A late summer holiday took me back to the Scilly Isles, the largely unspoiled and nearly traffic-free archipelago in the far south west of Britain. Here, beaches are often deserted and human noise rarely drowns the sounds of nature. As a result, perhaps, we twice heard, on one beach, a strange and eerie crying noise. The first time, the source was mysterious; the second I saw that there were two seals floating on one side of the bay. Standing in the surf, one swam ever nearer towards me on the shore whilst its companion continued to drift in the sunlit water. Their presence seemed the only proximate cause for the haunting wails; not a mermaid, but perhaps a selkie, curious about the people on the beach. The sound was so weird though, that you could readily understand how people would have had to conclude that sirens sang out at sea on rocks.
St Varna’s Well
Perhaps my susceptibility to such imaginings was heightened by the fact that, whilst I was away, I reread Ithell Colquhoun‘s Living Stones- Cornwall (published in 1957). I feel sure she would have sympathised with my conviction that the selkies were singing to us, for- as I have described in my Spirits of the Land– her Cornwall was permeated with supernatural power, whether that emerged through the very rocks and vegetation of the ancient landscape or emanated from the water sprites or guardians of the peninsula’s many wells. Colquhoun was acutely sensitive to these presences- not just at locations such as the Carn Euny well, but even beside the stream that ran past her studio/ home in the Lamorna Valley. As for my own recent trip, on the island of St Agnes we visited St Warna’s Well, set in the cliffs overlooking a small bay facing the Atlantic. Sadly, it was run rather dry and offered only a muddy puddle within its stone enclosure; as Colquhoun would have said, the site needed someone “who would cultivate its hidden guardian… I hoped that it too might have already, or would soon attain, its invisible guardian.” She mentions too a faery well called the Pin Well or Pin Mill, which was formerly known above the fishing village of Newlyn in west Penwith (before someone destroyed it and took the basin as a birdbath for their garden). Here, on Good Fridays, the practice was once for little girls to visit the site with their dolls. A pin would be dropped in the well and water would be poured on the doll, at the same time as giving it a new name. What the ancient origins of this baptismal rite may have been may only be speculated, but this sadly-vanished well plainly resembles Venton Bebibell, up on the moors near the Men an Tol, which I described previously.
The Buzza Hill chambered tomb and the view west
On a closely related point, I might add that on the largest Scilly island of St Mary’s, on the edge of the main settlement of Hugh Town, there is Buzza Hill. This is said once to have been a primary haunt of the Scilly faeries. The hill is also crowned by a megalithic tomb, a coincidence that struck me forcefully when I climbed the hill one evening to see the sunset. As I’ve described before, the known presence of the faeries at a burial site for the ancestors cannot be merely fortuitous. They are seen as inextricably associated, the faeries drawn by those ancient spirits to frequent the site.
The scraps of folklore that Colquhoun picked up in the 1940s and ’50s were indicative of how much might have been lost, as well as confirming the remnants that we still possess. So, for example, after a visit to Helston she recorded that “green is seldom worn; it is still considered an unlucky colour for a dress in Cornwall. An assistant in a shop once told me that always had difficulty selling a green garment- unless it was bought by a visitor- as many of their regular customers felt that wearing one might presage a death in the family.” We know that the South Devonshire pixies were said to be highly protective of the colour green: a saying noted down in 1916 at Beesands, near Dartmouth in the south of the county, was that- if a human wears green- they’ll soon be wearing mourning. Clearly, this was information known about the neighbouring pixies that had once been of much broader distribution; Colquhoun, during the 1950s, may have picked up on one of the last traces of this age-old knowledge.
In the past I’ve examined the sources of faery riches, but I’ve come across a mid-seventeenth century text which concentrates on this subject. What follows is borrowed from David Rankine’s book Treasure Spirits and from the manuscript BL Sloane MS 3824 (c.1649).
Books of spells for finding buried treasure date back to the early sixteenth century in England; it seems there was something of a craze for conjuring up imps and then going in search of gold hidden in hills or under old crosses. Magic was needed to find the secret hoards and, often, to get access to them, as they were frequently guarded by brownies, dobbies, spirits of place or (rarely) the ghosts of men who had been slain just for that purpose. The excavators were often termed (not wholly flatteringly) ‘barrow diggers,’ giving us a good idea of the sorts of site they preferred to target: fairy hills where treasure was very likely to be found.
Interestingly, treasure wasn’t always to be found on dry land. A manuscript in the Bodleian Library, known as e Mus 173 includes invocations and rituals to help find gold lost under the sea. The spirit Saymay can assist with this, as will Azuriel, Azael and Elevotel, who may be conjured using a circulus aquaticus (an ‘aquatic circle’) and then required to help in retrieving submarine riches.
Luckily, the buried treasure dealt with by the manuscript BL Sloane MS 3824 aren’t concealed in locations anywhere near as inaccessible as the bottom of the ocean…
“Of Troves of Treasure & Hauntings
By these Distinctions, a man’s Capacity may Easily judge, by what Spirit or spirits, any hidden or Buried Treasures are Kept, be they of what Order so ever, or the Cause, why any house or place is haunted & troubled or infested, which being truly Known, is by patience and perseverance, and a prudent management of Such Affairs, according to this Art And wherein it Is to be Required, to be overcome and vanquished, and the house or place freed from such hauntings, molestations & troubles, of all spirits, Sylphs or Fairies, or any other spirits of what order or nature Soever, whether Aerial, Terrestrial or Infernal, But if the Philosopher Proficient in this art, and other his fraternity, in any matters of this or the Like nature, have neither patience nor prudence, and the master Philosopher, undertaking the management of what is Requisite to be performed in this art as aforesaid, hath no judgement to Distinguish Between one thing & another in whatsoever goeth about, they May go shoo the Goose.
There are many Castles, old monasteries, and Abbeys and houses, & many other both such like, and, also other places, that are haunted & infested With these Kinds of spirits aforementioned [i.e. Sylphs or Fairies], the Reasons thereof are more than one, but it is, and always hath been observed, & by practical Experience found, that generally it is for no other Cause or Reason, than that treasures are hidden thereabouts, sometimes It may prove Otherwise, as that some horrid murder hath been committed there, or that some heinous Extraordinary Crimes have been acted, and frequently Practiced….[which leads to hauntings].”
