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There was a well-known news report from the BBC in the 1960s. A roadway was being built in Ireland. People who lived nearby were upset because the road would go a bush that had long been claimed by the . And the reporter does the whole thing with a straight face, but he clearly thinks this is fascinating and absurd. At one point, he asks a woman:

Have you seen a yourself? No I didn’t but my mother did so, she’s a woman 80 years of age, tells us she was working in this house and her master was an invalid, she saw little body up the road dressed in red. She hid behind a door. She was frightened by it.

That was 50 years ago. In 2017, a member of Irish parliament named Danny Healy-Rae told the Irish Times that continual problems on the roads in County Kerry were due to the fact that the roads went through fairy forts. He was widely mocked but in his defense, he said, quote “if someone told me to go out and knock a fairy fort or touch it, I would starve first.”

Eddie Lenihan is a professional storyteller who lives on the West coast of Ireland. I reached him at his home. As you’ll hear we did not have a great connection but you can still make out what he’s saying.

Eddie has dedicated his life to collecting fairy stories and beliefs because he’s worried that they’re dying out.

EDDIE: And I will say due to America. Due to America and American culture which has infiltrated all aspects of life here and life everywhere. American television films and for good as well as for bad – nobody can deny that. And Walt Disney did an amazing amount of destruction to fairy lore.

Now, Walt Disney didn’t invent Tinkerbell or fairy godmothers. He just gave them a visual form that was appealing to children, and imprinted Tinkerbell onto every object a kid could ever own – and made her the corporate mascot dripping fairy dust all over the Disney logo.

But a lot of these very romantic notions of fairies actually came from the Victorians. I’m sure you’ve seen those old illustration of adorable, tiny, women with wings.

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Personally that version of the fairies never appealed to me. I became fascinated by traditional fairy folklore when I learned that it was much darker, and weirder

EDDIE: Any time I have been told by old people now when they were children and stories were told by the fire down below, if there was a suspicion that children were about, they were quickly told – get to bed! You’re not to be listening to this! Get to bed!

These days, adults don’t tell fairy stories around the fire while kids try to listen. Those stories are usually just sitting in folklore departments. That’s why Eddie Lenihan became a professional storyteller.

EDDIE: It’s all very fine to have this in libraries, in folklore departments but it’s no good there for academics. I go out and I tell the stories; the stories are no good unless they’re not told. Every time I tell one of these stories, I think of the person who told me that story and that person is not dead because I’m telling their life.

You’re listening to imaginary worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I’m Eric Molinsky.

Today fairy folklore: why it endured for centuries, and what these stories have to say to us now, in the 21st century.

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First, a few things about fairies.

As I said before, they’re not always spritely little ladies with wings. They’re usually human sized. They could be male or female, beautiful or ugly – although they tended to be either very beautiful or very ugly.

They’re also very capricious. Their powers are never clearly defined, which makes the punishments and rewards they deal out all the more surprising.

And they don’t exist in time and space the way that we do.

Martha Bayless is a professor of folklore at the University of Oregon. A favorite story of hers dates back to a collection of folk tales from 12th 3 century England – although this story is probably much older. It’s about a king named Hurla who was invited to a fairy wedding.

MARTHA: And he went, it was glorious feasting light from place no one could see, underground and in the end put on horse with his troops and they gave him a small dog and said don’t get down from your horse until the dog jumps down. And so he traveled out and he found that 200 years had passed since he had gone into fairy wedding which he thought was a few days, and so he processed with troop and finally one person got impatient got off his horse and he crumbled into dust because he got off his horse before the dog jumped down. The tale says they’re still riding around the English countryside; they’re called the Wild Hunt because dog has not yet jumped down. And that perfectly expresses how it’s beautiful in the fairy world but inexplicable, the fairy had no grudge against Hurla, but yet they give you dog and you have to stay on horse until the dog jumps down. Why is that?

Why would you give someone a dog sit on a horse? And why wait for the dog to jump down? It doesn’t make any sense. But that’s what makes the fairies so mysterious.

MARTA: And so it’s hard to let go of the story because you’re still wondering about it and you still might see him, they’re still out there in the countryside, when you see waving in trees, might be King Hurla and his troops passing through.

So, how did fairy folklore evolve? And why did people think these stories were more than just stories into the modern age?

Martha thinks it has to do with the fact that Ireland has never been very heavily populated, so the land is less developed.

MARTHA: I think one of the reasons people thought about fairies is they saw these ancient featuring of the landscape which were prehistoric tombs which were big mounds, and you still see them in Ireland, in England did away with them, but in Ireland see them, these are obviously not natural landscapes, who made these? And they obviously must be a race of beings that came before us, and they had great power to make these amazing structures, who were they? They must have been a supernatural race of beings. They must have been the fairies. And that’s why you have legends of fairies leading people into mounds; they go back into mounds because that’s the entrance to the fairy world.

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Helena (hel-EE-na) Byrne is professional storyteller in Dublin. And she says another common factor with fairies is that they’re always tied to the landscape, and usually a very specific mound, tree or bush.

