The Three Fairies Sculpture, The Rollright Stones
This year I
decided to take a break from Scottish folklore and research an area completely
new to me, the Cotswolds. I soon discovered there are plenty of supernatural
tales of ghosts witches devils and black dogs, but the fairies seem to have covered
their tiny little tracks well and left few tales of their adventures behind for
us unfortunately! Katharine Briggs, in her Folklore of the Cotswolds (1974),
reassures us that they were perhaps once more active: “Fairies and domestic
spirits, which must have been pretty active in that region, have almost completely
disappeared although they are supposed to be responsible for the transport of
Tackley Church from its intended site”. Though even this tale has remained a
mystery to me, and I have found no further details of it yet. So you will
have to forgive me including tales from slightly outside the Cotswolds too, as
otherwise this may be a bare blog post indeed!
One of the few
detailed fairy encounters can be found in Nandor Fodor’s Between two Worlds,
from an interview with Claire Cantlon, Secretary of the Faery Investigation Society,
where she showed Nodor the letters (c.1929–1937) she had received including a
Gloucester fairy sighting. The letter writer was staying at an old house in
Gloucester and the garden backed on to the forest of Birdlip Beeches, covering
part of the Cotswold Hills. She was drying her hair in the sunshine of the
forest, out of sight of the house, when suddenly she felt something tugging at
her hair. “A most extraordinary sight met my eyes. He was about nine inches
high, and the most dreadfully ugly, dreadfully misshapen, most wrinkled and
tiniest manikin I have ever seen. He was the colour of dead aspen leaves, sort
of yellow brown – with a high squeaky voice. He was caught in the strands of my
hair. He was struggling to escape, and he grumbled and complained all the time,
telling me I had no right to be there, troubling honest folk, and, that I might
have strangled him. Finally he freed himself and disappeared.” She said she mentioned
this encounter afterwards to a professor of Bristol University, and he was not
surprised and told her that Birdlip Beeches was one of the few places left where
there were fairies, and no one could go there because of it.
Another
mention of strange goings on at Birdlip has been made more recently. “Black
dogs are scattered over the Cotswolds and are of different kinds; some of them
human ghosts, some of them doggy, and some evil spirits. One on Birdlip Hill is
a helpful spirit who guides lost travellers (Briggs, 1974).
So, the first
stop on my Cotswolds visit? Birdlip! I could not find a location marked on maps
as Birdlip Beeches, but there is a beautiful wild wooded area to the west of
the village containing plenty of beech trees, and many a brown crinkled leaf
just waiting to be caught in a passer-by’s hair.
Fairies of a
similar size were also sighted at Tuffley, a little village on the side of the
aptly named Robin’s Wood Hill in Gloucestershire. Doris Poole, aged nine or
ten, was sitting in a field close to a tree when “about seven little people
approximately eight inches tall looked over a bluebell bank, then climbed over
and came quite near to her without apparently noticing her. They reminded her of
harebells blowing in the wind, but they had long, flowing hair and their
dresses were in pastel shades of mauves, pinks, yellows, and blues, falling
softly from their shoulders to below the knees. A little fellow dressed in red
came last, carrying something in front of him. They all seemed in a hurry and
disappeared behind the tree” (Johnson, 2014).
Doris had previously
seen fairies in her bedroom when she was about five. “They came in,” she said, “through
the window – six or seven of them – all dressed in white, and very pretty they
looked, floating about the room. They didn’t flutter their wings quickly like
butterflies, but moved with the grace of ballet dancers. One came down and sat
on the rail at the foot of the bed.”
Doris also
saw fairies in a Primrose wood on the edge of Painswick Beacon. “They had
wings, and their hair was darker than that of the field fairies. Their dresses
were of similar style, but in brown, green, and lemon shades. They were in
among, and taller than, the primroses, and were looking down on them. Now and
then one would touch a flower or a leaf and peep underneath, as though
searching for something. “I was so entranced,” wrote Mrs Poole, “that the last
one had gone before I realised it. My niece’s teacher told her there were no
such things, but I know I wasn’t dreaming, and I have never forgotten them” (Johnson,
2014).