The locations listed here are affirmed by the text that was added to Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft in its 1665 edition, a continuation titled A Discourse Concerning the Nature & Substance of Devils and Spirits, there’s a discussion as to the places where terrestrial spirits (nymphs, satyrs, faeries, cobali) are most commonly found (c.IV, s.7). They principally frequent woods, mountains. caves, ruins, desolate places and ancient buildings, but can also be located in mines, with hidden treasures, or in places where people have been slain (c.1, s.14). The English playwright and author Thomas Heywood was of the same opinion in The Hierarchie of Blessed Angels (1635), in which he wrote that “Other [faeries] such houses to their use have fitted/ In which base murthers have been once committed./ Some have their fearefull habitations taken/ In desolat houses, ruin’d, and forsaken” (Book 9, p.574-5).
The Sloane manuscript then discusses the sources of the faeries wealth, which seem to be threefold: they may earn the money by working for humans, they may win it from the earth themselves by their toils in mines or they may simply discover lost or forgotten treasure that has been buried (mainly by people who died and were unable to recover it).
“Treasure Trove is various & Different in its Recovery or Discovery, which we thus, manifest from the Tradition of the Ancients, setting aside what we have Seen & Known by Experience, both herein and as is aforesaid: We must understand, that the two last Kind of Terrestrial Spirits, next forespoken of [i.e.Sylphs or Fairies] , being more humane & Courteous to man, than the Aerial & Infernals, by reason of their Sympathy & proximity with him, can & do work, & amongst the rest of their Arts they use, to Coin the Gold and Silver they take out of mines into that Country’s Coin where they find it, and willingly dwell & frequent in, which is wherein all places where minerals are (for they love not all places, though their mines be never So Rich and Royal) neither where they are, Do they take away or work upon all, but only a small proportion thereof, so that still getting a little from Every place, as it groweth & Cometh to maturity, always add to their Store.
Some others Delight to wander & go abroad, & work amongst miners, who also bring home their wages, Some Delight in other trades, and Some to be in Gentlemen’s Services, [and] be bringing all home, and multiplying their treasury, for they are never vile nor Experience, nor will accompany with no one or other person living, in the Common way of Eating & Drinking, though they love them never So well, yet they will work and do any Laborious thing for, and amongst men, but will not accompany them the times when they Eat or Drink.”
Thomas Heywood gave a similar account in his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels of one particular community of faeries:
“Subterren Spirits they are therefore styl’d, Because that bee’ng th’ upper earth exyl’d, Their habitations and aboads they keepe In Concaves, Pits, Vaults, Dens, and Cavernes deepe; And these Trithemius [Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), German monk and writer] doth hold argument To be of all the rest most pestilent: And that such Daemons commonly invade Those chiefely that in Mines and Mettals trade; Either by sudden putting out their lamps, Or else by raising suffocating damps, Whose deadly vapors stifle lab’ring men… The parts Septentrionall [northern] are with these Sp’ryts Much haunted, where are seen an infinit store About the places where they dig for Oare. The Greeks and Germans call them Cobali. Others (because not full three hand-fulls hye) Nick-name them Mountaine-Dwarfes; who often stand Officious by the Treasure-delvers hand, Seeming most busie, infinit paines to take, And in the hard rocks deepe incision make, To search the mettals veines, the ropes to fit, Turne round the wheeles, and nothing pretermit To helpe their labour; up or downe to winde The full or empty basket: when they finde The least Oare scatter’d, then they skip and leape, To gather’t thriftily into one heape. Yet of that worke though they have seeming care, They in effect bring all things out of square, They breake the ladders, and the cords untwist, Stealing the workmens tooles, and where they list Hide them, with mighty stones the pits mouth stop, And (as below the earth they underprop) The Timber to remove they force and strive, With full intent to bury them alive; Raise stinking fogs, and with pretence to further The poore mens taske, aime at their wracke and murther. Or if they faile in that, they further aime, (By crossing them and bringing out of frame Their so much studied labor) so extreme Their malice is, to cause them to blaspheme, Prophane and curse: the sequell then insuing, The body sav’d, to bring the soule to ruin.”
Heywood, Book 9, p.568
The Sloane manuscript’s author the turns to the nature and quality of the gold that the faeries guard or mine underground:
“These Kinds of treasures, are not Easily but with difficulty to be Obtained; Such as hath been made by man & used amongst men, and with less Difficulty obtained And if at any time a magical Philosopher Should Discover Such treasures, as is of their one Manufacture, & proceeds to Obtain & get the Same, and though they Seem to yield up and Donate the same to him, yet they will by such Crafts & subtleties, as they are well Knowing in, Convert it to the likeness or Similitude of a Clear Contrary, and baser & most Vile and contemptible matter, as Earth, Clay, Dung, Shards, Soil, or some Kind of Despicable and Regardless matter, or Else to move it; and then is the Philosopher at a loss:
But if any such thing as a transmutation should be perceived or Known, to be either Visibly, or otherwise artificially, or by Discerning Something of a Contrary Species or Nature of the place, where it Lyeth; yet Let it be taken up, and let the fire judge of it, and proceed therein after the same manner, as all metals and minerals Are refined and separated, by such means it will return to the Same Essence it had before:
But in Such Treasures as they, as hath been the Manufacture of and Used amongst men, they Seldom or never Do so by Such Treasures as are not Kept by any Spirit, or that any of these terrestrials should be wandered from, and that Lyeth in some obscure unfrequented place, some person may on a sudden Set or work there And so by near Accident may Discover & carry awav the same, without the Least Knowledge of any thing in this Art, Or otherwise these spirits foreknowing, that such a person will be At such a place, at Such a time, and though they should have the Keeping of the same & leave, Having a great Love & friendship to such a one, or the Like, Do quit the same & leave from him against he Cometh there to work, by reason of which Sudden intended action & intermission, the matter comes to be thus accidentally Discovered and gotten, that otherwise might Lie there many years even time out of mind, or Removed to Another place so never to be Discovered, &c:
Also, such Treasures as are Kept by such Spirits or Terrestrial first before spoken of, as the Executioners of God’s Justice Thereupon &c: are not so easily to be found and obtained, as such that are hidden Innocently, Either for future persons or from fear or Danger of a loss, and afterwards happens to be Kept, by the monstrous Sort of Terrestrial Spirits, as Sylphs, Fairies &c: or the Like…”
The last summoning spell I’ll cite is intriguingly different to those so far described; it was recorded by the folklorist Laurence Gomme in the Gentleman’s Magazine Library in 1885. The text advises closing up a glassful of “conglobulated” (compressed) air, water or earth and exposing this to the sun for a month. After this time, the constituent parts are to be separated and the magician will find that it is “wondrous what a magnetic quality each of these elements has to attract nymphs, sylphs and gnomes. Take ever so small a dose everyday and you will see the republic of sylphs fluttering in the air, nymphs making to banks in shoals and gnomes, guardians of wealth, spreading forth their treasures.”
