Modern Fairy Sightings

Do you believe in fairies? The Folklore Podcast’s Mark Norman explores...

FAIRY M ODERN

SIGHTINGS Featuring Guest

Jo Hickey-Hall Episode 9 Supplement

Includes excerpts from Mark and Jo’s upcoming book Modern Fairy Sightings

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Phantom Coaches & Cockstride Ghosts

In This Episode: Host: Mark Norman Guest: Jo Hickey-Hall Art Direction: Melissa Martell Graphic Design: MDM Creative Audio Production: Circle of Spears

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Modern Fairy Sightings With Jo Hickey-Hall

FAIRY M ODERN

SIGHTINGS Discovering Modern Belief In Fairies With Guest Jo Hickey-Hall

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n this episode of The Folklore Podcast, host Mark Norman interviewed social historian Jo Hickey-Hall. Jo and Mark are collaborating on a project examining people’s modern experiences with fairies and fairy folklore and are writing a book looking at these experiences and comparing them to traditional elements of Fairy lore. They have also contributed a chapter to a new book on British Fairy traditions which is due for publication in the summer of 2017.

This supplement contains some extracts from Jo and Mark’s research for this book, examining fairy traditions in the county of Devon, in the United Kingdom.

The wild and rugged landscape of Devon provides the perfect ambience for folklore and traditional beliefs to flourish and thrive within. Even in the faster-paced era of the twenty-first century, time sometimes seems to pass more slowly amongst the desolate moors and verdant valleys of the countryside. It is no surprise that we discover such a wealth of folklore here, weaving curious tales through land and time.

Narratives relating to the fairy folk are no exception.

Image Courtesy of

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John Fitz built a memorial in stone over the well around 1568 in order to show his gratitude. The location is still known as Fitz’s Well.

The possibility of being ‘pixy-led’ - as reported by Sir John Fitz - was to become the county’s most prominent folkloric fairy phenomenon and caused great unease among locals and travellers alike. This is illustrated the following century in antiquarian Thomas Westcote’s, historical and topographical, A View of Devonshire (1630).

We begin amid the gloom of the sixteenth century witch-hunting era, two decades before the publishing of Reginald Scot’s, Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), a post-reformation sceptical attack on superstitions of the time. Accused of witchcraft, Dorset cunning man John Walsh admitted to the court in Exeter in 1566 that he was frequenting ancient burial mounds at the potent hush of midnight, to communicate with the fairy folk. They appeared as, ‘three kindes of fairies, the black, the white, and the green,’ to reveal the whereabouts of lost property and disclose whether his clients had been bewitched.

Fairies as enchanters are introduced in another story of around the same time, providing a very early example of being ‘pixy-led’ - tricked into losing one’s way in the isolated landscape of the moors. The story, one of the more prominent of the Dartmoor legends, concerns Sir John Fitz, an astrologer and astronomer who lived at Fitzford House in Tavistock. Fitz is recognisable in Dartmoor legends also as the father of Lady Howard whose spectral coach drives the road between Tavistock and Okehampton. We examined this story in the podcast episode “Cockstrides and Carriages” (Show 2). He and his wife were said to have been pixy-led whilst riding on Dartmoor and were saved only when finding a natural spring, the water of which both provided them sustenance and appeared to restore their sense of direction.

‘Passing from Chagford we are travelling to The [sic] moor to find Gidlegh [sic], where, if we take not great heed, we may soon wander and stray, and so make longer stay in this coarse place than we willingly would; and, peradventure, I shall by some be thought to lead you in a pixy-path by telling an old tale…’

A quarter of a millennium later, the fear of being pixy-led evidently remained a real risk. A surgeon based in Kenton wrote to weekly newspaper, the Exeter Mercury in 1883 to illuminate its editor on the local resident’s, ‘hidden but cherished opinions’.

‘The first hint I received that the superstition of the old times lingered in the place was the discovery that messengers, sent to summon me at night, would never come by a certain lane, called the Kenn-lane, about a mile in length, but travelled by a rougher and more hilly road. I was told that the lane was ‘Pixie led’, that a man returning at night to his home lost himself at the beginning of the lane and found himself sitting under the hedge at the end of it, and that he must have been carried by the Pixies rapidly through it.’

