In the lore of Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland, when
God cast out the arrogant angels from heaven, they became the evil
spirits that plague mankind, tormenting us and inflicting us with
harm. The ones who fell into hell and into caves and abysses became
devils and death-maidens. However, those who fell onto the earth
became goblins, imps, dwarfs, thumblings, alps, noon-and-evening-
ghosts, and
will-o'-the-wisps. Those who fell into the forests became the
wood-spirits who live there: the hey-men, elves, the wild-men, the
forest-men, the wild-women, and the forest-women. Finally, those
who
fell into the water became water spirits: water-men, mermaids, and
merwomen. These angels were condemned to remain where they were,
becoming the
faeries of seas and rivers, the earth, and the air.
The following is from the book "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries'
published in 1911/ and a quote form a web site on theories of fairy
origins.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ne
u/celt/ffcc/
Taking Evidence (Section I, Chapter II, part 2)
III. IN SCOTLAND
Introduction by ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Hon. LL.D. of the University
of
Edinburgh; author of Carmina Gadelica.
The belief in fairies was once common throughout Scotland --
Highland
and Lowland. It is now much less prevalent even in the Highlands
and
Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they do in the
Lowlands.
But it still lives among the old people, and is privately
entertained
here and there even among younger people; and some who hold the
belief declare that they themselves have seen fairies.
Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of
[85]
fairies and as to the belief in them. The most concrete form in
which
the belief has been urged has been by the Rev. Robert Kirk,
minister
of Aberfoyle, in Perthshire. (1) Another theory of the origin of
fairies
I
took down in the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and, though I
have
given it in Carmina Gadelica, it is sufficiently interesting to be
quoted here. During October 1871, Roderick Macneill, known as
'Ruaraidh
mac Dhomhuil, then ninety-two years of age, told it in Gaelic to
the
late J. F. Campbell of Islay and the writer, when they were
storm-stayed in the precipitous island of Miunghlaidh, Barra :--
'The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of heaven,
where he had been a leading light. He declared that he would go and
found a kingdom for himself. When going out at the door of heaven
the
Proud Angel brought prickly lightning and biting lightning out of
the
doorstep with his heels. Many angels followed him -- so many that
at
last the Son called out, "Father! Father! the city is being
emptied!"
whereupon the Father ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates
of
hell should be closed. This was instantly done. And those who were
in
were in, and those who were out were out; while the hosts who had
left
heaven and had not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth,
like
the stormy petrels. These are the Fairy Folk -- ever since doomed
to
live under the ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when
the
King permits. They are never allowed abroad on Thursday, that being
Columba's Day; nor on Friday, that being the Son's Day; nor on
Saturday, that being Mary's Day; nor on Sunday, that being the
Lord's
Day.
God be between me and every fairy,
Every ill wish and every druidry;
To-day is Thursday on sea and land,
I trust in the King that they do not hear me.
(1) It was the belief of the Rev. Robert Kirk, as expressed by him
in
his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, that the
fairy
tribes are a distinct order of created beings possessing human-like
intelligence and supernormal powers, who live and move about in
this
world invisible to all save men and women of the second-sight (see
this
study, pp. 89, 91 n).
[86]
On certain nights when their bruthain (bowers) are open and their
lamps
are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the fairies
may
be heard singing lightheartedly : -
Not of the seed of Adam are we,
Nor is Abraham our father;
But of the seed of the Proud Angel,
Driven forth from Heaven.'
"The Secret Commonwealth" -revisited
by Paul B. Thompson
Nebula Editor
pscp...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
It has long been the habit of scholars to study the obscure, the
strange, and the unusual. Aside from the intrinsic interest of such
subjects, the fringes of human experience offer the widest scope for
unexpectedly enlarging our collective knowledge. Many common
scientific
subjects were once "fringe:" electricity, meteors and radioactivity
were all once beyond the pale of standard knowledge. No scholar worth
his salt would pass up an opportunity to write their name into
history
as a discoverer.