This text departs from conventional faery lore by its adoption of the elementals described by Paracelsus; the earth spirits, the gnomes, are often imagined rather like knockers in mines and in this case they stand in for the treasure-guarding faeries in revealing and- we may infer- offering up their riches to the magician who has gained some measure of control over them.
Arthur Rackham, Dymchurch- the Sussex farisees prepare to leave England
I have written a great deal about the faeries of the British Isles and several of my books have concentrated upon regional families, such as the pixies of the South West and the tylwyth tegof Wales. The English faeries have not received my specific, separate attention, although their traits have been discussed many times in the wider context of British Faery. Here, though, I want to narrow the focus to try to isolate the uniquely English traits of these peoples.
We must begin with names. A range of related terms, all derived from ‘fairy,’ were used in the southern and eastern parts of England to denote the Good Neighbours. In East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk) we will encounter frairies, feriers and ferishers. In Kent, there are the fairisies whilst in Suffolk, Sussex and Surrey we hear of the farisees/ farisies, sometimes spelled (doubtless under Biblical influence) as pharisees. This appeared as feeresses in Berkshire and appears to have been known in one form or another up into the Midlands as far as Worcestershire and even Herefordshire. The use of farisees strikes us now as odd, and in Victorian times learned men were convinced that the simple rural folk had confused Bible figures with fairies “in a most hopeless manner.” They hadn’t: farisees is simply a double plural of fairies, a dialect trait. Nonetheless, I wonder if some of the words used did have an unconscious influence upon pronunciation. What’s more- as one Sussex author noted- the fact that the faeries/ pharisees were mentioned in the Bible was just another reason to believe in them- a perfectly logical sounding argument that ran directly counter to many of the principles of Protestantism– that these beings could only be delusions of the devil because they were not otherwise capable of being accommodated within biblical categories.
Frary is an older English word meaning a brotherhood or fraternity, and you could imagine how this might shape understanding of ‘fairy.’ Equally, to feer meant to scare and supernatural beings, such as the inhabitants of Beedon Barrow in Berkshire, definitely had this effect upon local people.
Clearly, there was a faery population identifiable across most of lowland England, of which eighteenth and nineteenth century folklorists found and recorded the surviving traces. These beings were not brownies nor were they Puck or Robin Goodfellow; they were understood to be different, not solitary but communal in nature and with a distinct set of habits and characteristics.
I have discussed the key features of English faeries numerous times in separate postings, but I’ll identify them here based on a very rough survey of the recorded folklore. Their main traits are as follows:
They dance in rings to music, which is often heard by humans. A good example of this is found in Round About Our Coal Fire, of 1734. The ‘faries,’ the author tells us, were “very little creatures cloathed in green and [they] danced upon our green.” They “would do good to industrious, cleanly People but they pinch the Sluts.” They generally came out of molehills and always had music, dancing on moonlit nights and leaving mushroom rings behind them. This description summarises many of the key aspects of the English faery and gives particular emphasis to their love of dancing, which is perhaps their most constant activity. In Sussex, there was a song associated with harvest celebrations that went “We’ll drink and dance like the Pharisees.” From the same county we have a report that these beings were “liddle folks not more than a foot high [who] used to be uncommon fond of dancing. They ‘jound’ [joined] hands and danced upon the grass until it became three times as green as it was anywhere else. That’s how these here rings come upon the hills;”
The farisees live under hills (as we’ve just seen- and to the extent that they’re called the ‘hill-folk’ in Lancashire) and their music is often heard coming from those hills and barrows. Nevertheless, the faeries will also enter human houses and other buildings such as barns and mills. As Reginald Scot said in 1584, they live “inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth” but they will enter country houses at night to play and make noise.” They often cause a nuisance and disturbance in homes whilst they will make use of other human buildings for threshing or grinding;
They have a great liking for dairy products and will steal these from humans if they can. Faeries themselves are sometimes caught by humans- perhaps accidentally, sometimes when they’re in the act of stealing from us;
The pharisees will abduct individual humans. Adults are just kidnapped, babies and young children are swapped for aged faeries, whom we call ‘changelings.’ Their own childbirth often needs the help of a human midwife and she is often required to anoint the new-born with a special ointment which invests it with its faery powers of glamour;
They are generally small and often dressed in green;
They are often associated with wells and pools. They may bathe in the latter, whereas the former often have healing properties. For example, the faeries used to swim at night in Fairy Pools at Brington in Northamptonshire whereas the ‘Fairy Well’ at Wooler in Northumberland had curative powers: children were dipped in it and bread, cheese and pins were left as offerings;
They will injure humans and kill and steal cattle using bows and arrows– the ‘elf-shot’ we sometimes find;
They don’t like churches and often move them as they’re being built to new sites- or, rarely, will remove themselves to escape them (especially the din of their bells).
They often need human help mending their tools. Such deeds of kindness are often rewarded with gifts of food, whilst those people whose conduct meets with faery approval may receive regular gifts of money as a token of their favour. For example, a Lancashire milkmaid received sixpence from the faeries because she would fill a milk jug and leave it out for them- but when she told her boyfriend what she was doing, she forfeited the coins. The farisees like clean and tidy people, and lucky individuals will have chores completed for them or will have wishes granted. They don’t like people who spy upon or steal from them; these individuals are likely to suffer the “de cuss of de Pharisees” as it was called in Sussex, suffering blight of their health and loss of their prosperity and good fortune.
The characteristics and activities listed here will be very familiar to many readers and rightly so, as they clearly lie at the core of (English) faery identity. All the same, it was instructive to go through the folklore records concerned solely with those faeries called ‘farisees’ and ‘frairies’ to see which particular traits were the most common amongst them. Dancing in rings and a taste for milk, butter and cream were out in front by a very long way. Theirs is a life dedicated to pleasure and feasting!
The writer and blogger Neil Rushton has very recently posted an article on his Dead but Dreaming blog which discusses ‘The Connection between Faeries & Prehistoric Sites.’ As regular readers of British Fairies will know, this is a subject which has long intrigued me as well.
