Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 2: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry who's just
Speaker 2: flitting around us, sprinkling us with fairy dust so we
Speaker 2: can fly around with their fear and of course all
Speaker 2: that makes this stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know. That's right, a fairy petition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited about this one. I asked for this.
Speaker 2: I think fairies are cool, and we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about them because I realized I had a very limited
Speaker 2: understanding of what fairies are, what qualifies as fairies, where
Speaker 2: they came from, what they can do, what they do do,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. So we're going to get into it. Chuck,
Speaker 2: when we talk today about fairies.
Speaker 3: That's right, and I think it can be summed up
Speaker 3: best by saying, fairies have existed in many forms in
Speaker 3: lore throughout parts of Europe for a long long time.
Speaker 3: And sometimes they're good fairies, sometimes they're bad fairies, sometimes
Speaker 3: they're evil, sometimes they're fun.
Speaker 2: There you go, that's all you need to know.
Speaker 3: And now we're gonna talk about all of that over
Speaker 3: and over for the next forty minutes.
Speaker 2: Well, what's really weird that The first thing I didn't
Speaker 2: know is that fairies as we understand them today are
Speaker 2: relatively recent concepts. And that because, like you said, they
Speaker 2: pop up in lore all over the place at different times,
Speaker 2: going back a very long time. There's it's not like
Speaker 2: some groups said, hey, these are what fairies are and
Speaker 2: it just spread. Instead, groups around Europe in particular, came
Speaker 2: up with these concepts of things that had fairy traits,
Speaker 2: but they didn't they didn't put the whole thing together
Speaker 2: as fairies until much later. So no one can really
Speaker 2: agree on what exactly a definition of fairies are, aside
Speaker 2: from something that they're kind of human like usually and
Speaker 2: they're associated with magical powers some way or another.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because if you tried to do that, it would
Speaker 3: be like, well, here are Irish fairies from this period
Speaker 3: and they're like this, and here are Scottish fairies from
Speaker 3: this period and they're like this, and these come from
Speaker 3: Scandinavia in this period and they're completely different, and here's
Speaker 3: their stories, which is what folklore is. It's different everywhere.
Speaker 3: The actual word fairy is much more recent than the
Speaker 3: lore of the fairy. It didn't come around in the
Speaker 3: language until late medieval period, but the law of fairy
Speaker 3: goes back much, much, much further, and from the beginning.
Speaker 3: I guess we need to talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: elves because they are sort of in lockstep with fairies
Speaker 3: in that lore in a way. One way is that
Speaker 3: elves were not you know, the kind of fun, lovely elves.
Speaker 3: They're not making cookies in a tree back in the
Speaker 3: early days. They were usually associated in the early days
Speaker 3: with illness, with rash, with health problems. If your cows
Speaker 3: all died, it could have been the work of elves.
Speaker 1: Kind of an impy kind of creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that demonstrates like the idea that they brought, say,
Speaker 2: disease or illness, especially mysterious suddenly on setting disease or illness,
Speaker 2: like that's associated with fairies or elves in this case,
Speaker 2: and that also pops up in other places too. But
Speaker 2: they just didn't call them elves. They called them other things.
Speaker 2: But you just kind of see some like underpinnings of
Speaker 2: things that came to be part of fairy lore. And
Speaker 2: eventually they were like, all this stuff is so different,
Speaker 2: We're just gonna have to chop the fairies up. Into
Speaker 2: different camps and categories, which they eventually did. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about that later, but one of the one of the
Speaker 2: things that they figured out, there's a guy named Ronald
Speaker 2: Hutton who as a folklore scholar from the Anglo Saxon period.
Speaker 2: He didn't live in that time, that's his his focus,
Speaker 2: I guess, And he said, there's like clues here there
Speaker 2: because nobody sat down for at the very earliest periods
Speaker 2: and said, here's what fairies are. Future historian, go tell
Speaker 2: everybody about it. They just pop up here there, and
Speaker 2: they seem to pop up not just in folklore but
Speaker 2: in actual like scholarly works from the early medieval period
Speaker 2: where people are like, oh, yeah, this guy ran into
Speaker 2: a fairy and here's his story.
Speaker 1: That's right, he did.
Speaker 3: You know, if you look at the name as far
Speaker 3: as like elves always being like empish or bad or monstrous,
Speaker 3: even that's not necessarily true because there is a name
Speaker 3: ae l f w I ny I guess would that
Speaker 3: be pronounced elf line off line?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so that's a great band name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not too bad. Ex it's an Anglo Saxon name,
Speaker 3: but it means elf friend. So that's an indication that
Speaker 3: you know, there were friendly elves and this came from
Speaker 3: Ronald Hutton. And when Ronald Hutton talks.
Speaker 1: People listen, Wow a joke for our genexen boomer friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: what would make the most sense is that elves, fairies,
Speaker 2: these kind of like supernatural creatures that live in close
Speaker 2: proximity and interact sometimes with humans, probably came from the
Speaker 2: early gods and the early nature spirits, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: until Christianity came along that they were kind of wiped
Speaker 2: out or demonized, literally demonized, and in Ireland in particular,
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, they're actually related to one of the
Speaker 2: last native indigenous magic using people who lived in Ireland
Speaker 2: before the modern Irish people like us alive today came along,
Speaker 2: in particular the Tua dey Donna. They were like, again,
Speaker 2: like a magic using people. They were people of the
Speaker 2: goddess Danu, who was also known as the Morrigan. And
Speaker 2: they said, okay, this is what elves and fairies evolved
Speaker 2: into from this group, this magic using group, as humans
Speaker 2: kind of came in and pushed them out into the
Speaker 2: rural areas.
Speaker 3: Did you just feel the entirety of our d and
Speaker 3: d audience stirring in their seat when you said magic user.
