can keep a book borrowed for up to 15 days).
Both of these are the same book, the order of the chapters is different in both editions.

UK, The Middle Kingdom:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6455523W/The_middle_kingdom

US, Irish Earth Folk:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17682810W/Irish_earth_folk
 
The above-quoted post just -- belatedly -- noticed. This book is mentioned -- with quotes / semi-quotes of some length -- in the "Fortean Traveller" section of the Forums: sub-section "Fortean Nations", the "Ireland" entry.
 
That would be ...

The Prince Edward Island Magazine
Vol. 4, no. 4 (June, 1902)

"How Roderick Visited Europe"; subtitled "Carried off by the Fairies"
Author: J. M. K.
00. 136 ff.

http://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_06876_40/23?r=0&s=1
Thanks, great to read the whole thing! I took screenshots, which I reproduce here if there is no objection: roderick 1.pngroderick 2.pngroderick 3.pngroderick 4.pngroderick 5.png
 
I've done some online rummaging around to determine whether or not The Prince Edward Island Magazine was a literary (versus news / non-fiction) publication. There are certainly a number of literary contributions published within it.

FWIW the Roderick story (along with the anonymized "J. M. K." author attribution) strikes me as a fictional submission rather than a field report. I'm at a loss to explain why it's been widely cited as if it was anything more than that.
 
I've done some online rummaging around to determine whether or not The Prince Edward Island Magazine was a literary (versus news / non-fiction) publication. There are certainly a number of literary contributions published within it.

FWIW the Roderick story (along with the anonymized "J. M. K." author attribution) strikes me as a fictional submission rather than a field report. I'm at a loss to explain why it's been widely cited as if it was anything more than that.
It may be "fiction", it may be "fact", or perhaps it resides somewhere in between, in that hyphenated space on the spectrum that unites the two.
The style – rather than subtance – does indeed strike one as literary from our 21st c. vantage point, but this was simply how educated people thought and wrote in the 19th and early 20th c.

Either way, it's a darn good read, and highy amusing/terrifying.
 
One of my very favourite places. OH and I once spent a magical afternoon there (the Yorkshire Wolds are magical to me, anyway, but that place in particular). The following year, we attempted to share the magic with our children, but were unable to make our way back to it: all the roads leading to it were blocked off. I don't know what we must have done to upset the place...
Krepostnoi, we found it because we got lost and came into Terrington by a road we'd never been on, before... So it must have wanted us to find it! We just saw the sign or whatever and randomly stopped because it looked interesting.

When we were there the other day, a woman came out of the woods over the road from it and asked if we'd seen her dog. She'd lost it on a shoot, apparently. A bit later, a 4 x 4 pulled up, rolled down the window and a bloke - must have been the husband - asked us the same thing. I hope they found him. As you can see from the second picture, it was about dusk when we got there. I doubt it's a Bermuda Triangle thing (more a stupid terrier thing) - and hope they found him before it got dark.
 
Oh lucky you! It's one of my all time favourites! What a cool thing to have done. Just saw that episode.
Yes Filmed at Bamburgh Castle but the only sad thing about it the bloody BBC did the usual not commission the show for a 2nd series which they did with another great show The Living and The Dead.
 
I have a suspicion that Faeries actually refers to people who followed village fairs around. Today we would call them carnies. The more you dig, the more connections you find.
 
I have a suspicion that Faeries actually refers to people who followed village fairs around. Today we would call them carnies. The more you dig, the more connections you find.
These connections, of course, might have played a part on fairy lore. Mixed meanings with different origins often fuse, and similar words become one.
However, I would point you to the article "The Semantics of the Word Fairy" written by Noel Williams, in the book The Good People edited by Peter Narváez (pp. 457–498).
If you want to read the thesis that was the base for the chapter, you can get it here (free download):
The semantics of the word 'fairy' in English between 1320 and 1829.
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/24958/
 
These connections, of course, might have played a part on fairy lore. Mixed meanings with different origins often fuse, and similar words become one. However, I would point you to the article "The Semantics of the Word Fairy" written by Noel Williams, in the book The Good People edited by Peter Narváez (pp. 457–498). If you want to read the thesis that was the base for the chapter, you can get it here (free download): The semantics of the word 'fairy' in English between 1320 and 1829.
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/24958/
Thank you so much. I will get stuck into this asap. This is an issue that has interested me for quite a while, and I didn't know anybody had written seriously about it.
 
