Beware Fairy Home Invasion! April 28, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
It is rarely that this blogger is flabbergasted about something on fairies: but today he was fair blown away by this sentence concerning the fey on the Isle of Man, published in the early spring of 1902 in a Liverpool newspaper.
Fairies are not encouraged at any other time of the year, only on New Year’s Eve. Visitors to the island will doubtless have noticed the fanciful patterns drawn in white chalk on the doorsteps. This is done to keep the fairies away.
Chalk marks against fairies? There is a long tradition of marks against witchcraft in Irish and in British tradition: marks in the dirt or in wood to keep witches from penetrating human spaces (houses, churches) or the stables or places where cows congregate. These are unfortunately little written about: but they are – at least the ones in wood – found.
But as to marks against fairies? Well, this is new… Humans have, in terms of their living spaces, two relations with fairies. In the first, fairies attempt to force their way into the human space for sex, for food or to kidnap house-dwellers. In others human accidentally stray into the fairy space, perhaps building a house across a fairy track, or opening a door on a fairy meeting place.
It makes sense, I suppose, that in the first instance there be protective symbols to keep fairies far from the house. Does anyone know of any other cases or, even, a better reference for this supposed Manx custom. What, for example, did the Manx markings look like? Drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
Inspired to look at this by archaeologist Alison Fearn who is presently writing her doctorate on the subject of protection against the supernatural. Something to look forward to!
Also while we are on the subject. The article continues.
‘Have you ever seen a fairy?’ I asked of an old Manx-woman.
‘The prettiest little creatures you can imagine, about four inches in height, and all dressed in scarlet and green, with pink caps on their heads. I saw them dancing on that hedge,’ pointing to a garden which is now within the town boundary of Douglas. The woman had not gained her idea of fairies from books, as she could not read.’
Ha!
Dun Eve Tel, 30 Aug 1902, 2
3 May 2018, the great Faery Folklorist writes in: Hiya! Thought the Manx fairy sign sounded familiar, managed to find a possibly useful reference in Tongue’s Somerset Folklore: “When I was very small I used to help an old cottager in his garden (at least I thought I helped), but whatever else he might do I always made the charm sign for him in the new-turned soil. I don’t know what the stick was, he always gave it me (hazel, I suspect), but no matter how erratic my efforts he was immensely pleased – a child had blessed his garden safe from the ‘vairies’. The sign, which I have seen once or twice since, is a heart between two crosses. I knew one woman who used it on her pie-crusts, but only did it because her old mother always used to. Keightley mentions it as a pastry charm.” A quick search in Keightley’s book for pastry charm didn’t show any matches though, will have to go through it more thoroughly at some point and see if it’s mentioned there!