It is interesting, of course, that the phenomenon was termed ‘pixy-leading’ and was not connected linguistically to the fairies. We must ask ourselves why this should be the case and what the differences are.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Modern Fairy Sightings With Jo Hickey-Hall

“Pixies present a difficult problem. What on earth are they? On the one hand, like fairies, they are usually said to have existed long ago but not now. On the other hand we still occasionally hear of people seeing them in modern times.�

Image this page & opposite: Graveyard at night

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In modern Devon there seems little distinction between the various genera into which these creatures may be divided: fairy, pixie, imp, sprite or elf (to quote but a few) all become rather interchangeable and aspects that were once quite separate may now be ascribed using any of these terms. But this was certainly not always the case. Within the folklore of the region the main two commonly used names - fairy and pixie - were so far apart that some researchers considered there to be a war between the two races.

The origins of the fairy and pixie races in Devon are nigh on impossible to trace, although various theories have been put forward as to their roots. The eminent late Devon folklorist Theo Brown put forward a few suggestions. In her book, Devon Ghosts, she says: “Pixies present a difficult problem. What on earth are they? On the one hand, like fairies, they are usually said to have existed long ago but not now. On the other hand we still occasionally hear of people seeing them in modern times. My own mother used to see them when she was young, but only when she was alone and in a rather dreamy, dissociated mood.

I well remember when we were camping at Postbridge in the 1920s she reported seeing a strange figure wandering at the top of Drift Lane. It was tall and thin and dressed in green, rather indefinite garments. What struck her was its air of melancholy. She had seen pixies on other occasions when as a very young woman she had walked round the cliffs surrounding Watcombe Bay, near Torquay. Then she had recently come from London.

It is not only superstitious countryfolk (if there are any!) who see pixies: the most sophisticated townies can be confronted with these mysterious beings. A friend of mine, a brigadier’s wife, used to see them on Dartmoor quite frequently, especially in the little valleys round the edge of the moor, where tiny streams trickle down between moss-covered rocks. She was sure they avoided the forestry plantations.

Numerous theories have been suggested to explain them, such as that they are the decadent remnant of a prehistoric race or their ghosts. Or they are diminished pagan deities, or, in Victorian folklore, the spirits of unbaptised babies hanging around in accordance with the grim old teaching that if you were not baptised you could never enter heaven, but if you were not actually wicked you would not enter hell either. Thus you dangled between heaven and hell in a kind of amoral limbo as a lost spirit outside the pale of Christian society.”

In the South West the term piskie often being substituted for pixie. The origins of this come from the fact that in the old West Country dialect it was common for pairs of letters from the original Saxon to be transposed, for example in the local dialect you would ‘aks’ a question rather than ask.

The word piskie is still very common in this area.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Modern Fairy Sightings With Jo Hickey-Hall

This issue of size or diminution is an interesting one. Sightings of fairies and pixies in Devon tend to suggest a creature between one foot and three feet in height. But it is possible that they may have been larger at one time and some accounts put them closer to human size. Devon folklore tells that a member of the Elford family, who lived in the moorland town of Tavistock, managed to hide from Cromwell’s troops in a pixie house which is still visible on Sheeps Tor. In his book Paranormal Devon, Daniel Codd records: “Towering above the little village of Sheepstor can be found Sheep’s Tor, where a natural fissure or narrow cavern among the rocks is called Pixie’s, or Piskie’s, House. It is notable historically for being the hiding place of a royalist named Elford, who took shelter here while evading Cromwell’s soldiers. This was believed to be the palace of the pixies, a singularly difficult place to reach, for according to Mrs Bray: ‘How any living thing but a raven, a crow, or an eagle could make his home in such a spot, is to me, I confess, a puzzle.’ Mrs Bray mentions in passing that the young women of Sheepstor were strikingly beautiful, and I wonder if mothers genuinely feared for their offspring, living so near a place with such an unenviable reputation; Mrs Bray was herself advised to leave a pin, or some small token, during a visit to the Pixie’s House, lest these ‘invisible beings’ torment her in her sleep.”

