Crossing Boundaries

I cannot recall if I have ever personally eaten a hot cross bun, but I think it is fair to assume that we are all at least familiar with the food. Who would have imagined that a pastry should be a holdout from lost fairy culture? But that is exactly where my research has led me. According to D.L. Ashliman, in Fairy Lore: A Handbook (p. 31), the telltale sign of the cross was initially carved into the unbaked rolls to protect against theft by elves of questionable character.

This brings up several interesting points, the most obvious of which is the perpetual struggle between lore and religion. It should be clear by now that we cannot engage in any practical discussion of the Early Modern supernatural without factoring the Christian Church into the equation, and if they could not quench fairy belief, they were determined to establish them as an enemy. To be fair, the fairies had always been dangerous - for they were wild and could not be trusted - but that did not keep adventurous young boys from hoping that they might discover elvish treasure, or housewives from trying to snag a brownie’s help. To the pious, however, revulsion of the cross would have labeled fairies an evil thing without their ever needing to give further proof of it. It relegated them to the realm of vampires and werewolves. The Church fueled earlier superstition in order to further its own ends, assuring people that the surest defense against fairy pranksters was to live a moral and devout life.

Small wonder that the Church should have felt itself to be in competition with the fairies. I would not be surprised if the reason that pagan concepts of them held out as long as they did had to do with their approachability. To the common people who believed, life would have offered few opportunities for breaking the cycle of the mundane. The possibility of the supernatural was their “out.” But what were their options? Few would summon demons and risk the fate of Doctor Faustus, yet the popular view of God was distant at best. Emphasis was on escaping judgment rather than reaping rewards, and certainly not rewards in this life. People may have served God, but they could not interact with him. Fairies assumed the middle ground, neither too evil nor too good. In fact, they were probably the most anthropomorphic of the supernatural beings of European tradition, feeling human emotions like anger, jealousy, love, and loyalty to their own, and experiencing human lusts and desires. They were relatable.

It is possible that people’s determination to allow for a magical being with which they could interact led to certain discrepancies in the beliefs. The term “fairy” was used to describe any creatures from water nymphs to royal elves to leprechauns, and meant, loosely, “a spirit being.” On the other hand, fairies were able to have sexual intercourse with humans, and numerous rituals involved leaving them offerings of human food. Obviously they had some substance, and were even, to a degree, confined to the dictates of physicality. In fact, their most notable magical power, recurring throughout the stories, seemed to be the ability to make things appear other than they really were. In this sense, fairies seem little more extraordinary than first-class illusionist, it is often unclear at what point “us” becomes “them.” In an effort to make them more “real,” did they become perhaps less believable. In other words, what does a spirit want with a hot cross bun?



(Picture courtesy of http://fullhomelydivinity.org/images/hot_cross_bun.jpg.)