The Supernatural in Folk-Tales
The folk-tale is one of the new fashions in fiction. True, folk-lore
has long constituted an important element of literature, constantly
recurring in poetry, particularly in the ballad, in the drama, the
novel, and short story. Yet it has been in solution. It has not been
thought important enough to merit consideration for its own sake, but
has been rather apologized for, covered up with other materials, so
that its presence is scarcely recognized. Now, however, as Professor
Kittredge says, folk-lore is no longer on the defensive, which fact
is evident in fiction as elsewhere. Scholars of our day are eagerly
hunting down the various forms of folk-lore to preserve them in
literature before they vanish completely, and learned societies
are recording with care the myths and legends and superstitions of
peasants. Many volumes have appeared giving in literary form the
fictions of various races and tribes, and comparative folk-lore is
found to be an engrossing science.
The supernatural forms a large element of folk-literature. The
traditions and stories that come down to us from the childhood of
any race are like the stories that children delight in, tales of the
marvelous, of the impossible, of magic and wonder. Folk-literature
recks little of realism. It revels in the romantic, the mystic. Tales
of gods and demi-gods, of giants and demons, of fairy-folk, of animals
endowed with human powers of speech and cunning, of supernatural flora
as well as fauna, of ghosts, devils, of saints, and miracles, are the
frame-work of such fiction. English literature is especially rich in
these collections, for not only are the sections of English-speaking
countries themselves fortunate fields for supernatural folk-tales,
but the English, being a race of colonizers, have gone far in many
lands and from the distant corners of the earth have written down the
legends of many tribes and nations. This discussion does not take into
consideration primarily folk-tales translated from other languages, but
deals only with those appearing in English, though, of course, in many
cases, they are transcripts from the spoken dialects of other people.
But it is for their appearance as English fiction, not for their value
as folk-lore, that they are taken up here.
Wherever in fiction the life of the peasant class is definitely
treated, there is likely to be found a good deal of folk-lore in the
form of superstitions, taboos, racial traditions of the supernatural.
This is present to a marked degree in the stories of Sir Walter Scott,
and in fact one might write a volume on the supernatural in Scott's
work alone. For example, we have Oriental magic and wonder,[181]
supernatural vision,[182] superhuman foreknowledge,[183] unearthly
"stirs,"[184] the White Lady of Avenel,[185] the bahrgeist,[186]
besides his use of diabolism, witchcraft, and so forth already
discussed. Thomas Hardy's work, relating as it does almost wholly to
rustic life, is rich in superstitions and traditions of the peasants.
_The Withered Arm_ gives a gruesome account of a woman's attempt to
cure her affliction by touching her arm to the corpse of a man who
has been hanged, the complicating horror being furnished by the fact
that the youth is her husband's secret son. He gives a story[187] of
a supernatural coach that heralds certain events in the family life,
charms for securing love as for making refractory butter come when the
churn is bewitched, and so forth. Similar elements occur in others of
his novels and stories. Eden Phillpotts' fiction[188] shows a large
admixture of the folk-supernaturalism of the Dartmoor peasants, as do
_Lorna Doone_, _Wuthering Heights_ and numberless other novels and
stories of other sections. There are guild superstitions reflected in
the work of various writers of the sea, as in W. W. Jacobs' stories,
for instance, tales of mining life, and so on.
[181] In _The Talisman_.
[182] In _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_.
[183] In _The Two Drovers_.
[184] In _Woodstock_.
[185] In _The Monastery_.
[186] In _The Betrothed_.
[187] In _Tess_.
[188] _Children of the Mist_, _The Witch_, and others.
American fiction is equally rich in such material. Stories of the
South, showing life in contact with the negroes, reveal it to a marked
degree, as in the work of Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris,
Ruth McEnery Stuart, Will Allen Dromgoole, and others. The Creole
sense of the supernatural appears in George W. Cable's novels and
stories, the mountain superstitions in those of John Fox, Jr., and
Charles Egbert Craddock, those of New England in Mary Wilkins Freeman,
Alice Brown, and their followers, the Indian traditions in Helen Hunt
Jackson, J. Fenimore Cooper, the Dutch supernaturalism in Washington
Irving, who also gives us the legendry of Spain in his tales of the
Alhambra. Thomas A. Janvier has recreated antique Mexico for us in his
stories of ghosts and saints, of devils and miracles.
In most fiction that represents truly the life of simple people there
will be found a certain amount of superstition which is inherent in
practically every soul. There is no one of us but has his ideas of
fate, of luck, of taboo. We are so used to these elements in life that
we scarcely pay heed to them in fiction, yet a brief glance at books
will recall their frequent appearance. They color poetry to a marked
degree. In fact, without the sense of the marvelous, the unreal, the
wonderful, the magical, what would poetry mean to us? So we should
feel a keen loss in our fiction if all the vague elements of the
supernatural were effaced. Absolute realism is the last thing we desire.
Now the folk-tale, told frankly as such, with no apology for its
unreality, no attempt to make of it merely an allegory or vehicle
for teaching moral truth, has taken its place in our literature.
The science of ethnology has brought a wider interest in the oral
heritage of the past, linking it to our life of the present. And the
multiplication of volumes recording stories of symbolic phenomena
of nature, of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, of supernormal animals
and plants, of fairies, banshees, bogles, giants, saints, miracles,
and what-not make it possible to compare the widely disseminated
stories, the variants and contrasting types of folk-supernaturalism.