Unfortunately
it was a bit late in the year to look for Primroses, but the woods around
Painswick Beacon are enchantingly varied with open grassy areas and deep mossy
woodlands, and a spiders web of footpaths. The area has a long and interesting
history with some of the woodlands sitting on the edges of an Iron Age hillfort
dating from around 400BC to AD43. Perhaps more unusually, the hill also
features an 18-hole golf course, with golf being played on the beacon since the
formation of the Painswick Golf Club in 1891. It’s a most unusual site with the
ancient blending curiously with the modern, a between place if ever there was
one…
If it weren’t
for Marjorie Johnson’s Seeing Fairies I feel we would know little indeed of
Cotswold Fairies, and once again we turn to her for our next fairy encounter.
On a night before the full moon, Miss Amarilla Easthand of Gloucestershire was
walking in the garden, feeling troubled and wanting to be alone. Near the
garden was a wood enclosed by a fence, and around it were big oak trees, and as
she passed she noticed the sparkle of a few drops of rain in the grass, and it
was then she spotted something else entirely. “A gust of shining little forms
swept by, dancing in and out of the trees. “I looked towards the wood,” she
said, “and for a moment everything was dark, but suddenly a light shone forth
and a group of gleaming fairies danced about. They floated by like a silvery
cloud and then disappeared””. She was beside herself with joy and her troubles were
quite forgotten, and she described herself as seeming to be in a far-off land (Johnson,
2014).
Johnson also
mentions a sighting in a house on the outskirts of Cheltenham. Two sisters,
Nora and Anita Bruce, had a lovely bowl of roses, which they wanted to
photograph. “They fixed their camera for a time exposure and went away from the
room. When the picture was developed, that, too, showed fairy life”. If only we
could see what fairy life they captured in this picture! We shall have to make
do with our imaginations I’m afraid.
Further
north up in Chipping Campden Mrs Claudia F. Renton also had an encounter with winged
fairies. She unfortunately allowed her gardener to uproot an area of overgrown
flowering shrubs at the top of her garden and greatly regretted her decision
afterwards. As was her custom for many years, she took a camp chair up there
and sat for her afternoon rest, sleeping for a while. When she opened her eyes
she was astonished to see “many little forms floating in the air”. “They were
floating in all directions and all around me, dozens of them. I could follow
their flight with my eyes. Some would make a circle and land on my shoulder, my
arm, my hand. I knew by instinct they were fairies and had been disturbed by
the uprooting of the shrubs. I could see their airy-fairy wings with the veins
(or whatever they were) running through them as fine as a hair, and their tiny
round heads just like black dots. In all they would be an inch long, some
smaller”. She watched them for a long time and then got in the car to tell her
grandchildren, who came back with her. The next day they sat in the same spot
and sure enough she could see them, though in lesser numbers, but to her
surprise the children could not see them, even when she pointed to one. The
fairies disappeared after a few days through occasionally she saw one or two
afterwards (Johnson, 2014). Though we must wonder, were they indeed fairies or
a swarm of insects of some sort disturbed by the uprooting of the shrubs?
Although no direct
mention is made of fairies, the following story has a feel of the fae to it I
think, particularly the green livery and refusal of payment. One winter evening
a traveller was riding across the Wolds to Stroud to stay with friends, when
dusk appeared sooner than expected and the snow began to fall in thick blinding
sheets. The weary traveller began to despair of finding any shelter when he
noticed a light ahead, which he followed until he came to an inn. The door was
open and a fire burning, and a little old groom appeared and led the traveller’s
horse away to the stable. He checked on his horse and then stood warming
himself by the fire, until he heard movement upstairs. He went up and was
silently welcomed by a servant in a green livery, who showed him to a
comfortable bedroom with a warm fire and good meal. He ate his supper, drank
his mulled ale and fell soundly asleep in his four-poster bed. He woke before
cockcrow, anxious to arrive in Stroud and reassure his friends of his wellbeing.
He found the fire made up with mulled ale warming, and bread and cheese waiting
ready for his breakfast, but not a soul was to be seen. He could find no one in
the stable either, so ate his breakfast and left two guineas on the table, and
off he went into the starry night. When he arrived in Stroud his friends were
glad to see him but when he mentioned staying at an inn above Dursley his
friend remarked that there was no inn in Dursley, though his friend’s wife did
believe there was. So all three of them set out to put the debate to rest, and
sure enough they found his horse’s hoof prints and followed the trail. But when
the trail ended they found no inn, just two guineas lying on the frozen snow. “I’ve
been told they come out on stormy nights”, said the lady. “And they never take
payment. They never stay after cockcrow. It’s lucky you went early or you’d
have waked in the snow” (Briggs, 1974).
