I have a new book coming out in September of this year, called ‘Travelling the Fairy Path’ so today I’d like to offer an excerpt from it. Its going to focus on the more experiential side of my own spirituality but it also includes some discussion of things I’ve learned from the folklore, with a chapter on the ballad material. This excerpt is from that chapter.
The Queen of
Elfan’s…
This is a first for me, a movie review, but I really want to do this one for two reasons: I hardly ever find decent urban fantasy as a movie and the mainstream critics have eviscerated this one which I think deserves a response. As an author of urban fantasy this genre is one that is obviously very close to my heart and I have been excited since I first saw ads for Bright because it looked like…
It’s generally assumed in Western culture today that elves, and more widely many types of fairies, have pointed ears and the image has become so ingrained in popular culture as to be a trope. Yet why do we picture elves and fairies with pointed ears, when most descriptions from European folklore^ emphasize how human-like these beings appear?
Arthur Rackham illustration, public domain
When we…
Recently for Patheos I did a post based on having people ask me questions on social media about the Morrigan which I answered in a Q&A format in a blog. Afterwards I had several people ask me to do one based around the Fair Folk and this is the result. As always I’ll point out that this is based on my personal knowledge and experience with Themselves and also that I use the term fairies as a…
Since my new book ‘Fairies: A Guide to the Celtic Fair Folk’ was just released last Friday, I thought today I’d like to share an short excerpt from that work. what follows is from the introduction and is looking at how we can, and why we should, respect places that belong to Themselves:
Respecting Their
Places
Many
people lump nature spirits in with fairies and that is both true and untrue….
One of the most well-known of the Scottish fairies, the Gillie Dubh is solitary being who is generally reclusive but unlike many solitary fairies is good natured and helpful to humans. The Gillie Dubh is unique in some respects because of how focused his folklore originally was to a very specific area, and how many alleged sightings of him there were for a sustained period of time, which has…
This month has been one of contemplation for me, as I look at how the last year has gone since Ireland. I’ve written about it, probably more than some people care to read about, because it’s a big thing for me and because it’s probably the overriding thing in my life this month. No matter what else has been going on my mind always spins back to the same thoughts: what does it mean to serve,…
I’ve mentioned a few times before that I sometimes am given things in dreams. Sometimes these things relate to herbal knowledge and sometimes they are more complex, such as when I was told how to make Cáca Síofra. I can’t always share these things, but when I can I do try to, not only so that other people can make use of them but also because I want to encourage other people to trust in what they…
The name bodach, like elf and goblin, is used for specific fairy beings and is also a generic term for a type of a fairy. Bodachs are found in Scottish folklore where they are usually seen as a type of frightening nighttime fairy that may lead people astray or attack people; in some localized folklore the Bodach is an individual being while in other lore it is a general type of being which can…
This article originally appeared in Air
n-Aithesc, vol III, issue II, August 2016
The Cailleach
“Ebb-tide has come to me as to the sea;
old age makes me yellow;
though I may grieve thereat,
it approaches its food joyfully….
I am Buí, the Cailleach of Beare;
I used to wear a smock that was ever-renewed…”
–
The Lament of the Old…