Speaker 2: And you get this one too cleric, They're.
Speaker 1: All like, what did he just Did you just say
Speaker 1: magic users?
Speaker 2: Did he say fighter instead of night?
Speaker 3: So those irish elves, like you said, descended from them
Speaker 3: and lived on in fairy forts or fairy mounds, these
Speaker 3: sort of raised structures. If you are an archaeologist, you
Speaker 3: will say, actually, those are not for fairies. They were
Speaker 3: where ancient humans lived. But that notion persists, the magical
Speaker 3: notion persists such today that still in some places you
Speaker 3: cannot build roads where there are these places because not
Speaker 3: of the fact that ancient humans might be buried there,
Speaker 3: but because of the supernatural menace that might befall you
Speaker 3: if you disturb it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I saw that archaeologists are like, great, for
Speaker 2: whatever reason we're preserving these archeological sites. That's fantastic. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the most recent I could find was there was a
Speaker 2: highway being built in County Claire in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 2: and they were gonna they were gonna basically tear up
Speaker 2: a ferry bush, and people were like, you do not
Speaker 2: want to do that, and they actually built. They moved
Speaker 2: the road over so they didn't remove this ferry bush.
Speaker 2: This is almost in the twenty first century that they
Speaker 2: did this, you know. So there is this idea of
Speaker 2: you know, fairies do exist to some degree, the people
Speaker 2: believe in it. And it's not just from this ancient
Speaker 2: folkal or tradition. It actually was revived in the early
Speaker 2: twentieth century in Ireland became part of like nationalist pride,
Speaker 2: which is why it survives in such strength today as
Speaker 2: we'll see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and was not you know, kind of Concurrently, while
Speaker 3: this was happening in Northern Europe, the British Isles like Scandinavia,
Speaker 3: Germany and the British Isles mainly, it was also at
Speaker 3: the same time coming out of classic Greek and Roman stories.
Speaker 3: Basically this is where the sort of the human appearing
Speaker 3: fairy kind of comes more into play. That lived these
Speaker 3: very lavish lifestyles. They had kings and queens stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily saying they were human, because sometimes they were
Speaker 3: sometimes they were not, but they seem to always have
Speaker 3: some sort of connection to magic in some.
Speaker 2: Way, right, yes, and.
Speaker 3: Didn't like people, didn't like like real regular humans or
Speaker 3: at least didn't trust them.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's from this belief in nymphs and satyrs. Again,
Speaker 2: these are like wood dwelling sprites, magical people. They bear
Speaker 2: a really strong resemblance to elves and the British Isles.
Speaker 2: But again, these things evolved in an isolated manner. I think,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the Romans did make it all
Speaker 2: the way to Britain, so I guess it's possible they
Speaker 2: brought the ideas of nymphs and satyrs with them, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. I definitely have the impression that this
Speaker 2: stuff evolved from the Celts independently. So, but the name
Speaker 2: fairy actually comes from the Roman mythology of the fates
Speaker 2: fairy well, fates led to fairy in English fay and fairy,
Speaker 2: fae and fae r i e. Were magical or uncanny.
Speaker 2: There was an adjective that described that, and in fact,
Speaker 2: if you came down with sudden illness you were considered
Speaker 2: to be fay struck or fairy struck. And get this, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I saw that the word stroke today for becoming suddenly paralyzed,
Speaker 2: comes from elf stroke, which was what they used to
Speaker 2: call it in the medieval era when somebody suddenly had
Speaker 2: a stroke. That's what the that's what it came from.
Speaker 2: You were stricken by elves, you were ELFs.
Speaker 1: Stroke el Strokes another good band name.
Speaker 2: I think that that's alf Wind's debut album.
Speaker 3: Did you know that actor Aubrey Plaza had a stroke
Speaker 3: when she was twenty years old?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't. Wow, she's solely recovered. Huh oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I think it had been out before,
Speaker 3: but she recently was on I think Howard Stern and
Speaker 3: talked about it, like in depth. Not maybe not for
Speaker 3: the first time, but I think it it's been amplified recently.
Speaker 3: But yeah, very scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I'm sure, man. I think it's scary at
Speaker 2: any age, but especially when you're younger too, you know.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, all right, So we're in the twelfth century now,
Speaker 3: Aubrey Plaza's won't be around for a long long time.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of traditions by this point firmly
Speaker 3: established about these again human looking or at least human shaped,
Speaker 3: little supernatural creatures. Sometimes they you know, they weren't angels
Speaker 3: or devils. They kind of danced in between sometimes depending
Speaker 3: on the lore and the story, and they lived in
Speaker 3: a human like society sort of parallel to us, and
Speaker 3: were a lot like us.
Speaker 1: They lived a lot longer. It's now occurring to me
Speaker 1: that Ruby and I a few.
Speaker 3: Years ago read a whole fairy series of books that
Speaker 3: was kind of fun about these children who find these
Speaker 3: fairies and go to their magical land. And it's very
Speaker 3: now that I know this stuff. It's very much based
Speaker 3: on all this sort of traditional lore.
Speaker 2: Is it. But was it positive or were those kids
Speaker 2: in danger?
Speaker 1: Well, they were a little bit of both. The kids
Speaker 1: weren't in danger.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like a Narnia thing, like once
Speaker 3: they went in there, there was like kind of good
Speaker 3: and evil to combat, gotcha.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that definitely does follow in the tradition of
Speaker 2: how there was a duality among fairies, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: even necessarily like in this world, these fairies are good
Speaker 2: and these are bad, although some some cultures did separate
Speaker 2: them like that, but it could just be different folk
Speaker 2: beliefs that the same fairies, depending on where you encountered them,
Speaker 2: how you treated them, how you spoke around them, could
Speaker 2: go from good to evil, and it just like the
Speaker 2: flip of a switch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did this in these books too.
