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| "This 1960s painting by Matta D. evokes Faery World fascination for me." --J. Arthur Rath III |
FAIRY LORE
This painting by Matta D introduces this webpage’s link with lands and beings beyond the everyday world. Writers such as Tolkien, Yeats, and Blake created mythical systems of their own, as did Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll. This web page traces such paths and also follows the road of folklorist Tristram Potter Coffin who was the consultant to Time-Life Books Inc. when they published a sequence on myths, legends, and folk tales.
Posting IV
Universal Fairy Faith
Interest in Fairy phenomena surged and diverged during the late nineteenth century. Participants in new areas of mysticism, e.g., Rosicrucians, adopted some, psychology leaders took it into account, and fairy lore flourished in all areas of the creative arts.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was himself a Spiritualist and published a full-length book, “The Coming of Fairies” (1922).
A general feeling grew about many things one has never seen, but existence of which no sensible person would wish to deny. I decided to learn about it.
… During many years in Upstate New York I became acquainted with Indian beliefs. Iroquois Indians told me elders once summoned dwarfs and nature spirits by knocking on a large stone.
… I read accounts of races of pygmy stature around the world that corresponded to European dwarfs and trolls. They lived in Southern Asia and its islands, in Melanesia, New Guinea. Central Africa had pygmy races.
…I read accounts of pygmies in China during the 23rd Century B.C. Japan had survivors of dwarfs in the Kurile Islands. (The hairy Ainu, a Caucasian-like, under-sized race, exterminated the Negrito race, two to three feet in stature.) The Pre-Buddhist animist of the Japanese apparently is due to folk memories of them.
…Fairies were famous among the Romans and Teutons. Romans pictured them on mediaeval reliefs as pygmies with butterfly wings.
…Egyptians and Greeks represented the soul as a small winged human figure.
…Small gnomes are regarded as friendly to man. In fairy lore they are treated as mine-haunting fairies, goblins, pixies, leprechauns, and elves living in the earth (raths), rocks, and caverns.
William Butler Yeats, Irish mystic and poet, delved deeply into mythology and Pre-Raphaelite artists and Victorian authors romanticized it.
In 1917 Yeats described how he was bringing his mind close to the minds of Indian and Japanese poets.
His vision fused together ghosts, fairies, and magic, and Christian faith. In 1902 Yeats wrote of wakening from a dream to see the loveliest people he had ever seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green, cut like old Green raiment, were standing at his bedside. Her dress was gathered about her neck into kind of a chain which represented ivy leaves. (See description of a fairy garland in the Rath “May Day is Fay Day” 2012 blog on this website.)
Yeats wrote: “What filled me with wonder was the miraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now. …It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like mountain pools at evening, so peaceful it might be a little sad.”
He based metaphors on Japanese drama, e.g., “He is like those phantom lovers in a Japanese play who never mingle or cry.” He described a ghost in a Japanese play who is set afire by a fantastic scruple. A Buddhist priest explains the fire will go out if the ghost ceased to believe in it (which of course it couldn’t).
Yeats describes amorous shades (ghosts) in a Japanese play and equated them with the human soul’s desire for eternal possession of a single moment!
Asian Bonding
Asian folklore is not my recent avocation as the following recollection illustrates. My multi-culture orientation toward fairy and folktales is the outcome of my Hawaii enculturation. As a child I was exposed to Asian, Hawaiian and Caucasian culture drama and stories. By the time I wrote “The Nightingale” for a college competition, I’d read Yeats’ impressions about Japanese theatre.
The headline for my play’s review included the words “Theatrical Magic.” Romance Language Professor Frank Piano of now 200-year-old Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, wrote:
“‘The Nightingale’ is a philosophical melodrama set in rural Japan. It calls for stylized acting and carefully calculated movements. Emotion is portrayed largely by the way the characters look and move…sustaining an atmosphere of inner trepidation which amounts to sheer theatrical magic. Important also was the excellent music, makeup, staging and author’s imagination for the effectiveness of the total impression. The production was done in a streamlined form of ‘theatre in the round’…It swelled the scene by means of ‘the brightest heaven of invention.’”
I wrote the wavering young Buddhist monk’s song:
“Kiss me darling, kiss me under starlit skies, Yoi, Yoi. And play your samisen for me by the lantern light. I’ll tenderly caress you and whisper words of love….In the silent and silvery night, just you and me. Only temple bells a-ringing far and far away. Sano Yoi, Yoi.”
The play’s denouement reflected Japanese tragedy genre:
For lover or nightingale who can wait? Whenever he cometh, he cometh late.
Seeing “Pagliacci,” Leoncavalli’s opera in New York City inspired me to begin my play with a Japanese-styled sung “Prologue.” After bowing to the audience, the kimono-clad interlocutor sang:
Good friends…
Kindly permit me to exclaim
That the wiles of women are many,
And affect all men the same.
