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Fairies, Pixies, Elves, Sprites & Other Little Folk

That was very interesting lordmongrove.
Reminds me of when my daughter and I went on an indigenous walk at Monkey Mia and the guide told us he would see little people when he hunted at night.
Maybe that's why it got called 'Monkey Mia'?
It's largely desert there, nowhere for anything to hide.
 
Maybe that's why it got called 'Monkey Mia'?
It's largely desert there, nowhere for anything to hide.

Yeah Nah Myth - there's plenty of places to hide at Monkey Mia...the resort is a bit bare but the rest of the place is alright.

Monkey Mia (Gutharraguda, Monkey Mia's real name, means two bays).


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A landscape totally alien to what I see everyday:(

Yeah, I must admit, me too PeteS. I'm about 4,000 K's east of MM on the Bruie Plains of New South Wales - it's mainly grey and white box country, with Cypress Pine in spots, Red IronBark on the occasional ridges and Sheoak around subsurface water.

The only thing lacking IS water...and the aquatic life of course. Our water source is the Bogan River - when it runs, so we're making do with bore water.

It's a treat to travel this big country, and I adore coming over a ridge to discover the surrounding bush that you've travelled through for 300 K's has dramatically changed to a completely different habitat.

Anyway, Monkey Mia - a nice spot mate.
 
That's the first time I have watched on one of those videos. That's utterly charming and has a bit of a Detectorists vibe. Which is a compliment because The Detectorists is some of the finest tv I have seen in years.
Hehe yes, it's Russel and Hugh!
 
What an interesting thread, with room for all parts of the spectrum of Fortean approaches to a subject.

There are things that you can see or experience that exist outside of your body, and yet which lack any solid existence of their own. Examples include a rainbow, a reflection and an echo. Two people a hundred metres apart can see a rainbow at the same time, but it is not the same rainbow.

Dismissing hundreds or even thousands of years of fairy lore from a wide range of cultures with reductionist explanations like "a race memory of an earlier bronze age people" is no more "scientific" than some airy hand waving explanation by analogy with references to planes, dimensions, or wavelengths.

Likewise, dismissing it all with a generic psychological explanation misses the point.

Fairies are like fear, love, and hope: they exist in the sense that people experience them, they do things to appease or encourage them, and they allow their belief in them to affect their own behaviour.

Here's my thought on fairy land. It has happened to me a handful of times in 58 years. I first had this insight when I went to Bampton in Oxfordshire to watch the traditional Morris dancers. I drove round the corner and there they were outside the pub, dressed in clean fresh brilliantly white costumes, lit by a shaft of sunlight, their lines straight, and every man off the ground at the same time, and they looked perfect. For the rest of the day, they were a bunch of mainly middle aged men in slightly grubby whites who had enjoyed a pint and were going through the motions of their traditional dances. In that first moment when I saw the they looked exactly like they ought to look; for the rest of the day, they looked like they really are.

There are moments when everything is exactly as it should be. There is the moment when the low afternoon sun brings out the golds and yellows in the birch forest, when the ground underfoot is dry and carpeted with leaves that are golden and not yet decayed, and when you glance in the right direction just as a jay or a green woodpecker rises from the ground. You step on a dry twig and the sharp crack of it breaking echoes and that is the only sound you can hear. A moment later, the sun has gone behind a cloud, a group of mountain bikers goes tearing past, and you notice that the path is strewn with litter. That first perfect moment was something like fairy land.

It is almost like deja vu, which I have experienced a few times. It is a moment of perception that is gone almost before you notice it.
 
HE IS BACK!
Thanks! I wouldn't have found this for days probably if I'd not seen your post.

It's all a bit more arty when shot by Tom. (Who has messed with the colour saturation nicely, by the look of it). And at last we get to see Tom.

Love that he's back. He's what my kids call "wholesome". There's so little wholesome left in the world. Dartmoor, too, he said. Not sure I've noticed him identifying places, before. Love that he's back. In time for Beltane, too... That's no coincidence.
 
Thanks! I wouldn't have found this for days probably if I'd not seen your post.

It's all a bit more arty when shot by Tom. (Who has messed with the colour saturation nicely, by the look of it). And at last we get to see Tom.

Love that he's back. He's what my kids call "wholesome". There's so little wholesome left in the world. Dartmoor, too, he said. Not sure I've noticed him identifying places, before. Love that he's back. In time for Beltane, too... That's no coincidence.


His beards whiter though...
 
I was introduced to Little People, pooka, and banshee from a 1959 Disney film called Darby O’Gill and the little People

where Sir Sean Connery had to sing and in later years said that was scary for him.
 
is Erwin's channel going to turn into a Detectorists-style whimsical Englishness comedy (with pixies + wyrms)? Maybe that was it all along? Tom isn't as good an actor as him, so this one is more obviously scripted. Turning it into more-easily legible entertainment would be one way around the bind he's got into now that he's got so many credulous followers, and might face a backlash when people realise he is monetising the character he's created (i.e exploiting his believers).
 
... and might face a backlash when people realise he is monetising the character he's created (i.e exploiting his believers).
Monetising something gives it value, not only to the person making the profit, but also to the customer or consumer.

A brand new expensive car is a very poor investment indeed compared to a second hand but reliable car. However, a successful financial advisor will gain customers and build her business by having the brand new expensive car: the opposite of what logic would suggest. People are attracted to the signs of success: the accountant has made money doing this, and therefore she must be good at it — and therefore she will make money for me.

Similarly with expensive wine. Once you get past about £10 a bottle and eliminate the poor quality plonk, most of us could not tell the difference. However, we are likely to be impressed if someone gives us a £50 bottle of wine. The fact that they paid that much for it increases our perception of its quality.

If Erwin's product is "good enough to make money" then that will give it an added air of credibility for many.

Of course, there will be some who see it as a "sell out" and will move on to the next big thing.
 
Monetising something gives it value, not only to the person making the profit, but also to the customer or consumer.

A brand new expensive car is a very poor investment indeed compared to a second hand but reliable car. However, a successful financial advisor will gain customers and build her business by having the brand new expensive car: the opposite of what logic would suggest. People are attracted to the signs of success: the accountant has made money doing this, and therefore she must be good at it — and therefore she will make money for me.

Similarly with expensive wine. Once you get past about £10 a bottle and eliminate the poor quality plonk, most of us could not tell the difference. However, we are likely to be impressed if someone gives us a £50 bottle of wine. The fact that they paid that much for it increases our perception of its quality.

If Erwin's product is "good enough to make money" then that will give it an added air of credibility for many.

Of course, there will be some who see it as a "sell out" and will move on to the next big thing.
...but this isn't just about monetisation, it's about people believing Erwin is a real person, which he isn't. Some of the people buying his prints + drawings for up to £1,000+ are spending that money because they believe he is a genuine bumbling english guy stalking pixies at Alderley Edge and elsewhere. I think that if the channel becomes more obviously fictional, employing the visual grammar + tropes of film/tv, then people who were duped might accept that it is fiction more easily, and just say how clever it is, without calling Erwin/Smith a charlatan. This is just a theory. With his art getting £1K on ebay, this could be viewed as fraud, and it could get difficult for him. Turning it into something that's clearly entertainment could allow him to have his cake and eat it.
[edited for clarity +typos]
 
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