I’ve provided a link to the piece, but I’ll pick out a few themes and remarks here for comment. Neil begins by observing that “There is a deep connection between the faeries and prehistoric sites throughout Britain, Ireland and Western Europe. This connection is recorded in the folkloric record and in modern testimonies, suggesting a metaphysical linkage that may provide a deeper understanding of the faerie phenomenon.” This connection has been the basis for much of my own thinking on the subject, as most recently set out in my 2022 book Spirits of the Land and in my posting on the name Albion.
Neil discusses the earliest documented story linking faeries with a prehistoric burial mound, Willy Howe in East Yorkshire, and remarks on the impressive fact that a site identified for its fae character in the 1100s still retained those associations in the early twentieth century. As I’ve frequently remarked, the strongest connections are with long barrows, monuments from which faery music is often known to emanate, but any distinctive hill might be chosen as a faery residence or as a portal to the underground realm of Faery. That said, many ancient sites, including stone circles and menhirs, have fae associations- sites such as the Rollright stone circle in Oxfordshire or the Mitchell’s Fold circle in Shropshire. A valuable index of these sites can be found in a gazetteer by Leslie Grinsell. Simon Young of the Fairy Investigation Society has helpfully put the book’s English, Welsh and Scottish/ Manx chapters on the Academia website, and Neil provides a link.
As the case of Willy Howe just showed, people continue to have faery experiences or contacts at ancient sites to this day. Neil gives some examples and the aforementioned Simon Young has included others in the Fairy Census.
To conclude, Neil explores what the meaning and importance of these longstanding links may be. The faeries’ regular presence at burial mounds tends to reinforce their links with our dead ancestors; Neil summarises this nicely when he states that “The folklore that portrays the faeries as inhabiting the land of the dead shows them as representatives of the past and what is gone.” Ancient monuments might therefore be understood as “interface with the transcendent world of the dead.” The prehistoric sites may also be viewed as access points to the faes’ “own standalone non-physical reality,” places where we might have experiences of altered states of consciousness which induce encounters with the otherworld. Neil also suggests that the faeries might be understood as manifestations of ancient indigenous beliefs, or part of a collective consciousness that can be contacted at certain charged spots in the landscape. When I have proposed that we approach them as spirits of the land, as genii loci or ‘the soul of Britain,’ I think I’ve been trying to find expression for similar ideas.
In a previous post I’ve examined how faery names appear in British place-names and give us a hint of a wider network of faery presence underlying the current landscape. I want to pursue that theme a little further here.
I’ve also observed (many times) how closely linked the faeries are to hills and mounds, especially ancient sites such as barrows and hill forts. It’s notable how frequently there is a coincidence between the two. See, by way of illustration, a succession of sites along the South Downs in Sussex. The faeries have been seen dancing at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve at both Torberry and Cissbury hillforts whilst at Pulborough, a faery funeral was encountered, and Burlow (or Burlough) Castle is associated with a classic ‘broken peel’ story: a ploughman mends a damaged tool for the faeries and is rewarded with some beer; a companion who refuses to assist is struck ill and soon dies. We see how ‘bury,’ ‘borough’ and ‘low’ feature in these examples- from the Anglo-Saxon words burg/ burh (a fort) or beorg (a mound) and hlaew (mound). Faery pipes have been found at Dolbury Camp in Somerset and, at Greenhow Hill in North Yorkshire, a district nurse was called to attend at a faery birth inside the How. So consistent are these matches that it might even be worthwhile (given sufficient time and resources) seeing what correlations could be discovered between such place-name elements and faery traditions. Other examples of this are Yorkshire Elf Howe and Drake Howe (where a dragon guards gold, it seems) and Long Low and Cauldon Low in Staffordshire, where the faeries dance.
Curiously, the faeries aren’t always strict about their dwelling places. However much they may prefer sites with ancient associations, they are known to make do with any suitable mound. Both the aforementioned Pulborough and Burlow Castle in Sussex are, in fact, not prehistoric hills but the remnants of Norman motte and bailey castles. Humans having kindly piled up the earth- and then abandoned the sites, the faeries have moved in- and then will defend what they regard as their property. In County Durham, attempts to remove the old motte at Bishopston were met with a warning voice advising the locals to leave well alone.
Sometimes, the place-name evidence hints at a deeper and more complex story than that passed down to us. At the famous ancient oak wood on Dartmoor, Wistman’s Wood, faeries have been sighted. The name itself doesn’t indicate a wood owned by Mr Wistman, but something much more mysterious or sinister: the first element is the dialect word wisht meaning eerie or uncanny, so that the ‘wisht man’ linked to the spot would seem to be an elf, pixie, or perhaps a demon. Wisht also denotes the mental state of being pixie-led (known as ‘mazey’ in Cornwall) and the wood was identified in 1873 as a haunt of both pixies and derricks (the dwarves of the south-west).
At Horbury in West Yorkshire a hairy boggart with ice-cold skin and glowing eyes was said to attack unwary people. A ‘padfoot‘- a supernatural large dog (which was white instead of the usual black)- would appear as an omen of death, as well as simply scaring people to death. The apparent derivation of the town’s name is from horh-burg (the fort on dirty land) but linguistic expert Eilert Ekwall was reluctant to accept this, given the settlement’s hilltop site; he therefore speculated about its origin being hord-burg- the fort where treasure is concealed- which might well explain the ferocious behaviour of the local beings. Birstall in Leicestershire was named from another burg or fort; perhaps this is why the town is known for the shag dog with glowing mouth that has been sighted there. As we might very well anticipate, at the three Wambarrows in Somerset (it seems they were the ‘womb-like’ mounds) a black hound waylays travellers and protects the hill’s hoard from the greed of treasure hunters.
Cissbury Rings
Other Place Name Evidence
Sometimes, a place name supplements a faery story associated with the place. In other words, rather than being the evidence of a faery connection, the name reinforces the impression that the locale of the account was a place with a genuine and persistent supernatural presence. Many readers may be familiar with the story of the faeries of Inkberrow in Worcestershire who moved away because of the noise from the new church bells. We might well have expected some faery dwelling thereabouts anyway, given that the name derives from an Anglo-Saxon name meaning ‘Inca’s Barrows.’ The ancient burial mounds were evidently a major feature in the landscape during the sixth or seventh centuries when Angles settled there; they very probably guessed too that these were the abode of elves. Rather similar is Harrow Hill near Angmering in Sussex. This is (allegedly) the last place in England where faeries were seen (a debatable claim) but, once again, we could have predicted a supernatural presence by the fact that the Saxon settlers named it after (and, presumably, set up) a hearg- a pagan shrine. They were recognising some numinous quality to the place.