But my purpose in this discussion is to show the presence of the
folk-supernaturalism in literature, in prose fiction particularly.
There is no science more fascinating than comparative folk-lore and no
language affords so many original examples of oral literature as the
English. As we study its influence on fiction and poetry, we feel the
truth of what Tylor says[189]:
Little by little, in what seems the most spontaneous fiction, a
more comprehensive study of the sources of poetry and romance
begins to disclose a cause for each fancy, a story of inherited
materials from which each province of the poet's land has been
shaped and built over and peopled.
[189] In _Primitive Culture_, vol. i., page 273.
The Celtic Revival, the renascence of wonder in Ireland, has done more
than anything else to awaken modern love for antiquity, to bring over
into literature the legends of gods and men
"Beyond the misty space
Of twice a thousand years."
While the movement concerns itself more with poetry and the drama than
with prose,--Ireland has been likened to "a nest of singing birds,"
though the voices of some have been sadly silenced of late--yet fiction
has felt its influence as well. The land of the immortals glooms and
gleams again for us in storied vision, and the ancient past yields up
to us its magic, its laughter, its tears. These romances are written,
not in pedestrian prose as ordinary folk-tales, but with a bardic
beauty that gives to style the lifting wings of verse. Each fact and
figure is expressed in poetic symbols, which Yeats calls "streams of
passion poured about concrete forms." A sense of ancient, divine powers
is in every bush and bog, every lake and valley. Ireland has enriched
universal fancy and the effect on literature will perhaps never be lost.
* * * * *
One of the most interesting aspects of folk-loristic supernaturalism
is that concerned with nature. The primitive mind needs no scientific
proof for theories of causation, since, given a belief in gods, it can
manage the rest for itself. With the Celts there is ever a feeling
of nature as a mighty personality. Every aspect, every phase of her
power is endowed with life and temperament. Celtic pantheism saw in
every form a spirit, in every spring or cloud or hill-top, in every
bird or blossom some unearthly divinity of being. A primrose is vastly
more than a yellow primrose, but one of "the dear golden folk"; the
hawthorn is the barking of hounds, leek is the tear of a fair woman,
and so on, which poetic speech bears a likeness to the Icelandic court
poetry. This figurative sense suggests "an _after-thought_ of the old
nature-worship lingering yet about the fjords and glens where Druidism
never was quite overcome by Christianity." It lends to the Celtic
folk-tales their wild, unearthly beauty, their passionate poetry and
mystic symbolism akin to the classic mythology and such as we find in
no other folk-literature of the present time.
In the stories of Lady Gregory, John Synge, Yeats, Lady Wilde, and
various other chroniclers of Celtic legendry, we find explanations
of many phenomena, accounts of diverse occurrences. Lady Wilde[190]
(Speranza) tells of natural appearances, such as a great chasm
which was opened to swallow a man who incurred the anger of God by
challenging Him to combat for destroying his crops. A supernatural
whirlwind caught up the blasphemer and hurled him into the chasm that
yawned to receive him. Many of the aspects of nature are attributed
to the activities of giants, and later of demons; as the piling up of
cyclopean walls, massive breast-works of earth, or gigantic masses of
rocks said to be the work of playful or irate giants. The titans were
frolicsome and delighted in feats to show off. There is a large body
of legends of diabolized nature, as the changing of the landscape by
demons, the sulphurizing of springs, and the cursing of localities.
[190] In _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland_.
Many other aspects of nature are made the basis for supernatural
folk-tales too numerous to mention. Stories of the enchanted bird,
music, and water appear in various forms, and the droll-tellers of
the Cornish country tell many stories of the weird associated with
out-of-doors. The Celtic superstitions and tales have lived on through
successive invasions and through many centuries have been told beside
the peat fire. They have been preserved as an oral heritage or else in
almost illegible manuscripts in antique libraries, from which they are
taken to be put into literature by the Celtic patriots of letters. The
sense of terror and of awe, a belief in the darker powers, as well as
an all-enveloping feeling of beauty is a heritage of the Celtic mind.
It is interesting to note the obstinacy of these pantheistic, druidic
stories in the face of Irish Catholicism. In many other bodies of
folk-supernaturalism in English we have similar legends of nature, as
in the Hawaiian, the Indian, African, Canadian, Mexican stories, and
elsewhere. But the material is so voluminous that one can do no more
than suggest the field.
Certain forces of nature are given supernatural power in drama and
fiction, as the sea that is an awful, brooding Fate, in Synge's
drama, or the wind and the flame in Algernon Blackwood's story, _The
Regeneration of Lord Ernie_, or the goblin trees in another of his
tales, that signify diabolic spirits, or the trees[191] that have a
strange, compelling power over men, drawing them, going out bodily to
meet them, luring them to destruction. Blackwood has stressed this
form of supernaturalism to a marked degree. In _Sand_ he shows desert
incantations that embody majestic forces, evocations of ancient deities
that bring the Sphynx to life, and other sinister powers. He takes
the folk-loristic aspects of nature and makes them live, personifying
the forces of out-door life as mythology did. The trees, the sand,
the fire, the snow, the wind, the stream, the sea are all alive, with
personality, with emotion, and definite being. His trees are more
awesome than the woods of Dunsinane, for they actually do move upon
their foe. In _The Sea Fit_ he contends that the gods are not dead, but
merely withdrawn, that one true worshiper can call them back to earth,
especially the sea-gods. The sea comes in power for the man with the
Viking soul and takes him to itself. His going is symbolic.