Speaker 2: Actually okay, great.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: A good example to me, Chuck of how just randomly
Speaker 2: different fairies can be. What can be considered a fairy
Speaker 2: is Merlin from the Arthurian Legends, Like he's considered a fairy.
Speaker 2: His dad was either a demon or a fairy, and
Speaker 2: Merlin was at least half fairy, which would explain his
Speaker 2: sorcery skills. And then Morgan le Fay was also part
Speaker 2: of the Arthurian Legends, and they think that she is
Speaker 2: descended or based on the Irish Morgana that we talked about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: One of the kind of maybe surprising things to learn
Speaker 3: is that at the time, if you were a in
Speaker 3: medieval times.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 3: May write it as a like this is a real
Speaker 3: natural phenomenon that we just don't haven't studied yet and
Speaker 3: don't fully understand yet. Like it's looked upon as lore
Speaker 3: all these years later, but at the time a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff was kind of put out in historical
Speaker 3: accounts of the day, even not just like folklore books
Speaker 3: and stuff, as like, hey, this is the thing and
Speaker 3: we just don't understand it yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very Fordian in nature, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then kind of wrapping up the medieval era. In
Speaker 2: the thirteenth century, Christianity stepped up and said, no, these
Speaker 2: fairies you're talking about, they are mentioned nowhere in the Bible,
Speaker 2: so therefore they're evil, they're devils, they're in disguise, they're
Speaker 2: meant to lead you astray. Stop talking about fairies. And
Speaker 2: if you know a fairy, stop talking to that fairy.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to be friends with them any longer.
Speaker 2: That's right, And it led to a great schism among
Speaker 2: some really wonderful fairy human friendships. But eventually it recovered.
Speaker 2: And when we come back, we'll pick up starting around
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century when things really got hot again.
Speaker 3: All right, here we go with that two everybody fairies
Speaker 3: true story. We're in the nineteenth century. Now, we're jumping
Speaker 3: ahead a little bit. We'll probably jump back as well.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: But interest in the traditions I think you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: like these sort of old traditions are being revived because
Speaker 3: of national pride. All this old folklore is kind of
Speaker 3: coming back. Of course, central to a lot of these
Speaker 3: stories were the brothers Grim Jakopp and Wilhelm, who we
Speaker 3: did I think a two parter on the Grim brothers
Speaker 3: didn't we Yeah.
Speaker 2: We did one on the fairy Tales, and I can't
Speaker 2: yeah or the other one I guess.
Speaker 3: It was, I think, yeah, just on the Grim Brothers themselves.
Speaker 3: So those are from a while ago, but those are
Speaker 3: good if you want to check those out. But if
Speaker 3: you look at their eighteen twelve collection, this is I
Speaker 3: believe before that they were telling sort of oral stories
Speaker 3: and before they put them into like real literary works
Speaker 3: that had a lot more religion and a lot less
Speaker 3: of the sexy stuff. A lot of these were like
Speaker 3: really really violent tales and feature you know, things, you know,
Speaker 3: like little folks living inside of a mountain, magical creatures,
Speaker 3: helpful elve sometimes but also really awful like violence and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, which of course fairies were a part of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fact that they're called fairy tales demonstrates
Speaker 2: what I was talking about earlier, that fairy was an
Speaker 2: adjective for anything magical or uncanny, so it encompassed all
Speaker 2: sorts of magical stuff, not just flying little humans or
Speaker 2: imps that tried to trick you into stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this stuff is growing via previous folklore obviously,
Speaker 3: but now like real literary works are starting to write
Speaker 3: about this stuff more and more in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: Right, so people are, like you said, they're starting to
Speaker 2: have kind of a response or reaction to modernization. And
Speaker 2: there one of the first responses was to kind of
Speaker 2: try to preserve the original traditional folklore. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: just the Grims that did that. There was a novelist
Speaker 2: named Anna Eliza Bray and she collected folk stories from
Speaker 2: her native Devonshire, England, and she published them in eighteen
Speaker 2: forty four. And what she found by going out in
Speaker 2: the countryside and interviewing the rural people there is that
Speaker 2: basically everybody believed in Pixie's fairy, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: They were just part of the fabric of life, and
Speaker 2: in particular, the people of Devonshire associated them with the
Speaker 2: souls of unbaptized babies who didn't go on because they
Speaker 2: hadn't been baptized, but they didn't go to Hell or
Speaker 2: anything like that. They just turned into fairies, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty pleasant thing to think totally.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Also, late in the nineteenth century, none other than William
Speaker 3: Butler Yates published I don't know if it was the
Speaker 3: first one, but maybe one of the first big guide
Speaker 3: books almost about fairies. It was called Fairy and Folk
Speaker 3: Tales of the Irish Peasantry, published in eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: and you know, retold popular stories, reprinted some stories. It
Speaker 3: sounds like a pretty easy gig if you asked me
Speaker 3: for Yates.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what that reminds me of, Chuck is
Speaker 2: do you remember that big coffee table gnome book from
Speaker 2: the seventies.
Speaker 1: M like garden Homes.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was an illustrated guide to gnomes and how
Speaker 2: they lived and where they lived.
Speaker 3: It was I don't remember that. I bet I would
Speaker 3: recognize it if you like showed me that. I know
Speaker 3: we did not own that, but it was probably in
Speaker 3: a lot of coffee tables.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'll buy it and then bring it over
Speaker 2: to you and so you we'll sit on the couch
Speaker 2: and go through it together. Okay, Oh that sounds nice.
