Lucy Cooper - THE ELEMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAIRIES - An A-Z of Fairies, Pixies, and other Fantastical Creatures

A writer, antiquarian, and folklorist, Alexander Carmichael was born on the island of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland. He attended local schools and later became a civil servant in various locations in Ireland and Scotland. It was while he was on the Isle of Skye that he became a collector of stories for J. F. Campbell.

The strict methodology that was Campbell’s approach did not suit Carmichael’s artistic temperament, but nonetheless he learned to take notes on everything that interested him. He left Scotland and lived in Cornwall for two years before taking up a post in the Uists (the central group of islands of the Outer Hebrides). Here he continued collecting ballads, hymns, anecdotes, incantations, poems, and songs. From 1873 some of his lore was printed in the newspaper the Highlander .

He went on to work in various locations in Scotland and retire to Edinburgh, by which time he was considered by many to be a pillar of the Gaelic intellectual community. He then embarked on a more ambitious work and compiled Carmina Gadelica (1900), a treasure trove of culture, lore, and traditions from various Gaelic-speaking regions of Scotland.

A domestic spirit, half- brownie, half-ghost. His story is as follows. Long ago at Hilton Hall in Northumbria, there lived a contrary spirit called the Cauld Lad of Hilton. Some say he was the spirit of a stable boy who had been killed by one of the past Lords of Hilton. Now he could be heard at night clattering about in the kitchen after the servants had gone to bed, putting sugar in the salt cellar, upturning chamber pots and setting everything topsy-turvy. If the servants left him a bowl of cream or a cake spread with honey, he would clean and tidy. Sometimes he could be heard sadly singing, lamenting that the person who would “lay” him to rest, or exorcise his spirit, was yet to be born:

Woe’s me! woe’s me!

The acorn’s not yet

Fallen from the tree,

That’s to grow the wood,

That’s to make the cradle

That’s to rock the bairn,

That’s to grow to the man,

That’s to lay me.

Woe’s me! Woe’s me!

However, the servants knew that the way to lay a brownie was to pay for its services in non-perishable goods such as clothes. So they left out a green cloak and hood for the Cauld Lad of Hilton. He dressed in them at midnight and frisked about in them until dawn, singing:

Here’s a cloak and here’s a hood,

The Cauld Lad of Hilton shall do no more good!

As the sun rose, he vanished, never to be seen again.

(Pronounced keeask .) A Scottish mermaid. Half-woman, half-grilse (a young salmon), she is also known as maighdean na tuinne , “maiden of the wave.” Her top half is that of a beautiful woman, while below the waist she has the tail of grilse. She may grant three wishes to anyone who catches her.

There are stories of marriage between ceasgs and humans. The male offspring of these unions are said to grow up to be excellent sea captains.

Like most sea maidens, the ceasg is also believed to have a darker, dangerous side. This is described in a story in J. F. Campbelland George Henderson’s The Celtic Dragon Myth (1911), in which the hero is swallowed by a ceasg .

An idea common to tales from the Scottish Highlands is that of the separable soul. Ceasgs are believed to keep their souls separately from their bodies, hidden in an egg or in a box. To destroy a ceasg , one must find and destroy her soul.

See Zemi .

In fairy lore throughout Europe and other parts of the world one of the fairies’ favorite tricks was to steal a human child, or sometimes a nursing mother, and take them away to fairyland. They replaced the human either with one of their own kind, known as a changeling, or with a stockor fetch, a “doll” representing the stolen child or woman, which by means of fairy glamor was given the semblance of life. The stock or fetch could take the form of a piece of wood or a bundle of grass and sticks, fashioned in the likeness of the abducted human.

Fairy changelings were sometimes sick or weak fairy children whom the fairies placed in the care of a human family so that they might have a better chance of survival. At other times they were elderly fairies who were being given the opportunity to live out their old age in comfort, cosseted and doted on by their new “parents.”

Typically, changelings were described as sickly, wizened, or otherwise abnormal in appearance, either never gaining the power of speech or displaying unsettlingly advanced language skills. In many tales, they had insatiable appetites and cried constantly. Occasionally, there were tales of parents who treated the changeling kindly in the hope that their own child would likewise be cared for. More often, suspected changelings were subjected to cruel tests and ordeals in an attempt to drive away the fairy and secure the return of the healthy human child. In many tales, these included dunkings in holy wells, beatings, or leaving the supposed changeling unattended in the woods, on a hillside, beneath a church stile, on a manure pile, or in an otherwise inhospitable environment. Sadly, many human children born with physical abnormalities or wasting diseases or who otherwise did not fit the norm endured sometimes fatal cruelties at the hands of parents and communities who labeled them as changelings.

Various reasons are given as to why fairies coveted human babies, ranging from the sinister to the benign. At the darker end of the spectrum, it was said that fairies had to pay a tithe or tribute to hell (as in the ballad of Tam Lin) and rather than spill fairy blood, they paid in the blood of humans. Alternatively, humans were taken to fairyland as slaves and put to work as servants or smiths. Beautiful golden-haired children were most prized by the fairies. Some said that they were sought after to improve the fairy stock; others simply that fairies thought these fair-haired children were particularly attractive and doted upon them like pets.

Nursing mothers were frequently sought to suckle fairy offspring. According to some tales, it seems that fairies wanted human milk to give their fairy children a human soul. An account in R. H. Cromek’s Remains of Galloway and Nithsdale Song (1812) relates the case of a nursing mother who was blessed and rewarded by a fairy for allowing her child to feed on human milk.

Various methods were employed to trick a changeling into revealing its identity. In many tales across Europe it is the mother’s unusual use of eggshells that compels the changeling to give itself away. In a German tale the mother cracks an egg in half and sets it on the stove to boil, forcing the changeling to exclaim from the cradle, “Well, I am as old as the Westerwald, but I’ve never seen anyone cooking with an eggshell!” As the changeling laughs, it shoots up the chimney and the human child is restored to the cradle.

Many Celtic changeling tales involve the “brewery of eggshell,” in which eggshells are set upon the hearth on the pretext of brewing beer in them. This strange behavior prompts the changeling to pass comment, uttering words to the effect: “I remember seeing an acorn having an oak, and I remember seeing a hen having an egg, but I don’t remember seeing anybody brew beer in the shell of a hen’s egg.”