Uttering the singing sound of falling waters, he bent forward,
turned. The next instant, curving over like a falling wave he swept
along the glistening surface of the sands and was gone. In fluid
form, wave-like, his being slipped away into the Being of the Sea.
[191] In _The Man Whom the Trees Loved_.
The uncanny potentialities of fire are revealed[192] where the internal
flame breaks out of itself, the inner fire that burns in the heart
of the earth and in men's hearts. The artist trying to paint a great
picture of the Fire-worshiper is consumed by an intense, rapturous
fever, and as he dies his face is like a white flame. The snow appears
embodied as a luring woman.[193] She tries to draw a man to his
death, with dæmonic charm, seen as a lovely woman, but a snow demon.
Blackwood shows the curious combination of the soul of a dead woman
with the spirit of a place,[194] where a man is ejected by his own
estate, turned out bodily as well as psychically, because he has become
out of harmony with the locale. Nature here is sentient, emotional,
possessing a child, expressing through her lips and hands a message of
menace and warning. The moon is given diabolic power in one of Barry
Pain's stories, and the maelstrom described by Poe has a sinister, more
than human, power. August Stramm, the German dramatist, has given an
uncanny force to the moor in one of his plays, making it the principal
character as well as the setting for the action. This embodiment of
nature's phases and phenomena as terrible powers goes back to ancient
mythology with a revivifying influence.
[192] In _The Heath Fire_.
[193] In _The Glamor of the Snow_.
[194] In _The Temptation of the Clay_.
The supernatural beast-tale has always been a beloved form, Æsop's
fables, the beast-cycles of medievalism, Reynard the Fox, the German
Reinecke Fuchs, all show how fond humanity is of the story that endows
animals with human powers. Naturally one thinks of Kipling's _Jungle
Tales_ and Joel Chandler Harris' _Uncle Remus_ stories as the best
modern examples, and these are so well known as to need but mention.
Similar beast-cycles are found in the folk-fiction of other countries.
Of course, it is understood that the _Uncle Remus_ stories are not
native to America, but were brought from Africa by the slaves and
handed down through generations in the form in which Harris heard them
by the cabin firesides in his boyhood. They are not "cooked" or edited
any more than he could help, he tells us, but given in the dialectic
form in which they came to him. There are various tales similar to this
series, as Kaffir tales, collected by Theal, Amazonian tortoise myths
brought together by Charles F. Hart, and _Reynard, the Fox in South
Africa_, by W. H. I. Bleek. J. W. Powell in his investigations for the
Smithsonian Institute found legends among the Indians that led him to
believe the _Uncle Remus_ stories were originally learned from the red
men, but Harris thought there was no basis for such theory. _Anansi
Stories_, by Mary Pamela Milne-Horne, includes animal tales of the
African type. Anansi is a mysterious being, a supernatural old man like
a Scandinavian troll or English lubber-fiend, who plays tricks like
those of the fox and like the jackal in Hindu stories. He is a spider
as well as a man and can assume either shape at will.
In primitive races and in the childhood of peoples there is the same
element of close association between man and the animals that one
finds in child-life. An animal is often nearer and dearer to a child
than is a human being, as in crude races man is more like the animals,
candid, careless, unreflecting. His sensations and emotions are simple,
hunger, love, hate, fear. Animals, in turn, are lifted nearer the human
in man's thinking, and are given human attributes in folk-lore which
bridges the gulf that civilization has tended to fix between man and
animals, and gives one more of a sense of the social union that Burns
longed for. There is in these stories of whatever country a naïveté
reflecting the childhood of the race and of the world, a primitive
simplicity in dealing with the supernatural.
The folk-fiction of each country gives stories of the animals common
to that section. In tropic countries we have stories of supernatural
snakes, who appear in various forms, as were-snakes, shall we say?
by turns reptiles and men, who marry mortal women, or as diabolic
creatures that, like the devil, lose their divinity and become evil
powers. We also see in the tropics elephants, lions, tigers, baboons,
gorillas, and so forth, as well as certain insects, while in colder
climes we have the fox, the wolf, the bear, and their confrères. In
island countries we find a large element of the supernatural associated
with fishes and sea-animals. Hawaiian stories recount adventures of
magic beings born of sharks and women, who are themselves, by turns,
human beings living a normal human life, and sharks, devouring men
and women. Several of Eugene Field's stories are drawn from Hawaiian
folk-supernaturalism, as _The Eel-king_, and _The Moon Lady_.
The Gaelic stories of Fiona McLeod show the supernatural relation
existing between mortals and seals. The seals may wed human beings and
their children are beings without souls, who may be either mortal or
animal. The power of enchantment exercised by the creatures of the sea
may turn men and women into sea-beasts, forever to lose their souls.
This may be compared with _The Pagan Seal-Wife_, by Eugene Field, Hans
Christian Andersen's sad story of the little mermaid, and _The Forsaken
Merman_, by Matthew Arnold. Fiona McLeod tells the story of the Dark
Nameless One, a nun who became the prey of a seal and was cursed with
the penalty of living under the sea to weave fatal enchantments.