Speaker 2: So okay, So, like you said, W. B. Yates created
Speaker 2: this guide book to the Irish fairies, and it actually
Speaker 2: became like kind of one of the authoritative homes on
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And one of the things that I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier I think is really important. I didn't realize this,
Speaker 2: but in the British Isles, in Ireland and Cornwall and
Speaker 2: Wales and the Scottish Highlands. They as in the nineteenth
Speaker 2: centuries it kind of wore on. They really grabbed on
Speaker 2: to that tradition, that folklore of fairies and just absorbed
Speaker 2: it into their modernizing national belief and pride. I had
Speaker 2: no idea about that, but it certainly does explain why
Speaker 2: still this at least kind of a winking belief in
Speaker 2: fairies in the area still too, which I think is great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cool to rediscover those old traditions nuts too, specifically
Speaker 3: like thumbier nose it, you know, the modernization of science
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But any way, in America, I'm kind of jealous because
Speaker 2: in America we don't have fairies. We just have like baseball.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, baseball's pretty great there, it is, but it's
Speaker 3: no fairies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Also, in eighteenth century literature was when we first saw
Speaker 3: wings on these things. I don't think we mentioned yet
Speaker 3: that up until this point these were not sort of
Speaker 3: the tinker bells that you might picture flying around when
Speaker 3: you think of fairies with their little flitty wings. That
Speaker 3: happened in the early eighteenth century in literature a little bit,
Speaker 3: but really the Victorian period is where we get this
Speaker 3: idea of these sort of tiny little insect like things
Speaker 3: usually looking like women, or at least shaped like women,
Speaker 3: and that more commonplaces what you think of as fairies
Speaker 3: is the Victorian era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the wings are typically done like kind of
Speaker 2: like a really beautiful, colorful, translucent butterflies wings. I've also
Speaker 2: seen that they are sometimes depicted with bird wings or
Speaker 2: bat wings, which I didn't like that last one. One
Speaker 2: of the guys who really kind of advanced our modern
Speaker 2: conception of fairies is, you know, little beautiful humans with
Speaker 2: wings was a painter named John Anster Fitzgerald, and his
Speaker 2: paintings are just a joy to look upon. My favorite
Speaker 2: so far is Rabbit and Fairies, and I mean it
Speaker 2: does what's on the label. It's a rabbit surrounded by
Speaker 2: fairies in this cute little grassy area and it's just
Speaker 2: heartwarming stuff. It's like looking at old care bears images.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm looking at that now. Is that a
Speaker 1: great point? I mean, it's beyond the whimsy of it.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, very very lovely, but not expected like bright colors.
Speaker 1: It's very beige.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let's not overlook that whimsy because it is important.
Speaker 3: No, it for sure is because these are fairies, after all,
Speaker 3: not all art depicted them depicted them like that, though
Speaker 3: it wasn't always these beautiful things, or at least that
Speaker 3: wasn't the reason behind it. Because there's a little something
Speaker 3: in the art world back then called the fairy loophole,
Speaker 3: and that is, if you lived in a place at
Speaker 3: the time that had pretty bad censorship for butts and
Speaker 3: breasts and paintings, a little workaround was to just paint
Speaker 3: it as a fairy because they were usually not clothed
Speaker 3: at that point, and so you could say, hey, sensor,
Speaker 3: you can't say anything. There's a fairy that's not a woman.
Speaker 2: See the wings, dummy beat it. This is actually what
Speaker 2: inspired me to do this episode on Fairies, Chuck. There
Speaker 2: was a buzz it great.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, why, I just wonder where that came from.
Speaker 3: And now it all makes sense. We should have just
Speaker 3: done this one as.
Speaker 2: A short stuff. So we're going to do a short
Speaker 2: stuff within a larger episode right here, right now, we're
Speaker 2: going to great talk about the Cottingly Fairies hoax, which
Speaker 2: was arguably the greatest fairy hoax of all time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was in nineteen seventeen. Photography was a thing
Speaker 3: at the time, and there was a sixteen year old
Speaker 3: named Elsie Wright and her nine year old cousin, Francis Griffiths. Griffiths,
Speaker 3: that's a tough one. And I even have teeth who said, hey,
Speaker 3: we photographed some fairies by the stream near our home
Speaker 3: in Cottingley, England.
Speaker 1: Everybody look, look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this was a time we did an
Speaker 2: episode on spiritualism and we talked about how it was
Speaker 2: a big response to so much death during the Civil War,
Speaker 2: the in World War One. And I think Elsie's mom, Polly,
Speaker 2: was into the spiritual movement and she took these pictures
Speaker 2: to the Theosophical Society, which is also intoitulism at the times,
Speaker 2: said look at what my daughter captured. Here's some fairies
Speaker 2: in photos. And everybody just went wild, like they just
Speaker 2: like if something can go viral in nineteen seventeen is
Speaker 2: what happened with these photos. They were spectacular photos of
Speaker 2: Elsie or Francis interacting with these beautiful little winged fairies
Speaker 2: flitting around in the air around them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had seen these somewhere. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you sent these to me or if I just came
Speaker 3: across them at some.
Speaker 1: Point in my path.
Speaker 3: Pretty famous, no, well yes, but also just like great
Speaker 3: and like super cool that this sixteen year old and
Speaker 3: nine year old pulled this hoax over because it looks
Speaker 3: pretty darn good for the time. What they did was
Speaker 3: they copied images from a children's book and cut them out,
Speaker 3: added wings to them, and then use hairpins to hold
Speaker 3: that paper up and took pictures.
Speaker 1: And I think it probably helps it.
Speaker 3: It was nineteen seventeen style photography, but.
Speaker 1: Pretty fun, little tricky thing to do for these two
Speaker 1: young girls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were like they you know, they didn't
Speaker 2: mean for this thing to become like a national phenomenon.
Speaker 2: But I think one of them later said, I think
Speaker 2: it was Francis, who's like, you could see the happins
Speaker 2: in the picture if you look closely enough. And yet
Speaker 2: that didn't matter, because the adults who were into spiritualism
Speaker 2: wanted so badly for some evidence that the supernatural existed.
Speaker 2: Some any fairy pictures will do that, they just bought
Speaker 2: the whole thing, hook line and sinker. And in fact,
Speaker 2: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, he got
Speaker 2: into spiritualism toward the end of his life, and because
Speaker 2: he was just such a trusted authority on things like
Speaker 2: mysteries and rationalism and all that stuff, he wrote a
Speaker 2: paper and when the paper was released, he was saying, essentially,
Speaker 2: this is real. I consulted a photography expert and the
Speaker 2: expert said, these pictures show whatever was in front of
Speaker 2: the camera when the photo was taken. They haven't been doctored,
Speaker 2: and it is true.
Speaker 1: The guy was right, no, no, that's true.
Speaker 2: But he was saying, like, they haven't been doctored, they
Speaker 2: haven't been messed with, like this is a real picture
Speaker 2: of what you're seeing. And Conan Doyle said, okay, they're fairies.
Speaker 2: This guy proved it. These are real deal things, and
Speaker 2: not everybody believed it. I think there was a headline
Speaker 2: in one of the London papers when Doyle released his
Speaker 2: article that said, has Conan Doyle gone mad? Like it
Speaker 2: was not necessarily well received by everybody, but in the
Speaker 2: spiritualist movement it was like we approof finally.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder if the last line of that article said,
Speaker 3: perhaps as best if he just sticks to Sherlock, he.
Speaker 2: Stays in his Sherlock lane, and that was the first
Speaker 2: instance of people using the word lane like that in
Speaker 2: a smarmy way. So I want to say also, Francis
Speaker 2: and Elsie were from what I can tell, Elsie went
Speaker 2: to her grave never admitting it was a hoax, really,
Speaker 2: because Francis did admit it until nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: Oh jeez.
Speaker 2: And she was saying like she didn't feel bad because
Speaker 2: obviously the adults wanted to believe this very obvious hoax,
Speaker 2: So you know, more power to them. I don't think
Speaker 2: said the last part. I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3: She said of men without hats concert, they're all dancing
Speaker 3: the safety dancer.
Speaker 2: She was like, hey, guess what that has something to
Speaker 2: get off my chest?
Speaker 1: There be good.
Speaker 3: So nineteen fifty seven there comes another paper from a
Speaker 3: folkloress named Catherine Mary Briggs who did another sort of
Speaker 3: categorization of fairies that involved what is this one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 3: I guess seven categories, and we're going to go over
Speaker 3: those quickly here. The first is heroic trooping fairies. These
Speaker 3: are the kinds I was talking about. There were a
Speaker 3: little more aristocratic that had the king and the queen.
Speaker 3: Not to be confused with the second grouping homely trooping fairies,
Speaker 3: which were you know, kind of farm dwellers who can
Speaker 3: maybe change in size, who might reward a human for help,
Speaker 3: who might punish a human for not helping or being unkind,
Speaker 3: and might even steal from humans.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's another one, solitary fairies. They're usually tied to
Speaker 2: a place, usually in the countryside, say like the moors
Speaker 2: or something like that, and they will often like pose
Speaker 2: as something like a needy stranger or something like that,
Speaker 2: and to test the traveler's kindness to strangers. And if
Speaker 2: they pass the test, they might be rewarded with something.
Speaker 2: If they fail, they'll probably be punished by this magical fairy.
Speaker 2: Leprechauns are one of them. They're usually tricksters. There's one
Speaker 2: named Tom tit Tot who I read the story of
Speaker 2: and it's great. It's got a kind of a rumpel
Speaker 2: stilt skinny vibe to it. But I think I like
Speaker 2: Tom tit Tot's a little more, so I say, go
Speaker 2: check out Tom tit Tot in his story.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, it seems like a lot of this
Speaker 3: as it's occurring to me more and more. It sort
Speaker 3: of falls into the category of the what's the story
Speaker 3: that you tell when it's are you going to do
Speaker 3: the good thing or the bad thing?
Speaker 1: Is it a fat no.
Speaker 2: More agacy tale?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like as a moral yeah, I think sort of fables
Speaker 3: and morality tales where they're saying, well, good things will
Speaker 3: happen to you or bad things will happen to you
Speaker 3: according to your behaviors and whether or not you're like
Speaker 3: kind to the stranger passing through town. It's actually a
Speaker 3: fairy or a leprechaun. YEA, well, well I'll be what
Speaker 3: else we got? We got three more categories?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: No, we've got two. No, we have three? Year, you're right.
Speaker 1: Three is a catch all tutelary.
Speaker 2: Fairies fun to say, but also include my favorite fairies,
Speaker 2: which are brownies, which are household helpers, and people will
Speaker 2: still leave out a little bit of bread, a little
Speaker 2: saucer of milk, or something like that as a thank
Speaker 2: you gift to the brownies that live in their house
Speaker 2: and help them out with household chores. The very very
Speaker 2: famous fairy tale about the cobbler who was helped out
Speaker 2: by fairies who made shoes for him every night and
Speaker 2: eventually made him a very wealthy man. Those are brownies.
Speaker 2: I remember that anybody helping out around the house, that's
Speaker 2: a brownie. And I just think that's the cutest, most
Speaker 2: down to earth folksy concept ever, that there's little tiny
Speaker 2: fairies that help out around the house. And the other
Speaker 2: thing that they do, which I think is hilarious, they
Speaker 2: punish lazy servants who aren't doing enough work by pinching
Speaker 2: them while they sleep.
