Fairy beliefs were going through a definite transition period during the Renaissance. For the majority of this project, I have been focusing on fairy lore, a primarily oral tradition that may not have been fully believed even among those who popularized the legends. In higher circles, the existence of fairies was likely to be discounted entirely, for the expanding use of the scientific approach did not allow much credit to the figures of stories. On the other hand, fairies continued to permeate common thought. John Aubrey, an eccentric antiquarian and collector of obscurities, offers one open-minded attempt to reconcile reason with popular belief. Here I would like to touch upon a couple of Aubrey's works, especially The Wiltshire Fairies, written in 1686, for a firsthand look at the conflicts faced by would-be believers in the early modern years. There is something charming about Aubrey. He prides himself on rationality and examines fairies from an informed perspective, but that does not change the fact that he is exploring a facet of lore few admit to believing. (We must recall here that all periods have considered fairies a thing of the past - backwards, as it were.) But Aubrey will no more quickly discount them than believe in them without proof. Scientifically speaking, they are innocent until proven guilty.
Aubrey attempts to separate the misunderstood from the truly unexplainable. In The Wiltshire Fairies, he describes a fairy encounter given him by his curate, one Mr. Hart, in Latin grammar school. I find it interesting that the storyteller is not one of Aubrey's fellow students, but a member of the clergy, and, presumably, a man of some education. It is possible that he hopes to impress the children or to frighten them into obedience, an idea fitting with current beliefs regarding the Catholic clergy's use of fairies, but there is no clear reason for his doing so. According to his tale, he was committing no worse sin than wandering over the downs when a group of "pigmies" (Paster 312) surrounded him, singing, dancing, and causing a general ruckus. He fell down in his amazement, and they "pinched him all over, and made a sort of quick humming noise all the time" (312). Then they left, and in the morning, he woke to find himself in the middle of a fairy ring (mushrooms, dead grass, or other natural material growing in a circular formation).
Because Aubrey is writing from memory, and because we do not have the context of the curate's tale, we can only guess at his reasons for it. Maybe he passed out drunk in a field and used the fairies to excuse his absence. Maybe he is cautioning the boys against traipsing around the moors at night. Maybe he merely enjoys a good story. At any rate, Aubrey is a skeptic. He and his roommate travel to the rings several nights later to investigate the matter for themselves, and they find nothing. But even in this, Aubrey retains his open mind, for "indeed it is said they seldom appear to any persons who go to seek for them" (312).
This is one of the great troubles in objectively studying fairy lore. In another of Aubrey's works, The Remains of Gentilism and Judaism (1688), he tells of a laboring man, Sir Bennet Hoskyns, who found a nine pence daily on his way to work. His wife noted the inexplicable addition to their finances and worried that he had acquired it dishonestly. He explained the situation to her, but he never found nine pence again. Aubrey also speaks of the scientist and antiquarian Elias Ashmole, who claimed that in a certain fairy mound, those preparing for weddings, etc., could find spits, crockery, and other things. They could use this on the condition that they returned it to the mound afterwards. So we see that fairies do not appear to those who search for them, that they will only help humans on the condition of secrecy, and that what they lend must not be kept. Let us humor the idea that fairies do exist. If these things were true, they would be extremely difficult to verify. It is a built-in safety for the plausibility of the legends. Though evidence may never be found, they cannot be entirely disproven.
Aubrey realizes this difficulty and confronts what he can. In the case of the fairy circles, he speculates that they are the result of underground gases which must force their way out of the narrow opening of a conical hollow, and, in their escape, form a second cone the inverse of the first. At the top of this second cone grows a mold which affects the grass above it. As a matter of fact, he is not far wrong, and his ideas show a desire to keep a rational perspective, though he is victim to his own wonder.
As an ending note to The Wiltshire Fairies, Aubrey also speaks of a tradition among his great uncles and his father's estate manager, old men at the time, of an unnaturally intuitive child during the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. He cannot remember whether the boy was mentally retarded. At the time of the battle, the child began to play with two wheat sheaves, beating them together and crying, "Now for Henry!" or "Now for Richard!" from time to time. Supposedly at the very moment of the battle's end, he shouted, "Now for King Henry, Richard is slain!" hailing the first Tudor monarch without verifiable knowledge of his triumph (313). Aubrey toys with the idea that the boy could have been a changeling, and here the suggestion appears to be his own. In the end, his love of the extraordinary subtly steps in front of hard reason.