From the Isle of Wight comes a story of a young man who joined a fairy dance on the beach at Puckaster Cove. After a while, he needed a rest and sat on something like a puffball mushroom. It burst under his weight and showered gold dust everywhere, some of which the faeries gave him before he left. Puckaster, as the name suggests, is indeed a faery place name, meaning the ‘tor’ (high rock or hill, as in Torberry) or the steort (a promontory or tail of land) associated with the puca or puckle (that is, with the goblin or puck). Not far away in the same parish is Puckwell Farm, pretty obviously the puca’s spring. It will be evident that Puck had a long association with this area of the Isle of Wight, apparently predating any dancing on the beach.
The Limits of Our Sources
Toponymy can’t answer all our questions, though, because of limitations to the evidence. On the River Teme in Worcestershire there is a spot very closely linked to the local faeries (the so-called farisees). They will mend any broken implements left for them at Osebury or Oseberrow Rock. There seems to be no record of the derivation of this name, although in this case the presence of either burg or beorg as the second element is pretty obvious and correlates with the supernatural connection recorded in folklore.
Another instance of this sometimes frustrating lack of evidence comes from Elbolton Hill in the Craven district of North Yorkshire. This is a very distinctive isolated, round and verdant hill where lights have been seen at night, luring people to join in with the faeries’ dancing. The name may very well not add anything to our knowledge of the spot: the second element is almost certainly botl-tun (village) but we can’t trace the name’s development back sufficiently far to know how it evolved. The earliest record is a tithe award of 1849- by which time the present form was settled. Generally medieval or earlier records are needed to see how a place-name used to be pronounced. The same’s the case on the Isle of Wight: there are several other ‘puck’ place-names, such as Puck Farm, but we can’t confirm their origins because of a lack of records.
The poet Andrew Young (1885-1971), wrote this evocation of A Prehistoric Camp, :
“It was the time of year Pale lambs leap with thick leggings on Over small hills that are not there, That I climbed Eggardon…
But there on the hill-crest, Where only larks or stars look down, Earthworks exposed a vaster nest, Its race of men long flown.”
Eggardon Hill, which is east of Bridport, in Dorset, is an Iron Age hill fort, but there is evidence of much earlier use in the form of several tumuli or long barrows on its summit. The presence of barrows within the defences is what interests me here: it is quite a common feature, as for example at Hambledon Hill further east in the same county.
Also by Young is the poem ‘Wiltshire Downs‘ from which I quote the final stanza.
“And one tree-crowned long barrow Stretched like a sow that has brought forth her farrow Hides a king’s bones Lying like broken sticks among the stones.”
With his mentions of lost races and ancient kings, Young has connected to a key feature of our landscape and folklore, but he does not take advantage of the full mystery associated with these features. There are deep resonances here at which Young only hints in the most subtle, or oblique, manner. Welsh poet and artist David Jones made full use of the layers of tradition and myth, though, in his extended prose-poem concerning the Great War, In Parenthesis (1931), in which he described slumbering British troops in Flanders dugouts as being “like long-barrow sleepers, their dark arms at reach.” He returned to this theme decades later in his series of poems, The Anathemata. In the poem Sherthursday and Venus day Jones mentioned “the hidden lords in the West-tumulus.” In the same poem he also recognised the intriguing mystery of hill-forts as well as barrows, imagining a climb “up by the parched concentric bends over the carious demarcations between the tawny ramps and the gone-fallow lynchets, into the vision lands.”
“Into the vision lands…” Jones intimately knew and worked with the legend and myth of the British Isles: he understood that the landscape was more than topography, that it comprised accrued memories and stories, that our reading of the land is as much composed of (often subconscious) echoes of legend and fairy-tale as it is of geology and land use. Beneath the features we see there are, indeed, the “hidden lords,” the “long-barrow sleepers” of British tradition. King Arthur sleeps beneath a hill, somewhere, waiting to answer the call to save Britain. Places across the British Isles are charged with the power of these genii loci, the spirits of place.
Cadbury Castle, Dorset: site of Camelot, faery grain store & site of sleeping knights
Rudyard Kipling was another writer who drew on the deep wells of folklore and, in his poem ‘Song of the Men’s Side’ from the book Rewards and Fairies, he advised:
“Tell it to the Barrows of the Dead—run ahead! Shout it so the Women’s Side can hear! This is the Buyer of the Blade—be afraid! This is the great God Tyr!”
In Kipling’s story The Knife and Naked Chalk the faery Puck, the archetypal British supernatural being, introduces the children Dan and Una to a neolithic herder who tells a tale of “a Priestess walking to the Barrows of the Dead.” The herder sees a girl he knows at a tribal ceremony:
“I looked for my Maiden among the Priestesses. She looked at me, but she did not smile. She made the sign to me that our Priestesses must make when they sacrifice to the Old Dead in the Barrows. I would have spoken, but my Mother’s brother made himself my Mouth, as though I had been one of the Old Dead in the Barrows for whom our Priests speak to the people on Midsummer Mornings.”
The ancestors lie beneath the tumuli and their purpose is to advise and help their living descendants. Perhaps that function is not yet exhausted…
As just mentioned, a vital element of one strand of British folk stories (the so-called ‘Matter of Britain’) is the concept of the sleeping hero. King Arthur, most commonly, is understood not to be dead and buried in Avalon but lies hidden beneath some ancient feature- a hill fort or cave, perhaps- awaiting the time when he is summoned to bring salvation to the island and its people. Beneath the ancient heights of those tribal fortifications, warriors lie in wrapped in the dreams of centuries, patiently biding their time until the call is sounded and their slumbers are ended. Arthur’s the best known of these heroes, but other sleepers include Thomas of Erceldoune, or Thomas the Rhymer, the mortal man who met the faery queen one May Day and travelled with her as her lover into Faery. Now he serves the once and future king, awaiting the day. Faery and folk history become entwined; Arthur is both mortal warrior and immortal faery monarch; human politics merge with mystical meaning and leave their mark upon the land- a constant reminder, to those in the know, that there is more present than meets the eye.
In another of his poems, Rite and Fore-time in the collection Anathemata, David Jones equated tumuli with altars, regarding both as places of worship and of burial of holy relics. His analogy is perceptive and powerful. The sleepers in the barrows are our ancestors, our predecessors on the land, and doubtless one element in their interment and the rites associated with their monuments was a reassertion of community links not only with those who had gone before but also with the landscape over which their remains now watched. They had become both features in the landscape and guardians of that landscape.
