October 24, 2024 • 46 mins
Most people think of Tinkerbell when we think of fairies, but the Disney versions capture only the last century or so of what we’ve conceived fairies to be. Over millennia they’ve gone from ugly and scary to pretty and helpful and everything in between. Come meet the fae!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry who's just
flitting around us, sprinkling us with fairy dust so we
can fly around with their fear and of course all
that makes this stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You should know. That's right, a fairy petition.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, I'm excited about this one. I asked for this.
I think fairies are cool, and we're going to talk
about them because I realized I had a very limited
understanding of what fairies are, what qualifies as fairies, where
they came from, what they can do, what they do do,
(00:48):
all that stuff. So we're going to get into it. Chuck,
when we talk today about fairies.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
That's right, and I think it can be summed up
best by saying, fairies have existed in many forms in
lore throughout parts of Europe for a long long time.
And sometimes they're good fairies, sometimes they're bad fairies, sometimes
they're evil, sometimes they're fun.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
There you go, that's all you need to know.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
And now we're gonna talk about all of that over
and over for the next forty minutes.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, what's really weird that The first thing I didn't
know is that fairies as we understand them today are
relatively recent concepts. And that because, like you said, they
pop up in lore all over the place at different times,
going back a very long time. There's it's not like
some groups said, hey, these are what fairies are and
(01:41):
it just spread. Instead, groups around Europe in particular, came
up with these concepts of things that had fairy traits,
but they didn't they didn't put the whole thing together
as fairies until much later. So no one can really
agree on what exactly a definition of fairies are, aside
(02:04):
from something that they're kind of human like usually and
they're associated with magical powers some way or another.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, because if you tried to do that, it would
be like, well, here are Irish fairies from this period
and they're like this, and here are Scottish fairies from
this period and they're like this, and these come from
Scandinavia in this period and they're completely different, and here's
their stories, which is what folklore is. It's different everywhere.
The actual word fairy is much more recent than the
(02:36):
lore of the fairy. It didn't come around in the
language until late medieval period, but the law of fairy
goes back much, much, much further, and from the beginning.
I guess we need to talk a little bit about
elves because they are sort of in lockstep with fairies
in that lore in a way. One way is that
(03:00):
elves were not you know, the kind of fun, lovely elves.
They're not making cookies in a tree back in the
early days. They were usually associated in the early days
with illness, with rash, with health problems. If your cows
all died, it could have been the work of elves.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Kind of an impy kind of creature.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, but that demonstrates like the idea that they brought, say,
disease or illness, especially mysterious suddenly on setting disease or illness,
like that's associated with fairies or elves in this case,
and that also pops up in other places too. But
they just didn't call them elves. They called them other things.
(03:42):
But you just kind of see some like underpinnings of
things that came to be part of fairy lore. And
eventually they were like, all this stuff is so different,
We're just gonna have to chop the fairies up. Into
different camps and categories, which they eventually did. We'll talk
about that later, but one of the one of the
things that they figured out, there's a guy named Ronald
(04:03):
Hutton who as a folklore scholar from the Anglo Saxon period.
He didn't live in that time, that's his his focus,
I guess, And he said, there's like clues here there
because nobody sat down for at the very earliest periods
and said, here's what fairies are. Future historian, go tell
(04:24):
everybody about it. They just pop up here there, and
they seem to pop up not just in folklore but
in actual like scholarly works from the early medieval period
where people are like, oh, yeah, this guy ran into
a fairy and here's his story.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That's right, he did.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
You know, if you look at the name as far
as like elves always being like empish or bad or monstrous,
even that's not necessarily true because there is a name
ae l f w I ny I guess would that
be pronounced elf line off line?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah? I think so that's a great band name.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, not too bad. Ex it's an Anglo Saxon name,
but it means elf friend. So that's an indication that
you know, there were friendly elves and this came from
Ronald Hutton. And when Ronald Hutton talks.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
People listen, Wow a joke for our genexen boomer friends.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people say, well, okay,
what would make the most sense is that elves, fairies,
these kind of like supernatural creatures that live in close
proximity and interact sometimes with humans, probably came from the
early gods and the early nature spirits, and it wasn't
until Christianity came along that they were kind of wiped
(05:37):
out or demonized, literally demonized, and in Ireland in particular,
they're like, yeah, they're actually related to one of the
last native indigenous magic using people who lived in Ireland
before the modern Irish people like us alive today came along,
in particular the Tua dey Donna. They were like, again,
(06:02):
like a magic using people. They were people of the
goddess Danu, who was also known as the Morrigan. And
they said, okay, this is what elves and fairies evolved
into from this group, this magic using group, as humans
kind of came in and pushed them out into the
rural areas.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Did you just feel the entirety of our d and
d audience stirring in their seat when you said magic user.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And you get this one too cleric, They're.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
All like, what did he just Did you just say
magic users?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Did he say fighter instead of night?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So those irish elves, like you said, descended from them
and lived on in fairy forts or fairy mounds, these
sort of raised structures. If you are an archaeologist, you
will say, actually, those are not for fairies. They were
where ancient humans lived. But that notion persists, the magical
(06:58):
notion persists such today that still in some places you
cannot build roads where there are these places because not
of the fact that ancient humans might be buried there,
but because of the supernatural menace that might befall you
if you disturb it.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, and I saw that archaeologists are like, great, for
whatever reason we're preserving these archeological sites. That's fantastic. But yeah,
the most recent I could find was there was a
highway being built in County Claire in nineteen ninety nine
and they were gonna they were gonna basically tear up
a ferry bush, and people were like, you do not
want to do that, and they actually built. They moved
(07:35):
the road over so they didn't remove this ferry bush.
This is almost in the twenty first century that they
did this, you know. So there is this idea of
you know, fairies do exist to some degree, the people
believe in it. And it's not just from this ancient
folkal or tradition. It actually was revived in the early
(07:55):
twentieth century in Ireland became part of like nationalist pride,
which is why it survives in such strength today as
we'll see.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, and was not you know, kind of Concurrently, while
this was happening in Northern Europe, the British Isles like Scandinavia,
Germany and the British Isles mainly, it was also at
the same time coming out of classic Greek and Roman stories.
Basically this is where the sort of the human appearing
(08:25):
fairy kind of comes more into play. That lived these
very lavish lifestyles. They had kings and queens stuff like that.
Not necessarily saying they were human, because sometimes they were
sometimes they were not, but they seem to always have
some sort of connection to magic in some.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Way, right, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Didn't like people, didn't like like real regular humans or
at least didn't trust them.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Right, And it's from this belief in nymphs and satyrs. Again,
these are like wood dwelling sprites, magical people. They bear
a really strong resemblance to elves and the British Isles.
But again, these things evolved in an isolated manner. I think,
I mean, I guess the Romans did make it all
(09:08):
the way to Britain, so I guess it's possible they
brought the ideas of nymphs and satyrs with them, but
I don't know. I definitely have the impression that this
stuff evolved from the Celts independently. So, but the name
fairy actually comes from the Roman mythology of the fates
fairy well, fates led to fairy in English fay and fairy,
(09:31):
fae and fae r i e. Were magical or uncanny.
There was an adjective that described that, and in fact,
if you came down with sudden illness you were considered
to be fay struck or fairy struck. And get this, Chuck,
I saw that the word stroke today for becoming suddenly paralyzed,
(09:53):
comes from elf stroke, which was what they used to
call it in the medieval era when somebody suddenly had
a stroke. That's what the that's what it came from.
You were stricken by elves, you were ELFs.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Stroke el Strokes another good band name.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I think that that's alf Wind's debut album.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Did you know that actor Aubrey Plaza had a stroke
when she was twenty years old?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
No? I didn't. Wow, she's solely recovered. Huh oh.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, And I mean I think it had been out before,
but she recently was on I think Howard Stern and
talked about it, like in depth. Not maybe not for
the first time, but I think it it's been amplified recently.
But yeah, very scary.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, oh, I'm sure, man. I think it's scary at
any age, but especially when you're younger too, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
No, absolutely, all right, So we're in the twelfth century now,
Aubrey Plaza's won't be around for a long long time.
There were a lot of traditions by this point firmly
established about these again human looking or at least human shaped,
little supernatural creatures. Sometimes they you know, they weren't angels
or devils. They kind of danced in between sometimes depending
(11:01):
on the lore and the story, and they lived in
a human like society sort of parallel to us, and
were a lot like us.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
They lived a lot longer. It's now occurring to me
that Ruby and I a few.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Years ago read a whole fairy series of books that
was kind of fun about these children who find these
fairies and go to their magical land. And it's very
now that I know this stuff. It's very much based
on all this sort of traditional lore.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Is it. But was it positive or were those kids
in danger?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Well, they were a little bit of both. The kids
weren't in danger.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
It was kind of like a Narnia thing, like once
they went in there, there was like kind of good
and evil to combat, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So yeah, that definitely does follow in the tradition of
how there was a duality among fairies, and it wasn't
even necessarily like in this world, these fairies are good
and these are bad, although some some cultures did separate
them like that, but it could just be different folk
beliefs that the same fairies, depending on where you encountered them,
(12:07):
how you treated them, how you spoke around them, could
go from good to evil, and it just like the
flip of a switch.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, they did this in these books too.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Actually okay, great.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
A good example to me, Chuck of how just randomly
different fairies can be. What can be considered a fairy
is Merlin from the Arthurian Legends, Like he's considered a fairy.