The mermaids, the kelpies, the sea-beasts are all half-human, half
sea-beast, and have a fatal power over human souls, drawing them with
a strange lure to give up their immortality. The kelpie appears in
several of Fiona McLeod's stories and in _The Judgment of God_ the
maighdeanhmara, a sea-maid, bewitches Murdoch, coming up out of the
water as a seal and turning him into a beast, to live with her forever,
a black seal that laughs hideously with the laughter of Murdoch. Edward
Sheldon has recently written a play[195] using the mermaid motif, and
H. G. Wells employs it as a vehicle for social satire[196] where a
mermaid comes ashore from The Great Beyond and contrasts mortal life
with hers. _The Merman and the Seraph_, by William Benjamin Smith, is
an unusual combination of unearthly creatures.
[195] _The Mermaid._
[196] In _The Sea Lady_.
In _The Old Men of the Twilight_, W. B. Yeats describes the enchantment
inflicted on the old men of learning, the ancient Druids, who were
cursed by being turned into gray herons that must stand in useless
meditation in pools or flit in solitary flight cross the world, like
passing sighs. Lady Gregory tells of magic by which Lugh of the Long
Hand puts his soul into the body of a mayfly that drops into the
cup that Dechtire drinks from, so that she drinks his soul and must
follow him to the dwelling-place of the Sidhe, or fairy people. Her
fifty maidens must go with her under a like spell that turns them into
birds, that fly in nine flocks, linked together two by two with silver
chains, save those that lead who have golden chains. These beautiful
birds live in the enchanted land far away from their loved ones. J. H.
Pearce tells a touching story of the Little Crow of Paradise, of the
bird that was cursed and sent to hell because it mocked Christ on the
cross, but because it had pity on a mortal sufferer in hell and brought
some cooling drops of water in its bill to cool his parching tongue,
it was allowed to fly up and light on the walls of Paradise where it
remains forever. Oscar Wilde's story _The Nightingale and the Rose_ is
symbolic of tragic genius, of vain sacrifice, where the tender-hearted
bird gives his life-blood to stain a white rose red because a careless
girl has told the poet who loves her that she must wear a red rose to
the ball. But at the last she casts the rose aside and wears the jewels
that a richer lover has sent, while the nightingale lies dead under the
rose-tree.
So we see everywhere in folk-fiction the supernatural power given to
animals, which acts as an aid to man, as a shield and protection for
him, or for his undoing. We see human beings turned into beasts as a
curse from the gods for sin or as expressing the kinship between man
and nature. In the different cycles of beast-tales we find a large
element of humor, the keener-witted animals possessing a rare sense of
the comical and relishing a joke on each other as on man. The _Uncle
Remus_ stories are often laughable in the extreme, and Bre'er Rabbit,
who, we might at first thought decide, would be stupid, is no mean
wit. We see a tragic symbolism in the stories of unhappy beasts who
must lure mortals to their damnation, yet feel a sense of human sorrow
and remorse. In these animal stories we find most of the significant
qualities of literature, humor, romance, tragedy, mysticism, and
symbolic poetry, with a deep underlying philosophy of life pervading
them all.
Lord Dunsany in his modern aspects of mythology, perhaps drawn in
part from classic mythology though perhaps altogether Celtic in its
material, brings together animals to which we are not accustomed. He
has a story of a centaur, a frolicsome creature two hundred and fifty
years young, who goes caracoling off the end of the world to find his
bride. Algernon Blackwood tells of a man who remembers having been a
centaur and lives in memory-metempsychosis his experiences of that
far-off time. Dunsany introduces other curious, unfamiliar beasts to
us, as the bride whom the man-horse seeks in her temple beside her sad
lake-sepulchre, Sombelene, of immortal beauty, whose father was half
centaur and half god, whose mother the child of a desert lion and the
sphinx. There is the high-priest of Maharrion, who is neither bird nor
cat, but a weird gray beast like both. There is the loathsome dragon
with glittering golden scales that rattles up the London streets and
seizes Miss Cubbige from her balcony and carries her off to the eternal
lands of romance lying far away by the ancient, soundless sea. We must
not forget the Gladsome Beast, he who dwells underneath fairyland,
at the edge of the world, the beast that eats men and destroys the
cabbages of the Old Man Who Looks after Fairyland, but is the synonym
for joy. His joyous chuckles never cease till Ackronnion sings of the
malignity of time, when the Gladsome Beast weeps great tears into an
agate bowl. There are the hippogriffs, dancing and whirling in the far
sunlight, coming to earth with whirring flight, bathing in the pure
dawn, one to be caught with a magic halter, to carry its rider past the
Under Pits to the City of Never. There are the gnoles in their high
house, whose silence is unearthly "like the touch of a ghoul," over
which is "a look in the sky that is worse than a spoken doom," that
watch the mortals through holes in the trunks of trees and bear them
away to their fate. Lord Dunsany looses the reins of his fancy to carry
him into far, ancient lands, to show us the wonders that never were.
Magic forms an alluring element of the supernatural romance, and we
find it manifesting itself in many ways. In the romances of William
Morris, prose as well as poetry, we find enchantment recurring again
and again, as in _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_, _The Wood beyond
the World_, _The Well at the World's End_, and others. Yeats said
that Morris's style in these old stories was the most beautiful prose
he had ever read, and that it influenced his own work greatly. He has
unearthly characters, such as the Witch-wife, the Wood-wife, the Stony
People, and so forth. He shows us the enchanted boat, the Sending
Boat, the cage with the golden bars which prison the three maidens,
magic runes with mighty power, the Water of Might which gives to the
one drinking it supernatural vision and magic power, the changing
skin, the Wailing Tower, the Black Valley of the Greyweathers, and so
forth. Birdalone's swoon-dream in the White Palace is unearthly, as the
witches' wordless howls. Part of the weirdness of Morris's prose is due
to the antique tone, the forgotten words, the rune-like quality of the
rhythm.