In the wooded mountains of Nippon,
During the month of red maple leaves,
We see a faithful young follower,
And the spell love on him weaves.
So grasp the object lesson
And hold it to your heart,
As you hear the song of Sumiko
And watch it work its art.
After another bow he exited, the stage lights went up and Sumiko began singing. This was sixty years ago. My love of folklore from East to the West, throughout the Pacific to Atlantic Ocean regions, was well established by then.
*Drawings are by Alex G. Paman, from his book “Asian Supernatural,” Mutual Publishing, Honolulu, Hawaii (2010). These fairy beings from Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines are visiting here with the youthful artist’s permission.
Posting III
Now Coexisting
Bringing Western and Eastern worlds together seemed an impossibility until recently. It was as Rudyard Kipling declared in an 1889 ballad:
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
Persons in the West were able to peek partway, if not meet all of the way, because of poetic illustrations by Edmund Dulac in 1907. These two are of “The Fisherman and the Genie” one of the entertaining stories a beautiful Persian woman nightly told to stay alive.
An English language edition of the book first appeared in 1706 with stories with roots in ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Turkish, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian folklore and literature.
“Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor,” were integrated into the collection by Antoine Galland, a Frenchman, and other European translators.
Innovatively crafted stories in the Mid Eastern style were stimulating stylistic potpourris. They were filled with rich poetry and poetic speeches, chants, hymns, songs, lamentations, beseeching, praising, pleading, riddles.
Such variety: historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, and erotica and new stylistic techniques to hook readers, build anticipation, for the narrator to turn each tale into a “cliffhanger”—what is going to happen next?
There is generally scholarly agreement that “The Thousand and One Nights” was a composite work. Apparently, they originated in India and Persia in the eighth century. In the ninth or tenth century, Arab stories were added and from then on, century after century further layers of stories were added in Syria and Egypt—and that is how the book swelled to the full 1,0001 nights of storytelling.
English writers picked it up; Sir Richard Francis Burton (1885) came out with his translated version, as did other writers who accused each other of plagiarism as stories worked their way, more or less, into the public domain, in 1978 Walt Disney Productions brought Aladdin his wonderful lamp into view.
What Hath Rath Wrought?
Hawaii is a microcosm of what the world is becoming; here cultures originating in the East and the West co-exist with remaining Old Hawaii. I conclude this month’s Fairy Lore essay to explain that exploring what Kipling called “The Twain,” is not new to me, which is why I am carrying on this way.
Sixty years ago a Japanese Kabuki drama I wrote was produced at a selective, conservative, eastern college. It had been entered in a playwrighting contest and I chose this dramatic artform set in Japan, even though World War II in the Pacific soldiers were part of the student body. “Those two (twain) should never meet,” Kipling, a sometime Vermont resident, would surely affirm. But Hamilton College was a liberal arts college and liberal means open to new behavior.
My excitement in sharing worldwide folklore does not mean I have just jumped on a bandwagon, with East and West cultures becoming open. This sampling is the result of youthful exposure in multi-cultural Hawaii—before World War II brought censorship, now long gone.
The play was titled “The Nightingale”, it was staged as a Japanese Kabuki drama—poetical-type of dialogue, (original) music—instruments and songs--elaborate make-up. It was both romantic and horrifying involving a geisha and a naïve priest who becomes smitten by her, a jealous warlord, and others whose actions reveal the characters of the three principals. Two songs were included—one of seduction and this one with words of affirmation:
You are the geisha girl meant for me. Here’s a glass of rice wine so mellow and so sweet. Why don’t you drink it and give me a smile? Let’s say “Kampai for our future bright.
Ne, Tonko Tonko.
Am I to be blamed for loving you my dear, And I follow like a shadow everywhere you roam. Is it a sin to adore you and you alone, And seek you like a light in the starless night? Ne, Tonko, Tonko.
Meeting Asian Supernaturals
Alex G. Paman, a professional illustrator and journalist based in Northern California is an avid researcher of Asian culture. His new book “Asian Supernatural, including Hawaii and the Pacific,” issued by Mutual Publishing, Honolulu, Hawaii, is an outcome of his growing up in the Philippines. He explains how through its history, geography, and natural resources, Asia/Pacific is perhaps the most culturally diverse region in the world.
In Paman’s words, “Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam religions and indigenous animist beliefs create a supernatural setting where religion, history, and mythology coexist.”
His book fills a much-needed gap between Eastern and Western traditions of myth, fantasy, and the supernatural. Here are drawing of some of his creatures gleefully dancing before feeding your imagination.
The creative world is larger, now that “The Twain” have met.
Posting II
This is about a world weirder and eerier than supposed by a public whose images of fairies have reached them through the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney.
In 1966, the late Terence McKenna, a Hawaii Island resident, described W.Y. Evans-Wentz findings about fairyland:
“It is a cosmos where souls of the dead and of vanished races coexist invisibly with our own, a world of haunting elfin music outside of time. One day in the land of Sidhe is sufficient for the great wheel of many centuries to turn in the ordinary world. Heroes and fools, lucklessly enchanted as well as quick-witted survivors fill Evans-Wentz’s accounts of human encounters with the fairy world.”
Evans-Wentz, authored “The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries” after many years spent interviewing hundreds of folks about their experiences. He lived as a Buddhist monk in India, was with a pre-eminent Tibetan Lama, and became a colleague of fairy lore experts, including writers William James, George W. Russell (A.E.), and W. B. Yeats.
A cultured Irishwoman, meeting exacting requirements psychologists and pathologists demand from a percipient,
told Evans-Wentz she had seen five classes of fairy beings at a
rath--stone areas under which they live:
1. Gnomes—earth spirits, seemingly a sorrowful race. About two and one-half feet tall, they had round heads and dark, thick-set bodies.
2. Leprechauns—also small and full of mischief. She stated, “I followed one with a very merry face who beckoned to me with his finger. We went about half a mile out to the Rock of Fairies (rath) where he giggled and disappeared.”
3. Little People—small and quite good looking.
4. Good People—beautiful beings, the size of adult humans who, according to folklore, direct magnetic currents of the earth.
5. Sidhe—regal, beautiful, taller than most humans. Known as being of the Cult of Tuatha de Dannan, they came to Ireland in a cloud of mist at the dawn of history bringing magic with them. Driven to the underworld by invaders, they led all Fairies and ruled from the Hill of Tara, Ireland’s magical centre.
E-W heard how, with the help of fairies, a lowly born daughter became the Queen of Tara. This is that story:
A shoemaker and his wife, living along the river, had their first child taken by the Queen of Fairies who resided within a moat.
A little leprechaun was left in its place. The same exchange occurred when their second child was born. At the birth of the third child the fairy queen ordered her servants to take it, but they couldn’t move the child. Its mother, being short of pins, had used a needle to fasten the child’s clothes. The needle it appeared as a beam of iron to them, a new metal against which fairies felt powerless.
The fairy queen decided to be the baby girl’s Godmother instead. She sent her servants to give the lovely child gifts of being the grandest lady, the greatest singer, and the most wonderful maker of mantles (a sleeveless coat). Her own gift was to declare: “The first time the little girl left the house she would return it in the form of a rat. The mother determined never to permit her daughter to leave the house.
When the girl reached the age of eighteen the young prince of Tara happened to be riding by on a hunt. He heard her singing. Entranced by the music he entered the house. Seeing the singer’s wonderful beauty he asked her to marry him.
Her mother said that could not be. She took her daughter out of the house for the first time and brought her back into in an apron under the form of a rat, so the prince might understand the refusal.
That enchantment didn’t change the prince’s love for the beautiful singer. He explained how his father the king had a special day when great ladies of Ireland assembled in the Halls of Tara. “Then, the grandest lady, the greatest singer, and the best mantle maker would be chosen as his wife.” He added, “Each lady must arrive in a chariot.”
The rat asked him to send four patchwork colored cats and a pack of cards to her home. Until that day, he must carry her as a rat in his pocket.
The rat made everything known her fairy lady friends. Then, when the cats and cards reached the girl’s home, fairies turned the cats into splendid horses and the cards into a wonderful chariot. As the chariot was setting out from Tara, the fairy queen clapped her hands and laughed with delight. Her enchantment was over.
When the prince saw the wonderful chariot coming, he knew who it was. He went out to meet it; the beautiful lady within it explained everything.
The prince arranged for this young girl to be the last contestant. She won everything! The king had to admit that this strange person was the grandest lady, the greatest singer, and the best mantle-maker in Ireland. When the old king died she became Queen of the marvelous fabled place known as Tara, remains of which exist today.
Margaret Mitchell, aunt of a friend of mine, wrote “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Mitchell described heroine Scarlett O’Hara’s spacious Georgia plantation that her father Gerald won in an all-night card game. O’Hara borrowed money for slaves from his brothers and created a luxurious plantation, giving it a pretentious name from Irish lore: “Tara.”
Posting I
All types of fairies cover the world, from Asian Brownies to Zulu Zombies.
Diminutive people were driven into hiding by invading humans. Mortals regarded some of them as “another race,” or possibly “spirits.” They have been out of sight for a long time.
The Wife of Bath commented on that in “The Canterbury Tales” Chaucer (1340-1400). I’ve modernized her language:
In the old days of King Arthur,
All this land was filled with fairy.
I speak of many hundreds years ago,
But no man can see elves any more.
