Fairies & Elves

For many people today, the image of an elf is firmly established in the characters of either the handsome Legolas Greenleaf or the lovely, ethereal Arwen as depicted in the Peter Jackson film of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ring saga by actors Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler.While the elves in Tolkien’s vision are tall and stately beings, tradition has most often portrayed elves and their fellow citizens from the unseen realm as diminutive, hence, “the wee people.” Small in stature though they may be, elves, the “Hidden Folk,” are not beings with whom to trifle.Careless or disrespectful humans who trespass on forest glens, rivers, or lakes considered sacred to elves maysuffer terrible consequences—even cruel deaths.

Entrepreneurs who wish to desecrate land whereon lie fairy circles or mounds in order to build a road or construct a commercial building may find themselves combating an unseen enemy who will accept only their unconditional surrender.

Trouble at the Herring Plant In 1962, the new owners of a herring-processing plant in Iceland decided to enlarge the work area of the building. According to Icelandic tradition, landowners must not fail to reserve a small area of their property for the Hidden Folk, and a number of the established residents earnestly pointed out to the recent arrivals that any addition to the processing plant would encroach upon the plot of ground that the original owners had respectfully set aside for the elves who lived underthe ground. In a condescending manner, the businessmen explained that they didn’t harbor those old superstitions and neither did their highly qualified construction crew who had modern, unbreakable drill bits and plenty of explosives. But the bits of the “unbreakable” drills began to shatter, one after another. An old farmer came forward to repeat the warning that the crew was trespassing on land that belonged to the Hidden Folk. The workmen laughed when the old man walked away—but the drill bits kept breaking. Finally, the manager of the plant, although professing disbelief in such nonsense, agreed to the local residents’ recommendation that he consult a local elf seer to establish contact with the Hidden Folk and attempt to make peace with them. The seer informed the......

I have a natural curiosity about all things - especially those related to the garden. So, I have always wondered about garden gnomes. Why do these little statues sport so many gardens all over the globe? Amazingly it all starts with a Greek philosopher, Empedocles in the fifth century BC, and his elemental theory that man was made up of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water.Paracelsus, a 16th-century physician and alchemist took this theory and flew with it, giving each element a personification. Sylphs stood for the air (and the east), symbolizing consciousness, freedom, communication and the powers ofthe mind.

Salamanders were the fire (south), representing spirit, energy, individuality and identity. Undines denoted water (west), emotions, subconscious, psychic powers and the soul.That brings us to the gnome. Gnomes are the elementals of earth (north), symbolizing strength, stability, fertility and the physical. Paracelsus stated gnomes as having occult knowledge of the earth. His term "gnome" probably came from the Greek gnosis (knowledge) or maybe the New Latin gnomus. This hermetic and Neo-Platonic doctrine was actually the basis of all medieval science and medicine. It wasn't until the Renaissance, when empirical science "gained ground," that the belief in the four elements subsided. So, people being people, they tended to take things literally and the elementals became more thansymbols. Without getting into the whole colourful folklore of gnomes, I will keep focused on the garden variety. Since the 1400s, in German folklore these little fellows represented good luck and having nature on your side; so it made sense to want to attract them into your garden. It was at the beginning of the 1800s in Germany that the first clay gnome showed up in the garden. It was made in Graefereda, Thuringia, Germany. The idea of drawing good luck to the garden and household by flattering gnomes by putting their statues in the garden caught on. The first to begin mass-producing the clay garden gnomes were Philipp Griebel and August Heissner (Heissner's are the most well known in the world). The first garden gnomes to show up in England were at Lamport Hall in 1840. Sir Charles Isham the 10th Baronet of Lamport Hall,broug......

Today we stand at the threshold of Beltane, the Celtic festival of summer, when the entire green world is charged with new life beneath the growing sun. In Ireland, Beltane (celebrated May 1st) was known as one of the three "spirit nights" of the year—along with Midsummer's Eve and Halloween—a time when the faeries rode out of their dwellings in the Hollow Hills within the Earth into the human world.Until the 20th century, many people had encounters with faeries and lived side by side with them in quite a natural way.Some of these faery-seers descended from generations of country-dwellers who kept the old beliefs intact; others werevisionaries, poets, and artists who refused to be influenced by the modern, materialistic worldview that, in William Blake's words, can only "see with, not thru, the eye."

The Nature of Faeries But what are faeries and do they still exist today? Many people still think of them as the delightful, gauzy-winged creatures of children’s books—but this was not always so.

Those faeries were a product of Victorian literature. Before that, there was a strong recognition throughout Europe of a host of sentient beings who are mostly non-physical entities, although they can be seen with the inner eye.  What’s more, they knew that faeries do not dwell in a far-off realm, but live within the subtle dimension of our world, co-existing with us in the cracks of our everydayreality. Faeries range from tall, beautiful, noble creatures to diminutive imps called "little people," with many shapes and sizes in between. There are solitary faeries, like the household brownie who looks like a small stocky man with a gray beard; leathery gnomes who dwell in forests and caves; "trooping faeries" who dance, sing, and feast together in the faery hills; and tribes of Cornish piskies, with red hair, pointed ears, and turned-up noses. One of the best explanations of what faeries are comes from an unlikely source, a 17th-century minister of the Church of Scotland: The Reverend Robert Kirk called them "a middle nature betwixt man and angel." They are creatures of light and energy, of "force" rather than "form," who can shift their shape as they please, unbound by laws of the physical world. Allfaeries are ......

No fairy is more feared in Ireland than the pooka. This may be because it is always out and about after nightfall, creating harm and mischief, and because it can assume a variety of terrifying forms.The guise in which it most often appears, however, is that of a sleek, dark horse with sulphurous yellow eyes and a long wild mane. In this form, it roams large areas of countryside at night, tearing down fences and gates, scattering livestock in terror, trampling crops and generally doing damage around remote farms.In remote areas of County Down, the pooka becomes a small, deformed goblin who demands a share of the crop at the end of the harvest: for this reason several strands, known as the'pooka's share', are left behind by the reapers. In parts of County Laois, the pooka becomes a huge, hairy bogeyman who terrifies those abroad at night; in Waterford and Wexford, it appears as an eagle with a massive wingspan; and in Roscommon, as a black goat with curling horns.The mere sight of it may prevent hens laying their eggs or cows giving milk, and it is the curse of all late night travellers as it is known to swoop them up on to its back and then throw them into muddy ditches or bogholes.

The pooka has the power of human speech, and it has been known to stop in front of certain houses and call out the names of those it wants to take upon its midnight dashes. If that person refuses, the pooka will vandalise their property because it is a very vindictive fairy. The origins of the pooka are to some extentspeculative. The name may come from the Scandinavian pook or puke, meaning 'nature spirit'. Such beings were very capricious and had to be continually placated or they would create havoc in the countryside, destroying crops and causing illness among livestock. Alternatively, the horse cults prevalent throughout the early Celtic world may have provided the underlying motif for the nightmare steed. Other authorities suggest that the name comes from the early Irish poc meaning either 'a male goat' or a 'blow from a cudgel'. However, the horse cult origin is perhaps the most plausible since many of these cults met on high ground and the main abode of the pooka is believed to be on high mountain tops. There is a waterfall formed by the river Liffey in the Wicklow mountains known as the Poula Phouk (the pooka's hole), and Binlaughlin Mountain in County Fermanagh is also knownas......