Speaker 1: That's got to be where brownie points comes from, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably, don't you think? Probably? Yeah, because you do
Speaker 2: want to score points with the brownies to keep them happy.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, in addition to happening out, if you don't
Speaker 2: reward them, they will sometimes start stealing. They'll make your
Speaker 2: milk go bad. They'll make it impossible for butter to
Speaker 2: churn into butter. They can't mess you up. You don't
Speaker 2: want to mess with them, but if you keep them happy,
Speaker 2: like I fully want a brownie in your house.
Speaker 3: They make your fart hang in the air long after
Speaker 3: it's it's fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that kind of brownie.
Speaker 3: Finally, there are nature fairies. These are the kind of
Speaker 3: water sprites and river sprites you were talking about, These
Speaker 3: spirits that dwell in nature.
Speaker 1: It's very.
Speaker 3: Self explanatory. They protect animals usually and deal with the
Speaker 3: animals out there. And then there's the catch all category
Speaker 3: that I mentioned, which are the scariest ones, like the
Speaker 3: giants and the hags and the monsters of the group.
Speaker 2: Like, yes, I get that that is part of original
Speaker 2: fairy lore and like the widest possible use of the
Speaker 2: term fairy. But we've evolved so far beyond that. How
Speaker 2: are you going to include like a monster and a
Speaker 2: giant into the fairy categories?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Giants and giant exactly, They're their own thing. Don't do
Speaker 2: any like them. Yeah, I say we take our second break, Chuck,
Speaker 2: and come back and wrap this up and talk some
Speaker 2: more about get this fairies, okay, Chuck. So, by the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century, early twentieth century, like fairies were starting to congeal,
Speaker 2: all these different threads were starting to kind of come together,
Speaker 2: and yeah, they were solidifying like so much jello pudding. Yeah,
Speaker 2: remember the skin on top of that stuff?
Speaker 3: Buh of, just like jello or the pudding.
Speaker 2: The jello pudding, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: If it sat out, would I get a little topper.
Speaker 2: As it sat it would almost invariably like create like
Speaker 2: a shell a skin at the top and it was
Speaker 2: limsay and rubbery and like you did not want it.
Speaker 2: But I think some real sickos liked the skin of
Speaker 2: the pudding.
Speaker 3: It's right here that I have to quickly sidetrack about
Speaker 3: a movie I just saw called The Substance.
Speaker 1: Have you read about this yet?
Speaker 3: No? It's the new movie with Demi Mour and Margaret
Speaker 3: Qually That is a body horror film. Oh, just say
Speaker 3: the least. If you're into body horror, this is the
Speaker 3: going to go down in history. Is the all time
Speaker 3: leader in that category. It is the most foul, horrifying,
Speaker 3: disgusting but great thing that I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2: I gotta see this.
Speaker 1: Are you into that kind of thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I like all kinds of horror. Body
Speaker 2: horror is not my leading type of horror. It's usually
Speaker 2: a good ghost story, but I like body horror.
Speaker 3: Well, go see The Substance. It is really something. I
Speaker 3: got the strongest stomach for that kind of thing. And
Speaker 3: I was literally feet pulled up in the theater, peeking
Speaker 3: through eyes like a small child.
Speaker 1: So are you and holding my ears?
Speaker 2: Are you into body horror?
Speaker 3: I like a Cronenberg thing, But This is like Cronenberg
Speaker 3: on ten million milligrams of steroids. However much that is,
Speaker 3: it's beyond the pale of anything that you could imagine
Speaker 3: for body horror.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm telling you, I'll see that in the meantime.
Speaker 2: You see, there's a classic body horror movie called Society
Speaker 2: from the mid eighties. Don't know that one, and it's
Speaker 2: widely considered the all time leader in horrible, horrific body horror.
Speaker 2: So anymore I will be I can't wait to see
Speaker 2: the Substance Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's got a great message. I can't remember
Speaker 3: the woman who made it, but her first movie is
Speaker 3: called Revenge and it was great, total sort of I
Speaker 3: spit upon your gravestyle Revenge film that you can watch
Speaker 3: now it's out on streaming. And she's just a very
Speaker 3: unique voice in film making these days. And a great
Speaker 3: message in this new one about women and aging and
Speaker 3: youth obsession with youth culture and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: From what you described the messages.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's tough. I cannot get some of the stuff
Speaker 1: out of my head.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's get back to fairies, shall we.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that all started with putting skin, by the way, Yeah, fairies.
Speaker 3: Lets your mind run wild with that association.
Speaker 2: Okay, so by this time fairies have are they're kind
Speaker 2: of becoming dual. They can be different kinds of sizes.
Speaker 2: They can be ugly or beautiful. And then from that
Speaker 2: point on, like they either have one or the other,
Speaker 2: usually polar extremes. Right, so, like they're either immortal or
Speaker 2: they don't have souls, so when they die they just
Speaker 2: perish completely, or they're they're fallen angels but they're not
Speaker 2: demonic or wait, member, there may be unbaptized babies, like
Speaker 2: there's they're as desparate and weird as it sounds like.
Speaker 2: It's still way more put together than the threads used
Speaker 2: to be before the nineteenth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Sometimes there are solo fairies. Sometimes they
Speaker 3: are in little small communities or families. We have mentioned
Speaker 3: that a lot of times they live out in rural
Speaker 3: areas and caves and wells and heidi holes other sort
Speaker 3: of bucolic rural spots, mounds and holes in the ground,
Speaker 3: things like that. Sometimes there is a fairy land like
Speaker 3: in these books that I read Ruby, where things are
Speaker 3: just magical and wonderful or can go really wrong. A
Speaker 3: lot of times the beauty is an illusion. So there
Speaker 3: are some stories like if a human comes along and
Speaker 3: says the right spell or applies to magic ointment, they
Speaker 3: will be awakened to the true reality that everything is all.