Where did England’s elves go? To Ireland to get away from the English, as many landmarks show. Called a “Rath,” these were underground fairy habitations, as well places for human protection.
The ancient rath, or fort, was about half an acre, and had two or more ramparts for defense from marauders. When their chieftains died out, “Sidhe”—fairy folk-- crowded into the forts where they held councils, revels and dances. Legends say that if a man puts his ear close to time ground at night he can hear sweet fairy music rising up from under the earth.
Woe, though, to a human is enticed by fairies dancing in a ring around the rath. The human will become enchanted and lost forever, as stories go.
Irish have preserved traditions such as: The rath being sacred to the fairies, no mortal is allowed to cut down a tree that grows on it, or to carry away a stone. It would be dangerous to build on a fairy rath. Fairies would punish such a rash act—cause an explosion on the builder’s eyes, give him a crooked mouth, or some other deformation. No human hand should dare to touch their ancient dancing grounds!
“The Hobbits,” who J. R. Tolkien’s book introduced in the early 1930s, live under a rath. In Irish legends, people of the mounds are known a “The Sidhe” or “The Good People.”
Ireland’s place names with pre-nouns such as Lis, Rath, and Shee are associated with these people. (For example, Lismore, Lisdoonvarna, Sheemore, Rathfarnham etc.)
According to legend, "The Sidhe", or people of the mounds, are"The Good People" and descended from Ireland’s original settlers. Millennia ago, they were defeated by Milesians, forerunners of today’s Irish.
Sidhe retreated to a different dimension of space and time than our own, and are believed to be living under mounds, fairy raths, and cairns. Some have moved to a mythical island to the west of Ireland, it might be “Avalon,” where King Arthur sleeps.
Fairy paths are said to run all across Ireland. Humans are warned not to build upon these paths, they are underground lines of magical forces! The ancient ruins of Fairy Raths are still believed to be ruled by the Sidhe. Walking over these places will cause bad luck—although many are noted in guides for tourists.
Fairies and folklore have a long English history and authors tried to rediscover them. In 1570 Spenser published his long poem “The Fairie Queen,” in 1620 Ben Jonson wrote a poem entitle “Robin Goodfellow,” and about the same time Robert Herrick wrote poetry about Oberon and Queen Mab. John Milton in “L’Allegro (1632) and in “Paradise Lost” (1667) explained that fallen angels became fairies.
Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1603), and his last play, “The Tempest” (ca. 1611), brought fairyland to mass audiences.
The French writer Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was the godfather of enchanted beings. He wrote of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Puss in the Boots, Briar Rose, Bluebird and others. His “Mother Goose Tales” were published in 1695.
The Grimm Brothers (Jacob, 1785-1863, and Wilhelm, 1786-1859) adapted many of Perrault’s stories and included them among over 200 fairy tales they put in book form.
The Victorian Age (1837-1901) was a long period of peace while Queen Victoria ruled. It may have been a time when England wanted to believe in fairies, because they represented one of the ways they could escape the dreary reality of living in an unromantic and materialistic age.
Belief in fairies and folklore helped Victorians connect with disappearing customs of country life. Author Thomas Hardy wrote, “Village tradition, a vast amount of unwritten folklore has nearly sunk into eternal oblivion.”
The Golden Age of Fairy Art (Pre-Raphaelite painters 1840-1870) gave English the combination of fairy painting with truth to nature, it also brought unclothed bodies into view—real humans weren’t portrayed that way! This was accepted though, some of the Pre-Raphelite nudes were ephemeral creatures with wings.
Books by foreign writers fueled England’s craze for fairy stories: “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” (1824), and Hans Christian Andersen’s “Fairy Tales” (1849). Illustrations by England’s George Cruikshank (1792-1878) contributed greatly to their popularity.
English authors Lewis Carroll (pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dogson) brought “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to the real world in 1865, and J.M. Barrie, a Scottish novelist and playwright, introduced “Peter and Wendy,” his book now known as “Peter Pan.”
English ballet was another important source of imagery that augmented the Pre-Raphaelite painting scenes. One of the main themes was the supernatural, in which a spirit forms a relationship with a mortal…”La Sylphide” pioneered a succession of similar ballets, populated by nymphs, sylphs, dryads, wilis, peris, naids, and undines.
By the Victorian period, Nordic mythology was becoming popular and William Morris yielded to his great passion: He translated “Sigurd the Volsung” in the same year as Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” was first performed. Morris (1834-1896) was a writer, artist, designer, and publisher of illuminated books.
Artists, writers, and preservers of “special places” foster the mystique of fairies and fairies are integral parts of cultures around the world.
Miki the leprechaun reminds us in “Being Menehune”:
Fairies are beings having human forms Whose power is greater than mankind’s norm. Fairy-folk roamed freely among mankind Before the world was changed by human mind. |
