WEBVTT - Spend Some Time with Fairies 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.200 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.680 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.560 there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry who's just 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.040 flitting around us, sprinkling us with fairy dust so we 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.440 can fly around with their fear and of course all 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:24.600 that makes this stuff. 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:27.360 You should know. That's right, a fairy petition. 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.720 Yeah, I'm excited about this one. I asked for this. 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:35.639 I think fairies are cool, and we're going to talk 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:40.639 about them because I realized I had a very limited 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:44.040 understanding of what fairies are, what qualifies as fairies, where 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.280 they came from, what they can do, what they do do, 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.440 all that stuff. So we're going to get into it. Chuck, 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.320 when we talk today about fairies. 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:56.440 That's right, and I think it can be summed up 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.680 best by saying, fairies have existed in many forms in 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.479 lore throughout parts of Europe for a long long time. 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.600 And sometimes they're good fairies, sometimes they're bad fairies, sometimes 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:11.080 they're evil, sometimes they're fun. 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:14.000 There you go, that's all you need to know. 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:17.440 And now we're gonna talk about all of that over 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:19.120 and over for the next forty minutes. 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.120 Well, what's really weird that The first thing I didn't 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.640 know is that fairies as we understand them today are 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.920 relatively recent concepts. And that because, like you said, they 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:34.120 pop up in lore all over the place at different times, 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:38.319 going back a very long time. There's it's not like 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.400 some groups said, hey, these are what fairies are and 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:47.400 it just spread. Instead, groups around Europe in particular, came 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.600 up with these concepts of things that had fairy traits, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.480 but they didn't they didn't put the whole thing together 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.800 as fairies until much later. So no one can really 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:04.560 agree on what exactly a definition of fairies are, aside 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.960 from something that they're kind of human like usually and 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.440 they're associated with magical powers some way or another. 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:15.239 Yeah, because if you tried to do that, it would 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.680 be like, well, here are Irish fairies from this period 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.920 and they're like this, and here are Scottish fairies from 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:22.840 this period and they're like this, and these come from 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:26.280 Scandinavia in this period and they're completely different, and here's 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:30.640 their stories, which is what folklore is. It's different everywhere. 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.200 The actual word fairy is much more recent than the 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:39.360 lore of the fairy. It didn't come around in the 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:44.000 language until late medieval period, but the law of fairy 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.919 goes back much, much, much further, and from the beginning. 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:50.600 I guess we need to talk a little bit about 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:55.200 elves because they are sort of in lockstep with fairies 0:02:55.880 --> 0:03:00.760 in that lore in a way. One way is that 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.920 elves were not you know, the kind of fun, lovely elves. 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.760 They're not making cookies in a tree back in the 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.880 early days. They were usually associated in the early days 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:15.800 with illness, with rash, with health problems. If your cows 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:18.320 all died, it could have been the work of elves. 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:20.640 Kind of an impy kind of creature. 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:26.720 Yeah, but that demonstrates like the idea that they brought, say, 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:31.760 disease or illness, especially mysterious suddenly on setting disease or illness, 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:36.320 like that's associated with fairies or elves in this case, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.720 and that also pops up in other places too. But 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.080 they just didn't call them elves. They called them other things. 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:44.680 But you just kind of see some like underpinnings of 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.800 things that came to be part of fairy lore. And 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.480 eventually they were like, all this stuff is so different, 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:53.960 We're just gonna have to chop the fairies up. Into 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.119 different camps and categories, which they eventually did. We'll talk 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:00.920 about that later, but one of the one of the 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:03.520 things that they figured out, there's a guy named Ronald 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:08.800 Hutton who as a folklore scholar from the Anglo Saxon period. 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.520 He didn't live in that time, that's his his focus, 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:17.560 I guess, And he said, there's like clues here there 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.320 because nobody sat down for at the very earliest periods 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.520 and said, here's what fairies are. Future historian, go tell 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.840 everybody about it. They just pop up here there, and 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:29.919 they seem to pop up not just in folklore but 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.680 in actual like scholarly works from the early medieval period 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.039 where people are like, oh, yeah, this guy ran into 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:37.400 a fairy and here's his story. 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:39.919 That's right, he did. 