Yeats tells of magic whereby a woman is gifted with immortal youth and
beauty, so that she may wed the prince of the fairies; of the glamour
that falls on a mortal so that he loses his wits and remains "with
his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death"; of shadow
hares, of fire-tongued hounds that follow the lost soul across the
world, of whistling seals that sink great ships, of bat-like darker
powers, of the little gray doves of the good.
Dr. Hyde, in his _Paudeen O'Kelly and the Weasel_, speaks of a
sun-myth, of a haunted forest, of a princess supernaturally beautiful,
of the witch who complains to the robber, "Why did you bring away my
gold that I was for five hundred years gathering through the hills and
hollows of the world?"
Lady Gregory tells of Diarmuid's love-spot, where Youth touched him
on the forehead, so that no woman could look upon him without giving
him her love; of Miach who put the eye of a cat in a man's head, with
inconvenient results, for
when he wanted to sleep and take his rest, it is then the eye would
start at the squeaking of the mice, or the flight of birds, or the
movement of the rushes; and when he was wanting to watch an army or
a gathering, it is then it was sure to be in a sound sleep.
She shows us Druid rods that change mortals into birds; of Druid mists
that envelop armies and let the ancient heroes win; of Druid sleep
that lasts sometimes for years; of the screaming stone; of kisses that
turn into birds, some of them saying, "Come! Come!" and others "I go!
I go!"; of invisible walls that shield one from sight; of magic that
makes armies from stalks of grass; of wells of healing that cure every
wound.
Oscar Wilde, in his fairy stories and symbolic allegories, tells of
magic, whereby the Happy Prince, high on the pedestal on the square,
has a heart of lead because he sees the misery of the people, and sends
a swallow as his messenger to pick out his jeweled eyes and take them
to the suffering ones. He speaks of the wonder by which the bodies of
the mermaid and the fisherman who lost his soul for love of her, when
they are buried in unconsecrated ground, send forth strange flowers
that are placed on the sacred altar.
The dark enchantment appears in the poetry as often as in the prose,
from Coleridge's _Christabel_ to the present. Gordon Bottomley's _The
Crier by Night_ is a story of an evil presence that lurks in a pool,
coming out to steal the souls of those it can lure into its waters. The
woman, desperate from jealousy, who invokes its aid, says:
"For I can use this body worn to a soul
To barter with the Crier of hidden things
That if he tangle him in his chill hair
Then I will follow and follow and follow and follow
Past where the ringed stars ebb past the light
And turn to water under the dark world!"
The fairy has always been a favorite being with poets, dramatists,
and romancers, from Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton to the present
time. There is no figure more firmly established in folk-literature,
none more difficult to dislodge despite their delicacy and ethereal
qualities than the Little People. The belief in fairies is firmly
established in Gaelic-speaking sections and the Celtic peasant would as
soon give up his religion as his belief in the Sidhe. W. B. Yeats, in
_Celtic Twilight_, tells of an Irish woman of daring unbelief in hell,
or in ghosts who, she held, would not be permitted to go trapsin' about
the earth at their own free will, but who asserted, "There are fairies,
and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels." Everybody
among the peasantry believes in fairies, "for they stand to reason."
And there are not wanting others more learned that believe in the small
folk, as W. Y. E. Wentz, who in his volume _Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries_ puts up a loyal argument for the existence of the Sidhe. He
says:
Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the
same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychological
researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like
what William James calls soul-stuff or more individual units like
veridical apparitions.
If it were left to me, I'd as soon not believe in fairies as have to
think of them as veridical units! Mr. Wentz has never seen any fairies
himself, but he tells a number of stories to substantiate his faith in
them.
The volumes of fairy stories are by no means all for juvenile
consumption, since the modern adult dearly loves the type himself.
Many, or most, of the stories of fairies told frankly for children are
adaptations or variants of continental folk-legends. The more literary
side of fairy-literature has come from the Celtic lore, for the Dim
People are dearest of all supernatural beings to the Celtic soul. The
Irish, more innately poetic than most races, cling more fondly to the
beings of beauty and gather round them delicate, undying stories. W. B.
Yeats, Lady Gregory, Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde, John Singe, and Fiona
McLeod have given in poetry and lyric prose the Celtic fairy-lore, and
have made us know the same wild, sweet thrill that the peasants feel.
The poetic thought of the primitive races peoples everything in nature,
every bird and blossom and tree, with its own fairy personality.
Thackeray has written a fairy pantomime for great and small children,
as he says, in which the adventures of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulbo
are recounted. Eugene Field has a charming story of the _Fairies of
Pesth_, and Charles Kingsley's _Water Babies_ enriched the imagination
of most of us in youthful or adult years with its charming nonsense
of beings possible and impossible. J. M. Barrie in _Peter Pan_ won
the doubtful world over to a confessed faith in the fairy-folk, for
did we not see the marvels before our eyes? In _The Little White
Bird_ Barrie tells us how fairies came to be,--that they have their
origin in the first laugh of the first baby that broke into a million
bits and went skipping about, each one a fairy. He shows us the wee
folk in Kensington Gardens, where by the ignorant they are mistaken
for flowers, but children and those with the poet heart can see the
flashing faces and green garments of the fairies among the pansy beds.
W. B. Yeats is a favorite with the fairies, for they have given him the
dower of magic vision, to glimpse the unseen things, to hear the faint,
musical voices of fairy pipes and song. He tells us many stories of the
Dim People, in his tales and dramas. _The Land of Heart's Desire_,
the story of the struggle between the divine and mortal forces and the
powers of the Sidhe to claim the soul of the young wife and of the
triumph of the fairies, by which the girl's body falls lifeless by the
hearth while her spirit speeds away to live forever in the land "where
nobody gets old or sorry or poor," has a poignant pathos, a wild,
dreamy beauty that touches the heart. Yeats tells of the Imperishable
Rose of Beauty, of fantastic doings of the fairy-folk who steal mortals
away, especially new-born babies or new-wed brides, of evil fairies who
slay men in malice, and of the dances by moonlit hillside when mortals
are asleep.
James Stephens in _The Crock of Gold_ mingles delightfully fairy-lore
with other elements of the supernatural, as talking beasts, and
insects, the gods, a leprechaun, and Pan, combining with the droll
philosophy of the bachelor man to make a charming social satire. The
union of the world of reality with that of the wee people is seen
in the sad little story of H. G. Wells, _The Man Who Had Been in
Fairyland_. A crude, materialistic middle-class Englishman, in love
with an ordinary young woman, falls asleep on a fairy knoll one night
and is kidnapped by the Dim People who take him to their country, where
their queen falls in love with him. She vainly woos him, but he is
stolidly true to the thick-ankled girl of the town, until the fairies
send him back in sleep to mortal life. But when he wakes on the knoll
he is home-sick for fairyland, he cares no more for the village girl
who seems coarse and repulsive compared with the elfin creature whose
love he might have kept in the land of wonder, so he is wretched,
unable to fit again into mortal life and unable to reopen the doors
that closed inexorably upon him by his wish. This is a modern version
of the motif of the mortal lover and the fairy bride that we find
so often in mediæval ballads and romances, a survival of the Celtic
wonder-lore. Arthur Lewis in _London Fairy Tales_ writes philosophic
human stories in the guise of fairy tales, attempting frankly to bring
the impossible into contact with daily life. They are weird little
symbolic stories with an earthly wisdom associated with unearthly
beings. _The Passionate Crime_, by E. Temple Thurston, is a symbolic
fairy novel, the fairies being figures of the man's besetting sins,
bodiless presences blown on the winds of feeling, as the woman he loves
is lured by the fairy of her own beauty.
Whether fairyland be an actual place or a state of mind, it is a
province still open to romancers, and folklorists have aroused a
new interest in the Little People who may come nearer to us than
before. The flood of volumes recounting Celtic folk-tales with their
fairy-lore alone would make a long catalogue, and one can do no more
than suggest the presence of the fairy in English fiction. Andrew Lang
was a faithful lover of the Sidhe and made many collections of fairy
stories, Eden Phillpotts has written much of them, and various writers
have opened their magic to us. Some place the land of faerie under
the ground, some in secret caves, some in the mind, and Lord Dunsany
says that the Old Man Who Looks after Fairyland lives in a house whose
parlor windows look away from the world, and "empties his slops sheer
on to the Southern Cross."
We find many stories of gods, demigods, and heroes tangled up together
in folk-tales and in the literature they have influenced. It is
sometimes difficult to distinguish between them, and again it is
interesting to note how the hero-myth has been converted into the tale
of a god. Celtic romances and folk-supernaturalism give many stories of
gods, demigods, and heroes of superhuman force. It would be interesting
if one could trace them to their ultimate sources and discover how
much they have been suggested or influenced by classical mythology.
In _Fiction of the Irish Celts_, by Patrick Kennedy, are numberless
stories of the Fianna Eironn, or Heroes of Ireland, some of whom really
flourished in the third century and whose adventures were the favorite
stories of the kings and chiefs as sung by the ancient bards. Kennedy
also retells many of the Ossianic legends. In _Bardic Stories of
Ireland_ he relates the exploits of personages dating back to druidic
times and earlier, who reflect the remote stages of the legendary
history of the people, such as the antique King Fergus, who was given
supernatural power by the fairies and slew the sea-monster; Cormac,
who did many doughty deeds assisted by the powers of the Immortals,
and many others. W. B. Yeats, in his _Stories of Red Ranrahan_, gives
us glimpses of an Irish François Villon, a man of wandering nature, of
human frailties, yet with a divine gift of song.
Lady Gregory tells the wonderful saga of Cuchulain, the hero-god of
Ireland, in _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, which W. B. Yeats calls "perhaps
the best book that has ever come out of Ireland." It was his mother
Dechtire that drank the soul of Lugh of the Strong Hand, as he flew
into her wine-cup in the form of a Mayfly, so that she was bound by
enchantment and carried away with her fifty maidens as a flock of
lovely birds. When anger came upon him the hero light would shine about
his head, he understood all the arts of the druids and had supernatural
beauty and strength in battle. Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, and his
Red Branch have filled the legendry of Ireland with wonder.