In my 2022 book The Spirits of the Land- Faeries and the Soul of Britain, I pursue these themes in more detail, examining how the faeries as spirits of place and the stories of Arthur have become woven into the archaeology, the place-names and landforms of the country.
Although I’ve had the film sitting on Amazon Prime since the start of the year, I’ve only just got round to watching The Green Knight– and then only because I was given it as a DVD (yes, indeed) for my birthday last month. Anyway, it’s a good film- if strange- and though only bears a remote relationship to the original poem on which it’s based.
Having watched the film, I went back to my copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (as the Middle English poem is called today). This I bought second hand back in about 1985, when it cost me all of 25p. My version is the 1976 reprint of the Penguin Classics edition, originally retailing at the handsome price of 50p in those days.
I’m not sure I had read it again since I first bought it, but the story of Sir Gawain has had a special resonance with me since the late ’70s, primarily because of the 1973 film version of the story that I saw on TV at some point a few years after it was released. That impressed me hugely, because it created a magical, mystical atmosphere that- I have to say- was not so pronounced in the 2021 film with Dev Patel.
For me, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is very evidently a faery text. We start, of course, with the knight himself, whose colour alone seems enough to scream out not just his supernatural but his fae nature. The knights of King Arthur’s court certainly call him that when he appears before them at New Year: “a phantom from Fairyland the folk there deemed him” (for fantoum and fayryȝe þe folk þere hit demed).
The Green Knight presents a challenge- to receive a blow with an axe from any present, on the understanding that he will be able to return that blow a year later. Gawain accepts the wager and chops off the knight’s head. That ought to be the end of that deal, except that the knight calmly picks up his head and declares that he’ll see Gawain at the Green Chapel next New Year. Then he vanishes and “What place he departed to no person there knew.” Not only does this “unearthly being” magically survive a fatal blow but- just like a faery- he disappears into thin air.
Gawain is renowned for his knightly and Christian virtues. He has made a promise and he must keep his word. Therefore, the following December he sets out to find the mysterious Green Chapel. The poem is written in a north western dialect of Middle English and Gawain’s journey takes him through the north west of England, around the Wirral, the Mersey, Cheshire and Lancashire and thereabouts. He wanders day after day through rocky landscapes, past groves of oak, hazel and hawthorn (three magical and faery trees) searching for the unknown chapel. Lost in an icy landscape, he finds a castle which takes him in and gives him shelter. Better still, it turns out he is very near to his destination and can stay with the household celebrating until the very morning of New Year’s Day.
His host is the affable Sir Bertilak. He goes out hunting everyday, striking another bargain with Gawain: Bertilak will give him whatever he’s caught during the day in return for whatever Gawain wins that day in the castle. This is a second test, because Bertilak’s wife three times tries to seduce him, although all that’s exchanged are a hug and a kiss. These he passes on to Bertilak, not naming the lady but implying she’s a lady in waiting. However, at his last meeting with the lord’s wife, she gives him a magic belt to protect him from the Green Knight’s axe. Gawain accepts this- because he’s afraid- and conceals it from Bertilak, because it would give away its source. He therefore breaks his word.
On New Year’s Day Gawain rides to the Chapel. It is “a smooth faced barrow on a slope beside a stream… All hollow it was within” (A balȝ berȝ bi a bonke þe brymme bysyde… And al watz holȝ inwith.” For regular readers, this will look unavoidably like a faery knoll, a sithean as they’d call it in the Highlands. The Green Knight, as a faery, is bound to be connected to such a site. He aims three strokes of the axe at Gawain; the first two do not touch him; the third lightly nicks his neck. This reflects his encounters with the wife: twice Gawain politely refused her but a third time he did not act entirely properly nor openly.
Then, the Green Knight is revealed as being Bertilak- and his wife, we discover, is actually Morgan le Fay who used her magic powers to create the illusion of the knight beheaded and then revived. Her motivation seems to be her longstanding feud with her brother Arthur and his court, and a wish to expose and humiliate his most noble and honourable knight. Gawain, though, maintained his virtue. This test completed, the knight vanishes again- “To wherever he would elsewhere,” another example of nhis mysterious glamour.
In fact, it seems as though Morgan the Goddess (Morgne þe goddes), as the poem terms her, is actually present in the castle in two forms: temptress and scourge. She is the young and sexy seductress and she’s also an ‘old crone’ perhaps representing all the power and wisdom that she learned from Merlin. Elsewhere in the Arthurian romances, Morgan builds a chapel from which none who have been unfaithful in love may escape. The punishment of untrue lovers is a faery trait that I’ve discussed before.
There are, in truth, many layers to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, many themes and subtexts. I’ve just highlighted the aspects of most direct interest to this blog. As for the 2021 film, it’s well worth seeing; it’s its own story, with its own plot and denouement, different from the fourteenth century poem.
I’ve previously written about faery music, what’s often termed ceol sidhe in Irish Gaelic, and people’s experiences of hearing it. In this posting I want to survey how faery music has more directly impacted human music, through borrowed tunes and as a source of inspiration to us.
The faes are renowned for their love of music (and dance) and for their skill in playing instruments. That skill can be conveyed to humans- one potential route for faery tunes to reach us, perhaps. The examples of this process seem to come almost entirely from the Highlands of Scotland, with gifts of proficiency in playing the bagpipes often bestowed- not uncommonly along with an enchanted set of pipes (or the chanter at least).
Across Britain, it has been common over the centuries for people to hear faeries displaying their instrumental skills, usually the sounds of music being overheard coming from below faery hills. Examples of such locales can be found from the Fairy Knowe on Skye to the ‘music barrows’ of southern England, for example at Bincombe Down and Culliford Tree in Dorset and Wick Moor, near Stogursey in Somerset. A rare exception to this ‘eavesdropping’ is found in the story of Finlay, grandson of the ‘Black Fairy’ on Mingulay, whose own faery lover used to play her harp to him.
A number of faery tunes have been copied and preserved in human music, most notably in Shetland and Wales, where they are still remembered and played. A famous Shetland tune is Be nort da deks o’ Voe, learned directly from the trows. There are several such so-called trowie or ferry tüns from the far northern isles; two Welsh examples are Cân y tylwyth teg and Ffarwel Ned Pugh.
