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Fairies, Pixies, Elves, Sprites & Other Little Folk

Cujo said:
1) A small entity with an evil sense of humour and a relaxed attitude to time.

2) Everything is possible but remember Occam's Razor.

Cujo
( is that how you spell Occam's Razor?):rolleyes:

Forgive my ignorance, but what is Occam's Razor?

:confused:
Carole
 
Occam's razor was defined on page 1 of this thread, Carole.
I was pleased to also see it equated with KISS, since I independently did that in an article for my AstroSoc newsletter a few months back!

However, it is a very reductionist tool, and cannot be used to prove anything. It is merely a working guideline. Frinstance, a computer can pass the Turing Test if, in conversation with a human through a suitable interface, the human cannot tell if he is talking to another human or a computer. Applying Occam's razor, we would have to say that if you can't tell the difference there IS no difference, so we would have to assume human characteristics like consciousness, love, etc, etc, to the computer. Personally, I think that is a step too far.



Back to fairies:
No-one seems to have mentioned that fairy hills are often equated with Barrows (old burial mounds, not the wheeled devices used by costermongers!).
 
Me and my sister saw faeries when we were very young, It was weird because I had forgotten all about it until my sister said only "Remember the fearies?" and it all came back. We only saw them once, and they were tiny people floating in a bubble of light.
 
nikita said:
Me and my sister saw faeries when we were very young, It was weird because I had forgotten all about it until my sister said only "Remember the fearies?" and it all came back. We only saw them once, and they were tiny people floating in a bubble of light.
Can you expand on this?:eek:
 
p.younger said:
Can you expand on this?:eek:
Sure, I was about 8 and my sis was 6, we were at an aunts house sleeping over, and we were up late( for being that young) talking, as we couldn't sleep and all of the sudden we noticed a little light, then more came and when they came closer, we saw that they were very small people, all feminine looking, no hair and pointed ears, pale silver skin and the light that surrouned them was white. we just sat there and stared at them, then I cant remember what happened after that, I just know me and my sister didn't say a word about it to anyone, not even each other up until a few years ago. Thats all I remember, It's a vivid memmory now, but it didnt come back to me until later.
 
nikita said:
Sure, I was about 8 and my sis was 6, we were at an aunts house sleeping over, and we were up late( for being that young) talking, as we couldn't sleep and all of the sudden we noticed a little light, then more came and when they came closer, we saw that they were very small people, all feminine looking, no hair and pointed ears, pale silver skin and the light that surrouned them was white. we just sat there and stared at them, then I cant remember what happened after that, I just know me and my sister didn't say a word about it to anyone, not even each other up until a few years ago. Thats all I remember, It's a vivid memmory now, but it didnt come back to me until later.
I find this quite interesting, taken at face value this story could be dismissed as one kid dreaming and then convincing the other that he or she had seen it too, but the same kind of thing happened to my niece in similar circumstances, she and a friend who was sleeping over insist they were woken by the sound of giggling and saw on the windowsill a tiny cottage with with small folk dancing around it, both were sure they were not dreaming and it remains a mystery to this day twenty years later.:eek!!!!:
 
p.younger said:
I find this quite interesting, taken at face value this story could be dismissed as one kid dreaming and then convincing the other that he or she had seen it too, but the same kind of thing happened to my niece in similar circumstances, she and a friend who was sleeping over insist they were woken by the sound of giggling and saw on the windowsill a tiny cottage with with small folk dancing around it, both were sure they were not dreaming and it remains a mystery to this day twenty years later.:eek!!!!:
I would think so, to if it hadn't happened to me. As a kid I wasn't very interested in faeries, nor was my sister, so it would be a weird thing to make up. We would be more likely to claim to have seen a My Little Pony or She-Ra!
 
No, I haven't seen any fairies, but...

When I was about 3 years old (I think), I woke up early one morning and looked out of the window onto the front lawn.
It was a very cold morning, and there was a bit of mist rolling over the lawn. The entire lawn was covered in cobwebs covered in dew that was just starting to freeze. A magical sight to a 3 year old!
I remember hearing little voices and giggling, urging me to open the window and go out. So I climbed out of the window, and danced about on the lawn. I remember hearing the little voices around me as I ran about on the fairy-tale grass.
Unfortunately, it was at that point that my Dad came out of the house, and hauled me back inside.
Amazingly, although I was only 3, I remember it quite clearly. I didn't see them, but I heard them.