Lady Gregory tells of the high king of Ireland who married Etain of
the Sidhe; of the nine pipers that came out of the hill of the Sidhe,
whom to fight with was to fight with a shadow, for they could not be
killed; of Conchobar, the king, that loved Deirdre of the burning
beauty for whom many candles of the Gael were blown out; of Cruachan,
who knew druid enchantments greater than the magic of the fairies so
that he was able to fight with the Dim People and overcome them, and
to cover the whole province with a deep snow so that they could not
follow him. In _Gods and Fighting Men_ Lady Gregory tells of ancient
divinities that met men as equals. We come to know Oisin, son of Finn,
who is king over a divine country; of the Men of Dea who fought against
the misshapen Fomer. Men are called to the country of Under-Wave where
the gods promise them all their desires, as the god Medhir tells
Queen Etain that in his country one never grows old, that there is no
sorrow, no care among invisible gods. She tells us of Finn, who fought
with monsters, who killed many great serpents in Loch Cuilinn, and
Shadow-shapes at Loch Lein, and fought with the three-headed hag, and
nine headless bodies that raised harsh screeches. We meet Diarmuid,
who married a daughter of King Under-Wave, who raised a house by
enchantment, and whom Grania, of the fatal beauty, loved.
Jeremiah Curtin, Aldis Dunbar, and many another writer have told us
of the wonderful legends of the Celtic gods and heroes, who somehow
seem more human than Arthur and his Table Round or any of the English
mythical heroes.
It is Lord Dunsany, however, who specializes in gods in recent
times. He fairly revels in divinities and demons, in idols and
out-of-the-world creatures. His dramas of this nature are mentioned in
another connection, as _A Night at an Inn_, where a jade idol slays
with silent horror the men who have stolen his emerald eye; _The Gods
of the Mountains_, where seven beggars masquerade as the mountain gods
come to life, and some of the people believe but some doubt. But at
last the seven gods from the mountain come down, terrible figures of
green stone, and with sinister menace point terrible fingers at the
beggars, who stiffen as on pedestals, draw their feet under them like
the cross-legged posture of the images, and turn to stone, so that the
people coming say: "They were the true gods. They have turned to stone
because we doubted them." In _The Gods of Pegana_ are many fantastic
tales of divinities never heard of before, whom Dunsany calls to life
with the lavish ease of genius and makes immortal. In _Time and the
Gods_ we see many gods, with their servant the swart, sinister Time
who serves them, but maliciously. The gods dream marble dreams that
have magic power, for "with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose and
stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all shimmering white to
the morning." But Sardathrion, this city of visions, is overthrown by
hateful Time, whereat the mighty gods weep grievous tears. He tells us
of Slid, a new god that comes striding through the stars, past where
the ancient divinities are seated on their thrones, as a million waves
march behind him; of Inzana, the daughter of all the gods who plays
with the sun as her golden ball and weeps when it falls into the sea,
so that Umborodom with his thunder hound must seek it again and again
for her. He whispers to us of the prophet who saw the gods one night as
they strode knee-deep in stars, and above them a mighty hand, showing
a higher power. The gods are jealous of him that he has seen, so they
rob him of knowledge of the gods, of moon and sky, of butterflies and
flowers, and all lovely things. And last they steal his soul away from
him, from which they make the South Wind, forever to roam the waste
spaces of the world, mournful, unremembering.
In _The Book of Wonder_ are still other gods, as Hlo-Hlo, who wears
the haloes of other gods on golden hooks along his hunting-belt;
the Sphinx, who "remembers in her smitten mind at which little boys
now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands
aghast"; the certain disreputable god who knows nothing of etiquette
and will grant prayers that no respectable god would ever consent to
hear; Chu-chu and Sheemish, who become angry with each other and raise
rival earthquakes that destroy their temple and them. We are told of
the Gibbelins that eat men, whose home is beyond the known regions, and
whose treasures many burglars try in vain to steal only to meet death
instead. Alderic tries a crafty way to evade them but they are waiting
for him. "And without saying a word _or even smiling_ they neatly hang
him on the outer wall,--and the tale is one of those that have not a
happy ending." But enough of gods!--though we should not forget the
Aztec legend on which Lew Wallace's novel, _The Fair God_, was founded,
of the white divinity who was to come and rule the people.
There are many other elements of folkloristic supernaturalism that
cannot be mentioned, as the banshee, the wailful creature that is a
presager of death and the loss of the soul; the fetches, ghosts of the
living, whom John and Michael Banim write much about; the pixies, as
appearing in such works as S. Baring-Gould's _Eve_, and Stephens's _The
Crock of Gold_; the mountain trolls that play pranks on Ibsen's Peer
Gynt and Irving's Rip van Winkle; the "worrie-cow" that Scott tells
about; the saints and miracles that abound in Celtic literature as in
that of any Catholic country, and such as Thomas A. Janvier has told
of so delightfully in his legends of the City of Mexico. The giant has
almost faded from fiction, since, poor thing, he doesn't fit in well
with the modern scheme of housing. He came into the Gothic novel from
the Oriental tale where he had his origin, but now he appears in our
fiction only sporadically, as in Oscar Wilde's _The Selfish Giant_,
in a couple of stories by Blackwood, and a few others. We are glad to
meet him occasionally in frank folk-tales since literature at large
repudiates this favorite of our youth. He would not suit well on the
stage, for obvious reasons, and realism rejects him.
Lord Dunsany tells of elves and gnomes, of the Moomoo, of the magic
sword called Mouse, of the gnoles that caught Tonker, of the ancient
Thuls, of the window that opened to the magic of the world, and of many
other things which only the very young or the very wise care for.