There is another ‘Pixie’s House’ located at Chudleigh Rocks, although in this case the name has varied slightly over time as the gap in the rocks there used to be known as ‘Pixie’s Hole’ and is cited as such in the Philosophical Magazine of 1812. A small race were said to have lived here at one time, also using a hollow inside the rocks which became known as the ‘Pixie’s Parlour’. Theo Brown told a story of a gamekeeper who lived in this area with his wife and two children: “Chudleigh Rocks were supposed to be a favourite home of ‘the little people’. This is a wooded glen between cliffs of limestone, honeycombed with caves, an inner cul-de-sac being known as 8

‘The Pixies’ Parlour’. These caves and rocks are a popular if tough challenge to rock-climbers and speleologists. Down the glen flows the Katebrook (or Kidbrook) to join the River Teign near the site of the old station and Bridge Cottage.

By the Rocks once lived a gamekeeper with his wife and two small children. One morning the elder child, having been dressed first, wandered off and was lost. Her parents searched high and low for days, with the assistance of neighbours and even bloodhounds, but no sign of her could be found.

Eventually two young men nutting near the cottage came upon the little girl. She had no clothes on but appeared perfectly well and happy and not even hungry, and was sitting playing with her toes. It was assumed that the pixies had abducted her, but why they returned such a hearty specimen is not explained! This story was told by a local inhabitant to Lady Rosalind Northcote.”

In the same book, Devon Ghosts, Brown also cites the Christian suggestion found in Victorian folklore that fairies or pixies represented the souls of unbaptised children held in a limbo state, mentioned above. This is not an untypical example of a Christian philosophy (in this case that without baptism one may not enter heaven) adopting a piece of folklore or a folk tale in order to put its view across. We see these ‘morality tales’ often within folklore and there are more within the fairy lore of Devon.

A folktale known as The Fairy Ointment, for example, sees a nurse in Tavistock, who it is said is very fond of money, being taken by the fairies to tend to a fairy mother and her newborn child.

In the course of her work she is given ointment to rub on the baby’s eyes in a bottle which she inadvertently takes back to her realm after her year of work with the fairies. She tries to resist using it but cannot and ends up putting some on her left eye, with which she is then able to view the fairy realm. However, the fairy king discovers this fact and blinds her in this eye for her disobedience. A moral tale warning against the dangers of curiosity.

Interestingly, like many of the these folk ‘tales’ (as opposed to actual eyewitness accounts and sightings) we find that this story occurs in different variants in a number of places. Katharine Briggs, for example, records this in Scotland in a similar manner.

Tales of fairies and pixies permeated Victorian literature, art and drama and the moral folk tale was rehashed again and again. The fashion for collecting native folklore in rural communities reached a peak in the mid-nineteenth century.

One of these collectors was Anna Elizabeth Bray, an author with an interest in the traditions and superstitions of Devon. The following story, preserved by Mrs Bray, portrays the employment of fairy within Victorian tales, to make a moral point.

‘Two serving damsels of this place declared, as an excuse, perhaps, for spending more money than they ought upon finery, that the pixies were very kind to them. In the house where they worked near Tavistock, they had discovered that silver would be dropped overnight into a bucket of clean water, if they were careful to leave this in the chimney corner before they went to bed. But one night they forgot to put the bucket out, and the pixies came rustling indignantly into their room. The girls woke up and heard what was going on; one of them thought they should get up immediately and set the hearth in order, but the other yawned lazily and said they should not stir themselves, not for all the pixies in Devon. Well the hard-working girl got up, and filled the bucket, where a handful of silver pennies were found waiting for her in the morning; but the lazy one was afflicted with a lameness in her leg, and this lasted for seven years.’

Back on the moor, William Crossing, another folklorist had ‘gathered from the peasantry,’ a great collection of stories. One example in Tales of the Dartmoor Pixies (1890) describes how a labourer had begun ploughing at dawn and by breakfast time had grown hungry. As he worked the field back and forth he grew closer to an ancient granite standing stone.