An even more
curious tale with a hint of the fae also comes from Briggs, though it does come
from Ruth Tongue originally and may perhaps feel more fiction than fact. She
heard it around 1941 from a family of gypsies on their way to Wales, and the
tale belonged to Aaron Lee, a Wychwood gypsy in the 1860s. She comments that even
as late as 1967 the Lees still believed that a fairy was a fallen angel that
could win its way back to heaven.
A caravan of
gypsies were struggling up the Burford to Stow hill through a snow storm one
Christmas Eve, terrified by the “snow forester” ghosts all around the caravan whining
and screeching and pattering on the windows. They were said to haunt the woodland
coppice near Idbury. One of the boys heard a mewing and opened the door a chink,
and in walked a small white kitten. His mother told him to put it out, for white
cats were seen as a death token to the gypsies, but the son begged that it was
lost and said he believed as it was Christmas Eve the kitten would speak to
them if they spoke to it in rhyme. So he did and sure enough the cat did speak
and advised them how to survive the night. “You’ll all win safe through if ye
can keep on to the church bells. Hearken to the birds a-twittering and follow
after them.” Above the sound of the snow foresters they heard a twittering of
hundreds of little birds flying up to sing their Christmas carol at Stow
Church, and the gypsies plucked up their hearts and sang all the carols they
knew to keep the snow foresters at bay, as their horses heaved the van through
the snow until they came to a farm on the outskirts of Stow where a farmer let
them lodge in Christmas charity. The bells were ringing and the snow stopped
and the little white cat was gone. The little boy said it wasn’t a witch’s cat,
but a fallen angel earning her way back to heaven (Briggs, 1974).
Last but certainly not least, the fairies of the mysterious and curious Rollright
Stones. Here you will find a group of curious stone
monuments comprising of the King’s Men stone circle, the Whispering Knights burial
chamber, and the King’s Stone. These ancient megalithic stones have a
myth to tell, of a King who set forth to conquer England but who met an
unfortunate end in the hands of a witch who turned him and his men to stone,
and then herself into an elder tree. I won’t include the full tale here as it has
already been covered in great detail in Evans’ wonderful article The Rollright
Stones and their Folk-lore in Vol 6 No 1 of the Folklore Journal, but I think
the fairies deserve a special mention.
“The fairies
dance round the King-stone of nights. Will Hughes, a man of Long Compton, now
dead, had actually seen them dancing round. “They were little folk like girls
to look at.” He often told a friend who related this to me about the fairies
and what hours they danced. His window, Betsy Hughes, whose mother had been murdered
as a witch, and who is now between seventy and eighty, told me that when she
was a girl and used to work in the hedgerows she remembered a hole in the bank
by the king-stone, from which it was said the fairies came out to dance at
night. Many a time she and her playmates had placed a flat stone over the hole
of an evening to keep the fairies in, but they always found it turned over the
next morning.” (Evans, 1895) I can only imagine the frustration of the local
rabbit/badger/fox whose house was getting barricaded nightly!
I did have a
good look to see if any holes remain, but the banks around the stone are quite
overgrown, as they should be, so the fairies entrances remain hidden at
present.
Evans also mentions
in ‘The Rollright Stones and their Folklore’ that a series of trenched circles
at the Devil’s Quoits were formerly regarded as “Fairy Rings”, but unfortunately
does not elaborate further.
I will leave
you with a wonderful warning from Katharine Briggs’ Folklore of the Cotswolds: “An
oak coppice, where the oaks had been felled and shoots had spring up from the
stumps, was thought to be a sinister place after sunset”. So consider
yourselves warned!
Bibliography
Evans,
Folklore Journal, Vol 6 No 1 1895, The Rollright Stones and their Folklore
Nodor
(1964) Between Two Worlds
Briggs
(1974) Folklore of the Cotswolds
Turner
(1993) Folklore & Mysteries of the Cotswolds
Young,
Folklore 124 August 2013, A History of the Fairy Investigation Society 1927 –
1960
Johnson
(2014) Seeing Fairies