Arthur Machen deals with strange, sinister aspects of supernaturalism
unlike the wholesome folklore that other writers reveal to us. He seems
to take his material chiefly from the Pit, to let loose upon the world
a slimy horde of unnamable spirits of ageless evil. One reads of the
White People, who are most loathsome fairies under whose influence the
rocks dance obscene dances in the Witches' Sabbath, and the great white
moon seems an unclean thing. Images of clay made by human hands come
to diabolic life, and at mystic incantations the nymph Alanna turns
the pool in the woodland to a pool of fire. In _The Great God Pan_ the
timeless menace comes to earth again, corrupting the souls of men and
women, rendering them unbelievably vile. In _The Red Hand_ he brings
together ancient runes with magic power, black stones that tell secrets
of buried treasure, flinty stone like obsidian ten thousand years old
that murders a man on a London street, a whorl of figures that tell of
the black heaven, giving an impression of vast ages of enigmatic power.
One feels one should rinse his mind out after reading Arthur Machen's
stories, particularly the collection called _The Three Impostors_.
This discussion has taken more note of the Celtic folk-fiction than
of any other group influence, because more than any other it has left
its imprint on modern literature. There are hundreds of volumes of
folk-tales of the supernatural in English, but the Celtic Revival has
molded its legends into literature that is its own excuse for being.
In the work of this school we get a passionate mysticism, a poetic
symbolism that we find scarcely anywhere else in English prose, save
in such rhapsodic passages as some of De Quincey's impassioned prose.
Melody, which forms so large a part of the effect of supernaturalism
in poetry, is here employed to heighten lyric prose. Some of the wild
stories are like the croon of the peasant mother by her cradle beside
the peat-fire, some like wild barbaric runes of terrible unguessed
import, some like the battle-cry of hero-gods, some like the keening of
women beside their dead. The essential poetry of the Celtic soul pours
itself forth in rapturous, wistful music, now like a chant, a hymn, a
wedding-song, a lament for the lost soul.
In the Celtic folk-tales we get a mixture of romances, of the survivals
of barbaric days, the ancient druid myths, the pagan legends, savage
beliefs overlaid and interwoven with the later Christian traditions.
Sometimes the old pagan myths themselves become moral allegories,
the legend being used to tell a late-learned moral truth. But, for
the most part, there is no attempt at teaching save that which comes
spontaneously, the outburst of passionate, poetic romance, the heritage
of a people that love wonder and beauty.
The pagan poetry of the Gaelic race lives on and throbs over again in
Fiona McLeod's symbolic moralities. The mystical figures of awe and
woe appear from the dim past, a rapturous paganism showing through the
medieval religious brooding. Yet they are so symbolic of the spirit
that they are timeless. Coming as they do out of the dim legendary
past, they may reflect the veiled years of the future. They are mystic
chronicles of the soul, as in _The Divine Adventure_, where the Body
and Will alike shrink back from that "silent, sad-eyed foreigner, the
Soul."
In the stories of Yeats we get similar effects, the weird power of the
old curse-making bards, the gift of second-sight, a spiritual vision,
the spiritual sense that hears past the broken discordant sounds the
music of the world, the power to catch the moment "that trembles with
the Song of Immortal Powers." We hear faint whispers, catch fleeting
glimpses of the Dim People, see again the druids, the culdees, the
ancient bards and heroes. We discern in the Celtic literature a
sadness, dim, unreasoning yet deep, such as we see in the faces of
animals and little children. We see such symbolism as that of the
self-centered lovers who have heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts,
seeing only their own images throughout eternity. We feel the poetic
thoughts drifting past us like sweet falling rose-leaves, bright with
the colors of bygone years, like fluttering bird-wings, like happy
sighs. Yet again they are terrible trumpets blown in the day of doom.
We have the modern mysticism and symbolism side by side with the old
druidic mysticism, which seems like dream-stuff with deep spiritual
import. Yeats makes us feel that the old divinities are not dead,
but have taken up their abode in the hearts of poets and writers of
romance, and that the land of faery is all about us if we would only
see. But we lack the poetic vision. He makes us see the actuality of
thought, that thinking has its own vital being and goes out into the
world like a living thing, possessed by some wandering soul. He shows
us that thought can create black hounds or silver doves to follow the
soul, bring to life at will a divinity or a demon.
A certain supernatural element of style seems to lend itself to some
of the writers of strange fiction. Some of Oscar Wilde's sentences
unfold like wild, exotic flowers, in a perfumed beauty that suggests a
subtle poison at the heart. Lord Dunsany writes joyously of fantastic
creatures with a happy grace, sometimes like a lilting laugh, sometimes
a lyric rhapsody. His evoked beings are sportive or awesome but never
unclean. Arthur Machen's stories have an effect like a slimy trail
of some loathly beast or serpent. William Morris's style is like an
old Norse rune, while Algernon Blackwood makes us think of awakened,
elemental forces hostile to man. We feel bodiless emotions, feelings
unclothed with flesh, sad formless spirits blown on the winds of the
world. These folk-tales reflect the sweet carelessness of the Irish
soul, the stern sadness of the Scotch, the psychic subtlety of the
modern English. And as the study of folk-lore has influenced the
fiction of the supernatural, so these published romances have aroused a
wondering interest in the legendry of the past and made of folk-lore a
science.