His dad was either a demon or a fairy, and
Merlin was at least half fairy, which would explain his
(12:39):
sorcery skills. And then Morgan le Fay was also part
of the Arthurian Legends, and they think that she is
descended or based on the Irish Morgana that we talked about.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
One of the kind of maybe surprising things to learn
is that at the time, if you were a in
medieval times.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
May write it as a like this is a real
natural phenomenon that we just don't haven't studied yet and
don't fully understand yet. Like it's looked upon as lore
all these years later, but at the time a lot
of this stuff was kind of put out in historical
accounts of the day, even not just like folklore books
and stuff, as like, hey, this is the thing and
(13:24):
we just don't understand it yet.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, it was very Fordian in nature, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
And then kind of wrapping up the medieval era. In
the thirteenth century, Christianity stepped up and said, no, these
fairies you're talking about, they are mentioned nowhere in the Bible,
so therefore they're evil, they're devils, they're in disguise, they're
meant to lead you astray. Stop talking about fairies. And
(13:51):
if you know a fairy, stop talking to that fairy.
You're not allowed to be friends with them any longer.
That's right, And it led to a great schism among
some really wonderful fairy human friendships. But eventually it recovered.
And when we come back, we'll pick up starting around
the nineteenth century when things really got hot again.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
All right, here we go with that two everybody fairies
true story. We're in the nineteenth century. Now, we're jumping
ahead a little bit. We'll probably jump back as well.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
But interest in the traditions I think you mentioned earlier,
like these sort of old traditions are being revived because
of national pride. All this old folklore is kind of
coming back. Of course, central to a lot of these
stories were the brothers Grim Jakopp and Wilhelm, who we
did I think a two parter on the Grim brothers
(15:13):
didn't we Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We did one on the fairy Tales, and I can't
yeah or the other one I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
It was, I think, yeah, just on the Grim Brothers themselves.
So those are from a while ago, but those are
good if you want to check those out. But if
you look at their eighteen twelve collection, this is I
believe before that they were telling sort of oral stories
and before they put them into like real literary works
that had a lot more religion and a lot less
(15:38):
of the sexy stuff. A lot of these were like
really really violent tales and feature you know, things, you know,
like little folks living inside of a mountain, magical creatures,
helpful elve sometimes but also really awful like violence and
stuff like that, which of course fairies were a part of.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, and the fact that they're called fairy tales demonstrates
what I was talking about earlier, that fairy was an
adjective for anything magical or uncanny, so it encompassed all
sorts of magical stuff, not just flying little humans or
imps that tried to trick you into stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, but this stuff is growing via previous folklore obviously,
but now like real literary works are starting to write
about this stuff more and more in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right, so people are, like you said, they're starting to
have kind of a response or reaction to modernization. And
there one of the first responses was to kind of
try to preserve the original traditional folklore. And it wasn't
just the Grims that did that. There was a novelist
named Anna Eliza Bray and she collected folk stories from
her native Devonshire, England, and she published them in eighteen
(16:50):
forty four. And what she found by going out in
the countryside and interviewing the rural people there is that
basically everybody believed in Pixie's fairy, that kind of thing.
They were just part of the fabric of life, and
in particular, the people of Devonshire associated them with the
souls of unbaptized babies who didn't go on because they
(17:14):
hadn't been baptized, but they didn't go to Hell or
anything like that. They just turned into fairies, which is
a pretty pleasant thing to think totally.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Also, late in the nineteenth century, none other than William
Butler Yates published I don't know if it was the
first one, but maybe one of the first big guide
books almost about fairies. It was called Fairy and Folk
Tales of the Irish Peasantry, published in eighteen eighty eight,
and you know, retold popular stories, reprinted some stories. It
(17:44):
sounds like a pretty easy gig if you asked me
for Yates.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Well, you know what that reminds me of, Chuck is
do you remember that big coffee table gnome book from
the seventies.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
M like garden Homes.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yes, it was an illustrated guide to gnomes and how
they lived and where they lived.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
It was I don't remember that. I bet I would
recognize it if you like showed me that. I know
we did not own that, but it was probably in
a lot of coffee tables.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Okay, well I'll buy it and then bring it over
to you and so you we'll sit on the couch
and go through it together. Okay, Oh that sounds nice.
So okay, So, like you said, W. B. Yates created
this guide book to the Irish fairies, and it actually
became like kind of one of the authoritative homes on
the whole thing. And one of the things that I
(18:32):
mentioned earlier I think is really important. I didn't realize this,
but in the British Isles, in Ireland and Cornwall and
Wales and the Scottish Highlands. They as in the nineteenth
centuries it kind of wore on. They really grabbed on
to that tradition, that folklore of fairies and just absorbed
it into their modernizing national belief and pride. I had
(18:56):
no idea about that, but it certainly does explain why
still this at least kind of a winking belief in
fairies in the area still too, which I think is great.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, cool to rediscover those old traditions nuts too, specifically
like thumbier nose it, you know, the modernization of science
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
But any way, in America, I'm kind of jealous because
in America we don't have fairies. We just have like baseball.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, hey, baseball's pretty great there, it is, but it's
no fairies.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Also, in eighteenth century literature was when we first saw
wings on these things. I don't think we mentioned yet
that up until this point these were not sort of
the tinker bells that you might picture flying around when
you think of fairies with their little flitty wings. That
happened in the early eighteenth century in literature a little bit,
but really the Victorian period is where we get this
(19:51):
idea of these sort of tiny little insect like things
usually looking like women, or at least shaped like women,
and that more commonplaces what you think of as fairies
is the Victorian era.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, and the wings are typically done like kind of
like a really beautiful, colorful, translucent butterflies wings. I've also
seen that they are sometimes depicted with bird wings or
bat wings, which I didn't like that last one. One
of the guys who really kind of advanced our modern
conception of fairies is, you know, little beautiful humans with
(20:26):
wings was a painter named John Anster Fitzgerald, and his
paintings are just a joy to look upon. My favorite
so far is Rabbit and Fairies, and I mean it
does what's on the label. It's a rabbit surrounded by
fairies in this cute little grassy area and it's just
heartwarming stuff. It's like looking at old care bears images.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh wow, I'm looking at that now. Is that a
great point? I mean, it's beyond the whimsy of it.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It's beautiful, very very lovely, but not expected like bright colors.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's very beige.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, but let's not overlook that whimsy because it is important.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
No, it for sure is because these are fairies, after all,
not all art depicted them depicted them like that, though
it wasn't always these beautiful things, or at least that
wasn't the reason behind it. Because there's a little something
in the art world back then called the fairy loophole,
and that is, if you lived in a place at
the time that had pretty bad censorship for butts and
(21:35):
breasts and paintings, a little workaround was to just paint
it as a fairy because they were usually not clothed
at that point, and so you could say, hey, sensor,
you can't say anything. There's a fairy that's not a woman.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
See the wings, dummy beat it. This is actually what
inspired me to do this episode on Fairies, Chuck. There
was a buzz it great.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Oh yeah, why, I just wonder where that came from.
And now it all makes sense. We should have just
done this one as.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
A short stuff. So we're going to do a short
stuff within a larger episode right here, right now, we're
going to great talk about the Cottingly Fairies hoax, which
was arguably the greatest fairy hoax of all time.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, this was in nineteen seventeen. Photography was a thing
at the time, and there was a sixteen year old
named Elsie Wright and her nine year old cousin, Francis Griffiths. Griffiths,
that's a tough one. And I even have teeth who said, hey,
we photographed some fairies by the stream near our home
in Cottingley, England.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Everybody look, look.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, And so this was a time we did an
episode on spiritualism and we talked about how it was
a big response to so much death during the Civil War,
the in World War One. And I think Elsie's mom, Polly,
was into the spiritual movement and she took these pictures
to the Theosophical Society, which is also intoitulism at the times,
(23:00):
said look at what my daughter captured. Here's some fairies
in photos. And everybody just went wild, like they just
like if something can go viral in nineteen seventeen is
what happened with these photos. They were spectacular photos of
Elsie or Francis interacting with these beautiful little winged fairies
(23:21):
flitting around in the air around them.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, I had seen these somewhere. I don't know if
you sent these to me or if I just came
across them at some.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Point in my path.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Pretty famous, no, well yes, but also just like great
and like super cool that this sixteen year old and
nine year old pulled this hoax over because it looks
pretty darn good for the time. What they did was
they copied images from a children's book and cut them out,
(23:50):
added wings to them, and then use hairpins to hold
that paper up and took pictures.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And I think it probably helps it.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
It was nineteen seventeen style photography, but.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Pretty fun, little tricky thing to do for these two
young girls.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, and they were like they you know, they didn't
mean for this thing to become like a national phenomenon.