HELENA: There was a fairy tree near my house, and I used to go there and play now and again because the tree was pretty in the Spring, it had white blossoms on it, and when I told my mother where I had been going she had a heart attack, and said you can’t go there, that’s a fairy tree, you can’t interfere with the fairies because there will be desperate consequences if you upset them in any way.

Like many magical stories of fairies were often meant to explain scientific phenomena that people didn’t understand back then. But Helena thinks the fairies also explain the randomness of life – and death.

HELENA: When I was growing up, I heard about the , the harbinger of death. Banshee in Irish is a woman of the fairies, and she’s inform you about a death in the family by making a keening noise outside house at night, screaming, wailing, grieving sound, you didn’t want to meddle with banshee, didn’t want to hear because it meant someone in the household would pass away.

Belief in fairies has been strong in other countries from England to Iceland to Japan. So why has fairy folklore has been so resilient in Ireland?

Philip Byrne is a storyteller in Dublin – he’s no relation to Helena Byrne the other storyteller in Dublin. And Philip says, for most of Irish history, they didn’t have well-funded cultural institutions or news media.

PHILIP: We only got television in Ireland in 1962. Anyone born before that would’ve come up with story. And that was the traditional way of entertaining, you went from house to house and people told stories.

HELENA: These were people that were incredibly important to Irish culture, they were almost like journalists. They would move from village to village and move to the other town. And as well, didn’t have electricity until the 1960s, I always say it’s well and good to say you don’t believe I the fairies and you’re walking down a dark country road at night and you hear a noise in the bushes and you start to second guess yourself.

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Of course she means electricity wasn’t widespread. Until the ‘60s, it was limited the people who could afford it. That’s another reason why fairy folklore thrived in rural Ireland. It was a reflection of class.

HELENA: What was interesting about our relationship with the fairies is that the fairies were better dressed, they had these incredible parties, incredible food, incredible wine, these were things Irish people generally didn’t have. I guess it did reflect Irish society in that the fairies had the opposite of what we had, we were the poor ones and they were the ones who had grand magnificent homes, and lifestyles and food.

And Philip says, there was more to these stories than just lifestyles of the magically rich.

PHILIP: I mean, if you take any town where you or I live, and I ask you what keeps you from doing wrong? You’re an honest man you don’t do things, but police station and courts and jails to make sure you stay on the right path. You go into small rural communities those structures aren’t there so this belief in fairy world provided a social control, if you did what the norms of the community were you’d be by the fairies or they’d look after you. But if you didn’t observe those norms, the fairies would sort you out.

HELENA: It was incredibly disrespectful to even refer them as the fairies. You had to refer to them as the other folk, or the good people.

PHILIP: The other kind, the good crowd, the gentle people, a lot of the stories of the fairy world had a useful purpose.

That’s why Philip likes to tell this particular tale, which dates back to the early 19th century. And it is a story where the fairies are very small.

PHILIP: For this one, you need to know the days of the week in Irish. (names them) Seven days of week.

By the way, this is long story, but I’m going to play the whole thing because it gives a good sense of Philip’s craft as a storyteller.

PHILIP: There was a chap called Larry Lushmore lived in Kerry on the shadow of the mountains outside Kerry, nice guy, good form, never bad form, basket maker and chair maker by trade and he’d make baskets, always good form. And the 6 unique thing about Larry is that he had a very bad curvature of the spine. So walking is difficult for him, one night he was walking back from Kerry, on his way he passed a fairy mound, so he stopped to rest for a while, you can imagine if you have that disability as he was lying up against the bank, he heard coming from inside the mound (sings two days of week) which is Monday, Tuesday, Monday Tuesday. And he grabs up to the side of the bank and there down was this gaggle, hundreds of thousands of the good folk and they were singing and he got into the rhythm of it. Decaden. There was silence. The king of the fairies, you up there! What have you done! For centuries we’ve been singing, you add another day. What are you at?! Actually, that sound better than what we were doing, you have a great appreciation for our culture, and our ways and our music and thank you very much for improving. I want to reward you, with that 20 of the fairies jumped on this back, and before you could say as fast as the March wind, the hump was taken off his back. For the first time, his back was higher, straighter, for the first time in his life look the world in his eye and the king gave him beautiful clothes, pocket full of clothes, jewels and Larry went off didn’t change lifestyle still basket maker but needless to say the story of his transformation, his cure, traveled the country. And there was a chap down in Lesmore, Jack Maden, the only similarly between Jack and Larry was that Jack Madden had a hump, he was mean, miserable, bad form, lazy nothing was right in the world, everything was wrong and he just a really pain in the butt, but he heard what happened to Larry so he said to himself if your man got all that for adding one day, just think what I might get by adding two or three days. So he made his way up to nutgraph and shelter of the mound and sure enough he heard, days of the week. And he crawled up to the top and there again the same gathering and they were chatting, he says the other days of the week. Silence. The king of the fairies said get down there now! Yes, your majesty! He knew he was going to get his reward, what have you done?! Adding other days, you’ve have completely ruined our song, you have no appreciation for our culture and music, I know what happened you head about Jack and you think yore getting your reward, you are, with that 20 of the fairies took the hump that had been on the back of Larry and added it to the hump on Jack Madden’ back and sent on his way even more bent over than beforehand.

