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…
So first a story.
I have a fairy tree in my yard and I had the idea at one point to start tying ribbons on it, in the spirit of the rag tree tradition. Now usually a rag tree is by a healing well and the ribbons or bits of cloth tied on it represent prayers for healing of either the person or someone they are praying for. I knew this but still felt drawn to put ribbons on my own tree, and I…
Fairies and trees have had a long connection in mythology and folklore. Today I’d like to take a brief look at a selection of trees and the main fairylore associated with them.
I would note that this folklore can be convoluted as the trees themselves were often reputed to have spirits, much like we might understand dryads in a modern context, but beyond this tree-spirit could also be home…
This Samhain has been an interesting and intense one for me on several levels. It has been busy in purely mundane ways and it has been just as busy in spiritual ways. But more than anything I find myself reflecting whenever my mind isn’t set on anything else on being in Ireland this time last year, on my experiences there and the initiation I underwent that I had not expected. I hear the water…
With Samhain approaching I decided to write about the Dearg Due, the closest to a classic vampire that can be found in Irish folklore. Almost immediately though I ran into a slight problem, in that I can’t find any references to this being in actual books on folklore. The only sources in which I could find the Dearg Due mentioned were more modern works and mostly ones that focused on vampires…