‘As the ploughman passed near this rock on his way across the field, he was startled at hearing voices, apparently proceeding from beneath it. He listened, and distinctly heard one, in a louder tone than the rest, exclaim, “The oven’s hot!” “Bake me a cake, then,” instantly cried the hungry ploughman, in whose mind the very mention of an oven had conjured up thoughts of appetising cheer; “Bake me a cake, then.” He continued the furrow to the end of the field , when, turning his

plough, he set out on his return journey. When he approached the rock, what was his surprise and delight at seeing, placed on its surface, a nice cake, smoking hot. He knew at once that this was the work of the obliging little pixies, who evidently had a resort under the rock, and who had taken pity upon his hunger, and provided him with a morning meal.’

Compared to the Tavistock servants’ tale, it is a playful anecdote, yet perhaps it also highlights the reward of remaining respectful to the standing stone by ploughing around it. Often seen by farmers as a ploughing obstruction, these great rocks are known to have been broken up or buried in other sites throughout history in the British Isles.

Fairies were not only found in the landscape, of course, but could infiltrate the home too. Belief in fairy provided an influential means of control in family households. Employed in similar ways to the Victorian moral tales, the sharing of supernatural anecdotes was still an important aspect of rural home life in the early nineteenth century. Folklorist Jeremy Harte, citing Dartmoor folklore collector William Crossing from the late 1800s records: ‘As the family sit round the hearth, talk turns to the pisgies – “they’ve a got their own ways ‘bout everything an’ us can’t understand mun” The children sit wide-eyed and scared; the others are more inclined to say that it is all stories, but when a sound is heard outside they all jump, and as the man of the house goes to the door his wife looks troubled. But no, it is only a neighbour who has been pixyled on the moor.

By now the servant girl is quite worried, and the farmer’s son insists on taking care of her, and brings her to his side, behind the settle.’

While beliefs had remained strong up until the mid-part of the nineteenth century, they appeared to begin to wane. One key reason for this was the popularity of the Victorian chapbook and Penny Dreadful which began to use folklore themes in sensational stories, rendering the original folklore less palatable and unfashionable to retain a belief in.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Modern Fairy Sightings With Jo Hickey-Hall

“The children sit scared; the ot

inclined to say t stories, but when a outside

they all j

man of the house goe his wife

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wide-eyed and

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that it is all

a sound is heard

jump, and as the es to the door troubled.“ DEMONIC DOG “Pen and ink illustration of a demonic Black Dog

by Paul Atlas-Saunders” From the author’s book ‘Black Dog Folklore’ copyright Troy Books

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Modern Fairy Sightings With Jo Hickey-Hall

Therefore, by the end of the century, belief in the fairy folk was considered to be something to be found in rural areas and within the ‘uneducated’.

Writing in The Windsor Magazine, described at the time as, ‘an illustrated monthly for men and women’, Archibald S. Hurd suggested that, ‘though the children of Dartmoor are still ruddy of cheek, strong of limb, and unkempt, no self-respecting boy or girl believes to-day in Pixyland, that unknown country beneath the bogs where the fairies hatch their schemes of good or ill’. This was in 1896.

However, the following year Mrs G. M. Herbert had an experience, which she later recalled in the Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association in these words: ‘Though I am a grown woman with three sons, I still firmly believe in pixies and in fairies. When a child of seven I saw a pixie, and in recent years I have been ‘pisky-led’ on Dartmoor. I saw the pixie under an overhanging boulder closer to Shaugh Bridge (on the southern edge of Dartmoor) in the afternoon. I cannot say more definitely as at to the time, but I remember running in to my mother after an afternoon walk and saying I had seen a pixie – and being laughed at. This was in 1897. It was like a little wizened man about (as far as I can remember) 18 inches or possibly 2 feet high, but I incline to the lesser height. It had a little pointed hat, slightly curved to the front a doublet, and little short knicker things. My impression is of some contrasting colours, but I cannot remember what colours, though I think they were blue and red. Its face was brown and wrinkled and wizened. I saw it for a moment and it vanished. It was under the boulder when I looked, and then it vanished.’

Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries these beliefs continued to dwindle, with only occasional high levels of support, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s publicising of the ‘Cottingley Fairies’, for example.

The truth is, though, that people have continued to report fairy encounters throughout the twentieth century and up to the present day.

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Many of these have taken place in Devon and whether it is the simple expanse of nature itself, or the effect of being so isolated from modern humanity, Dartmoor in particular continues to provide a rich backdrop for fairy sightings The 1930s proved an exceptionally fruitful decade for a public defence of the existence of fairies, at a time when one might have expected an ever intensified retreat from rural superstition. In November 1930, a seemingly well-informed Devonian, Paddy Sylvanus wrote to the Morning Post newspaper in response to an article by a Mr Park which sought to invalidate Dartmoor superstitions.

‘I have lived for ten years on the borders of Dartmoor. I could and would introduce Mr James P. Park to a bridge that cannot be crossed at midnight; to a dell where fairies are still seen to dance; to a dangerous locality where an earthbound spirit dwells, causing terrible accidents; (and) to a well-known and universally respected lady who has seen a pixie and heard the wish-hounds. I could take him to visit a witch in her cottage, at the risk of being overlooked.’

The public were certainly interested. Imagine the satisfaction of the editor of John O’London’s Weekly, literary magazine when a request for first hand accounts was answered by Joyce Chadwick.

Her letter, which was published in March 1936 describes a very matter-of-fact observation of a ‘pisky’.

‘A few years ago on the Cornish-Devonian border, I was surprised to see on the cliff above me the figure of a tiny man, dressed in black, strutting round in a rather vain-looking way. So incredulous was I of the existence of the ‘pisky’ people that I said to myself, “In a minute I shall see what he really is – a bird, or a shadow.” But no, he went on being a tiny man – until he changed into a quite indescribable thing (are not piskies’ Irish cousins known as the shape-changers?); something with the appearance of a long, furry black roll, which gambolled about on the grass and then disappeared. A few minutes later, however, two more little shapes became visible – slightly larger and more rounder than the first pisky-man. They were sitting one on either side of a gorse bush, making movements similar to those made in sawing with a two-handled saw. Curiosity impelled closer investigation – but the short cut I

took up the cliff ended in unclimbable steepness and rubble, and I was obliged to return to the shore. By the time I had reached the gorse-bush by the usual path the pisky-sawyers were gone. Nothing except a form of air, though, could have sat on air as the sawyer on the sea side must have been doing – for the bush hung some inches over the cliff edge.’

By the middle of the 20th century a number of folklorists had returned to examining fairy experiences once again, recording what they were told.

In Diarmuid MacManus’ Irish Earth Folk, a Mrs C Woods described an encounter near Haytor Rocks, Dartmoor in 1952. While out walking, she saw a 3 foot tall elderly looking brown-capped or brown haired figure, dressed in a brown smock, tied with a waist cord. He seemed to be shading his eyes from the sun as he watched her. As she moved closer to get a better look, he quickly disappeared between the stones.

‘I had no idea at first that he was a little man; I thought rather of some animal until I got much nearer, and then I just stared and said to myself, “This is no animal, it is a tiny man in brown.” I felt and still feel so convinced.’

The clothing described is archetypal and is repeated in the following fairy sighting. In The Witchcraft and Folklore of Devon, the author, Ruth St Leger-Gordon describes a workshop discussion which took place in 1960 regarding the existence of fairies and pixies. Responding to the author’s disbelief, one lady declared her friend had seen, ‘four of them one day emerging from a bracken stack in one of the little rough field enclosures near Widecombe-in-the-Moor. All four were little men, two being somewhat taller than the others and less pleasant looking than the smaller couple. All wore the traditional costume of red doublet, red pointed cap and long green hose.’

Echoing Mrs Pethybridge’s sentiments, Ruth was later informed that in Dartmoor, ‘...the incident was not considered unusual.’