Also, completely incidentally, I have one pointy ear, and one normal ear...
...does this make me a fairy? :eek:
 
Mythopoeika said:
Also, completely incidentally, I have one pointy ear, and one normal ear...
...does this make me a fairy? :eek:

Half (or maybe a quarter?) Vulcan, perhaps. ;)
 
Hold on, I know I've come into this a little late, but I can't ignore some of this stuff.

Firstly, the Sidhe aren't bog standard little fairies/faeries (spelling dependant on how pretentious you wish to be, I've often thought). They're tall and very powerful, far more like the Tuatha de Danaan as mentioned before.

And Bean Sidhes (or Banshees - I never said I wasn't pretentious :)) aren't soul sucking succubi (say that with a mouthful of Smarties). Bean Sidhes tend to appear at times of death (yours or someone elses). They tend to be seen near water (wells, or usually streams) combing their long hair, or they can be heard as a woman's wailing cry. They are portents of death, not death itself.

I hope that's cleared up a few things
 
Faries are a light snack best served poached and dressed in a white wine sauce.

*Claps*
I don't belive in faries!

Az
 
Aben Zin said:
I don't belive in faries!

Az

I don`t belive in tables and chairs, but that dosn`t mean the don`t exist. There are also people who have never seen a table or chair but that does not stop them existing someware else.;)

Wm.
 
pardon my ignorance, but there are evil fairys?

i know this may be a bit late in the thread to be asking this but it's a while since i last read this thread and im a bit shocked at the thought of evil fairys


cas
 
casio said:
pardon my ignorance, but there are evil fairys?

i know this may be a bit late in the thread to be asking this but it's a while since i last read this thread and im a bit shocked at the thought of evil fairys


cas

If I remember correctly most fairy lore describes them as at best mischeivious and at worst downright maleveolent. I think we have forgotton this because our ancestors tended not to say what they thought out loud for fear that they would be overheard.

A bit like the ancient greeks who called the Furies the Eumenides (kindly ones) as they feared their wrath too much to use their real name out loud.

Cujo
 
well if they were all as foxy as tinkerbell (julia roberts) in peter pan (the film) then quite frankly i dont care how they behave



cas
 
Cujo said:
If I remember correctly most fairy lore describes them as at best mischeivious and at worst downright maleveolent. I think we have forgotton this because our ancestors tended not to say what they thought out loud for fear that they would be overheard.

The demise of the original faerie is often atributed to Shakespear - A Midsummer Night's Dream no doubt contributed to it. Shakespear wanted some magical agency, and one traditional to engalnd, but removed anything unpleasant from the faerie image. Other poets like Drayton and Herrick also wrote entirely self-imagined works about tiny little faeries with wings.

Soon after English fiction became obsessed with new stories of the Arabian Nights and tales of oriental magic, and faeries were forgotton.

The Victorians resurrected the stories, but only as tales for children. We all know how suppressed the Victorians were anyway, so imagine how harmless the kids stuff was made. This view stuck around and enjoyed grea popularity until little before the Second World War.

Interest in the old faerie legends was still shown by Kipling and others (no doubt in the occult revival as well), but it's greatest champion was probably J.R.R. Tolkien. Being a lecturer in Anglo-Saxon myths, he knew his stuff, and The Lord Of The Rings has been viewed as an exercise in reminding society what a true faerie tale should be.
 
Fairies were probably more amoral than actually evil. They were capable of good things, befriending mere mortals etc and being nice, but they could also do rather unpleasant things as well, like sticking an ass's head on your shoulders for starters!

Mind you, on some people that would be an improvement.

Anyway, some of the time it had to do with respect - you treated them right and they'd leave you alone. Or they'd just make your life hell for a laugh, or give you fantatic gifts and/or powers, again just for a laugh.

One thing's for sure - there are some fairies you wouldn't want at the end of your garden
 
Hmm, were'nt fairies also known as the hollow folk? It seem that not only do they play with time but also space.

Believing in fairies .... ? my faith is that there is something more than the mundane world but that primitive terms like god, fairy, soul or spirit do not assist us to examine it.

But I can't let you get away with saying that Shakespear reduced the fay. Sure the servants they employed were small but the senior fairies were Oberon, Titania and Puck and you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of them.

