Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1564 page)

I know a gentleman belonging to one of the learned professions whose career would not be helped if this article were to connect him with fairy lore. As a matter of fact, in spite of his solemn avocations and his practical and virile character, he seems to be endowed with that faculty — let us call it the appreciation of higher vibrations, which opens up so wonderful a door to its possessor. He claims, or rather he admits — for he is reticent upon the subject — that he has carried this power of perception on from childhood, and his surprise is not so much at what he sees, as at the failure of others to see the same thing. To show that it is not subjective he tells the story that on one occasion while traversing a field he saw a little creature which beckoned eagerly that he should follow. He did so, and presently saw his guide pointing with an air of importance to the ground. There, between the furrows lay a flint arrowhead, which he carried home with him as a souvenir of the adventure.

This gentleman is further distinguished by having that power of attracting animals, even wild animals, which some people have, and it may be that this sympathy is the same quality which helps him in getting into touch with fairies. His account of the latter is extraordinarily interesting.

“I should describe them as being between two and three feet in height,” says he, “and dressed in brown clothes. The nearest approach I can get to them is to say that they are ‘spiritual monkeys.’ Their general instinct is to avoid mankind, but they are capable individually of becoming extremely fond of humans — or of
a
human. They are just Peter Pans, children who have never grown up. Speaking generally I should imagine that anyone who has had any truck with the fairies must have obeyed the scriptural injunction to ‘become as a little child ‘ — i.e. he or she must be either a Buddha or simple.”

Another friend of mine who claimed to have the power of seeing fairies is the late Tom Tyrrell, the famous medium, whose clairvoyance and general psychic gifts were of the strongest character. I cannot easily forget how one evening in a Yorkshire hotel a storm of raps, sounding very much as if someone was cracking their finger and thumb, broke out around his head, and how with his coffee-cup in one hand, he flapped vigorously with the other to warn off his inopportune visitors. In answer to my question about fairies, he says:

“Yes, I do see these little pixies or fairies. I have seen them scores of times. But only in the woods and when I do a little fasting. They are a very real presence to me. What are they? I cannot say. I can never get nearer to the beggars than four or five yards. They seem afraid of me, and they scamper off up the trees like squirrels. I dare say if I were to go in the woods oftener I would perhaps gain their confidence more. They are certainly like human beings only very small, say about twelve or fifteen inches high. I have noticed they are brown in colour, with fairly large heads and standing up ears, out of proportion to the size of their bodies, and bandy legs. I am speaking of what I see. I have never come across any other clairvoyant who has seen them, though I have read that many do so. Probably they have something to do with Nature processes. The males have very short hair, and the females rather long, straight hair.”

The idea that these little creatures are occupied in consciously furthering Nature’s projects — very much, I suppose, as the bee carries pollen — is repeated by the learned Dr. Vanstone, who combines great knowledge of theory with some considerable experience, though a high development of intellect, is, in spite of Swedenborg’s example, a bar to psychic perception. This would show, if it is correct, that we may have to return to the classical conceptions of something in the nature of naiads and fauns and spirits of the trees and groves. Dr. Vanstone, whose experiences are on the borderland between what is objective and what is sensed without being actually seen, writes to me:

“I have been distinctly aware of minute intelligent beings in connection with the evolution of plant forces, particularly in certain localities, for instance in Ecclesbourne Glen. Pond life yields to me the largest and best sense of fairy life, and not the floral world. I may be only clothing my subjective consciousness with unreal objective imaginations, but they are real to me as sentient intelligent beings, able to communicate with us in varying distinctness. I am inclined to think that elemental beings are engaged, like factory hands, in facilitating the operation of Nature’s laws.”

Another gentleman who claims to have this most remarkable gift is Mr. Tom Charman, in the New Forest, who hunts for fairies as an entomologist would for butterflies. In answer to my inquiries he tells me that the power of vision came to him in childhood, but left him for many years, varying in proportion with his own nearness to nature. According to this seer the creatures are of many sizes, varying from a few inches to several feet. They are male, female, and children. He has not heard them utter sounds but believes that they do so of finer quality than we can hear. They are visible by night as well as by day, and show small lights about the same size as glowworms. They dress in all sorts of ways. Such is Mr. Charman’s account.

It is easy, of course, for us who only respond to the more material vibrations, to declare that all these seers are self-deluded or are the victims of some mental twist. It is difficult for them to defend themselves from such a charge. It is, however, to be urged upon the other side that these numerous testimonies come from people who are very solid, practical and successful in the affairs of life. One is a distinguished writer, another an ophthalmic authority, a third a successful professional man, a fourth a lady engaged on public service, and so on. To wave aside the evidence of such people on the ground that it does not correspond with our own experience, is an act of mental arrogance which no wise man will commit.

It is interesting to compare these various contemporary first-hand accounts of the impressions which all these witnesses have received. I have already pointed out that the higher vibration which we associate with hot sunshine, and which we actually seem to see in the shimmer of noontide, is associated with many of the episodes. Apart from this is must be admitted that the evidence is on the whole irregular. We have creatures described which range from five inches to two and a half feet An advocate of the fairies might say that since the tradition has always been that they procreate as human beings do, we are dealing with them in every stage of growth, which accounts for the varying size. It seems to me, however, that a better case could be made out if it were pleaded that there have always been many different races of fairyland, and that samples of these races may greatly differ from each other, and may inhabit varying spots, so that an observer like Mr. Tyrrell for example, may always have seen woodland elves which bear no resemblance to gnomes or goblins. The monkey-like brown-clad creatures of my professional friend, which were over two feet high, compare very closely with the creatures which little Baring-Gould saw climbing on to the horses. In both cases these taller fairies were reported from flat plain-like locations, while the little old man type varies completely from the dancing little feminine elf so beloved by Shakespeare. In the experience of Mr. Turvey and Mr. Lonsdale two different types engaged in different tasks were actually seen at the same moment, the one being bright-coloured dancing elves, while the other were the brown-coloured attendants who guarded over them.