You can imagine that story being told to children. The lessons are clear. Your physical appearance is not important. What matters is what’s inside your heart, and how you treat others.

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Although Philip says even people who didn’t believe in fairies understood that these stories were useful not just to teach kids lessons, but to protect them as well.

PHILIP: There is so much in media today about pedophilia and child abuse -- rather than saying to someone don’t go near that person of a, b, and c, make them a monster or they’re from the fairy world and they’re not good, you keep the kids safe.

Now the main authority for most of Irish history has been the Catholic Church. And in the minds of most people, fairy folklore existed side-by-side with devout Christianity. But Martha Bayless says the church has not always been comfortable with that situation.

MARTHA: Well I think the bad news for the fairies was the 1430s because that’s when the church really started feeling threatened by supernatural creatures, they had always been weary and disapproving but at that point they decided we’ve had enough of this, and it just caught fire and people thought we’ve had enough bad luck, got to be fairies or witches, and so that’s when witch persecutions and fairy persecutions – people who said they were fairies, people who talked approvingly about fairies. The good news is that a lot of village tried to eliminate all magic, identify witch and kill her, which is horrific but bad luck didn’t go away, this is hokum, this doesn’t work, never mind and we like the fairies.

Eventually the fairy purges died out, but there was an infamous story from 1895. A woman named Bridget Cleary had gone through sudden mood swings -- maybe a nervous breakdown, we’re not sure. Her husband and her brother thought that she wasn’t Bridget. She was a fairy impersonating Bridget. So they burned her alive to get the fairy out.

HELENA: Of course the story of Bridget Cleary, she was murdered by her husband because she believed she was a changeling and the only way to get his wife out was to push out the fairy – almost like an exorcism which went to the extreme.

One of the reasons why we know about this tragedy is because the trial was a sensation, and some British journalists and politicians used it as fodder to argue that the Irish are too backwards to not be allowed to rule themselves. We have no way of knowing whether Bridget Cleary’s death actually set back Irish independence, but it didn’t help. 8

Although Philip is proud of the fact that this didn’t turn the Irish against their own folklore. In fact, Bridget Cleary became incorporated into a children’s song with the lyric, “Are you a witch or are you a fairy, or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?”

And in the 1930s, just a few years after Ireland finally gained independence, the new government set aside money to create a folklore commission that’s still active today.

PHILIP: And I have no idea how much was used, but when there was no money for anything, I think it underscores the national importance that’s attached to folklore.

But it was modern media that finally made the fairies an endangered species.

PHILIP: They say that when electricity came to the country, the fairies left

That’s why Eddie Lenihan collects fairy stories from the oldest people he knows.

EDDIE: I visited an old man for over 26 years. He died 10 days ago at the age of 100. And he met them. He met them he told me. And of course, my first question was naturally enough, what do they look like? And he sat a moment and he looked at me and he said, the person sitting besides you could be one of them and you wouldn’t know it. When you think about it – that’s a frightening answer.

Yes, Eddie thinks the “The Other Crowd,” “The Good Folk” are real. In fact, he successfully campaigned to re-route a road that would’ve gone through a fairy bush.

EDDIE: Because I have always maintained to be logical, if the fairies can’t exist then God can’t exist either because they are both otherworldly. And sometimes people get angry at me, how dare you? Are you against religion? No. I go to church every Sunday. But I would always says if you deny one, you have to be logical then and deny the other. It stands to reason. If the fairies can’t exist, well then God can’t exist either.

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Belief in fairies is on the wane. But there has been resurgence of fairies in fantasy novels.

My first introduction to authentic fairy folklore was in the 2003 novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke. And in the last 20 years, there’s been dozens of other novels about fairies, with more coming out all the time.

It’s not clear why this trend took off, but I talked with a book editor who worked with writers like Susannah Clarke to get the fairy folklore right. And this editor told me that she think fairies represent the natural world. When we fear that nature is in danger from industrialization or climate change, the fairies can give the Earth a voice.

But what I like about the fairy stories is that they’re morality tales – but they’re not always black and white. Traditional fairy stories allow you to be comfortable with the grey areas in life because the fairies are unknowable. So believing in them means you know that there are certain things in this world that you’re never going to understand – that you’re never going to control -- and that’s okay.

And the message of these stories is usually, “Be careful before jumping to situations that you don’t really understand. Don’t barge into foreign cultures, thinking you know what’s best for them. Respect the traditions and practices of The Other Crowd.” That’s a pretty good credo to live by. I wish more people subscribed to that philosophy.

That’s it for this week, thank you for listening. Special thanks to Eddie Lenihan, Martha Bayless, Helena Byrne and Philip Byrne – who says if you think fairy stories are edgy, you should check out the ancient myths that pre-date the fairies.

PHILIP: I mean, when you try to follow these classic Irish myths, the amount of inter marrying or bonking your sister’s cousin’s brother, whatever! I mean -- it would make racy reading today!

Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply network. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emolinsky and imagine worlds pod. My website is imaginary worlds podcast dot org. 10