Young, 'Against Taxonomy: the Fairy Families of Cornwall' (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Fairy Census I: Part 1, Britain and Ireland
A sample from the book. 'Discover a world beyond our own in The Fairy Census I (2014-2017), a collection of five hundred extraordinary fairy encounters from all corners of the globe. From brief four-word accounts to multi-page memories, this book is the first of three published volumes for the Fairy Census I and relates to British and Irish run-ins with the fay (§§1-191). Marvel at earthlights, stumps that transform into elves, multicoloured magical ponies and many, many fairy bumps in the night. Each encounter is richly detailed, with data on the location, time of day, the psychological factors surrounding the experience and a number of other points to give depth and context to these impossible happenings. Whether you’re a believer, a Fortean or a sceptic, the Fairy Census will make for entrancing reading.'
Irish Fairies - A short History of the Sídhe, 2022
Irish Fairies A Short History of the Sídhe For thousands of years the Irish have believed in 'the fairies'. In present-day Ireland however, as in so many modern societies, fairies have been retreating, almost to the point of extinction. Nevertheless, the question might still be asked, what if Irish fairies were not created or imagined, but remembered? Ireland can trace the origins of its fairies to pre-Christian times. The large stone structures and tombs dotting the Irish landscape from the Neolithic Age prompted the immigrant Celts to weave a complex story about the builders, creating a pantheon of early gods. Over time, these evolved into fairy royalty. Their habitations became the brughsídhe or hostels, concentrations of fairy folk in the early medieval landscape. Their residences still stand today. It was generally understood that the fairies, na sídhe, led lives that paralleled human existence, but also stood apart. Living mostly underground, they showed themselves only when they choose to. They also lived close to the death realms-separate, but only just. While Creideamh Sídhe, the fairy faith, has mostly vanished across Europe, Ireland and a few other Celtic countries have been reluctant to forgo their remaining fairy connections. Since the seventeenth century, fairy communities have inveigled themselves into Irish society to remind us that even if we are forgetting them, they have not lost sight of us.
The Fairy Census 1, 2014-2017.pdf
This is a collection of 500 contemporary fairy experiences: most from the English-speaking world. The pdf is 400 pages long: about 160,000 words. The experiences date from the 1920s to the 2010s and respondents were aged from three-years old to ninety when they believe that they encountered fairies. It is hoped that the collection will allow for further studies of the supernatural and of supernatural experiences both by the editor and others. A second phase of collection is now underway.
Young, 'Three Cornish Fairy Notes'
Three Cornish Fairy Notes: (1) William Dunn and the Piskies, 1869, (2) The Brownie of Penzance, 1879, (3) Piskeys on the Border, c. 1930’ Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries 41, 1-4
2022
In March 2020, I published an article comparing the pixies of Devon and Cornwall, appearing in Folklore, the journal of the Folklore Society. Since that time, I found a relevant source, Ingram, Cooke, and Co., English Forests and Forest Trees, Historical, Legendary, and Descriptive (1853). It includes remarkably early references to Devonian pixies, enhancing the ability to understand the traditions of the two neighbors on either side of the Tamar River, which forms much of the boundary separating Cornwall and Devon. This source (featuring ML 7015 and ATU 124) allows for an augmentation of my original article, enhancing and supporting the conclusion that I reached, namely that the pixy traditions of Devon and the far west of Cornwall were not expressions of diffusion from one place to the other.