N.B According to the antiquarian, diarist and founder member of the Royal Society, John Evelyn, fairies were done for by the English civil war
 
Would query Dan's notion that the Victorians made fairies sweet
and harmless. Dadd? Doyle? Millais? Maclise? Paton? All of them
used fairy lore to explore some very adult themes. The nightmare
world of Victorian fairy painting is something children might still find
disturbing.

So when did they become sweet and harmless? There are dark
notes in Peter Pan but the fairy Tinkerbell is in danger of fading
if the children do not believe. A wave of fairy plays and books
followed during the First World War, offering escapist entertainment.

The Starlight Express by Algernon Blackwood, which Elgar set to music
can seem a very twee story of stardust but underneath it lies a full
gnostic myth of regeneration. Blackwood had been a practising occultist.

There are signs in decorative artists such as Walter Crane that the
fairies were ornamental without being dangerous, yet illustrators such as
Rackham never lost sight of the implicit ambiguity of their appeal.

It is when the image of the fairy is withdrawn from any narrative that it
seems to cloy. The cliché fairies seem to be the work of commercial artists
illustrating gift-books, cards and packaging from the 1920s onwards?
 
If you read FT151 page 48-49 "Local Inconsistencies....", you would of read about "Bonewitz's Law" - What you believe is what you get". So if you belief in fairies and the like, they will come into existence. If you stope believing then they'll disappear. Those with the strongest belief will determine the local reality. This is why the Loch Ness monster is not sighted in the Thames, if nobody beleives its there then it cannot appear/exist in the Thames.

Objects cannot believe in monsters etc.... This probably why this no definite proof for UFO's, God, bigfoot etc. Is because the camera doesn't beleve what it is seeing, therefore, it cannot exist for the camera.

Redtom
 
Faerie-lore isn't really my field, as such, but I thought you might be interested in these bits...

I grew up in Keighley, in West Yorkshire. When I was a kid 25-odd years ago some hill farmers were known to be still leaving "gifts" of a pat of butter, or maybe some milk or bacon at the farm gate for the local "Hob", as they are known in that bit of the area (Boggarts, elsewhere in Yorkshire, I believe), the idea being that if "they" were happy, they wouldn't get up to any mischief. The farmers could still be doing it to this day (I hope so!). As it happens, the lane leading from Oakworth to the moors is called Hob lane.

I presume this practice has some sort of pre-Christian prayer offering origin, a bit like wishing wells... I recall reading one farmer saying "It's just for the cats not bloody fairies!" but I imagine a Yorkshire hill farmer probably would say that to avoid any potential affront to the down-to-earth Yorkshire stereotype, so who knows?

Nearby, in Stanbury, the Old Silent Inn is meant to be haunted by the sound of "Fairy Bells"

In Langcliffe, at the foot of Ribblesdale almost every house had smooth pebbles and upturned Pond's Cold Cream Jars (!) on their window ledges and thresholds, to keep away evil and the Little People. Sadly, this seems to have died out as the houses have become holiday homes for yuppies :mad:

I wonder if paranormal activity has increased since the smooth stones went?
 
Found this reference in a link from the Breaking news page.
... A dwende is a dwarf. A tiyanak is a monster who takes the form of a baby or a little child. It lures the unwary into a forest with its cries until he gets lost.

Turn your shirt inside out and the spell will be broken. A nuno sa punso is an old dwarf who lives in a little mound of earth. Step on that mound and bad things will happen to you ...

The link in full is
http://www.inq7.net/opi/2001/nov/01/opi_nhcruz-1.htm

This sounds a lot like celtic fairy lore
 
Fairy folk

Fairy Tales

By Rebecca Patt

In a post-'X-Files' world, fairies may be the next big--er, little--thing. Here in Santa Cruz, they even have a spokesperson ...

YOU BELIEVE IN fairies, right? It's OK, you can admit it. This is Santa Cruz. But wait, I'm not just talking about the fairies who wear lipstick and strut around the Dakota. I'm talking about ... well, Tinker Bell. Except for real. Supposedly.

Around here, testimonials of fairy sightings abound, and boy, do they come out of the woodwork when you're working on a story like this. Fairies are said to be of all shapes and sizes and in all different locations. One local said he glimpsed some wee folk fluttering around a field of wildflowers in Utah. Another said he's seen the Mothman, a Shaquille O'Neal-sized, brown-winged creature, while at a rest stop in Humboldt. Yet another claimed to have encountered one of the legendary Menehune--the swarthy, fierce little people of Hawaiian mythology--while on a camping trip in Kauai.

