fairies, folklore and forteana
Simon Young FiLES A nEW REPoRT FRom THE inTERFACE oF STRAngE PHEnomEnA AnD FoLK BELiEF
a failed fairy rescue
It is my favourite true fairy story. An Irishman is stolen by the fairies, who leave a fake body in his place. His family are oblivious, believing that he has died. After the body is buried, the father has a dream. The son appears in his sleep and explains that he has, in fact, been kidnapped by the Sidhe (the Irish fairies). To rescue him the father must come to the cross of Glendalough (Tipperary, not County Wicklow) at midnight on Midsummer Night’s Eve with some whisky, a blackhafted knife and a number of trusted companions. He is to wait till he sees his son mounted on a passing fairy horse. Then, the father and his friends must surround the son’s horse and cut off the enchanted creature’s right ear: only then will the father be able to rescue his flesh and blood from an eternity in fairyland.
The father and companions gather, but the spell does not work: one of the father’s companions had, unbeknownst to the father, murdered three men. This cursed individual prevents the rescue party from seeing the fairies as they pass, and the son is lost for ever.
I call this story ‘true’ because the events described, at least those we can test historically, did actually take place. In 1837, a young man named Keating, from Newcastle in Tipperary, died. He was buried, but his father subsequently had a dream. In that dream the son asked his father to be rescued from the fairies on midnight on 24 June at the cross at Glendalough: he also gave instructions to bring friends, whisky and a black-hafted knife. The father, understandably, distraught, but believing in the power of the fairies to spirit away humans, gathered his neighbours together: a dead body was often claimed to be a fairy substitute corpse. Some 1,200 locals assembled at the cross as darkness fell on 24 June 1837 to restore the boy to his family. The hosting of the Sidhe did not show, though, and the inconvenient fact of the triple-murderer was revealed in a subsequent dream.
1,200 locals! It is a useful reminder that fairy beliefs were not just fireside chatter in Ireland two centuries ago. Many Irish men and women were prepared to act on these beliefs. This was not paganism, in that it elided perfectly into rural Catholicism. But nor was it ‘merely’ a rag-tag of mild superstitions hung out to dry on the line of Christian belief. What should we call these beliefs? Evans-Wentz wrote, in 1911, of ‘the fairy faith’. It is an expression that irritates many Irish historians, some of whom are ignorant of or indifferent to stories like the one above. But weren’t the Keatings and their neighbours partaking in a faith of sorts at midnight on 24 June 1837 as the Sidhe, they believed, rode by? Simon Young writes on folklore and history and runs www.fairyist.com
the father must come to the cross with some whiskey and a blackhafted knife