RJStewart.org - Irish Faery Tradition

The Irish Faery Tradition is part of an overall Celtic and European folkloric tradition, reaching back for many centuries. Its origins are perhaps rooted in the ancient megalithic culture that left so many mysterious and complex monuments in Ireland: the great resonant places of the Otherworld, such as Brugh na Boyne, Knowth, Dowth, Tara, New Grange and many more. Too many to count, in fact, for hundreds of smaller mounds, stone alignments, and ancient structures cover much of Ireland…often attracting no attention. Which is a good thing, for the spirits of the land, known traditionally as “faeries” are said to live in these megalithic structures, as well as in the natural features of the land and water. The spelling “faery” is intentional in this essay, to distinguish these land and water spirits of Ireland and other Celtic realms from the fantasy Fairy of entertainment and fiction. There is a significant difference between the Disney fairy and the Irish faery. In this essay we are going to explore the real nature of faeries, so be prepared for whimsicality to be shredded.

The bigger the site, the bigger the spirit… Brugh na Boyne is the home of Oengus, the Celtic god of love, poetry, and death. He is one of the Tuatha de Danaan, spiritual beings who, according to the medieval Irish text, The Book of Invasions appeared one day on a mountain in the North, bringing talismans of magical power with them (1). These beings, once the pantheon of an ancient Celtic sacro-magical tradition, eventually retreated to live beneath the earth, leaving the surface to destructive humans. In time they became faery beings, adding to the multitude already dwelling in the stones, streams, wells, lakes, trees, mountains, and rivers.

Why are there so many Faeries in Ireland?

If you are brave enough to explore the vast literature on faeries, you will find that all writers, from the Irish monks of the Middle Ages, through the 19th century scholars and poets, to W Y Evans Wentz in the early 20th century (2), and on to the plethora of modern academics and folklorists, all agree on one thing…there are a lot of faeries in Ireland.

But no one ever asks why…why so many? And, perhaps the most significant unasked question; what are they doing there? These two questions lurked in my mind for years, while I was researching and writing my own faery books (3). Here are some of the answers that I discovered in Ireland.

What is generally called the “faery tradition” is seldom understood in full…it is usually limited to the academic study of folklore. You know the kind of thing, visit grandmother, ask her about faeries, write the answers down or nowadays tape them…get a grant, publish a book. But grandmother is speaking with a voice that comes down to us from prehistoric times…she is not merely relating quaint countryside Irish beliefs. Not at all…she is telling us that the land is alive teeming with energetic spiritual forces that over the centuries, the millenniums even, became personified as myriad forms: some human, some animal, some a mixture, theriomorphic forms that combine human, bird, animal, fish. Most of all, she is telling us stories about how to live, how to relate, how to be integrated within the living land. You will not get a government grant for that.

While many faery beings take organic forms, others are sensed or seen only as radiant lights flowing over the land. The paintings of the modern Irish mystic and poet, AE, George William Russell, show such beings. If you go to the museum in Armagh, you will find some of his visionary work there. His autobiography The Candle of Vision, is worth searching for (4).

So when we hear “folk tales” about faeries, we are hearing something that describes the living forces of the land. This is still evident today in many examples: I would like to quote you just two of a number from my own direct experience.

When I was traveling in Ireland some years ago, visiting ancient sites, one such site was in the back yard of a farmhouse. The woman of the house opened the door: She had a baby upon her hip, and inside the lounge I could see a television, loudly on, and a refrigerator, and a computer. After asking her permission to go through the yard, she said, “Of course you can go through…but be careful. A mighty king is buried there, and anyone who disturbs him loses the use of their arms and legs.” So here was this modern young woman directly, and seriously, telling me something that had been handed down for thousands of years… for the site was a megalithic chamber tomb. But more than this telling, was the inherent idea that to interfere with the land at a place of power is to ask for trouble. Needless to say, I did not disturb the site in any way.

Another modern story that I had from several independent sources was of the man somewhere in Ireland, in a place not to be named, who broke a faery line when he extended his new house. Faery lines are found in many Celtic countries (they are not to be confused with the fashionable idea of ley lines, for they are something different, and unique to the faery tradition). In some old communities the lines are marked by small pathways that start suddenly and finish nowhere, or by curves in the roads, or strange breaks in boundary fences and walls. This poor man had been warned that a faery line ran by the back of his new house, but he extended the building anyway. His first son died in an accident, then his second son fell ill and died. Next his third son fell ill, and then he tore down the extension of the house… and the third son recovered.

Now, is this modern story an urban legend? It was relayed to me as contemporary and true. What does it tell us? That if you interfere with faery lines of power, your house and family can become imbalanced and ill, even unto death. So faery tradition is about vitality, the health of the land and the human relationship to that health. Could any subject be more apt and urgent for our polluted corrupt and disease infested times?

What does the faery tradition teach us?

