Would You Give Up Everything for Faerie?
On Strange Disappearances, Shifting Realities, and the Vanishing Roads to Faerie
When I was in Ireland I visited a place in county Sligo called The Fairy Glen. I only knew it existed because I’d read about it on a website called Atlas Obscura.
It wasn’t easy to find. After hiking up the massive and stunning Knocknarea Mountain, we met a woman at a little stand selling drinks and that sort of thing and asked her where we could find the place. She gave us the sort of vague directions we were, at this point, used to getting in Ireland.
“Oh, just head down the way, about 5 or 6 telephone polls, and you’ll find it there all right.”
Uh, okay … So we headed down this winding road on the side of the mountain, surrounded by trees, and started counting telephone polls. We had no idea what we were looking for. I counted 5 polls and there was nothing there but more road and more trees.
Then, at around the 6th or possibly 7th poll, we found a crooked gate, tucked away off the side of the road, and figured this must be it. On the other side of the gate was a muddy path and bunches of the largest toadstools I had ever seen.
We tromped through the mud getting deeper and deeper into the woods, climbing over fallen logs covered in mushrooms and moss, the whole time wondering if we were going the right way at all.
Then we passed rocky walls with recesses covered in layers of moss.
The photos don’t show it, but the moss had water drizzling through it and dripping onto the rocks. The water caught the sunlight and glittered as it fell. It looked like some sort of magical elixir a fairy is meant to catch in a leaf.
I was thinking, how is this even real?
We kept going and eventually, after crawling over another fallen log, we found ourselves in a breathtaking little valley. There was green everywhere. Vines and moss poured down both rocky walls of the valley and the strange trees scattered about seemed almost to have personalities. One group looked like they could have been dancing before we showed up and only froze in place because they didn’t want us meddling humans to know what they’d been up to.
It really was like we’d wandered into another world. And faerie was the only appropriate way the describe it.
These photos don’t do the place justice. It was like the magic of it wasn’t meant to be captured by human technology. At one point, just as I was about to take another photo, my phone spun into the mud as if some invisible entity had slapped it out of my hand. Here’s the photo I accidentally took as my phone flew out of my hand:
This place couldn’t or wouldn’t be held still inside an image. It was alive and fluid in the way Faerie is said to be.
Because these places shift like the mist or the clouds, I think sometimes we are permitted to find them (after counting telephone polls) and at other times they find us. That’s the feeling I get when I think of Faerie. It’s this ephemeral, moving place like the staircases at Hogwarts or a phantom ship on the ocean.
It’s there. And then it’s not.
She saw a sun in a summer sky, And clouds of amber sailing by; A lovely land beneath her lay, And that land had glens and mountains grey And that land had valleys and hoary piles, And marled seas and a thousand isles. Its fields were speckled, its forests green, And its lakes were all of a dazzling sheen, Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay The sun, and the sky, and the cloudlet grey; Which heaved and trembled and gently swung, On every shore they seemed to be hung: For there they were seen on their downward plain A thousand times and a thousand again; In winding lake, and placid firth. Little peaceful heavens in the bosom of earth. ~ James Hogg
There was a time when Faerie was believed to be an actual geographical location, although the precise location was always vague and seemed to move. The Welsh thought it was somewhere in the North, or possibly in the west peninsular of Pembrokeshire, or maybe it was an Island in the Irish Channel off the Pembrokeshire coast. The British thought it was the Isle of Man. The Irish thought it was an island, too, and that it lay to the west.1
There seems to be some agreement that Faerie is some sort of Island. Sailors of the past claimed to have spotted it rising out of the fog. Some even claimed to have landed on it, a risky endeavour, since the Island is known to be there one minute and gone the next.
Avalon is probably the most famous of the fairy islands, the resting place of King Arthur himself, a place said to exist, we know not where. That’s because the reality of Faerie does not stand still, not as our islands do. It drifts out at sea and also on land, like it’s always on waves no matter where it is. Sometimes it hovers over hills or in forests or farmer’s fields, an invisible world, a hot air balloon of a world, not tethered to anything, that lands where it pleases for how long it wills. It’s a place you can wander into if you’re lost, or you might be lured there by some mischievous sprite.
But whatever and wherever it is, this shifting place of legend and our dreams beckons to us like a mirage in the desert, a light in a dark wood, a siren song out at sea.
“Find me,” it says. “Search for me. Follow the lights and the music. Swim to the island rising out of the mist, and …”
And what? What might we find there? If folklore has taught me anything, it’s that we will not find what we are looking for. It’s all pretty lights until the anglerfish swallows you whole.
But what are we looking for when we reach out for Faerie? What do we want when we move toward those distant lights? What are we missing? What is it that our hearts ache for when we dream of that shifting Island out there in the mist?
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices. That if I then had waked after long sleep. Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming. The clouds, methought, would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again. ~ Shakespeare, The Tempest
I don’t know how to answer those questions. I think it has something to do with enchantment, with wonder, with longing for a state of beauty and mystery than runs through everything and makes it meaningful.
Not to get all Wizard-of-Oz on you, but maybe the fairies can’t give us what we’re looking for. Maybe if we want to re-enchant the world, we’ll have to do it ourselves.
⁺˚*･✩☾
What do you think? How would you answer those questions? And are you willing to risk the anglerfish for a chance that what you are reaching for is real?
This month’s video features two stories from people who feel they slipped into a parallel fairy reality … and met the anglerfish.
🍄 Featured Artist
This month’s featured artist is Jilleen Dolbeare and her book Splintered Magic.
This book is about a middle-aged woman who is down on her luck, until she discovers that she's the great-granddaughter of a fae lord, and very powerful. This is the first book of a series, so if you like it, there’s more. It’s filled with action, humour and fairy magic!
Until next time,
Your Scary Fairy Godmother
Source: Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee