Episode 37: The Fair Folk | Show Notes

Amanda’s Notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy

https://mountainlore.net/2019/02/23/the-fair-folk/

https://thekayseean.com/life-and-culture/appalachian-folklore-part-2-sprites-and-spirits/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BB%C3%B1n%C3%AB%27h%C3%AF

So excited for this episode! Today we are discussing the fae, the fair folk, fairies. And this is one of those times that it would almost make sense for Corinne to go first, and we’ll get to why here in a bit, but I also don’t want to set the precedent that we know what we’re doing so I’m going to keep right on.

Sources today are as follows: The wikipedia page for “Fairy” because Wikipedia is always my jumping off point, the wikipedia page for “Nunnehi”, an article from The Kay Seean titled “Appalachian Folklore Part 2: Spirits and Sprites” by Austin Leonard, and an article from mountainlore.net call “The Fair Folk” by Steve Gilly.

So to start, what is a fairy? Well, that’s a loaded question. Per the wikipedia page, it’s the umbrella term for a type of creature found in the folklore of various European countries like Celtic folklore, Slavic, Germanic, English and French.

I won’t get too in depth here because I have a feeling you’re about to go freaking feral with the European things, but I did want to point out that some of the theories on the origins of fairies just make me happy so I’m going to talk about them. Deal with it. Various folklorists throughout history have attributed fairy stories to: the dead who were unworthy of heaven, the various children of Eve not mentioned in the Bible, demons, aliens, a species independent of humanity, a proto-human species, and fallen angels. So no real consensus. 

So how do we tie this in to the United States? Well. You have your Irish and Scottish immigrants making their way across the Atlantic because aren’t we all trying to escape the English? A decent number of these immigrants end up settling in the Appalachian region.

And what do people bring wherever they go? Their stories. So you have these communities getting set up, isolated from quite a bit of the rest of the country due to the geography of the region, telling stories fairies tricking people. You get stories of fairy rings and warnings to stay away from mushroom circles you find after rain. And you get a community of people primed to twist Native stories to fit their own folklore.

Enter the Cherokee nation and their stories of the Nunnehi. The Nunnehi were said to be a powerful and benevolent type of spirit, between 2 and 7 feet tall. The stories say they worked with healers, fought in battle alongside the Cherokee people, and acted as protectors. There’s even a story that says the Nunnehi came by to warn about Andrew Jackson coming to decimate the Cherokee nation. The Nunnehi offered the people a chance to find refuge in their world outside of ours. This caused a split, with some people choosing to follow and some choosing to stay home and fight.

Ok, so we have our Scots-Irish immigrant communities who talk to the Cherokee people and learn about spirit creatures of great power who like offerings of venison, beadwork, milk, and honey and they go oh! Those are the fairy folk of these hills, got it. And over time the Nunnehi stories were reworked under the lens of British Isles fairy lore in these communities. 

To finish out my segment, a couple of fairy related beliefs throughout the Appalchian region. If you find a fairy toadstool ring stand in the center and your wish will come true. When you have a fire going look at the flames. If any of the flames are blue you are being watched by good fairies. That was something my Gramps always told us when we went camping in the summers so I was so happy to find it mentioned when I was doing my research. Don’t throw out your floor sweepings or spent water at night, you might end up tossing them on a fairy you can’t see. And you definitely don’t want to know what happens when you piss off a fairy. And a combined fairy/Christian superstition: if you in a crowded room and it suddenly gets deathly quiet at 20 til or 20 after, you know that either fairies or angels just made their way through. And here I thought it was because I made a joke about my trauma again.

And that’s my segment!

Corinne’s Notes:

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tylwyth_Teg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaneque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirt_Sikes 

https://archive.org/details/britishgoblinsw01sikegoog 

So, the Fair folk! This is one of those things that sounded easy on the face of things- I read a ton of fantasy, I know types of fae! I fully expected to just coast through this, make it nice and easy for myself. But uh. I’m me. So instead of what I thought I’d be offering to you we’re gonna dive into Fair Folk taxonomy, because things I thought of as individual types of fae are more like. Families of fae. Like talking felidae instead of Felis catus.

Because Amanda. Amanda did you KNOW that apparently Tylwyth Teg are not just one kind of fair folk? In Welsh folklore, y Tylwyth Teg are the fair folk in general, and there are more specific types! Types like the Ellyllon (more like what we think of as Elves) and Coblynau (more like dwarves. They like to mine). In the 1880 edition of “British Goblins: Welsh Folklore, Fairy Mythology, Legend, and Traditions”, the AMAZINGLY named journalist and folklorist Wirt Sike has this to say about attempting to classify the Fair Folk: “Fairies being creatures of the imagination, it is not possible to classify them by fixed and immutable rules. In the exact sciences, there are laws which never vary, or if they vary, their very eccentricity is governed by precise rules.” Which. A) I love the approach he’s taking but B) science has well and truly marched on. Sir I’d love to introduce you to the argument about whether or not “fish” are a thing, scientifically speaking. 

Despite his aforementioned difficulties in making “scientific” categories, Mr Sike actually breaks the Tylwyth Teg down into 5 different types of fae: the Ellyllon and Coblynau I previously mentioned are two of those categories, but there’s also household fairies (similar to Brownies, for example), fairies of “the lakes and streams” (we love a wet tart), and mountain fairies. 

Also, entirely off-topic, but Sike also points out that William Shakespeare drew a lot of his faerie lore from Welsh stories, which is pretty cool!

Sike goes on to drill down even further into more atomized types of Tylwyth Teg, such as the Pwca (better known with the spelling Pooka), which according to his understanding is a type of Ellylldan - analogous to Will-o’-wisps. One of the things I like about the book is how he connects these Welsh fair folk to other fae figures across Europe, and even into the Americas. I will say that again, this was published in 1880 and some of how he talks about other ethnicities is perhaps not what we’d use anymore. I’ll give him this at least, he seems to have taken a respectful approach, not a dehumanizing one. Other than the note that he used language that was once common, it’s a delightfully engaging