"Noah's Dove" <noahdove7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:210d39ec-de8e-49ca-a65e-07f5c845aa71@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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 Perth****re. (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 op****tunity 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 Perth****re, 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 cl*****), 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 fa****on 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
> p***** 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
> re****ts
> 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 night****rt. 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 pari****oners
> 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.
Whatever you're smoking, I'll have some.
James
aka
Commander Hughes
|