Thank you so much. I will get stuck into this asap. This is an issue that has interested me for quite a while, and I didn't know anybody had written seriously about it.
If that is the case, get the book too. It was written later, and it may have updates (I didn't had time to read them yet).
Updates do exist, for example, in Scottish Fairy Belief by Lizanne Henderson. I had access to the thesis her book was based on, and after comparing them, I noticed the "chapters" were rearranged and some things are updated (I would have to dig up some examples, but I don't have time now. Time, time, time, I should be working! See you later.
 
Nice to be among fellow bibliophiles. So far the article is quite interesting btw. Thx again.
 
Where the Fairies Dwell: Irish Ringforts in Our World and Theirs

Source: ancient-origins.net
Date: 6 March, 2020

A cloud of mystery looms over the ringforts that speckle the countryside of Ireland. More than 45,000 ringforts have been documented throughout Northern Europe and yet little is known about the date, occupancy, and function of these structures. Perhaps this mystery persists due to the mythology surrounding them; that they exist as the gate way to the realm of the fairies and are protected pieces of Irish history that few dare to disturb.

Accounts of missing livestock, trances, death, and other misfortune have kept the fairy forts protected for many years. However, a few brave historians and archaeologists are beginning to peel back the curtain and search for answers regarding these ancient structures.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/anc...l-irish-ringforts-our-world-and-theirs-007061
 

Responding rather late -- ah yes, the Korrigans ! By chance, I had heard -- long ago, and "in the by-going" -- of this faerie folk. It was via a story in -- I think -- an ancient (1920s?) book of "knowledge and lore about anything and everything" for kids, which we had in the family: in there, I'd reckon, as an example of a Breton folk-tale. Just "korrigans" in general were written of -- not going into the various "sub-species" mentioned in the linked item: IIRC, simply a brief explanation that they are a "little people" of legend, comparable to our piskies, brownies, etc. From what I remember of this tale, these guys in it, would likeliest have been of the "korril" variety: I recall that via korrigan-type agency, the human hero -- a nice, straightforward fellow -- was in the end rewarded; whereas his obnoxious, greedy, crooked rival ended up beggared and humiliated. I remember the korrigans' days-of-the-week song, featuring in the tale.
 
Leprechaun Tribunals

Tribunals are convened only when there is some
sort of dispute between leprechauns, or when it is
alleged that some sort of crime has been
committed. (These are not “crimes” in the human
sense; they may include excessive noisiness, long
periods of relative sobriety, and so on.) The
casters will hear all sides and will deliberate at
length (usually over copious amounts of poteen,
supplied by the local leprechaun community) before
arriving at their decisions. These judgments do not
have to be unanimous—a simple majority verdict
will do.

From the (admittedly questionable) accounts of
those mortals who have secretly witnessed them,
leprechaun courts seem to be rather undisciplined
affairs, reminiscent of courtrooms in the American
Wild West. Strong drink is permitted to be served
throughout the proceedings, and this often leads to
rowdy and undisciplined behavior among both the
spectators and the judges. Indeed, it is said that
on a number of occasions, during certain lengthy
proceedings, the judges have become so
intoxicated that they could not reach a coherent
decision. There is also, if reports are to be
believed, a great deal of trading and selling
between leprechauns within the court, so the whole
affair takes on the appearance of a market.

(from Bob Curran's book on leprechauns)
 
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