Episode 38: Blaming the Fair Folk | Show Notes
Amanda’s Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nain_Rouge
Corinne, I am stealing your schtick here and going with some North American stories by way of France. You know what that means, poor pronunciations for a few minutes! Let’s see how much I can make Corinne cringe during this segment, shall we?
So this episode I am covering the Lutin from France. The Lutin is often compared to the hobgoblin or house-spirit of English folklore. They were known to be obsessed with horses. When they made it across the Atlantic to Quebec one of the more famous stories told about them mentioned farmers coming out to their stables in the morning and finding out that the horses all had their manes and tails braided overnight.
To really tie into today’s topic, I want to focus on a version of the Lutin that made its way to Detroit via French immigrants. Please settle in while I talk about The Nain Rouge.
The story goes that a fortune teller told Detroit’s founder, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, to appease the Nain Rouge. Did our buddy Antoine do this? No! Instead, when he encountered the Nain Rouge he smacked it with his cane and yelled “Get out of my way, you red imp!”.
Believe it or not, causing bodily harm to a fairy didn’t go well for our mortal buddy Antoine. He started to encounter some incredible bits of bad luck. He was accused of abusing his power in Detroit and reassigned to Louisiana. His bad luck didn’t stop there, the French government wasn’t pleased with his performance in Louisiana and had him brought back to France to be imprisoned and stripped of his fortune.
In 1883 Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin’s Legends of Le Detroit described the Nain Rouge as "very red in the face, with a bright, glistening eye; instead of burning, it froze, instead of possessing depth emitted a cold gleam like the reflection from a polished surface, bewildering and dazzling all who came within its focus," and with "a grinning mouth displaying sharp, pointed teeth, completed this strange face". Other sources describe the Nain Rouge as small, having an old man’s face, red and/or black fur, and rotten teeth.
Now, the Legends of Le Detroit is the first known telling of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac’s encounter and bad luck, written a full 180+ years after the man’s alleged curse. Now, that hasn’t stopped people throughout history claiming that they saw (or they heard about sightings) happening before misfortunes.
For example: The creature is said to have appeared on July 30, 1763 before the Battle of Bloody Run, where 58 British soldiers were killed by Native Americans from Chief Pontiac's Ottawa tribe. Supposedly, the Nain Rouge "danced among the corpses" on the banks of the Detroit River after the battle, and the river "turned red with blood" for days after. According to the tale, all the misfortunes of Governor and General William Hull leading to the surrender of Detroit in the War of 1812 are blamed on the Nain Rouge. Two utility workers claim to have seen the creature just before the 1967 Detroit riots,[2] and supposedly, it was also seen before an ice storm in 1976.
Naturally the Nain Rouge is a big part of city culture. Every spring there’s a community parade, the Marche du Nain Rouge, in which the imp is ceremonially chased out of the city. The parade ends with the imp being burned in effigy to keep it out of the city for another year. Starting in 2012 some lighthearted pro-imp protestors have showed up to the parade echoing the fortune teller’s sentiments to “appease the Nain Rouge”. And that’s my segment.
Corinne’s Notes:
Sources:
https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4701657/4690221/4725247
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfshot
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2021/1021/1237227-fairy-forts-ringforts-superstitions-rural-ireland/
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2017/0202/849502-doomed-delorean-dream/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-31459851
Hall, A. (2005). CALLING THE SHOTS: THE OLD ENGLISH REMEDY “GIF HORS OFSCOTEN SIE” AND ANGLO-SAXON ‘ELF-SHOT.’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 106(2), 195–209. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43344130
Bonser, W. (1926). Magical Practices against Elves. Folklore, 37(4), 350–363. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256144
Those Fair Folk! If they’re not helping you through the woods, they’re absolutely wrecking your shit. Western european folklore is chockablock full of ways to avoid the ire of the fae. For example, you’ll recall in the Trees episode we did that certain trees were meant to guard against the supernatural - such as using Hawthorn for protection, or making a churn from ash trees [look up tree name omfg] to keep your butter from being ruined via witchcraft. I’m going to list off a few of the things I found that are blamed on the fair folk before I get into what might actually be my favorite- which I’d never heard of until I started down this research path!
Unexplained paralysis in livestock (frequently referred to as fairy riding)
Tuberculosis was once believed to be caused by the fae!
Fairy Forts in Ireland (which are probably remnants of settlements from circa Stone Age to early Medieval times) are to be left alone. Disturbing one often means you’re going to die young. This is great for archaeologists- there’s a reason there are so many fantastic sites that are well preserved throughout Ireland!
Similarly, Fairy Thorns (i.e. thorn trees/hawthorns) growing in the middle of fields are not to be torn down.
There’s a golf course in Ulster with a fairy thorn that’s been there since it opened in the late 1800s. If your golf ball hits it, you have to apologize or you will have terrible games. You’re to nod to it/greet it as you pass as well.
Reportedly, when Belfast built its ill-fated DeLorean factory in the early 1980s, they tore down a fairy thorn at the location. The factory closed 18 months after it opened. Coincidence? Or Fae malice?
And now for what I’m actually super excited to talk about! Elfshot!
In practical terms, elfshot refers to arrowheads and flints that date back to the Neolithic and Bronze ages. Which is super freaking cool, in my honest opinion. These arrowheads were believed to have been hurled by the fae, most often at cattle, but sometimes at other livestock or people, making them suddenly ill and in pain. In his 1926 essay MAGICAL PRACTICES AGAINST ELVES, Wilfred Bonser (and oh my god how I want to call him Willy Boner but that’s mean) talks about early writings around elfshot and posits that this particular believe was brought by the Anglo-Saxons.
Elfshot was reportedly (and I’ll explain what I mean by that in just a moment), written about rather extensively in medieval medical texts, such as the Leechbook from 900, written for King Alfred (iirc, this is the same text that has a cure for styes that is remarkably effective, as proven by contemporary scientists). Some of these cures for elfshot read as cruel to me as a contemporary person living in the 21st century. One such remedy that Bonser describes includes silently piercing the left ear of the afflicted animal with a knife and striking it on the back with a staff.
In collections of folk remedies for elfshot curated by researchers at Duchas.ie’s (doochas - ch like ch in hebrew) Schools collection in Ireland, one common ingredient I saw was something referred to as “elf stones”, which are small, round white stones. Nine of them plopped into holy water along with a few other ingredients (these other ingredients differed in the collections that I saw) will help cure elfshot in your cattle. I did think it was interesting that it was always nine elf stones, and I haven’t seen any reasons for that specific number in the research I did, but I know I only scratched the surface.
OKAY so remember what I said about elf-shot and medieval medical texts? In 2005, scholar Alaric Hall had some bones to pick with the translations being used in the Leechbook and other similar texts. Much of the research that had been done in the early 20th century seemed to be based around an 1860s translation. Hall goes into a LOT of nitty-gritty detail on both the original Old English (note to self: is this Old English? It looks like it to me, v germanic, and predates the Norman invasion of 1066) and how various scholars have translated (and possibly mistranslated) that particular remedy. His argument is that while yes elves are mentioned at the very end, the remedy itself is not for something called elfshot, it’s for an animal in extreme pain, possibly from having eaten too much and disturbed its digestive system. Horses are rather fragile, ya know? That said, in Hall’s own translation he does note that mention of elves at teh very end and suggests that the original writer was indicating that elves still could have been involved so really you ought to take care and follow the steps outlined.
