Land of Faerie: the Disappearing Myth

Volume 5 Number 2 Article 1 10-15-1978 Land of Faerie: The Disappearing Myth Caroline Geer Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Geer, Caroline (1978) "Land of Faerie: The Disappearing Myth," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 5 : No. 2 , Article 1. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol5/iss2/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Discusses various theories for the origins of fairies (and tales about them) in myth, history, and religion. Additional Keywords Faerie—Origins; Fairy tales—Origins; Fairy tales—Relation to Myth; Bonnie GoodKnight This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol5/iss2/1 LAND OF FAERIE: THE DISAPPEARING MYTH by Caroline Geer So an age ended, and its last deliverer died Tolkien, however, asserts that "history often resembles In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe: 'myth,' because they are both ultim ately of the same stuff. The sudden shadow of a giant1 s enormous calf That "stuff" must be reality, or the truth that strikes us Would fall no more at dusk across their lawns outside. when we recognize something as truly real, even though it may seem to be highly improbable, given our present circum They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt s ta n c e s . A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death, But in a year the spoor had vanished from the heath: Almost every source one may consult on the subject of A kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out. fairy tales, except Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories", refers eventually to our "primitive and savage ancestors" as the Only the sculptors and the poets were half sad, originators of such tales, and even mythology in general. And the pert retinue from the magician's house And often, such as in MacLeod Yearsley's The Folkl ore o f Grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanquished powers Fairy-Tales, these tales are referred to as the childhood of w ere g la d fiction, or stories from mankind's childhood.6 This view point offers definite problems to a thoughtful scholar such To be invisisible and free; without remorse as Tolkien. Mankind has certainly developed both techni Struck down the sons who strayed into their course, cally and scientifically since prehistoric times; yet it is And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad. only in the last four hundred years or so that it has become almost a necessity for a man to specialize in a certain A New Age field because the quantity of knowledge available is so W.H. Auden great that one man can no longer conceivably know, much less understand, everything there is to know. Tolkien interjects this query, "But do we really know much about these 'naked Faerie has been diversely defined, sought after, dis ancestors' except that they were certainly not naked? Our believed, and mocked; nevertheless, it pervades not a small fairy-stories, however old certain elements in them may be, part of mankind's earliest folklore. Its magic lingers here are certainly not the same as theirs. Yet if it is assumed and there even in our time, though as faintly as a glimmer that we have fairy-stories because they did, then probably of light on a gray sea. Unfortunately, fairy stories have we have history, geography, poetry, and arithm etic because been relegated in the main part to children in the form of they liked these things too, as far as they had yet separ nursery tales. Yet we must ask what is written in these ated the many branches of their general interest in every fairy tales, and is something there that can be labeled true thing."7 Modern culture may not be so sophisticated as F a e rie ? one might like to believe, despite the harm such a thought might bring to our cultural ego. In turning to Funk and W agnall's Standard Dictionary o f Perhaps it is like chasing the wind to try to attach an F o lk lo r e , one finds "fairy" defined as a term used to dis exact origin onto fairy-tales. Such questions as, "When did tinguish a particular supernatural being; or more specifical the Land of Faerie become a part of our world; a part and ly from the Middle English root, it means either simply yet still apart?" continue to persist in our thoughtful con "enchantment," or the dwelling place of enchanted beings or sideration. Stith Thompson has suggested that "the ultimate even the "collective inhabitants of such a land: these origin of nearly all folktales and myths must remain a mys latter should properly be called f a y s . " ! The Celts seem to tery. There is of course nothing mystical about it: it is be responsible for the idea of "communal fairies," probably merely impossible to recapture the needed facts."8 "Impos because they envisioned their fairies as dwelling in hills, sible" here seems a bit harsh. Perhaps we have access to or mounds. There are, certainly, other concepts of "fairy;" the facts but do not desire to follow where they may lead however, in order for the scope of this paper to be realis us because of our own prejudice concerning man's origin. On tic, the discussion w ill be confined to English fairy lore, the whole, speculation seems to center in only two camps. and that specifically dealing with that tradition and One side asserts that fairies are identical or similar to legend which borders upon myth. The origin of this concept the dead;9 the other side counters that they are figures in of fairy, and of mythology in this sense also, has led to whom is preserved the memory of the conquered inhabitants of various contradicting theories. According to Herbert Skin England.10 Christina Hole proposes in English Folklore n e r in Readings in Folklore, there appear to be at least that "these people [fairies! were small and dark, the men four schools of thought concerning the advent of the super being about five feet five inches or less, and the women natural into legend and saga: 1) through the Euhemerists shorter. They lived in round huts, whose floors were sunk who believed Faerie was a legend begun in fact but exagger two or three feet below ground level, and which, when cover ated through the oral tradition; 2) through those who main ed with turf, looked very like hillocks or green mounds. tain that pagan mythology is but a corruption of the "true Their culture was prim itive, and successive waves of taller religion originally revealed to man;" 3) through others who and more advanced invaders had little difficulty in dispos feel that the figures of myth are symbols, though there is sessing them." These peoples' mode of living gives us some no agreement on the specific meaning; and 4) through more insight into how they became associated with fairy mounds or modern "critics of great eminence" who maintain that the spirits from the dead. Yearsley is a little more straight figures of myth are merely the symbolization of the physical forward in his analysis as he deplores "the absurdity of forces of nature.2 There is a partial truth in all of these depicting fairies as tiny people with butterfly wings. [It] statements, and it seems that a part of each viewpoint must is rendered the more ridiculous, especially as the fays of be found in the final syncretic definition. J.R.R. Tolkien's Celtic folklore are of normal height. This does not, viewpoint would fit most nearly in the second group who however, invalidate the theory that the dwarfish goblins, feel that pagan mythology is a corruption, or at least a elves, and gnomes may have been derived from a smaller race distortion, of Truth. And Stith Thompson, though he does of conquered aboriginals."11 Both speculations are plau not feel that it is "safe to posit any single origin" for sible and possible. It is also not unlikely that fairies the mythology "even of a particular people"3 does agree that may be embodiments of fallen or dethroned gods; especially myth and fairy ta le "continually flow into each other."4 since fairies on the whole are depicted as being benevolent 3 toward men, aside from the accounts of their revengefulness tires of the beauty there, for Beauty is certainly a part of in response to man's provocation. Yearsley further observes that Land also, even a part of its very being. In Tolkien's that the northern races have their White Elves, who a re own words, "Fantasy is made out of the Primary world, but a friendly to man, and their Black Elves, who are the dwarfs good craftsman loves his m aterial, and has a knowledge and and trolls of the h ills and mounds.12 it seems plausible, feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of according to Mody Boatwright, that since there is a dis making can give..

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