Robert Kirk was such a scholar. Born in 1644, Kirk came from a long
line of educated men. His grandfather, John Kirk, was a notary and
scrivener in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Reverend James Kirk,
was
appointed minister to the parish of Aberfoyle, in Perthshire, in
1639.
He had a large family, of whom Robert Kirk was his seventh son. Among
the Celts, this was a propitious place to be born -- seventh sons
were
commonly believed to have second sight. Kirk never made a reputation
as
a seer, but he was exceptionally gifted intellectually. He studied at
Edinburgh University and at St. Andrews, receiving his master's
degree
at 17. Ordained as a minister, Kirk served at various parishes for
the
next twenty years. He married in 1678.
Kirk was also a linguist. He translated the psalms into Gaelic
verse,
and translated other religious works into the Scots Highland dialect.
His facility with Gaelic led him to be named editor of a new Irish
edition of the bible. In June 1685 he was appointed to his father's
old
parish of Aberfoyle, and served there until his early death in 1692.
Aberfoyle was, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, "[a] beautiful and
wild region, comprehending so many lakes, rocks, sequestered valleys,
and dim copsewoods, and not even yet quite abandoned by the fairies,
who have resolutely maintained secure footing in a region so well
suited to their residence."
His linguistic expertise would have been enough to insure Robert
Kirk
a footnote in the cultural history of the British Isles, but his real
fame (and interest to readers of ParaScope) lies in his study of
fairy
lore. He collected tales of fairy encounters by his countrymen and
analyzed them in a monograph entitled "The Secret Common-Wealth."
In Kirk's time, fairies were not seen as tiny, gauzy-winged
creatures
of children's storybooks. Far from it -- fairies were thought of as
strange, powerful creatures, a paraphysical race of beings living
among
mankind. It was common for some of the clergy to denounce fairy folk
as
demons, or at least servants of Satan. Kirk wasn't so sure. He
decided
that they were a separate race "betwixt Man and Angel." Lacking
scientific language to describe fairy attributes, Kirk resorted to
poetic descriptions. Fairies were made on "congealed Air" or
"condensed
cloud." This ethereal composition was crucial to their ability to
vanish at will, fly, or penetrate any enclosed space, no matter how
tiny. Being so nebulous, fairies imbibed only the most refined of
"spirituous liquors" (Scotland being a good location for such), and
Kirk noted that although they had prodigious appetites, fairies never
grew fat because they only used the quintessence of food and drink.
Humans sometimes stumbled upon fairy banquets hidden away in the
hills,
but mortals should never partake of fairy food; one taste, and the
luckless human was forever a captive of the Subterranean race. An
especially odd detail Kirk gives is that the fairies had a special
class of servant at their revels, whom he describes as "Pleasant
Children" or enchanted puppets, which sounds like the fairies were
tended by mechanical dolls...
Fairy affairs curiously mirrored the situation of their human
neighbors. When men experienced a good harvest, things were poorly in
the fairy realm, and vice-versa. Fairies lived in tribes and "orders"
(medieval social classes), had factions, fought wars among themselves
-- sometimes in the sky, to the astonishment of mortal witnesses --
and
by custom had to move their homes at the beginning of each quarter of
the year. These migrations were sometimes seen by psychically gifted
Scots, and led to them being called "the crew that never rest."
Fairy fashion echoed that of the country in which they lived. In
Scotland, they wore plaid kilts, and in Ireland dressed like the
Irish.
Fairy women were the finest spinners and weavers in the world, making
cloth as fine as cobwebs, which seems only fitting for a race made of
congealed air. They had no religion, but would flee when humans
invoked
God or Jesus. Kirk repeats the common belief that fairies fear and
hate
iron, and offers an unusual reason why: Hell, it seems, is a place so
hot and terrible molten iron flows like water all over the place.
Being
highly sensitive creatures, the fairies cannot bear even the smell of
cold iron, as it reminds them of the fate that awaits them once they
die... eternity in Hell.
Fairy relations with humans are always strange and often tragic.