Speaker 3: The treasure is garbage, and the food is poison and
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I found that interesting because the magic ointment jumped out
Speaker 2: at me because they also prescribed a magic ointment for
Speaker 2: witchcraft and to become a werewolf. And I don't remember
Speaker 2: what drug they what hallucinogen they thought was in that
Speaker 2: magic ointment, but I suspect yeah, referring to the same
Speaker 2: magic ointment that would make you trip balls.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, that's funny. Not Jim Wall's trip balls. They
Speaker 3: can't cross rivers usually, or any kind of running water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: Holy water is not great for them, right.
Speaker 2: No, And this is where the influence of the Christian
Speaker 2: Church came in. They don't like holy water, they don't
Speaker 2: like cold iron. Church bells really drive them. They sound
Speaker 2: like nails on a chalkboard to them. And in fact,
Speaker 2: like just talking about religion can set a fairy off
Speaker 2: that one historian from the fifties, Katherine Mary Briggs, said
Speaker 2: it is tactless in the extreme to mention Sunday to
Speaker 2: a fairy. That's one of the best lines I've ever read.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the other thing you don't want to
Speaker 3: do is if you meet a fairy, don't call that
Speaker 3: fairy a fairy, right.
Speaker 1: They don't want to hear that.
Speaker 2: No, they want to be called fair folk people of peace.
Speaker 2: One thing that everybody now agrees on about fairies is
Speaker 2: that they really respond to flattery and that they're very
Speaker 2: easily upset.
Speaker 1: Right, Sorry, I had a joke.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna tell Okay, you can tell me later.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you later.
Speaker 3: One thing that you can do, like, let's say you've
Speaker 3: got some disturbing fairy stories banning about that have to
Speaker 3: deal with human children and maybe a fairy, you know,
Speaker 3: swapping them out for a fairy like they've become a changeling. Essentially,
Speaker 3: if you're an unchristened baby and you think your baby
Speaker 3: is at risk to be carried off by a fairy,
Speaker 3: you wrap them up in daddy's clothes, put a bible
Speaker 3: under their pillow.
Speaker 1: That's a good way.
Speaker 3: Or if you live a little dangerously, you can hang
Speaker 3: some iron fire tongs or some giant iron scissors over
Speaker 3: their cradle.
Speaker 2: Which seems like a really bad idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd go with the Bible under the pillow, And
Speaker 1: that's me talking.
Speaker 2: You don't want iron scissors to fall under your baby's crip.
Speaker 2: So this is where it gets really dark. In fact,
Speaker 2: there was a long standing folklore all the way through
Speaker 2: the late nineteenth century that when a child started to
Speaker 2: develop disabilities or was suddenly struck ill or i think
Speaker 2: was also born with like physical abnormalities, the folk belief
Speaker 2: was that the fairies had stolen the actual baby, the
Speaker 2: human baby, and replaced it with a fairy changeling, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: And so you would kill the fairy changeling because you
Speaker 2: wanted your baby back in hopes that they this would
Speaker 2: help get your baby back. And it was actually one
Speaker 2: of those things where probably some people, especially long ago,
Speaker 2: believed that what they were doing was actually killing a
Speaker 2: fairy baby. But it also served a really grim but
Speaker 2: kind of necessary for the time purpose of removing the
Speaker 2: baby that was never going to be able to help
Speaker 2: out on the farm, but was gonna need some of
Speaker 2: the food from that farm to stay alive, from a
Speaker 2: very poor family to have to take care of that kid.
Speaker 2: And that is about as dark as fairies get and
Speaker 2: there's some dark parts to fairies.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: And I would also like people to write in if they,
Speaker 3: like me, were singing the Chile's Babyback Ribs commercial in
Speaker 3: their head the third time you said babyback.
Speaker 2: Oh, oh yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet that happened. Nice.
Speaker 2: That's a gift to you, buddy.
Speaker 3: I think we should close with some famous fairies, because
Speaker 3: we mentioned that they had been had long been written
Speaker 3: about in literature, and some have some of that cream
Speaker 3: rises to the top everybody, and the wheat is separated
Speaker 3: from the chaff, and you get some genuine fairy celebrities.
Speaker 3: Puck is the one I would love to mention because
Speaker 3: Puck was not just from the mind of William Shakespeare.
Speaker 3: Puck was a fairy or a demon, depending on, of course,
Speaker 3: various factors of medieval folklore and Shakespeare by the time
Speaker 3: he got around to writing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck
Speaker 3: was a very mischievous character who Shakespeare leaned on in
Speaker 3: that story. Puck as a character would help with chores
Speaker 3: around the house, maybe get rewarded with some bread and
Speaker 3: milk from the midwives, but could also play tricks on
Speaker 3: people like that spoiled milk again or maybe trip an
Speaker 3: old lady walking through the forest.
Speaker 2: Right. He also appeared on the first season of Real World.
Speaker 1: That's wasn't the first season, but yes.
Speaker 2: So thank you for saving me a ton of emails. Yeah,
Speaker 2: first season was London, Josh. He also had a great nickname,
Speaker 2: Robin Goodfellow. Did not know that. Yeah, I'll just keep
Speaker 2: moving on. But you said that Shakespeare used him in
Speaker 2: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare was the champ of using
Speaker 2: and describing and writing about fairies. And it turns out
Speaker 2: they think actually venting fairies because one of the most
Speaker 2: legendary fairies was the fairy queen Queen Mab, who's described
Speaker 2: in Romeo and Juliet and just kind of spread from there,
Speaker 2: and they can't figure out where Shakespeare got this, so
Speaker 2: they actually think he might have made up this really
Speaker 2: definitive fairy Queen Mab, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: And I think we have to close by talking about
Speaker 3: the two most famous fairies of.
Speaker 1: Them all, who tinker Bell and that tooth fairy.