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:41.840 You know, if you look at the name as far 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:44.880 as like elves always being like empish or bad or monstrous, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.039 even that's not necessarily true because there is a name 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.640 ae l f w I ny I guess would that 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.119 be pronounced elf line off line? 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:58.279 Yeah? I think so that's a great band name. 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.080 Yeah, not too bad. Ex it's an Anglo Saxon name, 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:04.480 but it means elf friend. So that's an indication that 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:07.120 you know, there were friendly elves and this came from 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:09.400 Ronald Hutton. And when Ronald Hutton talks. 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:15.000 People listen, Wow a joke for our genexen boomer friends. 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:19.159 Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people say, well, okay, 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:22.599 what would make the most sense is that elves, fairies, 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:25.719 these kind of like supernatural creatures that live in close 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:30.520 proximity and interact sometimes with humans, probably came from the 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:34.599 early gods and the early nature spirits, and it wasn't 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.599 until Christianity came along that they were kind of wiped 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:43.000 out or demonized, literally demonized, and in Ireland in particular, 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.760 they're like, yeah, they're actually related to one of the 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:53.120 last native indigenous magic using people who lived in Ireland 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.680 before the modern Irish people like us alive today came along, 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:02.239 in particular the Tua dey Donna. They were like, again, 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:04.960 like a magic using people. They were people of the 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:09.320 goddess Danu, who was also known as the Morrigan. And 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.440 they said, okay, this is what elves and fairies evolved 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.200 into from this group, this magic using group, as humans 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.320 kind of came in and pushed them out into the 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:20.200 rural areas. 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.280 Did you just feel the entirety of our d and 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.240 d audience stirring in their seat when you said magic user. 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.520 And you get this one too cleric, They're. 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:33.440 All like, what did he just Did you just say 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:34.000 magic users? 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:35.720 Did he say fighter instead of night? 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.839 So those irish elves, like you said, descended from them 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:45.040 and lived on in fairy forts or fairy mounds, these 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.719 sort of raised structures. If you are an archaeologist, you 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.960 will say, actually, those are not for fairies. They were 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:58.279 where ancient humans lived. But that notion persists, the magical 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:02.000 notion persists such today that still in some places you 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.919 cannot build roads where there are these places because not 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.440 of the fact that ancient humans might be buried there, 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:12.240 but because of the supernatural menace that might befall you 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:13.320 if you disturb it. 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.240 Yeah, and I saw that archaeologists are like, great, for 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:21.240 whatever reason we're preserving these archeological sites. That's fantastic. But yeah, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.560 the most recent I could find was there was a 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.680 highway being built in County Claire in nineteen ninety nine 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.320 and they were gonna they were gonna basically tear up 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.320 a ferry bush, and people were like, you do not 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.280 want to do that, and they actually built. They moved 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.320 the road over so they didn't remove this ferry bush. 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:41.200 This is almost in the twenty first century that they 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.200 did this, you know. So there is this idea of 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:48.360 you know, fairies do exist to some degree, the people 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.240 believe in it. And it's not just from this ancient 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.480 folkal or tradition. It actually was revived in the early 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.920 twentieth century in Ireland became part of like nationalist pride, 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.040 which is why it survives in such strength today as 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:02.640 we'll see. 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:05.560 Yeah, and was not you know, kind of Concurrently, while 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.560 this was happening in Northern Europe, the British Isles like Scandinavia, 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:13.160 Germany and the British Isles mainly, it was also at 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:18.160 the same time coming out of classic Greek and Roman stories. 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:24.040 Basically this is where the sort of the human appearing 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.640 fairy kind of comes more into play. That lived these 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.640 very lavish lifestyles. They had kings and queens stuff like that. 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:34.760 Not necessarily saying they were human, because sometimes they were 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:38.880 sometimes they were not, but they seem to always have 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.160 some sort of connection to magic in some. 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.959 Way, right, yes, and. 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.480 Didn't like people, didn't like like real regular humans or 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:47.760 at least didn't trust them. 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:51.760 Right, And it's from this belief in nymphs and satyrs. Again, 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:57.320 these are like wood dwelling sprites, magical people. They bear 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.000 a really strong resemblance to elves and the British Isles. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.920 But again, these things evolved in an isolated manner. I think, 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.280 I mean, I guess the Romans did make it all 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.000 the way to Britain, so I guess it's possible they 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.320 brought the ideas of nymphs and satyrs with them, but 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:15.760 I don't know. I definitely have the impression that this 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:21.480 stuff evolved from the Celts independently. So, but the name 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:26.560 fairy actually comes from the Roman mythology of the fates 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:31.720 fairy well, fates led to fairy in English fay and fairy, 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:37.760 fae and fae r i e. Were magical or uncanny. 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.520 There was an adjective that described that, and in fact, 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.440 if you came down with sudden illness you were considered 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.920 to be fay struck or fairy struck. And get this, Chuck, 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:52.640 I saw that the word stroke today for becoming suddenly paralyzed, 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:57.640 comes from elf stroke, which was what they used to 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:01.440 call it in the medieval era when somebody suddenly had 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:03.680 a stroke. That's what the that's what it came from. 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:05.839 You were stricken by elves, you were ELFs. 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.400 Stroke el Strokes another good band name. 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.280 I think that that's alf Wind's debut album. 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.760 Did you know that actor Aubrey Plaza had a stroke 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:17.800 when she was twenty years old? 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.920 No? I didn't. Wow, she's solely recovered. Huh oh. 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:24.880 Yeah, And I mean I think it had been out before, 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.240 but she recently was on I think Howard Stern and 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.920 talked about it, like in depth. Not maybe not for 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.040 the first time, but I think it it's been amplified recently. 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:34.640 But yeah, very scary. 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.800 Yeah, oh, I'm sure, man. I think it's scary at 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.320 any age, but especially when you're younger too, you know. 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.880 No, absolutely, all right, So we're in the twelfth century now, 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.600 Aubrey Plaza's won't be around for a long long time. 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.080 There were a lot of traditions by this point firmly 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.640 established about these again human looking or at least human shaped, 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.760 little supernatural creatures. Sometimes they you know, they weren't angels 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:01.280 or devils. They kind of danced in between sometimes depending 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.960 on the lore and the story, and they lived in 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:08.680 a human like society sort of parallel to us, and 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:10.080 were a lot like us. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.800 They lived a lot longer. It's now occurring to me 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.080 that Ruby and I a few. 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.120 Years ago read a whole fairy series of books that 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.120 was kind of fun about these children who find these 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.480 fairies and go to their magical land. And it's very 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:29.160 now that I know this stuff. It's very much based 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:31.480 on all this sort of traditional lore. 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.640 Is it. But was it positive or were those kids 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:35.240 in danger? 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:37.880 Well, they were a little bit of both. The kids 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:38.559 weren't in danger. 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.079 It was kind of like a Narnia thing, like once 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:41.640 they went in there, there was like kind of good 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:43.600 and evil to combat, gotcha. 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.000 So yeah, that definitely does follow in the tradition of 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:50.600 how there was a duality among fairies, and it wasn't 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.920 even necessarily like in this world, these fairies are good 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:58.400 and these are bad, although some some cultures did separate 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.600 them like that, but it could just be different folk 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:06.800 beliefs that the same fairies, depending on where you encountered them, 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:10.560 how you treated them, how you spoke around them, could 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:14.360 go from good to evil, and it just like the 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:15.319 flip of a switch. 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:17.120 Yeah, they did this in these books too. 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:18.400 Actually okay, great. 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:19.240 Yeah. 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:22.880 A good example to me, Chuck of how just randomly 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.240 different fairies can be. What can be considered a fairy 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:32.760 is Merlin from the Arthurian Legends, Like he's considered a fairy. 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:36.360 His dad was either a demon or a fairy, and 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.320 Merlin was at least half fairy, which would explain his 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:44.320 sorcery skills. And then Morgan le Fay was also part 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.440 of the Arthurian Legends, and they think that she is 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.080 descended or based on the Irish Morgana that we talked about. 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:53.839 Yeah, that's right. 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:57.280 One of the kind of maybe surprising things to learn 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.360 is that at the time, if you were a in 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:05.560 medieval times. 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:02.040 You. 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.040 May write it as a like this is a real 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.200 natural phenomenon that we just don't haven't studied yet and 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.840 don't fully understand yet. Like it's looked upon as lore 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:16.560 all these years later, but at the time a lot 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.880 of this stuff was kind of put out in historical 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.120 accounts of the day, even not just like folklore books 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:24.320 and stuff, as like, hey, this is the thing and 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:25.760 we just don't understand it yet. 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.320 Yeah, it was very Fordian in nature, you know. 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:30.440 Yeah. 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:34.440 And then kind of wrapping up the medieval era. In 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:39.240 the thirteenth century, Christianity stepped up and said, no, these 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:43.400 fairies you're talking about, they are mentioned nowhere in the Bible, 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:47.560 so therefore they're evil, they're devils, they're in disguise, they're 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:51.160 meant to lead you astray. Stop talking about fairies. And 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.240 if you know a fairy, stop talking to that fairy. 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:56.880 You're not allowed to be friends with them any longer. 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.280 That's right, And it led to a great schism among 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:05.000 some really wonderful fairy human friendships. But eventually it recovered. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.959 And when we come back, we'll pick up starting around 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:10.400 the nineteenth century when things really got hot again. 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.160 All right, here we go with that two everybody fairies 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:45.880 true story. We're in the nineteenth century. Now, we're jumping 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.600 ahead a little bit. We'll probably jump back as well. 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:49.640 That's right. 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.320 But interest in the traditions I think you mentioned earlier, 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.040 like these sort of old traditions are being revived because 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.800 of national pride. All this old folklore is kind of 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:03.560 coming back. Of course, central to a lot of these 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:08.600 stories were the brothers Grim Jakopp and Wilhelm, who we 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:12.040 did I think a two parter on the Grim brothers 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:14.760 didn't we Yeah. 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.240 We did one on the fairy Tales, and I can't 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:18.560 yeah or the other one I guess. 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:21.000 It was, I think, yeah, just on the Grim Brothers themselves. 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:22.320 So those are from a while ago, but those are 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:24.480 good if you want to check those out. But if 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.840 you look at their eighteen twelve collection, this is I 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.680 believe before that they were telling sort of oral stories 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.880 and before they put them into like real literary works 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:38.680 that had a lot more religion and a lot less 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.800 of the sexy stuff. A lot of these were like 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:46.200 really really violent tales and feature you know, things, you know, 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.200 like little folks living inside of a mountain, magical creatures, 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:54.400 helpful elve sometimes but also really awful like violence and 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:56.920 stuff like that, which of course fairies were a part of. 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.960 Yeah, and the fact that they're called fairy tales demonstrates 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.480 what I was talking about earlier, that fairy was an 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:07.240 adjective for anything magical or uncanny, so it encompassed all 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:11.840 sorts of magical stuff, not just flying little humans or 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:14.600 imps that tried to trick you into stuff. 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:20.280 Yeah, but this stuff is growing via previous folklore obviously, 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.200 but now like real literary works are starting to write 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.360 about this stuff more and more in the nineteenth century. 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:29.400 Right, so people are, like you said, they're starting to 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.400 have kind of a response or reaction to modernization. And 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.400 there one of the first responses was to kind of 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:39.120 try to preserve the original traditional folklore. And it wasn't 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:41.280 just the Grims that did that. There was a novelist 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:46.400 named Anna Eliza Bray and she collected folk stories from 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.240 her native Devonshire, England, and she published them in eighteen 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.640 forty four. And what she found by going out in 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.600 the countryside and interviewing the rural people there is that 0:16:56.240 --> 0:17:00.880 basically everybody believed in Pixie's fairy, that kind of thing. 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.480 They were just part of the fabric of life, and 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:08.680 in particular, the people of Devonshire associated them with the 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:14.159 souls of unbaptized babies who didn't go on because they 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:16.440 hadn't been baptized, but they didn't go to Hell or 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:18.560 anything like that. They just turned into fairies, which is 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.360 a pretty pleasant thing to think totally. 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:22.680 I love it. 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:26.879 Also, late in the nineteenth century, none other than William 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.399 Butler Yates published I don't know if it was the 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.560 first one, but maybe one of the first big guide 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:36.560 books almost about fairies. It was called Fairy and Folk 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.320 Tales of the Irish Peasantry, published in eighteen eighty eight, 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.840 and you know, retold popular stories, reprinted some stories. It 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:46.600 sounds like a pretty easy gig if you asked me 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:47.840 for Yates. 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:50.080 Well, you know what that reminds me of, Chuck is 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.239 do you remember that big coffee table gnome book from 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:54.640 the seventies. 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:57.080 M like garden Homes. 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.840 Yes, it was an illustrated guide to gnomes and how 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:02.280 they lived and where they lived. 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.399 It was I don't remember that. I bet I would 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.399 recognize it if you like showed me that. I know 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:10.240 we did not own that, but it was probably in 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:11.240 a lot of coffee tables. 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:13.400 Okay, well I'll buy it and then bring it over 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:15.240 to you and so you we'll sit on the couch 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.800 and go through it together. Okay, Oh that sounds nice. 