Time
passes differently among the fairies. What seems like a few days or
weeks in Elfland can be decades in the mortal world. Kirk's
informants
told him of vast underground halls, lit by perpetual lamps, where
hundreds of fairies feasted and roistered down the ages.
There were also more sinister aspects to human/fairy interactions.
Most people have heard of changelings, where a human baby is taken
away
from its parents and a defective fairy child left in its place. But
the
Subterraneans did not balk at taking adults away too. They
particularly
liked women who'd just given birth. They were kidnapped to serve as
wet
nurses to fairy babies. Interestingly, the fairies would leave exact
doubles of their captives behind. Kirk discusses these doppelgangers,
who he calls "co-walkers," in some detail. Like changeling infants,
co-walkers tend to weaken, become incoherent, and eventually die.
They're not human or fairy, but a sort of biological robot created by
fairy magic to distract mortals away from the truth about the
abduction
of their loved ones. UFO lore is full of co-walker types. Many of the
classic "men in black" episodes feature clumsy, muddle-mouthed
visitors
who don't quite seem in sync with the mundane world. MIBs, like
co-walkers, perform some task, then depart -- though they don't
usually
die in front of puzzled witnesses.
Kirk gives this account of one woman's abduction (I have modernized
his spelling):
"Among other instances of undoubted verity, proving in these the
being
of such aerial people, or species of creatures not vulgarly known, I
add the subsequent relations, some whereof I have from my
acquaintance
with the actors and patients and the rest from the eyewitnesses to
the
matter of fact. The first whereof shall be of the woman taken out of
her child-bed, and having a lingering image of her substituted body
in
her room, which resemblance decayed, died, and was buried. But the
person stolen returning to her husband after two years space, he
being
convinced by many undeniable tokens that she was his former wife,
admitted her home and had diverse children by her. Among other
reports
she gave her husband, this was one: that she perceived little what
they
[the fairies] did in the spacious house she lodged in, until she
anointed one of her eyes with a certain unction that was by her;
which
they perceiving to have acquainted her with their actions, they
fained
her blind of that eye with a puff of their breath. She found the
place
full of light, without any fountain or lamp from whence it did
spring."
Kirk goes on to say the returned woman was undoubtedly the same one
everyone thought had died, and that her husband, having remarried
since
her "death," was obliged to divorce his second wife to remarry his
first.
The scholarly minister's interest in the Good People (as fairies
were
euphemistically called) proved unhealthy. Kirk's monograph was
finished
in 1691. A short time later, after the minister returned from London
to
Aberfoyle, he went for an evening stroll in his nightshirt. Kirk's
perambulations took him past a fairy mound near his home. While
passing
by the mound (or walking over it, according to some accounts), the 47
year-old scholar collapsed. He was found and brought home, but died
soon after and was buried in the kirkyard of his own church. Kirk's
death on or near a fairy mound must have made his parishioners
shudder,
but an even weirder postscript would be added to the case.
One of Kirk's relatives was awakened in the night by the apparition
of
the dead minister. Kirk gave him a message for his cousin, one Graham
of Duchray. I am not dead, Kirk's specter declared. The Good People
had
carried him off. He had one chance to escape their clutches: when
Kirk's posthumous child was christened (his wife being pregnant when
he
died), Kirk's apparition would appear at the ceremony. Graham of
Duchray was to throw an iron-bladed knife over the head of the
minister's specter. Iron was a powerful counter to fairy magic, and
Kirk would be released from their power by this act. (One wonders
what
would become of his corpse, buried securely in the Aberfoyle
cemetery... but some folk in Aberfoyle claimed that Kirk's body was
abducted, not just his soul. His coffin, it was said, was buried with
nothing in it but stones.)
The child was born, and duly christened. While the family dined
afterward, Kirk appeared before them. Unfortunately, his cousin
Graham
was so thunderstruck by this vision he failed to throw his knife as
directed. Kirk's spirit faded away, never to be seen again. Well into
the twentieth century people in Aberfoyle maintained that Robert Kirk
was not really dead, but lived as an eternal captive in fairyland.
This kind of fairy lore echoes again and again through UFO
literature.
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