The usual process for acquisition is simply overhearing the reel being played and committing it to memory. Most often this happens when a musician happens to be sat on or near a faery knowe, but in one Shetland case, a man heard a trow piper playing the tune when a crowd of trows passed his house one morning, whilst he was still lying in his bed. On the Isle of Man, a man called Willy the Fairy (William Cain) during late Victorian and Edwardian times often heard fairies singing and playing instruments in Glen Helen at night and had learned several songs just by listening to them. In fact, quite a number of Manx tunes and songs are reported to have been borrowed by humans, being fairy compositions originally.
In a few cases the tunes are more consciously passed on. A piper called Fyfe from Reay in Perthshire spent many hours with the fairies, enjoying their music and honing his own skills- giving his playing a magical charm that made him much in demand at dances. Sometimes conferring musical ability seems almost incidental or accidental: a fairy woman visited a Perthshire home and tuned the family’s bagpipes for them. She then played a few tunes before leaving, but the three sons of the family were endowed with great prowess as pipers thereafter.
A major problem in transmission is that faery music can prove notoriously hard to remember. In his 1779 history of Aberystruth parish, the Reverend Edmund Jones reported that “everyone said [the music] was low and pleasant, but none could ever learn the tune.” On the Isle of Man, one musician had to return three times to the same spot where he’d heard faery music to be able to commit it to memory (see Evans Wentz, Fairy Faith, pages 118 & 131). This aspect of the music has parallels with memories of time spent by mortals with the faeries ‘under the hill.’ Some have said they are unable to recall anything of what happened and what was said whilst they were there (although we may suspect that a diplomatic silence may actually be involved).
As for faeries and trows featuring in human music, Italian folk metal band Elvenking, for example, regularly refer to elvendom, elven legions and the elven king in their songs- see, for instance, ‘Oakenshield,’ ‘Banquet of Bards’ and, much more remarkably, ‘Trows’ Kind.’ This track, from the band’s 2006 album Winter Wake, is a unique catalogue of British folklore, from the Shetland trows “henking” at a dance, taking in southern Scottish Redcaps who are “greedy for silver and gold” to witches in the form of hares. ‘Henking’ is the distinctive limping dance performed by trows.
All in all, the song is a lament for a fading faery kind:
“Through years and centuries, Through myth and poetry Our race’s slowly dying In the heart of mankind.”
At the same time, though, the lyrics are not sentimental about fae nature: they are “Nymphs of dark and lust- Fairy of bad fate!”- although it is also reported that-
“Somebody tells he has seen Some of the little ones Some even that have talked with them So nice and handsome…”
Again, the wisest course of action over faery doings (and faery tunes) may be a discrete silence.
Overall, Elvenking seem to be under no illusions about the perilous truth of faery nature: they advise against getting involved- “Please, don’t be such a fool!” They know that faeries can be highly alluring, tempting humans into ill-advised sexual liaisons: “Desire grows, denial howls/ Your will has gone,” but the only likely outcome is enslavement and subjection.
See too my 2023 book, No Earthly Sounds- Faery Music, Song & Verse, whichis available as an e-book and paperback from Amazon/ KDP. For more information on the impact of Faery on human composers and songwriters, see my 2022 book, published on Amazon, The Faery Faith in British Music.
In this post I look at one of the places with which fairies are often associated- ancient sites– and then consider exactly how they are linked to these monuments.
Barrows and Standing Stones
There is a very longstanding link between faeries, megalithic structures and ancient burial tumuli. Its exact nature, nevertheless, is a little hazy. It’s not always clear if the faes are merely present at these sites from time to time (usually to dance) or whether they actually reside at- or under- them.
For example, at the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, the faeries have been seen dancing- but also disappearing down a hole by the King Stone- implying that they were accessing their underground home by that route. The Hurle Stane, near Chillingham in Northumberland, was a well-known site of faery assemblies.
On the Isle of Arran, faeries meet at the various stone circles on the island, but are especially closely linked to the megalithic complex at Machrie Moor: one of the stone circles here is a double ring called Fion-gal’s Cauldron Seat. A faery or brownie was said to live below it- who was propitiated by pouring milk into a hole in the side of one of the stones.
Suidhe Coire Fhionn, Machrie Moor
It isn’t just single or grouped standing stones, though. Prehistoric barrows also have very strong faery associations. The round barrow at Carn Gluze, St Just, Cornwall, is the place of faery dances and burning lights at night. A long barrow at Butcombe in Somerset is called the Fairy Toot; another barrow in the same county at Stoke Courcy is known as the Pixies’ Mound and another on Beaulieu Heath in Hampshire is called the Pixies’ Cave. All these names strongly imply that our Good Neighbours were known to live beneath the mounds. I have very often noted the presence of faes beneath natural ‘knolls’ or ‘knowes,’ so it makes sense for them to take up residence in man-made features too. Many such sites are recognised in Scotland, too, often being sitheans (places were the sith people live). Examples are found at Fowlis Wester, Perth (a barrow and stone circle), Carmylie, Forfar and at Kinross.
Part and parcel of this group of ideas is an instinctive respect- even reverence- that many people have had for ancient sites in their vicinity. An Elgin man called Andro Man was accused in 1649 of setting up a standing stone and taking off his bonnet to it. He insisted to the kirk presbytery that it was merely a boundary marker, but they made him break up the monolith all the same. What’s most impressive about this case is how very late an expression of respect for menhirs this was. Older beliefs were still found amongst rural populations until comparatively recently, though. George Tyack, in his 1899 book on The Lore and Legend of the English Church, noted a belief on the Isle of Man that, if you pastured your sheep amidst a ‘druidic’ circle, the flock was bound to succumb to disease. In his Second Manx Scrapbook, Walter Gill mentioned standing stones at Germans and Michael on the island that are called ‘white ladies’ and which were white washed to emphasise their ghostly significance. ‘White ladies’ are most commonly spirits associated with springs and streams, so this is a fascinating merger of ideas.
The reason for treating stones respectfully is simple: if you fail to, the fairies using or living at the sites will have their revenge. In British Goblins, Wirt Sikes tells the story of a Dark Age inscribed pillar standing on a tumulus at Banwan Bryddin, near Neath, which was removed by Lady Mackworth to adorn a grotto she was constructing in the grounds of her home. Her workmen were unhappy over this, because the mound was well known to be a faery site, but the Lady had her way. Soon after the grotto was completed, a terrible storm raged over the Neath Valley and a landslip completely buried her expensive new grotto. The tylwyth teg had spoken.