The faery tradition is about spiritual forces, natural forces, embodied as beings that live in the land. If we want to be whole and healthy, we should know more about them, have a better relationship with them. And this is exactly what the old Irish faery tradition us: how to relate to these beings.

My thesis is that far from seeing the stories and practices of faery tradition as quaint old curiosities, that we should look deeper, and learn what the ancestors have to teach us: that we need to relate to the land, the continents, the oceans, the world, in a better and more wholesome way.

The Irish and Celtic faery tradition teaches us that we have spiritual cousins in the land, and that the health of the land depends on our good relationship with them. This is why in some places the faeries are called the Good Neighbors… we live right next to them, if we but knew it.

Many of the so-called superstitions of faery tradition can be seen in a different light once we appreciate that it is a tradition of relationship to the land and sea. For example, we all know that old country people used to, and still do, make offerings. These offerings are food and drink, sometimes brightly colored items or cloths, left at the back door, or at an ancient spring, or at stones, or even at the shrine of a saint. Such things are left for the people of the Sidh, the faeries, the Good Neighbors. They are usually interpreted as “acts of faith” at best, or “acts of ignorance” at worst, superstitious propitiation to avert bad luck.

Let us think about the offerings a different way: the food and drink originally came out of the land (rather than from MacDonald’s or Pepsi…honestly, it’s true, though hard to believe). Thus the offerings were emblematic of giving back: after the hard work of harvest, baking, brewing, something was given back. Even as a simple talisman this is potent, for it is a sign of acknowledgement and respect…we are not greedy, we give back to the land that has given us so much. But there is more.

The faeries are said to absorb the essence, the vitality, of the food and drink. The remaining substance must later be buried, and never given to a human or animal. This is an interesting idea, is it not? That the food and drink from the land have vital forces within them, that human hands can transform the raw food plants into food and drink, and that the transformed vitality can be offered back, sharing it with the spirits of the land. Even as a poetic or psychological practice, there is something deeply appropriate and satisfying in all of this.

In his book, The Spell of the Sensuous, American author David Abrams describes how he saw women make rice offerings in Indonesia, given “to the spirits” but subsequently carried off by ants. Then he tells us that the ants never came into the open houses, and wonders if this traditional practice of offerings to spirits is also a mystery of relating to the insect world. Is his experience in Indonesia and his interpretation of what he saw, based on rationalization, or does it mask a deeper truth, about how humans must interact with the other orders of life to live within the land?

Of course Europeans or Americans just spray chemicals…then we wonder why there are plagues of insects upon us. How does this relate to Irish and Celtic faery tradition? Well, the faery realm is the realm of exchange. As I have heard it aptly described, it is the realm of compost. It is where we give back, share, and exchange. Indeed, this simple but far-reaching truth is found in the faery and land- spirit traditions worldwide. The Indonesian with her rice grains, the woman of Connemara with her sweet baked cakes. They are at one in this fine knowledge: give back, share, and come into harmony with your own land.

On the subject of compost, do you remember the story of the man from county Clare who went into a faery hill, and tricked the occupants out of their pot of gold? When he got home, it was full of leaves and earth. Compost is the gold of the faery realm…but we do not value it sufficiently. So our surface world is dying of chemical toxicity, while the vast riches of our faery cousins are just beneath our feet…. the vast healing riches that we have rejected in pursuit of domination and greed.

The reality of faery beings

Some years ago, one of my mentors, the writer and Qabalist W G Gray, said that there is little point in debating if something is “real” or not, but that if we behave as if it is real, then we will have astonishing results. This is a powerful idea, for it connects the imagination and the manifest world. Not belief, or the deeper faith of religion, but the imagination. The Irish people have always behaved as if faeries are real, without debating belief or superstition. Most of all, the faery tradition is, even today, a practical aspect of daily life.

When grandfather talked about the Little People, he was speaking from within a model of reality…a practical working model that related every ancient mound, standing stone, tree, craggy rock, wild green hill, or lonely seashore, to a living group consciousness. To the rhythm of the farming and the fishing, to the turning of the seasons. The faery folk are embodiments of the natural life and death forces in the land, as, indeed, are we humans. Who are we, in the computer-compulsion age, to say that this old ancestral model is “unreal”? I propose that we need a model of this sort to repair the terrible rift in our lives, to heal our antagonism to the land, our isolation from and rejection of our environment. Ireland, with its faery dreams and deep soul suffering for the sake of the land, has much to teach the modern world.

The Faeries as Little People

I see that I used the phrase Little People, just a few lines above. So let’s explore this somewhat, as it contains a great treasure and mystery. Anyone who has had dealings with faery beings knows that oftentimes they are not small…some are gigantic in size and power. And why not…are not the land and the sea vast and potent? So how could those spirits that embody them be petty, prettified, and trivial? Here I am reminded of AE again, who, in an interview with W Y Evans Wentz, back in the early 1900’s (2) tells us that some faery beings are large, and are made up of many smaller beings that circulate around the hills, in the lakes, between the depths of the land and the surface. They circulate out of, and into, the larger being that is their holism or their source. Just as our own human bodies are made of cells and organs, each being part of a larger whole.

