Mass Migration, Destination Unknown

Maybe it is the culture. Maybe it is religion. Maybe it is a matter of simple overcrowding. Whatever the reason, the general consensus among all storytellers at all times is the same: there are not as many fairies as there used to be.

Tales of the fairies' departure are common. Usually there is the crossing of some river or lake (I am reminded of the Elves sailing from the Grey Havens in The Lord of the Rings), but the final destination is unnamed. After all, where would they go? Do they leave this world entirely, passing through the mists into another realm as Bradley's Avalon? I do not know, and I do not think I am supposed to. The moment we know where they are, and can go there and find that they are not, the illusion will be shattered.

A commonly given reason for the migration of fairies from a particular community is the sound of church bells, and they are apparently more tolerant of Catholics than Protestants (perhaps because the Catholic Church has a more supernatural aura to begin with?). Many blame the Reformation for the decided lack of fairies in the world nowadays. In a literal sense, this may not be far wrong.

Literature has also had a tremendous role to play in fairy deconstruction. The twentieth century Puck of Pook's Hill, by Rudyard Kipling, depicts Puck as the last of his kind. "There's no good beating about the bush: it's true," he says. "The people of the hill have all left" (Ashliman 35). That is true enough, if not in the way that Kipling meant it. Since Shakespeare's Puck, the fairies I have been discussing these last weeks have become rarer and rarer, finding replacements in a newer, more user-friendly version of themselves.

Another issue, of course, is the expanding human population. More than other supernatural beings, fairies share space with us (in but not of the world, as it were). Sometimes they live in hills or mounds, sometimes simply underground. The lurk in graveyards and around ruins. According to Diane Purkiss in At the Bottom of the Garden, it is a well-established notion that fairies live in the past, and they tend to link themselves with locations where entropy is visible (Purkiss 151). In an increasingly modern world, they are increasingly out of place.

It is my opinion that this is the real reason for their leaving. It is symbolic of their psychological graduation from the regions of possibility to those of imagination.We have not been able to reconcile our world with fairies for many years, since the Renaissance and before, in some cases, but if we believe that the fairies have left, we can also believe that they were once here. It is more magical to believe that they were than that they have never been.

Again, this desperation to make magic believable! It intrigues me.