Faery Hillocks
As I have described, the faeries took up residence in barrows and other ancient sites found in prominent and/ or raised places- hillforts and other enclosures- because they were already familiar with living in distinctive or isolated hills. Take, for example, a conical hill with a flat top near Strachar called Sian Sluai, the fairy hill of the host (sluagh); the home of the fairy queen at sith-chaillin near Fortingal, Perth; the many sioth-duns (fairy hills) around Buchanan, Perth, or the conical knoll called Harry’s Hill (Tom Eanraic) near Ardesier in Inverness, where the fairies met at night and where changeling children would be left overnight, in the hope of retrieving the stolen human baby.
Across Britain, in fact, fairies have been seen dancing on hills and disappearing into hills. It is wholly unsurprising, therefore, to discover that many of the healers who were accused of witchcraft in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made their contact with the faes in hilly places.
Katharine Jonesdochter of Orkney in 1616 described how she saw the trows “on the hill called Greinfall at monie sindrie tymes.” Thomas Leys of Aberdeen, and his lover Elspeth Reid, told their 1597 trial that they knew of a hill where they could raise a spirit in any likeness they chose. Katherine Ross said in 1590 that she “wald gang in Hillis to speik to the elf folk.” John Stewart of Irvine regularly met with the fairies at Halloween on top of two hills near to the town (1618). Isobel Haldane, from Perth, was carried from her bed one night to “ane hill-syde: the hill oppynit and scho enterit in” (1623). Katharine Caray wandered amongst the hills of Caithness “at the doun going of the sun [and] ane great number of fairie men mett her” (1616).
From what we can tell, the faeries lived in prehistoric sites on hills; I’ll give a few examples from Wales. The Iron Age hill fort known as Bryn y Pibion is definitely a faery dwelling, as it features in a ‘midwife’ story; the headland of Dinllain, defended by ancient earthworks, was a place for fairy dancing, after which they would raise a sod of earth and descended underground. Another midwife attended a fairy birth here too. Fairies gathered at the hillfort of Moeddin dressed in green to celebrate Mayday and, lastly, the prominent rock known as Ynys Geinon was connected to Craig y Nos castle by an underground passage, which the fairies reached by descending a golden ladder.
Conclusion
To conclude, therefore, we seem to have a double conjunction of associations. The faeries were drawn to and lived beneath ancient stones and mounds; if those were also raised on hills- so much the better, as with the barrow called the Fairy Hillock at Carmylie in Forfar, which stands on the top of a hill.
Cecil Collins, ‘The landscape of the threshold,’ 1962
There is a longstanding association between the fairies and barrows and megaliths, not just in Britain but across Europe. In earlier ages the fairy label was habitually chosen for these unexplained monuments. It may just have been a name- for instance, the Fairy Toot, in Somerset, Elf Howe near Folkton in Yorkshire, Fairy Knowe on Orkney, the Pookeen stone circle (the place of fairies/ pucks) at Clodagh, Co. Cork or the Fairy Stone (La Grand Menhir Brisee) in Brittany- but not infrequently fairies would be regarded as being more actively involved in the making of a site. The Champs les Roches stone rows in Brittany were made by fairies dumping stones they had been carrying; similarly, Tregomar menhir was dropped by a passing fairy. The allee couverte at Coat Menez Guen bears the marks of fairy fingers on two of its stones.
The extent of the fairy associations could vary:
music and dancing- at Athgreany stone circle in Co. Wicklow the fairies play their pipes there at midnight; the fairies are also said to dance around the Hurle Stane in Northumberland. Numerous Dorset tumuli are remembered as ‘music barrows’ where, if you sit at midday, you will hear fairy music within- for example at Bottlebrush Down, near Wimbourne and also at Ashmore, Culliford Tree, Bincombe Bumps and Whitcombe;
healing- the healing powers ascribed to the unusual holed stone arrangement at Men an Tol, Penwith, derive from the pisky linked to the site; and,
dwellings: under stones- most commonly, ancient stones are sites of supernatural habitation, in one way or another. Passage graves are dwellings themselves- for example in Brittany at Barnenez, La roche aux fees and at La grotte aux fees, which they deliberately wrecked; a Cornish fogou near Constantine was called ‘the pixie house’ and in Ireland several stone circles are classified as lios, fairy forts, for example Grange in Limerick and Lissyviggeen in Kerry. The Irish legend is, in fact, that after their defeat by the invading Milesians, the fairy tribe of the Tuatha De Danaan retreated into an enchanted kingdom beneath raths and stones- such places as Newgrange, Dowth and Knowth in the Boyne valley now being their abodes. Ancient stones marking the access to fairyland are a common account throughout the British Isles- a hole or stairs beneath a menhir would lead to the faery realm-see for example my earlier post on fairy dwellings. The Humberstone in Leicestershire is a fairy dwelling, as too is St John’s Stone in Leicester itself.
dwellings: under burial mounds- various ancient burial mounds are recalled in folk memory as the fairies’ homes: examples are to be found on Cley Hill in Wiltshire, at Cauldon Low and Long Low in Staffordshire (upon both of which the fairies were also known to dance, at the latter on Christmas Eve) and at Hob Hurst’s House, Deepdale and Monsal Dale in Derbyshire. It may be noted in passing that some of the stones linked with the fairies are in fact the remaining internal elements of tumuli- the so-called cromlechs such as Pentre Ifan in Wales and (it has been suggested) Men an Tol in Penwith.
Given the supernatural link to stones and tumuli, it was inevitable that people would invest the sites with magical powers. We have seen the curative properties of Men an Tol; conversely in Ireland and Scotland interference with or damage to stones was avoided through fear of fairy revenge. In Ireland the belief persists that disturbance could lead to crops or the home burning; in the Highlands Rev. Kirk recorded a prohibition upon taking turf or wood from a sithbruaich (a fairy hill).
Standing stones themselves have also been invested with spiritual power. Whether this is ascribed to their siting upon ley lines, or to fairy residents, it is still an element of our beliefs about standing stones. This posting is illustrated with a painting by English neo-romantic artist Cecil Collins, one of several works of his in which stones are anthropomorphised (see too Hymn, 1946 and 1956). These figures could well represent the fairy dwellers within the stones.
Further reading
An expanded version of this posting is found in my book British fairies (2017); for further reflections on the use of fairies in interpreting and accommodating the past, see my post on fairies explaining the unexplained.
British Fairies 