But I think one of them later said, I think
it was Francis, who's like, you could see the happins
in the picture if you look closely enough. And yet
that didn't matter, because the adults who were into spiritualism
wanted so badly for some evidence that the supernatural existed.
(24:26):
Some any fairy pictures will do that, they just bought
the whole thing, hook line and sinker. And in fact,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, he got
into spiritualism toward the end of his life, and because
he was just such a trusted authority on things like
mysteries and rationalism and all that stuff, he wrote a
(24:46):
paper and when the paper was released, he was saying, essentially,
this is real. I consulted a photography expert and the
expert said, these pictures show whatever was in front of
the camera when the photo was taken. They haven't been doctored,
and it is true.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
The guy was right, no, no, that's true.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
But he was saying, like, they haven't been doctored, they
haven't been messed with, like this is a real picture
of what you're seeing. And Conan Doyle said, okay, they're fairies.
This guy proved it. These are real deal things, and
not everybody believed it. I think there was a headline
in one of the London papers when Doyle released his
article that said, has Conan Doyle gone mad? Like it
(25:27):
was not necessarily well received by everybody, but in the
spiritualist movement it was like we approof finally.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
I wonder if the last line of that article said,
perhaps as best if he just sticks to Sherlock, he.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Stays in his Sherlock lane, and that was the first
instance of people using the word lane like that in
a smarmy way. So I want to say also, Francis
and Elsie were from what I can tell, Elsie went
to her grave never admitting it was a hoax, really,
because Francis did admit it until nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Oh jeez.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And she was saying like she didn't feel bad because
obviously the adults wanted to believe this very obvious hoax,
So you know, more power to them. I don't think
said the last part. I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
She said of men without hats concert, they're all dancing
the safety dancer.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
She was like, hey, guess what that has something to
get off my chest?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
There be good.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
So nineteen fifty seven there comes another paper from a
folkloress named Catherine Mary Briggs who did another sort of
categorization of fairies that involved what is this one, two, three, four, five, six,
I guess seven categories, and we're going to go over
(26:46):
those quickly here. The first is heroic trooping fairies. These
are the kinds I was talking about. There were a
little more aristocratic that had the king and the queen.
Not to be confused with the second grouping homely trooping fairies,
which were you know, kind of farm dwellers who can
maybe change in size, who might reward a human for help,
(27:07):
who might punish a human for not helping or being unkind,
and might even steal from humans.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yes, there's another one, solitary fairies. They're usually tied to
a place, usually in the countryside, say like the moors
or something like that, and they will often like pose
as something like a needy stranger or something like that,
and to test the traveler's kindness to strangers. And if
they pass the test, they might be rewarded with something.
(27:35):
If they fail, they'll probably be punished by this magical fairy.
Leprechauns are one of them. They're usually tricksters. There's one
named Tom tit Tot who I read the story of
and it's great. It's got a kind of a rumpel
stilt skinny vibe to it. But I think I like
Tom tit Tot's a little more, so I say, go
check out Tom tit Tot in his story.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
And you know, it seems like a lot of this
as it's occurring to me more and more. It sort
of falls into the category of the what's the story
that you tell when it's are you going to do
the good thing or the bad thing?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Is it a fat no.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
More agacy tale?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Like as a moral yeah, I think sort of fables
and morality tales where they're saying, well, good things will
happen to you or bad things will happen to you
according to your behaviors and whether or not you're like
kind to the stranger passing through town. It's actually a
fairy or a leprechaun. YEA, well, well I'll be what
else we got? We got three more categories?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
No, we've got two. No, we have three? Year, you're right.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Three is a catch all tutelary.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Fairies fun to say, but also include my favorite fairies,
which are brownies, which are household helpers, and people will
still leave out a little bit of bread, a little
saucer of milk, or something like that as a thank
you gift to the brownies that live in their house
and help them out with household chores. The very very
famous fairy tale about the cobbler who was helped out
(29:05):
by fairies who made shoes for him every night and
eventually made him a very wealthy man. Those are brownies.
I remember that anybody helping out around the house, that's
a brownie. And I just think that's the cutest, most
down to earth folksy concept ever, that there's little tiny
fairies that help out around the house. And the other
(29:26):
thing that they do, which I think is hilarious, they
punish lazy servants who aren't doing enough work by pinching
them while they sleep.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
That's got to be where brownie points comes from, right.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, probably, don't you think? Probably? Yeah, because you do
want to score points with the brownies to keep them happy.
Because yeah, in addition to happening out, if you don't
reward them, they will sometimes start stealing. They'll make your
milk go bad. They'll make it impossible for butter to
churn into butter. They can't mess you up. You don't
want to mess with them, but if you keep them happy,
like I fully want a brownie in your house.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
They make your fart hang in the air long after
it's it's fast.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Yeah, I know that kind of brownie.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Finally, there are nature fairies. These are the kind of
water sprites and river sprites you were talking about, These
spirits that dwell in nature.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
It's very.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Self explanatory. They protect animals usually and deal with the
animals out there. And then there's the catch all category
that I mentioned, which are the scariest ones, like the
giants and the hags and the monsters of the group.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Like, yes, I get that that is part of original
fairy lore and like the widest possible use of the
term fairy. But we've evolved so far beyond that. How
are you going to include like a monster and a
giant into the fairy categories?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Giants and giant exactly, They're their own thing. Don't do
any like them. Yeah, I say we take our second break, Chuck,
and come back and wrap this up and talk some
more about get this fairies, okay, Chuck. So, by the
(31:29):
nineteenth century, early twentieth century, like fairies were starting to congeal,
all these different threads were starting to kind of come together,
and yeah, they were solidifying like so much jello pudding. Yeah,
remember the skin on top of that stuff?
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Buh of, just like jello or the pudding.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
The jello pudding, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
If it sat out, would I get a little topper.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
As it sat it would almost invariably like create like
a shell a skin at the top and it was
limsay and rubbery and like you did not want it.
But I think some real sickos liked the skin of
the pudding.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
It's right here that I have to quickly sidetrack about
a movie I just saw called The Substance.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Have you read about this yet?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
No? It's the new movie with Demi Mour and Margaret
Qually That is a body horror film. Oh, just say
the least. If you're into body horror, this is the
going to go down in history. Is the all time
leader in that category. It is the most foul, horrifying,
(32:36):
disgusting but great thing that I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I gotta see this.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Are you into that kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah? I mean I like all kinds of horror. Body
horror is not my leading type of horror. It's usually
a good ghost story, but I like body horror.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Well, go see The Substance. It is really something. I
got the strongest stomach for that kind of thing. And
I was literally feet pulled up in the theater, peeking
through eyes like a small child.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So are you and holding my ears?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Are you into body horror?
Speaker 3 (33:07):
I like a Cronenberg thing, But This is like Cronenberg
on ten million milligrams of steroids. However much that is,
it's beyond the pale of anything that you could imagine
for body horror.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Okay, I'm telling you, I'll see that in the meantime.
You see, there's a classic body horror movie called Society
from the mid eighties. Don't know that one, and it's
widely considered the all time leader in horrible, horrific body horror.
So anymore I will be I can't wait to see
the Substance Man.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, and it's got a great message. I can't remember
the woman who made it, but her first movie is
called Revenge and it was great, total sort of I
spit upon your gravestyle Revenge film that you can watch
now it's out on streaming. And she's just a very
unique voice in film making these days. And a great
message in this new one about women and aging and
(34:00):
youth obsession with youth culture and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
From what you described the messages.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yes, it's tough. I cannot get some of the stuff
out of my head.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Okay, So let's get back to fairies, shall we.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, that all started with putting skin, by the way, Yeah, fairies.
Lets your mind run wild with that association.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, so by this time fairies have are they're kind
of becoming dual. They can be different kinds of sizes.
They can be ugly or beautiful. And then from that
point on, like they either have one or the other,
usually polar extremes. Right, so, like they're either immortal or
they don't have souls, so when they die they just
perish completely, or they're they're fallen angels but they're not
(34:45):
demonic or wait, member, there may be unbaptized babies, like
there's they're as desparate and weird as it sounds like.
It's still way more put together than the threads used
to be before the nineteenth.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Yeah, for sure. Sometimes there are solo fairies. Sometimes they
are in little small communities or families. We have mentioned
that a lot of times they live out in rural
areas and caves and wells and heidi holes other sort
of bucolic rural spots, mounds and holes in the ground,
things like that. Sometimes there is a fairy land like
(35:22):
in these books that I read Ruby, where things are
just magical and wonderful or can go really wrong. A
lot of times the beauty is an illusion. So there
are some stories like if a human comes along and
says the right spell or applies to magic ointment, they
will be awakened to the true reality that everything is all.