Holidaying at a Devonshire cottage in 1962, a Kilve cleric and his wife returned from a day’s outing expecting to dine on bread and cheese,

only to find that a fire had been lit and a previously uncooked stew was now ready for eating. ‘The fire was alight and the stew was hot. We had been within sight of the house all day. We had seen nobody go there, nor had we seen any smoke.’ If that inexplicable interchange wasn’t enough, some days later when the dinner had been left unchecked, cooking on the stove all day, they were surprised to find that their meal had very considerately been taken off the heat, rather than burnt to a crisp.

The authors were also told a first-hand late 20th century experience from the village of Chagford in Devon which also involved food preparation.

Harpist, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry was busily preparing for a concert gig one evening, whilst making dinner for her two young sons. In her haste, she discarded some potato peel into the bin rather than take it out to the compost as she would ordinarily. ‘I felt bad when I did that, because it’s not something I’d usually do. A minute or so later I had to throw something else away. I opened the bin and there was such a bright shining light sitting on the potato peelings in the rubbish bin. It was actually quite frightening because it's something you don't expect. I knew it was a fairy. I couldn't see a physical humanoid form, I just knew it was a fairy. I looked up and around and thought, “is there anything shining into this bin?” But it was such a dark little cottage and there was nothing shining into it, it was just there. I watched it for a while, until I got scared and put the lid down.’

What would happen if fairy visitors frequented your land? In around 2002 author, Michael Howard was told of a Devon farmer who by all accounts was a ‘the most rational and sceptical person you were ever likely to meet.’ The story goes that in dismantling an old barn he lit a fire and placed the timbe ‘As he approached the fire, the farmer was amazed to see in the light from the burning embers a circle of small green figures standing around it.

He immediately rushed indoors to tell his wife and bring her outside to witness the strange sight.

She predictably reacted with incredulity when her husband told her what he had seen and said he must have been mistaken. Naturally when the couple went back to the fire the mysterious green visitors had gone.’

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: Modern Fairy Sightings With Jo Hickey-Hall

Unusually, on Dartmoor, it was also believed that the pixies attended church. A rock, long since blasted and no longer in place, upon the moor was said by folklorist Mrs Bray to have been variously named Belfry Rock or Church Rock. The name came from the fact that it was said at one time that, on a Sunday, if you placed your ear to the rock you would be able to hear the sound of bells not unlike the church bells at Tavistock calling out for service (and incidentally at the same hour as the church).

The rock became known as Pixies’ Church because of this phenomenon, which we must imagine was due to some natural reflecting of the sound from Tavistock church itself. The pixies were also said to enjoy bell-ringing.

To this day, in the Devon town of Ottery St Mary, we find a calendar custom which commemorates an old tale concerning all of this: pixies, bell-ringing and place-names in the landscape. In this case, however, the pixies were responsible for abducting the bell-ringers, not ringing the bells themselves. The story dates back to 1454 when Bishop Grandisson was said to have had a set of bells commissioned for a new church that he had constructed in the town. The pixies were concerned that the new church and bells would mean an end to their rule of the area so they set out to divert the monks who were bringing the bells back from Wales where they were constructed.

Their plan ultimately failed and the pixies were said to have been removed from Ottery St Mary to a local sandstone cave which became known as the Pixies’ Parlour. The legend is still celebrated to this day where every year, on the Saturday closest to Midsummer’s Day, the local cubs and brownies dress as pixies and ‘abduct’ the town’s bell-ringers (or in some years, the Town Council). A reconstruction of the Pixies’ Parlour is built in the town square and abductees are imprisoned within it before being rescued by the vicar of the town’s church. This is a lovely traditional example that illustrates how the celebration of fairy folklore is still alive in Devon.

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SUGGESTED READING Bord, Janet, Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People (London, 1997) Briggs, Katharine. The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (London, 2002) Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Coming of the Fairies (New York 1922) Crossing, William. Tales of the Dartmoor Pixies: Glimpses of Elfin Haunts and Antics, (London, 1890) Harte, Jeremy, Explore Fairy Traditions, (Avebury, 2004) Johnson, Marjorie T. Seeing Fairies, Â AnomalistBooks, (San Antonio, 2014) The Fairy Investigation Society may also be found on the web at www.fairyist.com and is a great repository for fairy stories and traditions.

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