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.520 So okay, So, like you said, W. B. Yates created 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.320 this guide book to the Irish fairies, and it actually 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:28.439 became like kind of one of the authoritative homes on 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.960 the whole thing. And one of the things that I 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:34.680 mentioned earlier I think is really important. I didn't realize this, 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.679 but in the British Isles, in Ireland and Cornwall and 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:43.399 Wales and the Scottish Highlands. They as in the nineteenth 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.560 centuries it kind of wore on. They really grabbed on 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.720 to that tradition, that folklore of fairies and just absorbed 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:56.680 it into their modernizing national belief and pride. I had 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:59.560 no idea about that, but it certainly does explain why 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.719 still this at least kind of a winking belief in 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.560 fairies in the area still too, which I think is great. 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:11.360 Yeah, cool to rediscover those old traditions nuts too, specifically 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:15.159 like thumbier nose it, you know, the modernization of science 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:15.840 and stuff like that. 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.120 But any way, in America, I'm kind of jealous because 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:21.720 in America we don't have fairies. We just have like baseball. 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.680 Yeah, hey, baseball's pretty great there, it is, but it's 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:26.400 no fairies. 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:27.959 Yeah, that's true. 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.960 Also, in eighteenth century literature was when we first saw 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:37.200 wings on these things. I don't think we mentioned yet 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.600 that up until this point these were not sort of 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:41.760 the tinker bells that you might picture flying around when 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:44.879 you think of fairies with their little flitty wings. That 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:48.320 happened in the early eighteenth century in literature a little bit, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.960 but really the Victorian period is where we get this 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:55.719 idea of these sort of tiny little insect like things 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:58.680 usually looking like women, or at least shaped like women, 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.560 and that more commonplaces what you think of as fairies 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:03.480 is the Victorian era. 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.320 Yeah, and the wings are typically done like kind of 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:12.240 like a really beautiful, colorful, translucent butterflies wings. I've also 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.840 seen that they are sometimes depicted with bird wings or 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:20.240 bat wings, which I didn't like that last one. One 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.280 of the guys who really kind of advanced our modern 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:26.520 conception of fairies is, you know, little beautiful humans with 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:31.080 wings was a painter named John Anster Fitzgerald, and his 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.640 paintings are just a joy to look upon. My favorite 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:38.000 so far is Rabbit and Fairies, and I mean it 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.520 does what's on the label. It's a rabbit surrounded by 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.760 fairies in this cute little grassy area and it's just 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:49.359 heartwarming stuff. It's like looking at old care bears images. 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:54.960 Oh wow, I'm looking at that now. Is that a 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:58.520 great point? I mean, it's beyond the whimsy of it. 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:03.639 It's beautiful, very very lovely, but not expected like bright colors. 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:04.840 It's very beige. 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:09.800 Yeah, but let's not overlook that whimsy because it is important. 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:13.680 No, it for sure is because these are fairies, after all, 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.360 not all art depicted them depicted them like that, though 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.760 it wasn't always these beautiful things, or at least that 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.119 wasn't the reason behind it. Because there's a little something 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:26.640 in the art world back then called the fairy loophole, 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:29.840 and that is, if you lived in a place at 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:34.840 the time that had pretty bad censorship for butts and 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:39.160 breasts and paintings, a little workaround was to just paint 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.600 it as a fairy because they were usually not clothed 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.520 at that point, and so you could say, hey, sensor, 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:47.879 you can't say anything. There's a fairy that's not a woman. 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:53.080 See the wings, dummy beat it. This is actually what 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:56.000 inspired me to do this episode on Fairies, Chuck. There 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:57.959 was a buzz it great. 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:01.320 Oh yeah, why, I just wonder where that came from. 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:02.679 And now it all makes sense. We should have just 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:03.320 done this one as. 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:07.000 A short stuff. So we're going to do a short 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.000 stuff within a larger episode right here, right now, we're 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.800 going to great talk about the Cottingly Fairies hoax, which 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:16.480 was arguably the greatest fairy hoax of all time. 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:20.960 Yeah, this was in nineteen seventeen. Photography was a thing 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:23.560 at the time, and there was a sixteen year old 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:28.679 named Elsie Wright and her nine year old cousin, Francis Griffiths. Griffiths, 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:32.480 that's a tough one. And I even have teeth who said, hey, 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:35.720 we photographed some fairies by the stream near our home 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:36.840 in Cottingley, England. 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:38.800 Everybody look, look. 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:41.520 Yeah, And so this was a time we did an 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:44.040