But if fairies exist, you know we're going to get stuck with them in Santa Cruz. We were practically asking for it with that whole Elfland thing. And indeed, if you had to pick a ground zero for the emerging fairy phenomenon--which from the looks of it may very well snowball into something like the angel craze a decade ago--this just might be the place...

More here.

Load of old cottingley's? You decide. ;)
 
Diet might have something to do with it....

I've never actually seen a fairy, but I recall a trip to Yosemite years ago when I saw an entrance to the fairy world. I had eaten some mushrooms (three guesses which kind?) and saw what is known as a "fairy ring" - a perfect circle of trees which had grown up from suckers at the base of a reaaaaaaly big tree stump. Eventually the stump decomposes and you end up with a mysterious ring of trees. Sun was slanting thru the other trees and viola`! A perfect beam of light shone thru the gaps in the ring. In my altered mental state, I connected "fairy ring" with fairies, and it looked like a door with a bright light shining thru. So I concluded that was an entrance into fairy land. The lovely ferns, flowers, birdsong etc around me, so different from my normal cityscape environment increased the slightly surreal feel of the scene. But when I came down I was able to sort it all out.

Or maybe the 'shrooms just peeled away a veneer of "rationalization" that makes a me discount the things that contradict my personal world-view.....
 
ah yes, common field mushrooms do that to me, too.
 
My eldest child always swore she saw fairies throughout her childhood and sticks to her story now.
 
As you say varying types. It is easy for people to see fairies all over the world, if all strange humanoids are seen as fairies.
 
Fairies...

My ex-girlfriend told me of a few occasions when she and her sister interacted with them in their playroom when she was about 7 years old. She told me about the incidents rather matter-of-factly, before I grilled her about every last detail !

Apparently little folk (about 6-9 inches tall) danced and capered around their playroom, dressed in odd old-style clothes and speaking a language other than English. They didn't communicate directly with the girls, but were friendly and definately interactive. At one point the girls offered them a snack of bread with mulicoloured sprinkles (cake decoration-type). A few of the little-folk seemed curious and hesitantly sampled it, but weren't terribly impressed with the food. The girls got the impression from the clothing and social interaction that there was a heirachy and that a few of the more finely dressed characters were a type of nobility. All in all it seemed to be a positive and uplifting experience for the girls.

I also questioned my girlfriend's sister not long after I learned about the incidents. She confirmed the incidents and the info she gave me corroberated. Neither my ex-girlfriend or her sister were prone to flights of fancy and if anything I was a bit taken aback as to how matter-of-fact they were about it. I am 100% sure they believed what they saw and the details given individually matched.

I myself have not experienced any tangible, unambiguous Fortean phenomenon, but I am certain that my whole theory of life, the universe and everything would be somewhat different if I had experienced something like this during my childhood, with a witness to back it up.

These encounters occurred in suburban sub-tropical Australia (which, to me, seemed an odd place for the sort of traditional European folklore phenomena to occur), however the girls were born in Yorkshire, UK.
Perhaps these folklore-related phenomena migrate with the people, lending credence, I guess, to the more mundane psychological explanations of the little people phenomena.
 
I've seen things

Before I go any further, though, I should say that I lost my right eye in an accident when I was 15 months old. This has led to severely asymmetric development in my brain, including the hippocampus, which is one of the big pointers towards TLE. So I have not yet discounted the theory that I might be doing an alleged Whitely Streiber here (although I don't believe that aliens came millions of light years across space to stick a probe up my arse).

A very close knit group of friends and myself have experiences with things that may or may not be what the rest of the world calls faeries. There are all sorts, from small sparklies (differing from entoptics in that they are independent of the movement of the eye or head and they giggle, fer pity's sake) to small, stocky blokes in brown clothes with beards and a severe attitude, passing through such things as kelpies and bunyips in between. We use folkloric terminology for ease of communication rather than because we believe that is what these things are.

I don't have much of an issue with that sort of thing. It's just one way of interacting with one's environment and they may or may not be external. The bit that worries me is the Otherkin phenomenon. There are an awful lot of people out there accepting without question the idea that they are non-humans (faeries included - particularly Tolkien-esque elves) trapped in human bodies as some sort of grand field trip or experiment.

Sam
 
Just so you know, there is a Fairyland housing estate near Neath, South Wales. You can actually get the bus to Fairyland.
 
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