The treasure is garbage, and the food is poison and
(35:43):
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I found that interesting because the magic ointment jumped out
at me because they also prescribed a magic ointment for
witchcraft and to become a werewolf. And I don't remember
what drug they what hallucinogen they thought was in that
magic ointment, but I suspect yeah, referring to the same
magic ointment that would make you trip balls.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Right, Oh, that's funny. Not Jim Wall's trip balls. They
can't cross rivers usually, or any kind of running water.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Holy water is not great for them, right.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
No, And this is where the influence of the Christian
Church came in. They don't like holy water, they don't
like cold iron. Church bells really drive them. They sound
like nails on a chalkboard to them. And in fact,
like just talking about religion can set a fairy off
that one historian from the fifties, Katherine Mary Briggs, said
(36:42):
it is tactless in the extreme to mention Sunday to
a fairy. That's one of the best lines I've ever read.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, you know, the other thing you don't want to
do is if you meet a fairy, don't call that
fairy a fairy, right.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
They don't want to hear that.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
No, they want to be called fair folk people of peace.
One thing that everybody now agrees on about fairies is
that they really respond to flattery and that they're very
easily upset.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Right, Sorry, I had a joke.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I'm not gonna tell Okay, you can tell me later.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I'll tell you later.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
One thing that you can do, like, let's say you've
got some disturbing fairy stories banning about that have to
deal with human children and maybe a fairy, you know,
swapping them out for a fairy like they've become a changeling. Essentially,
if you're an unchristened baby and you think your baby
is at risk to be carried off by a fairy,
(37:38):
you wrap them up in daddy's clothes, put a bible
under their pillow.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
That's a good way.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Or if you live a little dangerously, you can hang
some iron fire tongs or some giant iron scissors over
their cradle.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Which seems like a really bad idea.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, I'd go with the Bible under the pillow, And
that's me talking.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
You don't want iron scissors to fall under your baby's crip.
So this is where it gets really dark. In fact,
there was a long standing folklore all the way through
the late nineteenth century that when a child started to
develop disabilities or was suddenly struck ill or i think
was also born with like physical abnormalities, the folk belief
(38:22):
was that the fairies had stolen the actual baby, the
human baby, and replaced it with a fairy changeling, right, yeah,
And so you would kill the fairy changeling because you
wanted your baby back in hopes that they this would
help get your baby back. And it was actually one
(38:43):
of those things where probably some people, especially long ago,
believed that what they were doing was actually killing a
fairy baby. But it also served a really grim but
kind of necessary for the time purpose of removing the
baby that was never going to be able to help
out on the farm, but was gonna need some of
(39:06):
the food from that farm to stay alive, from a
very poor family to have to take care of that kid.
And that is about as dark as fairies get and
there's some dark parts to fairies.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
And I would also like people to write in if they,
like me, were singing the Chile's Babyback Ribs commercial in
their head the third time you said babyback.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Oh, oh yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet that happened. Nice.
That's a gift to you, buddy.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
I think we should close with some famous fairies, because
we mentioned that they had been had long been written
about in literature, and some have some of that cream
rises to the top everybody, and the wheat is separated
from the chaff, and you get some genuine fairy celebrities.
Puck is the one I would love to mention because
(39:53):
Puck was not just from the mind of William Shakespeare.
Puck was a fairy or a demon, depending on, of course,
various factors of medieval folklore and Shakespeare by the time
he got around to writing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck
was a very mischievous character who Shakespeare leaned on in
that story. Puck as a character would help with chores
(40:15):
around the house, maybe get rewarded with some bread and
milk from the midwives, but could also play tricks on
people like that spoiled milk again or maybe trip an
old lady walking through the forest.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Right. He also appeared on the first season of Real World.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
That's wasn't the first season, but yes.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
So thank you for saving me a ton of emails. Yeah,
first season was London, Josh. He also had a great nickname,
Robin Goodfellow. Did not know that. Yeah, I'll just keep
moving on. But you said that Shakespeare used him in
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare was the champ of using
(40:56):
and describing and writing about fairies. And it turns out
they think actually venting fairies because one of the most
legendary fairies was the fairy queen Queen Mab, who's described
in Romeo and Juliet and just kind of spread from there,
and they can't figure out where Shakespeare got this, so
they actually think he might have made up this really
(41:16):
definitive fairy Queen Mab, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
And I think we have to close by talking about
the two most famous fairies of.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Them all, who tinker Bell and that tooth fairy.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Oh tinker Bell, of course, created by the great and
wonderful Jay and Barry, author of the play, and then
eventually the novel Peter Pan. What a great character and
what a great just thing that Jay and Barry launched
into the world. Like all about Peter Pan. I've always
loved Peter Pan and all the stories and iterations from
(41:50):
the various movies and cartoons to the actual books themselves,
and that book about Jay and Barry or the movie
about jan Berry, which was very good.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
J and Barry also invented the concept of fairy dust.
And there was a Guardian article that describes why I
actually think. I found it on Reddit to tell you
the truth. In the article, I say that Berry invented
fairy dust. So, originally Peter Pan was a play and
then a few years later it became a novel, and
the fairy dust appears in the novel because in the
(42:19):
interim between the play and the novels released, kids were
trying to fly like Peter Pan. So we introduced fairy
dust to say, like, you can't fly, kid, you don't
have fairy dust. You have to have fairy dust to
be able.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
To fly, So don't jump out of your window for gotcha.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Exactly because it's not gonna work.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
That's called a Janberry CoA original.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
And then the Tooth fairy, you said, right.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, of course everyone loves the tooth fairy.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Of course.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
This is the tradition of when your child looses their
baby tea, they put it under their pillow or maybe
in a little pocket of a tooth pillow that you
might have bought for eight bucks or whatever. In my case,
Janet Barney gave us a tooth fairy pillow, which was
very sweet as a gift, and you get some you
get something in there, like a little bit of money
(43:05):
or a little treat or something like that. And that
originated in Norse tradition in the thirteenth century, when parents
would pay a tooth fee.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah, they would pay a tooth fee because baby teeth
were considered good luck. So they were essentially buying the
lucky tooth from their child.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, buying it out.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
But the the first appearance of the actual tooth fairy
as we understand it today, that didn't come about until
nineteen oh eight, when apparently a Chicago Tribune writer just
made it up.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, but it was around long before that, but yeah,
in print for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
And then we also can't not name check all of
the Disney fairies, including tinker Bell. There was the fairy
godmother in Cinderella. Yeah, there were fairies and fantasia.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
All over the place.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Sleeping Beauty had three great fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather
the greatest. And that's all you really need to mention.
The list goes on, but we're going to stop there.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yeah, I wish I could remember the name of that
book series. Let me see if I can find it
real quick. Why don't you talk intelligently for ten seconds?
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Oh god, let's see a little more about fairies. Fairies
are great. Everybody typically agrees that was one scholarly finding
Backyard Fairies.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I believe that is it?
Speaker 2 (44:24):
What was that? That was the series?
Speaker 1 (44:26):
I think I think it's Backyard Fairies. Okay, I might
be wrong.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You sounded like you knew what it was a second ago.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Well i'm looking.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, yeah, Backyard Fairies by Phoebe wall w A h L.
It's wonderful and there are a lot of books and
they're a lot of fun if you have a kid,
that's you know, like six ish.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Okay, great, thanks for read too, Thanks for that. Yeah. Well,
Chuck recommended a children's book series which, as everyone knows,
unlocks listener mail.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, I'm gonna mention this a quick mistake we made,
and this is from Brad. A few people have written
in and this is something we've mistaked on before.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Mistake on.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Hey, guys, have just finished listening to your History of
Glasses episodes and noticed a little mistake and figured you'd
love when people right into correct you. When Josh was
listening Famous where monocles, you mentioned Monopoly guy rich uncle
Pennybags is apparently his name a great example of the
Mandela effect, guys, because he never wore a monocle. I'm
pretty sure you even mentioned this in your episode about
(45:34):
the Mandela effect, and probably in your Monopoly episode as well,
so this may be a three timer. Any who, You
guys are the best ever. I hope you make episodes
for at least another couple of decades.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Rock on, Brad, Rock on yourself.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Brad, that was a great email and we appreciate it.
We appreciate you thanks for pointing that out. It is
so interesting when that Mandela effect comes up.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Agreed, I thought he had a monocle.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Two. I just I even don't believe what Brad's saying
right now. I'm so convinced he had a monocle at
some point.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, I looked it up.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
I double checked, and there have been drawings of him
with monocles, but nothing that's not canon, like no official.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Monopoly stuff.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And I've been playing Monopoly, we've been playing as a family,
so I'm surprised it got past me.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Okay, all right, great, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
And that was from Brad.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
That's from Brad.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Okay, Well, if you want to be like Brad and
get in touch with us, send us an email too.
Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry who's just
flitting around us, sprinkling us with fairy dust so we
can fly around with their fear and of course all
that makes this stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You should know. That's right, a fairy petition.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, I'm excited about this one. I asked for this.
I think fairies are cool, and we're going to talk
about them because I realized I had a very limited
understanding of what fairies are, what qualifies as fairies, where
they came from, what they can do, what they do do,
(00:48):
all that stuff. So we're going to get into it. Chuck,
when we talk today about fairies.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
That's right, and I think it can be summed up
best by saying, fairies have existed in many forms in
lore throughout parts of Europe for a long long time.
And sometimes they're good fairies, sometimes they're bad fairies, sometimes
they're evil, sometimes they're fun.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
There you go, that's all you need to know.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
And now we're gonna talk about all of that over
and over for the next forty minutes.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, what's really weird that The first thing I didn't
know is that fairies as we understand them today are
relatively recent concepts. And that because, like you said, they
pop up in lore all over the place at different times,
going back a very long time. There's it's not like
some groups said, hey, these are what fairies are and
(01:41):
it just spread. Instead, groups around Europe in particular, came
up with these concepts of things that had fairy traits,
but they didn't they didn't put the whole thing together
as fairies until much later. So no one can really
agree on what exactly a definition of fairies are, aside
(02:04):
from something that they're kind of human like usually and
they're associated with magical powers some way or another.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, because if you tried to do that, it would
be like, well, here are Irish fairies from this period
and they're like this, and here are Scottish fairies from
this period and they're like this, and these come from
Scandinavia in this period and they're completely different, and here's
their stories, which is what folklore is. It's different everywhere.
The actual word fairy is much more recent than the
(02:36):
lore of the fairy. It didn't come around in the
language until late medieval period, but the law of fairy
goes back much, much, much further, and from the beginning.
I guess we need to talk a little bit about
elves because they are sort of in lockstep with fairies
in that lore in a way. One way is that
(03:00):
elves were not you know, the kind of fun, lovely elves.
They're not making cookies in a tree back in the
early days. They were usually associated in the early days
with illness, with rash, with health problems. If your cows
all died, it could have been the work of elves.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Kind of an impy kind of creature.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, but that demonstrates like the idea that they brought, say,
disease or illness, especially mysterious suddenly on setting disease or illness,
like that's associated with fairies or elves in this case,
and that also pops up in other places too. But
they just didn't call them elves. They called them other things.
(03:42):
But you just kind of see some like underpinnings of
things that came to be part of fairy lore. And
eventually they were like, all this stuff is so different,
We're just gonna have to chop the fairies up. Into
different camps and categories, which they eventually did. We'll talk
about that later, but one of the one of the
things that they figured out, there's a guy named Ronald
(04:03):
Hutton who as a folklore scholar from the Anglo Saxon period.
He didn't live in that time, that's his his focus,
I guess, And he said, there's like clues here there
because nobody sat down for at the very earliest periods
and said, here's what fairies are. Future historian, go tell
(04:24):
everybody about it. They just pop up here there, and
they seem to pop up not just in folklore but
in actual like scholarly works from the early medieval period
where people are like, oh, yeah, this guy ran into
a fairy and here's his story.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That's right, he did.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
You know, if you look at the name as far
as like elves always being like empish or bad or monstrous,
even that's not necessarily true because there is a name
ae l f w I ny I guess would that
be pronounced elf line off line?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah? I think so that's a great band name.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, not too bad. Ex it's an Anglo Saxon name,
but it means elf friend. So that's an indication that
you know, there were friendly elves and this came from
Ronald Hutton. And when Ronald Hutton talks.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
People listen, Wow a joke for our genexen boomer friends.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people say, well, okay,
what would make the most sense is that elves, fairies,
these kind of like supernatural creatures that live in close
proximity and interact sometimes with humans, probably came from the
early gods and the early nature spirits, and it wasn't
until Christianity came along that they were kind of wiped
(05:37):
out or demonized, literally demonized, and in Ireland in particular,
they're like, yeah, they're actually related to one of the
last native indigenous magic using people who lived in Ireland
before the modern Irish people like us alive today came along,
in particular the Tua dey Donna. They were like, again,
(06:02):
like a magic using people. They were people of the
goddess Danu, who was also known as the Morrigan. And
they said, okay, this is what elves and fairies evolved
into from this group, this magic using group, as humans
kind of came in and pushed them out into the
rural areas.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Did you just feel the entirety of our d and
d audience stirring in their seat when you said magic user.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And you get this one too cleric, They're.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
All like, what did he just Did you just say
magic users?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Did he say fighter instead of night?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So those irish elves, like you said, descended from them
and lived on in fairy forts or fairy mounds, these
sort of raised structures. If you are an archaeologist, you
will say, actually, those are not for fairies. They were
where ancient humans lived. But that notion persists, the magical
(06:58):
notion persists such today that still in some places you
cannot build roads where there are these places because not
of the fact that ancient humans might be buried there,
but because of the supernatural menace that might befall you
if you disturb it.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, and I saw that archaeologists are like, great, for
whatever reason we're preserving these archeological sites. That's fantastic. But yeah,
the most recent I could find was there was a
highway being built in County Claire in nineteen ninety nine
and they were gonna they were gonna basically tear up
a ferry bush, and people were like, you do not
want to do that, and they actually built. They moved
(07:35):
the road over so they didn't remove this ferry bush.
This is almost in the twenty first century that they
did this, you know. So there is this idea of
you know, fairies do exist to some degree, the people
believe in it. And it's not just from this ancient
folkal or tradition. It actually was revived in the early
(07:55):
twentieth century in Ireland became part of like nationalist pride,
which is why it survives in such strength today as
we'll see.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, and was not you know, kind of Concurrently, while
this was happening in Northern Europe, the British Isles like Scandinavia,
Germany and the British Isles mainly, it was also at
the same time coming out of classic Greek and Roman stories.
Basically this is where the sort of the human appearing
(08:25):
fairy kind of comes more into play. That lived these
very lavish lifestyles. They had kings and queens stuff like that.
Not necessarily saying they were human, because sometimes they were
sometimes they were not, but they seem to always have
some sort of connection to magic in some.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Way, right, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Didn't like people, didn't like like real regular humans or
at least didn't trust them.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Right, And it's from this belief in nymphs and satyrs. Again,
these are like wood dwelling sprites, magical people. They bear
a really strong resemblance to elves and the British Isles.
But again, these things evolved in an isolated manner. I think,
I mean, I guess the Romans did make it all
(09:08):
the way to Britain, so I guess it's possible they
brought the ideas of nymphs and satyrs with them, but
I don't know. I definitely have the impression that this
stuff evolved from the Celts independently. So, but the name
fairy actually comes from the Roman mythology of the fates
fairy well, fates led to fairy in English fay and fairy,
(09:31):
fae and fae r i e. Were magical or uncanny.
There was an adjective that described that, and in fact,
if you came down with sudden illness you were considered
to be fay struck or fairy struck. And get this, Chuck,
I saw that the word stroke today for becoming suddenly paralyzed,
(09:53):
comes from elf stroke, which was what they used to
call it in the medieval era when somebody suddenly had
a stroke. That's what the that's what it came from.
You were stricken by elves, you were ELFs.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Stroke el Strokes another good band name.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I think that that's alf Wind's debut album.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Did you know that actor Aubrey Plaza had a stroke
when she was twenty years old?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
No? I didn't. Wow, she's solely recovered. Huh oh.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, And I mean I think it had been out before,
but she recently was on I think Howard Stern and
talked about it, like in depth. Not maybe not for
the first time, but I think it it's been amplified recently.
But yeah, very scary.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, oh, I'm sure, man. I think it's scary at
any age, but especially when you're younger too, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
No, absolutely, all right, So we're in the twelfth century now,
Aubrey Plaza's won't be around for a long long time.
There were a lot of traditions by this point firmly
established about these again human looking or at least human shaped,
little supernatural creatures. Sometimes they you know, they weren't angels
or devils. They kind of danced in between sometimes depending
(11:01):
on the lore and the story, and they lived in
a human like society sort of parallel to us, and
were a lot like us.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
They lived a lot longer. It's now occurring to me
that Ruby and I a few.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Years ago read a whole fairy series of books that
was kind of fun about these children who find these
fairies and go to their magical land. And it's very
now that I know this stuff. It's very much based
on all this sort of traditional lore.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Is it. But was it positive or were those kids
in danger?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Well, they were a little bit of both. The kids
weren't in danger.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
It was kind of like a Narnia thing, like once
they went in there, there was like kind of good
and evil to combat, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So yeah, that definitely does follow in the tradition of
how there was a duality among fairies, and it wasn't
even necessarily like in this world, these fairies are good
and these are bad, although some some cultures did separate
them like that, but it could just be different folk
beliefs that the same fairies, depending on where you encountered them,
(12:07):
how you treated them, how you spoke around them, could
go from good to evil, and it just like the
flip of a switch.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, they did this in these books too.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Actually okay, great.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
A good example to me, Chuck of how just randomly
different fairies can be. What can be considered a fairy
is Merlin from the Arthurian Legends, Like he's considered a fairy.