So this vision of holism gives us one helpful insight into the idea of faeries as the Little People. There is, however, another, and to my mind more significant insight that rests upon ancient roots, and is nested in the very heart of Irish and Celtic consciousness and language. It is customary for powerful things to be described as their opposites. We still have remnants of this idea today in popular practice…what do we call an Irishman who is six feet tall, four feet wide, with the strength of an ox? Yes, you’ve got it; we call him “Tiny”.

In the ancient world gods and goddesses were often addressed in oblique terms: the Good Goddess or Bona Dea of the Romans was, in truth, the terrible Hecate of the Underworld (5). In early Irish texts, the Daghda, who is a titan being, progenitor of the land, is ridiculed and made a subject of humor…because he is so powerful (1). This respectful obliquity is typically Celtic and Irish; it is more resonant in Gaelic than in the English tongue, but we can still grasp the essentials, even in print.

Let us cast our minds back to that eager young American scholar, W Y Evans Wentz, traveling rural Ireland, almost a century ago. He was collecting evidence for his thesis at Oxford, which was to become the famous source book, The Faery Faith in Celtic Countries. He did not speak Irish, so often it was the local priest or a member of the gentry who introduced him the country people. We already feel mildly uncomfortable with this, do we not? Is he going to get the real goods on the faeries, under such conditions?

Sometimes he does indeed note remarkable stories, and we are deeply grateful to him for this, but he often misses the subtle implications. He asks an old woman, most likely through a translator, if she ever sees fairies. Here is a paraphrase of the typical reply: “ I never saw any myself…but my uncle, who is dead now, God rest his soul, saw them often at the sea shore and in the woods. They were very small, as he used to tell us”. This means, “ I see them every day at the sea shore and in the woods, and they are large and powerful”. She is telling the truth in an oblique way, that anyone familiar with Irish traditional culture will understand immediately.

So these large powerful beings are worthy of respect, for they embody and mediate the vital energies of the land. When we live within a model, a holism, an ongoing participation- drama, such as the faery tradition, we have potent ways of relating to the natural world. Not as superstition, not as outmoded beliefs or even as revival paganism, and certainly not as romantic escapism. Irish faery tradition is pragmatic, ongoing, and an integral part of daily life. I prefer to say is, rather than was, for this tradition has not died out, though it has been greatly reduced in general consciousness.

Faeries, birth, and death

One last true and modern story, a tale that I have always found moving and inspiring. It is of the elderly uncle of a friend of mine. Each morning this old man would rise very early, take a bottle of Guinness, and hike through the woods and over the stream to a small cave, close to a sacred spring. The spring was called the Pin Well, for in the past young woman had been in the habit of dropping pins into it when they wished to conceive. In that cave, the old man drank his Guinness, always sharing some of it, as he said, with the faeries.

One day he did not return to his work on the land, and eventually the family went out to look for him. They found him peaceful and dead in the cave, with the empty Guinness bottle in his hand. He had left this world from a faery place, a place of power, of relatedness, where he had shared, for many years, the dark foaming alcoholic blessing of human invention with spirit beings that filled the water, grew the grains. And it was a place of birth, of conception, of rising springs. Who would not wish to die so nobly, so peacefully, so much at one with the land of Ireland?

Thus the faery tradition inspires us, teaches us, that there are other ways to relate, other ways of living and dying. And in Irish tradition we learn that such ways are about our intimate relationship to the land and sea, the two powers of this world that shape us, nourish us, and enable all that we are. What is true of Ireland is true of all lands; but Ireland demonstrates this truth so amply for Westerners, with her potent faery tradition.

Celtic Gods, Celtic Goddesses, R J Stewart, Blandford Press, London, 1990 and subsequent editions. Also Celtic Heritage, Alwyn and Brinley Rees, Thames and Hudson, London 1975; Pagan Celtic Britain, Dr Ann Ross, Routledge Kegan Paul, London 1967
The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, W Y Evans Wentz, Oxford University Press 1911 and subsequent editions. Compare this to: An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures, Katharine Briggs, Pantheon Books, New York, 1976.
The Living World of Faery, R J Stewart, Mercury Publishing, Lake Toxaway, NC, USA, 1998; Earth Light and Power Within the Land, R J Stewart, 1991, Element Books, Shaftesbury, UK, with revised editions by Mercury Publishing USA, 1998.
The Candle of Vision, AE, George William Russell, University Books, New York, 1965
The Illustrated Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology, Michael Stapleton, Peter Bedrick Books 1986, New York.

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Last Update:

May 19, 2006