Fairies: Real Encounters with Little PeopleAuthor: Janet Bord
Publisher: Michael O'Mara, London
Isbn: 1-85479-698-4
Rating:  Beliefs, encounters and history of the little people The word "fairy" has become so debased that when it is not being used derogatorily it conjures an image of a grotesquely twee cherub of Disneyesque "reinvention". Yet before the Christians demonised it, it was a word of power and mystery the touchstone of all that was inexplicable for centuries. For example, we still use the word "stroke" to denote the sudden and crippling effects of reduced blood flow to the brain, derived from thebelief that such victims were "fairy-struck". In Fairies, Janet Bord, a Fortean folklorist, presents a re-assessment of the subject.
The notion that we share our landscape with magical beings goes back beyond the Bronze Age and can be found in most early and archaic cultures. It was all but stamped out in Europe by the spread of Christianity and not until Victorian times did pioneering folklorists begin gathering lore and experiences in the growing awareness that these were the fast-fading remnants of a universal animism.
Since those first and still great studies, scholars of fairylore have taken different paths. Most have treated the subject as a form of cultural archeology, examining in a detached fashion the fragments unearthed in old records or the current traditions of rural folk who had forgotten their final meaning. The other, rarer path is trod by those researchers (like Evans Wentz) who find that people are still reporting such encounters.
Bord goes one step further in acknowledging that a good part of Forteana concerns apparitions of strange entities of one sort or another and so she includes stories from the annals of ufology, ghosts, shamanism, religious visions and other fields. Bord abandons any attempt to prove fairies' objective reality, yet acknowledges that `something' is going on, psychologically and culturally, that is remarkably widespread and consistent. Universally, they are referred to as the "Good People" (or similar honorifics) despite (or because of) a reputation for being capricious and malicious. Nor were they always "Little People" as shapechangers, they could modify their appearance to suit the occasion, often manifesting in human stature or as giants. Some cultures have regarded them as "the lost souls of the dead, or fallen angels" or a kind of "race memory" of primitive ancestors and, recently, they've been annexed by ufologists (such as Jacques Uallee) who see aliens as high-tech fairies.
Fairies benefits from Bord's life-long interest in the subject which, combined with her Fortean eclecticism, provides a valuable modern insight into all aspects of the subject. Alongside the traditional sources, she presents new material, much of it personal testimony of encounters with "little beings". As someone who has long been fascinated by this material myself, I have no hesitation in recommending Fairies as the best single introduction to the subject.
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