His dad was either a demon or a fairy, and
Merlin was at least half fairy, which would explain his
(12:39):
sorcery skills. And then Morgan le Fay was also part
of the Arthurian Legends, and they think that she is
descended or based on the Irish Morgana that we talked about.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
One of the kind of maybe surprising things to learn
is that at the time, if you were a in
medieval times.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
May write it as a like this is a real
natural phenomenon that we just don't haven't studied yet and
don't fully understand yet. Like it's looked upon as lore
all these years later, but at the time a lot
of this stuff was kind of put out in historical
accounts of the day, even not just like folklore books
and stuff, as like, hey, this is the thing and
(13:24):
we just don't understand it yet.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, it was very Fordian in nature, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
And then kind of wrapping up the medieval era. In
the thirteenth century, Christianity stepped up and said, no, these
fairies you're talking about, they are mentioned nowhere in the Bible,
so therefore they're evil, they're devils, they're in disguise, they're
meant to lead you astray. Stop talking about fairies. And
(13:51):
if you know a fairy, stop talking to that fairy.
You're not allowed to be friends with them any longer.
That's right, And it led to a great schism among
some really wonderful fairy human friendships. But eventually it recovered.
And when we come back, we'll pick up starting around
the nineteenth century when things really got hot again.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
All right, here we go with that two everybody fairies
true story. We're in the nineteenth century. Now, we're jumping
ahead a little bit. We'll probably jump back as well.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
But interest in the traditions I think you mentioned earlier,
like these sort of old traditions are being revived because
of national pride. All this old folklore is kind of
coming back. Of course, central to a lot of these
stories were the brothers Grim Jakopp and Wilhelm, who we
did I think a two parter on the Grim brothers
(15:13):
didn't we Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We did one on the fairy Tales, and I can't
yeah or the other one I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
It was, I think, yeah, just on the Grim Brothers themselves.
So those are from a while ago, but those are
good if you want to check those out. But if
you look at their eighteen twelve collection, this is I
believe before that they were telling sort of oral stories
and before they put them into like real literary works
that had a lot more religion and a lot less
(15:38):
of the sexy stuff. A lot of these were like
really really violent tales and feature you know, things, you know,
like little folks living inside of a mountain, magical creatures,
helpful elve sometimes but also really awful like violence and
stuff like that, which of course fairies were a part of.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, and the fact that they're called fairy tales demonstrates
what I was talking about earlier, that fairy was an
adjective for anything magical or uncanny, so it encompassed all
sorts of magical stuff, not just flying little humans or
imps that tried to trick you into stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, but this stuff is growing via previous folklore obviously,
but now like real literary works are starting to write
about this stuff more and more in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right, so people are, like you said, they're starting to
have kind of a response or reaction to modernization. And
there one of the first responses was to kind of
try to preserve the original traditional folklore. And it wasn't
just the Grims that did that. There was a novelist
named Anna Eliza Bray and she collected folk stories from
her native Devonshire, England, and she published them in eighteen
(16:50):
forty four. And what she found by going out in
the countryside and interviewing the rural people there is that
basically everybody believed in Pixie's fairy, that kind of thing.
They were just part of the fabric of life, and
in particular, the people of Devonshire associated them with the
souls of unbaptized babies who didn't go on because they
(17:14):
hadn't been baptized, but they didn't go to Hell or
anything like that. They just turned into fairies, which is
a pretty pleasant thing to think totally.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Also, late in the nineteenth century, none other than William
Butler Yates published I don't know if it was the
first one, but maybe one of the first big guide
books almost about fairies. It was called Fairy and Folk
Tales of the Irish Peasantry, published in eighteen eighty eight,
and you know, retold popular stories, reprinted some stories. It
(17:44):
sounds like a pretty easy gig if you asked me
for Yates.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Well, you know what that reminds me of, Chuck is
do you remember that big coffee table gnome book from
the seventies.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
M like garden Homes.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yes, it was an illustrated guide to gnomes and how
they lived and where they lived.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
It was I don't remember that. I bet I would
recognize it if you like showed me that. I know
we did not own that, but it was probably in
a lot of coffee tables.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Okay, well I'll buy it and then bring it over
to you and so you we'll sit on the couch
and go through it together. Okay, Oh that sounds nice.
So okay, So, like you said, W. B. Yates created
this guide book to the Irish fairies, and it actually
became like kind of one of the authoritative homes on
the whole thing. And one of the things that I
(18:32):
mentioned earlier I think is really important. I didn't realize this,
but in the British Isles, in Ireland and Cornwall and
Wales and the Scottish Highlands. They as in the nineteenth
centuries it kind of wore on. They really grabbed on
to that tradition, that folklore of fairies and just absorbed
it into their modernizing national belief and pride. I had
(18:56):
no idea about that, but it certainly does explain why
still this at least kind of a winking belief in
fairies in the area still too, which I think is great.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, cool to rediscover those old traditions nuts too, specifically
like thumbier nose it, you know, the modernization of science
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
But any way, in America, I'm kind of jealous because
in America we don't have fairies. We just have like baseball.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, hey, baseball's pretty great there, it is, but it's
no fairies.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Also, in eighteenth century literature was when we first saw
wings on these things. I don't think we mentioned yet
that up until this point these were not sort of
the tinker bells that you might picture flying around when
you think of fairies with their little flitty wings. That
happened in the early eighteenth century in literature a little bit,
but really the Victorian period is where we get this
(19:51):
idea of these sort of tiny little insect like things
usually looking like women, or at least shaped like women,
and that more commonplaces what you think of as fairies
is the Victorian era.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, and the wings are typically done like kind of
like a really beautiful, colorful, translucent butterflies wings. I've also
seen that they are sometimes depicted with bird wings or
bat wings, which I didn't like that last one. One
of the guys who really kind of advanced our modern
conception of fairies is, you know, little beautiful humans with
(20:26):
wings was a painter named John Anster Fitzgerald, and his
paintings are just a joy to look upon. My favorite
so far is Rabbit and Fairies, and I mean it
does what's on the label. It's a rabbit surrounded by
fairies in this cute little grassy area and it's just
heartwarming stuff. It's like looking at old care bears images.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh wow, I'm looking at that now. Is that a
great point? I mean, it's beyond the whimsy of it.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It's beautiful, very very lovely, but not expected like bright colors.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's very beige.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, but let's not overlook that whimsy because it is important.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
No, it for sure is because these are fairies, after all,
not all art depicted them depicted them like that, though
it wasn't always these beautiful things, or at least that
wasn't the reason behind it. Because there's a little something
in the art world back then called the fairy loophole,
and that is, if you lived in a place at
the time that had pretty bad censorship for butts and
(21:35):
breasts and paintings, a little workaround was to just paint
it as a fairy because they were usually not clothed
at that point, and so you could say, hey, sensor,
you can't say anything. There's a fairy that's not a woman.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
See the wings, dummy beat it. This is actually what
inspired me to do this episode on Fairies, Chuck. There
was a buzz it great.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Oh yeah, why, I just wonder where that came from.
And now it all makes sense. We should have just
done this one as.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
A short stuff. So we're going to do a short
stuff within a larger episode right here, right now, we're
going to great talk about the Cottingly Fairies hoax, which
was arguably the greatest fairy hoax of all time.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, this was in nineteen seventeen. Photography was a thing
at the time, and there was a sixteen year old
named Elsie Wright and her nine year old cousin, Francis Griffiths. Griffiths,
that's a tough one. And I even have teeth who said, hey,
we photographed some fairies by the stream near our home
in Cottingley, England.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Everybody look, look.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, And so this was a time we did an
episode on spiritualism and we talked about how it was
a big response to so much death during the Civil War,
the in World War One. And I think Elsie's mom, Polly,
was into the spiritual movement and she took these pictures
to the Theosophical Society, which is also intoitulism at the times,
(23:00):
said look at what my daughter captured. Here's some fairies
in photos. And everybody just went wild, like they just
like if something can go viral in nineteen seventeen is
what happened with these photos. They were spectacular photos of
Elsie or Francis interacting with these beautiful little winged fairies
(23:21):
flitting around in the air around them.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, I had seen these somewhere. I don't know if
you sent these to me or if I just came
across them at some.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Point in my path.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Pretty famous, no, well yes, but also just like great
and like super cool that this sixteen year old and
nine year old pulled this hoax over because it looks
pretty darn good for the time. What they did was
they copied images from a children's book and cut them out,
(23:50):
added wings to them, and then use hairpins to hold
that paper up and took pictures.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And I think it probably helps it.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
It was nineteen seventeen style photography, but.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Pretty fun, little tricky thing to do for these two
young girls.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, and they were like they you know, they didn't
mean for this thing to become like a national phenomenon.