The claim that the fairy rings so often seen in meadow or marshland are caused by the beat of fairy feet is certainly untenable, as they unquestionably come from fungi such as
agaricus gambosus
or
marasmius oveades
which grow from a centre, continually deserting the exhausted ground and spreading to that which is fresh. In this way a complete circle is formed which may be quite small or may be of twelve-foot diameter. These circles appear just as often in woods from the same cause but are smothered over by the decayed leaves among which the fungi grow. But though the fairies most certainly do not produce the rings it might be asserted, and could not be denied, that the rings once formed, whatever their cause, would offer a very charming course for a circular ring-a-ring dance. Certainly from all time these circles have been associated with the gambols of the little people.

After these modern instances one is inclined to read with a little more gravity the accounts which our ancestors gave of these creatures, for however fanciful in parts it still may have had some core of truth. I say “our ancestors,” but as a matter of fact there are shepherds on the South Downs to this day who will throw a bit of their bread and cheese over their shoulders at dinner-time for the little folk to consume. All over the United Kingdom, and especially in Wales and in Ireland, the belief is largely held among those folk who are nearest to nature. First of all it was always supposed that they lived within the earth. This was natural enough since a sudden disappearance of a solid body could only be understood in that way. On the whole their description was not grotesque, and fits easily into its place amid the examples already given.

One of the best of the ancient accounts is that of the Rev. R. Kirk who occupied a parish at Monteith on the edge of the Highlands, and wrote a pamphlet called
The Secret Commonwealth
about the year 1680. He had very clear and definite ideas about these little creatures, and he was by no means a visionary but a man of considerable parts, who was chosen afterwards to translate the Bible into Erse. His information about fairies tallies very well with that already quoted. He slips up in imagining that flint arrowheads are indeed “fairy-bolts,” but otherwise his contentions agree very well with our modern instances. They have tribes and orders, according to this Scotch clergyman. They eat. They converse in a thin whistling sort of language. They have children, deaths and burials. They are fond of frolic-dancing. They have a regular state and polity with rulers, laws, quarrels and even battles. They are irresponsible creatures, not hostile to the human race unless they have reason to be angry, but even inclined to be helpful, since some of them, the Brownies, are by universal tradition, ready to aid in the household work if the family has known how to engage their affection.

An exactly similar account comes from Ireland, though the little folk seem to have imbibed the spirit of the island to the extent of being more mercurial and irascible. There are many cases on record where they are claimed to have shown their power and to have taken revenge for some slight. In the
Larne Reporter
of March 31,1866, as quoted in
True Irish Ghost Stories
, there is an account of how a stone which the fairies claimed having been built into a house, the inhabitants were bombarded with stones by invisible assailants by day and night, the missiles hurting no one but causing great annoyance. These stories of stone-throwing are so common, and present such similar well-attested features in cases coming from every part of the world, that they may be accepted as a recognised preternatural phenomenon, whether it be the fairies or some other form of mischievous psychic force which cause the bombardment. The volume already quoted gives another remarkable case where a farmer having built a house upon what was really a fairy right of way between two “raths” or fairy mounds, was exposed to such persecution by noises and other disturbances that his family was at last driven out and had to take refuge in the smaller house which they had previously occupied. This story is narrated by a correspondent from Wexford, who says that he examined the facts himself, examined the deserted house, cross-examined the owner and satisfied himself that there were two raths in the vicinity and that the house was in a dead-line between them.

I have particulars of a case in West Sussex which is analogous, and which I have been able to trace to the very lady to whom it happened. This lady desired to make a rock garden, and for this purpose got some large boulders from a field hard by, which had always been known as the pixie stones and built them into her new rockery. One summer evening this lady saw a tiny grey woman sitting on one of the boulders. The little creature slipped away when she knew that she had been observed. Several times she appeared upon the stones. Later the people in the village asked if the stones might be moved back to the field, “as,” they said, “they are the pixie stones and if they are moved from their place misfortune will happen in the village.” The stones were restored.

But supposing that they actually do exist what
are
these creatures? That is a subject upon which we can only speculate with more or less plausibility. Mr. David Gow, Editor of
Light
and a considerable authority upon psychic matters, had first formed the opinion that they were simply ordinary human spirits seen, as it were, at the wrong end of a clairvoyant telescope, and therefore very minute. A study of the detailed accounts of their varied experience caused him to alter his view and to conclude that they are really life forms which have developed along some separate line of evolution, and which for some morphological reason have assumed human shape in the strange way in which Nature reproduces her types like the figures on the mandrake root, or the frost ferns upon the window.

In a remarkable book,
A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands,
published in 1896, the author, Mr. Farnese, under inspiration, gives an account of many mysteries including that of fairies. What he says fits in very clearly with the facts that have been put forward, and goes beyond them. He says, speaking of elementals,

“Some are in appearance like the gnomes and elves who are said to inhabit mountain caverns. Such, too, are the fairies whom men have seen in lonely and secluded places. Some of these beings are of a very low order of life, almost like the higher order of plants, save that they possess independent motion. Others are very lively and full of grotesque unmeaning tricks.... As nations advance these lower forms of life die out from the astral plane of that earth’s sphere and succeeding generations begin at first to doubt and then to deny that they ever had any existence.”