John Aubrey's studies give a snapshot of shifting fairy beliefs in a couple of ways. Not only does he display a personal inclination for separating the explainable from the unknown, but the studies themselves give insight into fairies' changing identity. In the older story of the psychic child, the subject matter is serious, almost morbid. The child's uncanny knowledge is of war, death, and a new monarchy. In the more recent account of Mr. Hart, Aubrey describes the fairies' antics as annoying and little more. The people that taunt Mr. Hart are also undersized, characteristic of a later breed of fairy, and tricksters rather than powerful spirits. Already, in the mid-1600s, the stories themselves were slipping from the fairies' hold.
(A Midsummer Night's Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard. pp. 310-313)
Aubrey attempts to separate the misunderstood from the truly unexplainable. In The Wiltshire Fairies, he describes a fairy encounter given him by his curate, one Mr. Hart, in Latin grammar school. I find it interesting that the storyteller is not one of Aubrey's fellow students, but a member of the clergy, and, presumably, a man of some education. It is possible that he hopes to impress the children or to frighten them into obedience, an idea fitting with current beliefs regarding the Catholic clergy's use of fairies, but there is no clear reason for his doing so. According to his tale, he was committing no worse sin than wandering over the downs when a group of "pigmies" (Paster 312) surrounded him, singing, dancing, and causing a general ruckus. He fell down in his amazement, and they "pinched him all over, and made a sort of quick humming noise all the time" (312). Then they left, and in the morning, he woke to find himself in the middle of a fairy ring (mushrooms, dead grass, or other natural material growing in a circular formation).
Because Aubrey is writing from memory, and because we do not have the context of the curate's tale, we can only guess at his reasons for it. Maybe he passed out drunk in a field and used the fairies to excuse his absence. Maybe he is cautioning the boys against traipsing around the moors at night. Maybe he merely enjoys a good story. At any rate, Aubrey is a skeptic. He and his roommate travel to the rings several nights later to investigate the matter for themselves, and they find nothing. But even in this, Aubrey retains his open mind, for "indeed it is said they seldom appear to any persons who go to seek for them" (312).
This is one of the great troubles in objectively studying fairy lore. In another of Aubrey's works, The Remains of Gentilism and Judaism (1688), he tells of a laboring man, Sir Bennet Hoskyns, who found a nine pence daily on his way to work. His wife noted the inexplicable addition to their finances and worried that he had acquired it dishonestly. He explained the situation to her, but he never found nine pence again. Aubrey also speaks of the scientist and antiquarian Elias Ashmole, who claimed that in a certain fairy mound, those preparing for weddings, etc., could find spits, crockery, and other things. They could use this on the condition that they returned it to the mound afterwards. So we see that fairies do not appear to those who search for them, that they will only help humans on the condition of secrecy, and that what they lend must not be kept. Let us humor the idea that fairies do exist. If these things were true, they would be extremely difficult to verify. It is a built-in safety for the plausibility of the legends. Though evidence may never be found, they cannot be entirely disproven.
Aubrey realizes this difficulty and confronts what he can. In the case of the fairy circles, he speculates that they are the result of underground gases which must force their way out of the narrow opening of a conical hollow, and, in their escape, form a second cone the inverse of the first. At the top of this second cone grows a mold which affects the grass above it. As a matter of fact, he is not far wrong, and his ideas show a desire to keep a rational perspective, though he is victim to his own wonder.
As an ending note to The Wiltshire Fairies, Aubrey also speaks of a tradition among his great uncles and his father's estate manager, old men at the time, of an unnaturally intuitive child during the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. He cannot remember whether the boy was mentally retarded. At the time of the battle, the child began to play with two wheat sheaves, beating them together and crying, "Now for Henry!" or "Now for Richard!" from time to time. Supposedly at the very moment of the battle's end, he shouted, "Now for King Henry, Richard is slain!" hailing the first Tudor monarch without verifiable knowledge of his triumph (313). Aubrey toys with the idea that the boy could have been a changeling, and here the suggestion appears to be his own. In the end, his love of the extraordinary subtly steps in front of hard reason.
John Aubrey's studies give a snapshot of shifting fairy beliefs in a couple of ways. Not only does he display a personal inclination for separating the explainable from the unknown, but the studies themselves give insight into fairies' changing identity. In the older story of the psychic child, the subject matter is serious, almost morbid. The child's uncanny knowledge is of war, death, and a new monarchy. In the more recent account of Mr. Hart, Aubrey describes the fairies' antics as annoying and little more. The people that taunt Mr. Hart are also undersized, characteristic of a later breed of fairy, and tricksters rather than powerful spirits. Already, in the mid-1600s, the stories themselves were slipping from the fairies' hold.
(A Midsummer Night's Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard. pp. 310-313)
(Picture courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/John_Aubrey.jpg.)
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