But I think one of them later said, I think
it was Francis, who's like, you could see the happins
in the picture if you look closely enough. And yet
that didn't matter, because the adults who were into spiritualism
wanted so badly for some evidence that the supernatural existed.
(24:26):
Some any fairy pictures will do that, they just bought
the whole thing, hook line and sinker. And in fact,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, he got
into spiritualism toward the end of his life, and because
he was just such a trusted authority on things like
mysteries and rationalism and all that stuff, he wrote a
(24:46):
paper and when the paper was released, he was saying, essentially,
this is real. I consulted a photography expert and the
expert said, these pictures show whatever was in front of
the camera when the photo was taken. They haven't been doctored,
and it is true.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
The guy was right, no, no, that's true.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
But he was saying, like, they haven't been doctored, they
haven't been messed with, like this is a real picture
of what you're seeing. And Conan Doyle said, okay, they're fairies.
This guy proved it. These are real deal things, and
not everybody believed it. I think there was a headline
in one of the London papers when Doyle released his
article that said, has Conan Doyle gone mad? Like it
(25:27):
was not necessarily well received by everybody, but in the
spiritualist movement it was like we approof finally.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
I wonder if the last line of that article said,
perhaps as best if he just sticks to Sherlock, he.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Stays in his Sherlock lane, and that was the first
instance of people using the word lane like that in
a smarmy way. So I want to say also, Francis
and Elsie were from what I can tell, Elsie went
to her grave never admitting it was a hoax, really,
because Francis did admit it until nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Oh jeez.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And she was saying like she didn't feel bad because
obviously the adults wanted to believe this very obvious hoax,
So you know, more power to them. I don't think
said the last part. I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
She said of men without hats concert, they're all dancing
the safety dancer.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
She was like, hey, guess what that has something to
get off my chest?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
There be good.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
So nineteen fifty seven there comes another paper from a
folkloress named Catherine Mary Briggs who did another sort of
categorization of fairies that involved what is this one, two, three, four, five, six,
I guess seven categories, and we're going to go over
(26:46):
those quickly here. The first is heroic trooping fairies. These
are the kinds I was talking about. There were a
little more aristocratic that had the king and the queen.
Not to be confused with the second grouping homely trooping fairies,
which were you know, kind of farm dwellers who can
maybe change in size, who might reward a human for help,
(27:07):
who might punish a human for not helping or being unkind,
and might even steal from humans.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yes, there's another one, solitary fairies. They're usually tied to
a place, usually in the countryside, say like the moors
or something like that, and they will often like pose
as something like a needy stranger or something like that,
and to test the traveler's kindness to strangers. And if
they pass the test, they might be rewarded with something.
(27:35):
If they fail, they'll probably be punished by this magical fairy.
Leprechauns are one of them. They're usually tricksters. There's one
named Tom tit Tot who I read the story of
and it's great. It's got a kind of a rumpel
stilt skinny vibe to it. But I think I like
Tom tit Tot's a little more, so I say, go
check out Tom tit Tot in his story.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
And you know, it seems like a lot of this
as it's occurring to me more and more. It sort
of falls into the category of the what's the story
that you tell when it's are you going to do
the good thing or the bad thing?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Is it a fat no.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
More agacy tale?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Like as a moral yeah, I think sort of fables
and morality tales where they're saying, well, good things will
happen to you or bad things will happen to you
according to your behaviors and whether or not you're like
kind to the stranger passing through town. It's actually a
fairy or a leprechaun. YEA, well, well I'll be what
else we got? We got three more categories?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
No, we've got two. No, we have three? Year, you're right.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Three is a catch all tutelary.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Fairies fun to say, but also include my favorite fairies,
which are brownies, which are household helpers, and people will
still leave out a little bit of bread, a little
saucer of milk, or something like that as a thank
you gift to the brownies that live in their house
and help them out with household chores. The very very
famous fairy tale about the cobbler who was helped out
(29:05):
by fairies who made shoes for him every night and
eventually made him a very wealthy man. Those are brownies.
I remember that anybody helping out around the house, that's
a brownie. And I just think that's the cutest, most
down to earth folksy concept ever, that there's little tiny
fairies that help out around the house. And the other
(29:26):
thing that they do, which I think is hilarious, they
punish lazy servants who aren't doing enough work by pinching
them while they sleep.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
That's got to be where brownie points comes from, right.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, probably, don't you think? Probably? Yeah, because you do
want to score points with the brownies to keep them happy.
Because yeah, in addition to happening out, if you don't
reward them, they will sometimes start stealing. They'll make your
milk go bad. They'll make it impossible for butter to
churn into butter. They can't mess you up. You don't
want to mess with them, but if you keep them happy,
like I fully want a brownie in your house.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
They make your fart hang in the air long after
it's it's fast.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Yeah, I know that kind of brownie.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Finally, there are nature fairies. These are the kind of
water sprites and river sprites you were talking about, These
spirits that dwell in nature.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
It's very.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Self explanatory. They protect animals usually and deal with the
animals out there. And then there's the catch all category
that I mentioned, which are the scariest ones, like the
giants and the hags and the monsters of the group.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Like, yes, I get that that is part of original
fairy lore and like the widest possible use of the
term fairy. But we've evolved so far beyond that. How
are you going to include like a monster and a
giant into the fairy categories?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Giants and giant exactly, They're their own thing. Don't do
any like them. Yeah, I say we take our second break, Chuck,
and come back and wrap this up and talk some
more about get this fairies, okay, Chuck. So, by the
(31:29):
nineteenth century, early twentieth century, like fairies were starting to congeal,
all these different threads were starting to kind of come together,
and yeah, they were solidifying like so much jello pudding. Yeah,
remember the skin on top of that stuff?
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Buh of, just like jello or the pudding.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
The jello pudding, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
If it sat out, would I get a little topper.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
As it sat it would almost invariably like create like
a shell a skin at the top and it was
limsay and rubbery and like you did not want it.
But I think some real sickos liked the skin of
the pudding.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
It's right here that I have to quickly sidetrack about
a movie I just saw called The Substance.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Have you read about this yet?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
No? It's the new movie with Demi Mour and Margaret
Qually That is a body horror film. Oh, just say
the least. If you're into body horror, this is the
going to go down in history. Is the all time
leader in that category. It is the most foul, horrifying,
(32:36):
disgusting but great thing that I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I gotta see this.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Are you into that kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah? I mean I like all kinds of horror. Body
horror is not my leading type of horror. It's usually
a good ghost story, but I like body horror.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Well, go see The Substance. It is really something. I
got the strongest stomach for that kind of thing. And
I was literally feet pulled up in the theater, peeking
through eyes like a small child.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So are you and holding my ears?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Are you into body horror?
Speaker 3 (33:07):
I like a Cronenberg thing, But This is like Cronenberg
on ten million milligrams of steroids. However much that is,
it's beyond the pale of anything that you could imagine
for body horror.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Okay, I'm telling you, I'll see that in the meantime.
You see, there's a classic body horror movie called Society
from the mid eighties. Don't know that one, and it's
widely considered the all time leader in horrible, horrific body horror.
So anymore I will be I can't wait to see
the Substance Man.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, and it's got a great message. I can't remember
the woman who made it, but her first movie is
called Revenge and it was great, total sort of I
spit upon your gravestyle Revenge film that you can watch
now it's out on streaming. And she's just a very
unique voice in film making these days. And a great
message in this new one about women and aging and
(34:00):
youth obsession with youth culture and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
From what you described the messages.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yes, it's tough. I cannot get some of the stuff
out of my head.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Okay, So let's get back to fairies, shall we.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, that all started with putting skin, by the way, Yeah, fairies.
Lets your mind run wild with that association.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, so by this time fairies have are they're kind
of becoming dual. They can be different kinds of sizes.
They can be ugly or beautiful. And then from that
point on, like they either have one or the other,
usually polar extremes. Right, so, like they're either immortal or
they don't have souls, so when they die they just
perish completely, or they're they're fallen angels but they're not
(34:45):
demonic or wait, member, there may be unbaptized babies, like
there's they're as desparate and weird as it sounds like.
It's still way more put together than the threads used
to be before the nineteenth.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Yeah, for sure. Sometimes there are solo fairies. Sometimes they
are in little small communities or families. We have mentioned
that a lot of times they live out in rural
areas and caves and wells and heidi holes other sort
of bucolic rural spots, mounds and holes in the ground,
things like that. Sometimes there is a fairy land like
(35:22):
in these books that I read Ruby, where things are
just magical and wonderful or can go really wrong. A
lot of times the beauty is an illusion. So there
are some stories like if a human comes along and
says the right spell or applies to magic ointment, they
will be awakened to the true reality that everything is all.
