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Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.

Fairy sightings
One thing I never expected to be worrying about when I first started researching fairies was the basic question: ‘Are fairies real?’ But, as the scholar Simon Young has shown, there are a staggering number of fairy sightings, from just about every country, and every type of witness. Across the period 1900-1901, the time of the Boer War, a boy of five saw every night columns of tiny soldiers marching over his bed, accompanied by splendid martial music. When he recalled this in 1951, he stated emphatically that he would swear to the truth of it ‘in any court of law’. This man was Victor Purcell, a History lecturer at Cambridge, where he remained until 1963.Meanwhile, in Wales in the 20th century, a lone fisherman was startled to see and hear a small elderly male figure suddenly appear in the stream with him, gabbling excitedly, ‘Catch him, Tommy, I like to eat trouts, Tommy!’ Answering irritably and turning away to play his line out of some weeds, the fisherman was astonished to turn back and find that the fairy man had completely disappeared in open country. This very no nonsense witness was one Commander T.A. Powell—who went on to ask, incredulously, ‘How did he know my name?’
8
The Leprechaun Hunt of West Limerick
Not far from the fairy hill of Knockfierna, a schoolboy named John Keely has just hurtled across country to the house of the Mulqueens, and is breathlessly insisting that he has seen a fairy. The Mulqueens send him back to interrogate it. ‘I am’, the fairy responds ‘from the mountains and it is all equal to you what my business is.’ Next day two fairies appeared at the cross-roads between Ballingarry and Kilfinney, six miles from Rathkeale, in daylight, with skipping ropes, and ‘they could leap the height of a man’ according to Robert and John Mulligan and other eye-witnesses’. Soon crowds were assembling at the crossroads, with people coming from all over Limerick to see the leprechauns. Those who had spotted them asserted that they were ‘about two feet in height and had ‘hard, hairy faces like men and no ears’. They were dressed in red, with one sporting a white cape, and they wore knee-breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes.This leprechaun hunt seems to have occurred about the very end of August or start of September. The year was 1938. Locals were chasing the leprechauns because (as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin explains) these creatures have treasure. If you could catch one, you would then keep it in a box for a year and a day before it will reveal the location of its hoard. Any thoughts from Health and Safety are welcomed here.
7
Fairy Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet)
On the fairy-haunted Isle of Man, ‘on Dalby Mountain … the old Manx people used to put their ears to the earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (Sheean-ny-Feaynid)’. Although these murmurs were probably just tides on pebbles, something more mysterious may have been occurring elsewhere on the island. W.W. Gill describes a remote fairy-haunted triangle of hills and river valley, where Manx folk would gather to hear an unearthly ‘singing, as of human voices in distant unison, exhaled mysteriously on still evenings out of a certain steep piece of ground on the opposite bank, called the Granane’.Back in England in 1922, the composer and sometime Oxford fellow Dr Thomas Wood was holidaying with friends on Dartmoor when he heard ‘music in the air! It was overhead, faint as a breath. It died away, came back louder … It lasted 20 minutes. Portable wireless sets were unknown in 1922. My field glasses assured me no picnickers were in sight.’ Wood scored this music on the spot and insisted, ‘I am prepared to say on oath that what I wrote down is so close to the original that the authors themselves would not know the difference’. Recently, the American author Chris Woodyard performed this fairy music, via a transcription for electronic organ. Anyone who wants to achieve another musical first could also arrange a performance of Wood’s original score for two violins.
6
Fairy Poltergeists
Do fairies really exist? Poltergeists certainly do, and in fairy territory a disruptive, violent or noisy spirit in a house would be seen as an angry fairy. Although poltergeists are often riotous and persecutory, in a significant number of cases they have left presents or done chores for householders. In this sense, the dualism of the fairies (powerful beings who can easily tilt from good to bad) fits perfectly.The great fairy pioneer Katharine Briggs had a friend who as a child often visited the old ladies of Denton Hall near Newcastle in the 1890s. The ladies had, they told her ‘a silkie’ (glossed by Briggs as ‘the Northumbrian brownie’) which on the one hand ‘made it rather difficult to keep servants’ but, on the other, often helped with housework, ‘cleaning grates and laying fires’. She ‘dressed in grey silk, and they often met her … on the stairs’. During World War Two the friend returned to the Hall to find that the new occupants, although they never saw the silkie, certainly heard her. For ‘the son of the house was so persecuted by intolerable bangings in his room that they did not stay long’. I spoke a few months back to one of the staff at the Hall, and she confirmed that it is still haunted, albeit more mildly, in the present day.
5
Fairy Landscapes
Fairy Paths & Ley Lines (In Search of the Fae Folk Ep. 19)
In Ireland especially, the countryside was heavily marked by the presence of the fairies. Fairy forts or hills were one feature, and in 1911-12 councillors at Athlone, Westmeath, found they simply could not give away a house built beside the local fairy hill. Next, there were fairy trees, usually thorns. These were equally taboo, and new roads would have to swerve around them. A farmer in County Antrim who cut one down when drunk was said to have woken next morning with his head turned around backwards.Most dangerous of all were fairy paths. This was because they were usually invisible. Country people might innocently build a new house, only to learn from the local Fairy Expert that all or part of their home lay across a path used by the fairies at least once a day. One solution was to throw open back and front doors at the appointed hour, so that the Good People could pass through invisibly. But here the fairy poltergeist also presented special problems. Sometime before 1959 a man called Paddy Baine and his young bride suffered such violent hammerings in their new home that they feared a wall would fall down. Local wisewoman Mairead ni Heine was called in, and explained that one ‘corner of the house … was interfering with the progress of the “good people”’. A stonemason sliced off a corner of the building, and peace was restored.