Speaker 3: Oh tinker Bell, of course, created by the great and
Speaker 3: wonderful Jay and Barry, author of the play, and then
Speaker 3: eventually the novel Peter Pan. What a great character and
Speaker 3: what a great just thing that Jay and Barry launched
Speaker 3: into the world. Like all about Peter Pan. I've always
Speaker 3: loved Peter Pan and all the stories and iterations from
Speaker 3: the various movies and cartoons to the actual books themselves,
Speaker 3: and that book about Jay and Barry or the movie
Speaker 3: about jan Berry, which was very good.
Speaker 2: J and Barry also invented the concept of fairy dust.
Speaker 2: And there was a Guardian article that describes why I
Speaker 2: actually think. I found it on Reddit to tell you
Speaker 2: the truth. In the article, I say that Berry invented
Speaker 2: fairy dust. So, originally Peter Pan was a play and
Speaker 2: then a few years later it became a novel, and
Speaker 2: the fairy dust appears in the novel because in the
Speaker 2: interim between the play and the novels released, kids were
Speaker 2: trying to fly like Peter Pan. So we introduced fairy
Speaker 2: dust to say, like, you can't fly, kid, you don't
Speaker 2: have fairy dust. You have to have fairy dust to
Speaker 2: be able.
Speaker 1: To fly, So don't jump out of your window for gotcha.
Speaker 2: Exactly because it's not gonna work.
Speaker 3: That's called a Janberry CoA original.
Speaker 2: And then the Tooth fairy, you said, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course everyone loves the tooth fairy.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 3: This is the tradition of when your child looses their
Speaker 3: baby tea, they put it under their pillow or maybe
Speaker 3: in a little pocket of a tooth pillow that you
Speaker 3: might have bought for eight bucks or whatever. In my case,
Speaker 3: Janet Barney gave us a tooth fairy pillow, which was
Speaker 3: very sweet as a gift, and you get some you
Speaker 3: get something in there, like a little bit of money
Speaker 3: or a little treat or something like that. And that
Speaker 3: originated in Norse tradition in the thirteenth century, when parents
Speaker 3: would pay a tooth fee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would pay a tooth fee because baby teeth
Speaker 2: were considered good luck. So they were essentially buying the
Speaker 2: lucky tooth from their child.
Speaker 1: Yeah, buying it out.
Speaker 2: But the the first appearance of the actual tooth fairy
Speaker 2: as we understand it today, that didn't come about until
Speaker 2: nineteen oh eight, when apparently a Chicago Tribune writer just
Speaker 2: made it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was around long before that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: in print for sure.
Speaker 2: And then we also can't not name check all of
Speaker 2: the Disney fairies, including tinker Bell. There was the fairy
Speaker 2: godmother in Cinderella. Yeah, there were fairies and fantasia.
Speaker 1: All over the place.
Speaker 2: Sleeping Beauty had three great fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather
Speaker 2: the greatest. And that's all you really need to mention.
Speaker 2: The list goes on, but we're going to stop there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I could remember the name of that
Speaker 3: book series. Let me see if I can find it
Speaker 3: real quick. Why don't you talk intelligently for ten seconds?
Speaker 2: Oh god, let's see a little more about fairies. Fairies
Speaker 2: are great. Everybody typically agrees that was one scholarly finding
Speaker 2: Backyard Fairies.
Speaker 1: I believe that is it?
Speaker 2: What was that? That was the series?
Speaker 1: I think I think it's Backyard Fairies. Okay, I might
Speaker 1: be wrong.
Speaker 2: You sounded like you knew what it was a second ago.
Speaker 1: Well i'm looking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Backyard Fairies by Phoebe wall w A h L.
Speaker 3: It's wonderful and there are a lot of books and
Speaker 3: they're a lot of fun if you have a kid,
Speaker 3: that's you know, like six ish.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, thanks for read too, Thanks for that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: Chuck recommended a children's book series which, as everyone knows,
Speaker 2: unlocks listener mail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna mention this a quick mistake we made,
Speaker 3: and this is from Brad. A few people have written
Speaker 3: in and this is something we've mistaked on before.
Speaker 1: Mistake on.
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, have just finished listening to your History of
Speaker 3: Glasses episodes and noticed a little mistake and figured you'd
Speaker 3: love when people right into correct you. When Josh was
Speaker 3: listening Famous where monocles, you mentioned Monopoly guy rich uncle
Speaker 3: Pennybags is apparently his name a great example of the
Speaker 3: Mandela effect, guys, because he never wore a monocle. I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure you even mentioned this in your episode about
Speaker 3: the Mandela effect, and probably in your Monopoly episode as well,
Speaker 3: so this may be a three timer. Any who, You
Speaker 3: guys are the best ever. I hope you make episodes
Speaker 3: for at least another couple of decades.
Speaker 1: Rock on, Brad, Rock on yourself.
Speaker 2: Brad, that was a great email and we appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We appreciate you thanks for pointing that out. It is
Speaker 2: so interesting when that Mandela effect comes up.
Speaker 1: Agreed, I thought he had a monocle.
Speaker 2: Two. I just I even don't believe what Brad's saying
Speaker 2: right now. I'm so convinced he had a monocle at
Speaker 2: some point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked it up.
Speaker 3: I double checked, and there have been drawings of him
Speaker 3: with monocles, but nothing that's not canon, like no official.
Speaker 1: Monopoly stuff.
Speaker 3: And I've been playing Monopoly, we've been playing as a family,
Speaker 3: so I'm surprised it got past me.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, great, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: Got nothing else?
Speaker 2: And that was from Brad.
Speaker 1: That's from Brad.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want to be like Brad and
Speaker 2: get in touch with us, send us an email too.
Speaker 2: Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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