The treasure is garbage, and the food is poison and
(35:43):
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I found that interesting because the magic ointment jumped out
at me because they also prescribed a magic ointment for
witchcraft and to become a werewolf. And I don't remember
what drug they what hallucinogen they thought was in that
magic ointment, but I suspect yeah, referring to the same
magic ointment that would make you trip balls.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Right, Oh, that's funny. Not Jim Wall's trip balls. They
can't cross rivers usually, or any kind of running water.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Holy water is not great for them, right.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
No, And this is where the influence of the Christian
Church came in. They don't like holy water, they don't
like cold iron. Church bells really drive them. They sound
like nails on a chalkboard to them. And in fact,
like just talking about religion can set a fairy off
that one historian from the fifties, Katherine Mary Briggs, said
(36:42):
it is tactless in the extreme to mention Sunday to
a fairy. That's one of the best lines I've ever read.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, you know, the other thing you don't want to
do is if you meet a fairy, don't call that
fairy a fairy, right.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
They don't want to hear that.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
No, they want to be called fair folk people of peace.
One thing that everybody now agrees on about fairies is
that they really respond to flattery and that they're very
easily upset.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Right, Sorry, I had a joke.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I'm not gonna tell Okay, you can tell me later.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I'll tell you later.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
One thing that you can do, like, let's say you've
got some disturbing fairy stories banning about that have to
deal with human children and maybe a fairy, you know,
swapping them out for a fairy like they've become a changeling. Essentially,
if you're an unchristened baby and you think your baby
is at risk to be carried off by a fairy,
(37:38):
you wrap them up in daddy's clothes, put a bible
under their pillow.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
That's a good way.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Or if you live a little dangerously, you can hang
some iron fire tongs or some giant iron scissors over
their cradle.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Which seems like a really bad idea.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, I'd go with the Bible under the pillow, And
that's me talking.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
You don't want iron scissors to fall under your baby's crip.
So this is where it gets really dark. In fact,
there was a long standing folklore all the way through
the late nineteenth century that when a child started to
develop disabilities or was suddenly struck ill or i think
was also born with like physical abnormalities, the folk belief
(38:22):
was that the fairies had stolen the actual baby, the
human baby, and replaced it with a fairy changeling, right, yeah,
And so you would kill the fairy changeling because you
wanted your baby back in hopes that they this would
help get your baby back. And it was actually one
(38:43):
of those things where probably some people, especially long ago,
believed that what they were doing was actually killing a
fairy baby. But it also served a really grim but
kind of necessary for the time purpose of removing the
baby that was never going to be able to help
out on the farm, but was gonna need some of
(39:06):
the food from that farm to stay alive, from a
very poor family to have to take care of that kid.
And that is about as dark as fairies get and
there's some dark parts to fairies.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
And I would also like people to write in if they,
like me, were singing the Chile's Babyback Ribs commercial in
their head the third time you said babyback.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Oh, oh yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet that happened. Nice.
That's a gift to you, buddy.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
I think we should close with some famous fairies, because
we mentioned that they had been had long been written
about in literature, and some have some of that cream
rises to the top everybody, and the wheat is separated
from the chaff, and you get some genuine fairy celebrities.
Puck is the one I would love to mention because
(39:53):
Puck was not just from the mind of William Shakespeare.
Puck was a fairy or a demon, depending on, of course,
various factors of medieval folklore and Shakespeare by the time
he got around to writing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck
was a very mischievous character who Shakespeare leaned on in
that story. Puck as a character would help with chores
(40:15):
around the house, maybe get rewarded with some bread and
milk from the midwives, but could also play tricks on
people like that spoiled milk again or maybe trip an
old lady walking through the forest.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Right. He also appeared on the first season of Real World.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
That's wasn't the first season, but yes.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
So thank you for saving me a ton of emails. Yeah,
first season was London, Josh. He also had a great nickname,
Robin Goodfellow. Did not know that. Yeah, I'll just keep
moving on. But you said that Shakespeare used him in
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare was the champ of using
(40:56):
and describing and writing about fairies. And it turns out
they think actually venting fairies because one of the most
legendary fairies was the fairy queen Queen Mab, who's described
in Romeo and Juliet and just kind of spread from there,
and they can't figure out where Shakespeare got this, so
they actually think he might have made up this really
(41:16):
definitive fairy Queen Mab, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
And I think we have to close by talking about
the two most famous fairies of.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Them all, who tinker Bell and that tooth fairy.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Oh tinker Bell, of course, created by the great and
wonderful Jay and Barry, author of the play, and then
eventually the novel Peter Pan. What a great character and
what a great just thing that Jay and Barry launched
into the world. Like all about Peter Pan. I've always
loved Peter Pan and all the stories and iterations from
(41:50):
the various movies and cartoons to the actual books themselves,
and that book about Jay and Barry or the movie
about jan Berry, which was very good.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
J and Barry also invented the concept of fairy dust.
And there was a Guardian article that describes why I
actually think. I found it on Reddit to tell you
the truth. In the article, I say that Berry invented
fairy dust. So, originally Peter Pan was a play and
then a few years later it became a novel, and
the fairy dust appears in the novel because in the
(42:19):
interim between the play and the novels released, kids were
trying to fly like Peter Pan. So we introduced fairy
dust to say, like, you can't fly, kid, you don't
have fairy dust. You have to have fairy dust to
be able.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
To fly, So don't jump out of your window for gotcha.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Exactly because it's not gonna work.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
That's called a Janberry CoA original.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
And then the Tooth fairy, you said, right.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, of course everyone loves the tooth fairy.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Of course.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
This is the tradition of when your child looses their
baby tea, they put it under their pillow or maybe
in a little pocket of a tooth pillow that you
might have bought for eight bucks or whatever. In my case,
Janet Barney gave us a tooth fairy pillow, which was
very sweet as a gift, and you get some you
get something in there, like a little bit of money
(43:05):
or a little treat or something like that. And that
originated in Norse tradition in the thirteenth century, when parents
would pay a tooth fee.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah, they would pay a tooth fee because baby teeth
were considered good luck. So they were essentially buying the
lucky tooth from their child.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, buying it out.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
But the the first appearance of the actual tooth fairy
as we understand it today, that didn't come about until
nineteen oh eight, when apparently a Chicago Tribune writer just
made it up.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, but it was around long before that, but yeah,
in print for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
And then we also can't not name check all of
the Disney fairies, including tinker Bell. There was the fairy
godmother in Cinderella. Yeah, there were fairies and fantasia.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
All over the place.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Sleeping Beauty had three great fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather
the greatest. And that's all you really need to mention.
The list goes on, but we're going to stop there.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yeah, I wish I could remember the name of that
book series. Let me see if I can find it
real quick. Why don't you talk intelligently for ten seconds?
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Oh god, let's see a little more about fairies. Fairies
are great. Everybody typically agrees that was one scholarly finding
Backyard Fairies.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I believe that is it?
Speaker 2 (44:24):
What was that? That was the series?
Speaker 1 (44:26):
I think I think it's Backyard Fairies. Okay, I might
be wrong.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You sounded like you knew what it was a second ago.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Well i'm looking.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, yeah, Backyard Fairies by Phoebe wall w A h L.
It's wonderful and there are a lot of books and
they're a lot of fun if you have a kid,
that's you know, like six ish.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Okay, great, thanks for read too, Thanks for that. Yeah. Well,
Chuck recommended a children's book series which, as everyone knows,
unlocks listener mail.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, I'm gonna mention this a quick mistake we made,
and this is from Brad. A few people have written
in and this is something we've mistaked on before.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Mistake on.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Hey, guys, have just finished listening to your History of
Glasses episodes and noticed a little mistake and figured you'd
love when people right into correct you. When Josh was
listening Famous where monocles, you mentioned Monopoly guy rich uncle
Pennybags is apparently his name a great example of the
Mandela effect, guys, because he never wore a monocle. I'm
pretty sure you even mentioned this in your episode about
(45:34):
the Mandela effect, and probably in your Monopoly episode as well,
so this may be a three timer. Any who, You
guys are the best ever. I hope you make episodes
for at least another couple of decades.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Rock on, Brad, Rock on yourself.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Brad, that was a great email and we appreciate it.
We appreciate you thanks for pointing that out. It is
so interesting when that Mandela effect comes up.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Agreed, I thought he had a monocle.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Two. I just I even don't believe what Brad's saying
right now. I'm so convinced he had a monocle at
some point.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, I looked it up.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
I double checked, and there have been drawings of him
with monocles, but nothing that's not canon, like no official.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Monopoly stuff.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And I've been playing Monopoly, we've been playing as a family,
so I'm surprised it got past me.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Okay, all right, great, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
And that was from Brad.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
That's from Brad.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Okay, Well, if you want to be like Brad and
get in touch with us, send us an email too.
Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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