New Folklore Survey: Have You a Fairy Story to Tell? November 14, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite , trackback
Great news from London tonight. Launched in this month’s Fortean Times and run in association with the Fairy Investigation Society, which has been reconstituting for the last months and that will send out its first communication this weekend, the Fairy Census 2015-2016 is ‘a go’ (the organizers don’t apparently follow the Gregorian calendar). Now what is a fairy census? Well, there are two questionnaires online for those who have seen or those who have accounts (from friends, family etc.) of people who have seen fairies: the idea is apparently that as we can’t knock on fairy doors, we humans are supposed to count the fairy population on Oberon’s behalf. (Wonder how this would work with ghosts?) There is also a survey about fairy belief that anyone can do ‘who’ in the words of the survey ‘understands the word ‘fairy’’ and Beach spent a great deal of pleasure doing this with his two daughters this afternoon. (It seems to work well with children, above all, if they close their eyes.) The survey has been put together for the sixtieth anniversary of the Marjorie Johnson and Alasdair Alpin MacGregor fairy survey 1955-1956.
This blog is publicizing the survey for two reasons: one contemptible and one selfless (kind of). First, this fairy census would never have taken place without the help of our readers, who, almost three years ago helped track down Marjorie Johnson’s lost manuscript, which led to the publication of Seeing Fairies, essentially the record of the MacGregor/Johnson survey and which led to the idea of a new fairy survey. So hearty pats on the back all round. Second, whether you believe in fairies or not, a suprising number of people claim to see them and it is surely worthwhile trying to understand, whether these mysterious creatures are (i) in our head, (ii) in the country lane in front of us or (iii) both. The best way to do that, of course, is to gather data and there is by all accounts some wonderful stuff already in at the end of the first day including an electric blue fairy horse and a ten foot green tree spirit. This will be a census office like no other… The questions are not just about the event but also cover the witness to try and get to the bottom of who sees fairies: it goes without saying that all is anonymous. Anyone who can pass on likely fairy witnesses but doesn’t want to do the heavy lifting: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
