Faerie in February

Lament, lament, old Abbeys,
The Fairies’ lost command!
They did but change Priests’ babies,
But some have changed your land.
And all your children, sprung from thence,
Are now grown Puritans,
Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your demains.

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs which yet remain,
Where footed in Queen Mary’s days
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late, Elizabeth,
And later, James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath been.

By which we know the Fairies
Were of the old Profession.
Their songs were “Ave Marys,”
Their dances were Procession.
But alas, they all are dead;
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for Religion fled;
Or else they take their ease.

—Richard Corbet, “The Fairies Farewell”

FEBRUARY is filled with interesting observances and holidays, both civil and religious. Candlemas, of which spoke in detail in our last outing in these pages is perhaps the most sublime. But Mardi Gras, Lincoln’s and Washington’s Birthdays, and various others have each their own attractions. None, however, has as obscure origins nor bizarre subject matter as National Tell a Fairy Tale Day on February 26. The internet is rife with suggestions on how to celebrate it, but all the sources I consulted admitted themselves ignorant of how it began or why this day was selected. Never mind, though. It gives us an excuse for a fascinating line of enquiry.

Why would we do such things, to begin with? The land of Faerie is a strange one, well described in his essay On Fairy Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien: “The land of fairy-story is wide and deep and high, and is filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both sorrow and joy as sharp as swords. In that land a man may (perhaps) count himself fortunate to have wandered…” “Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.”

All interesting, to be sure, but why bother? On a low level, of course, they can be a useful source of morals for children. The original version of Red Riding Hood, for instance, ends with her being devoured — there is no miraculous revival of Grandma and Red by an itinerant woodsman. The moral is clear — don’t be stupid, children! Red Riding Hood should not have left the path, nor talked to the wolf, nor halted a second when she noticed there were things wrong with Grandma. These are invaluable lessons for children of every era.

But there is far more to the question then that — not least the attraction to these stories of adults in every era, and the sheer number of folk literally enchanted by them. For Tolkien, the not inevitable happy ending was part of their importance: “The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive.’ In its fairy-tale — or otherworld — setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

Tolkien goes on to point out that the keenest sort of joy is indeed the Gospel. This does not mean, to him, that the Gospel is merely the most successful Fairy Tale; rather, it is the truest thing we have, and all other happy endings are in a sense derivative or dependent upon it. Moreover, the miraculous content of Fairy Stories need not render them unreal. This writer, when researching his book on the Holy Grail, was struck by how many of the marvellous many occurrences chronicled in the Arthurian and other aspects of that particular legend — despite the lack of historicity, per se — have actually happened or continue to happen in what we regard as “everyday” or “real” life. What then of Faerie itself, and its…er…Fey…inhabitants?

Tolkien was of the belief that they were real, although their exact nature is not apparent. This may appear odd to us, but certainly a number of good Catholic writers agreed with him. We read in St. Jerome’s Life of Paulus the First Hermit, written in the second half of the fourth century, about St. Anthony’s encounter with an odd creature: “Before long, in a small, rocky valley shut in on all sides, he sees a mannikin with hooked snout, horned forehead, and extremities like goat’s feet. When he saw this, Anthony, like a good soldier, seized the shield of faith and the helmet of hope: The creature, nonetheless, began to offer him the fruit of the palm tree to support him on his journey and as it were, pledges of peace. Anthony, perceiving this, stopped and asked who he was. The answer he received from him was this:

“I am a mortal being and one of the inhabitants of the Desert whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi. I am sent to represent my tribe. We pray you in [Sic] our behalf to entreat the favour of your Lord, and ours, who, we have learnt, came once to save the world and whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.”

Later Catholic writers on this subject saw this as the first encounter between the Church and Faerie. Belief in such beings became well-nigh universal — St. Joan of Arc having admitted at her trial that she knew of them — though she distinguished the Saints she followed from them. During the 17^th century, Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (1622 — 1701) was an Italian Franciscan priest, author, and Inquisitor, and in his book Daemoniality, built up a picture of what such creatures might be like. The following century saw Dom Augustin Calmet’s Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c. — in which he dealt with elves, ghosts, witches and particularly vampires. To this day, some of the Catholic Indians of Maine believe in Little People who guard the churches and punish those who disobey the Lenten regulations. Tolkien was not the only Catholic 20^th century believer in such folk — the noted anti-birth control writer and convert Halliday Sutherland believed he had encountered them.

Out of all of this comes a very composite picture of what this strange race with whom (possibly) we share this world with are like. Although not having any Revelation of their own, they are able to apprehend directly such things as Transubstantiation. Supposedly, this insight divides them into those who — consumed with jealousy — work with the demons to ruin us, and those who, hoping to somehow benefit from our covenant if they help us out, are benevolent. Certainly it is amazing how much accounts of alien abductions sound very much like those of the fairies in days gone by, and in rural places even now.

Of course, one might well ask that if that is true, why is there no mention of it in Revelation? Well, Sinistrari and Calmet, among others would quote the line about the “Sons of God” begetting offspring upon the daughters of men as an oblique reference to them. Other would point out that Revelation contains only the Truths necessary for Salvation — so there is no mention about such things as the existence of the Americas or Nix Olympica on Mars, the biggest volcano in the Solar System.

But whether or not such things really do exist, the realities they portray of love and horror, heroism, miraculous victories against overwhelming odds, and the inevitability of a happy ending for the pure of heart are just that — realities. It is an unfortunate reality of our time that many of us — bound in computer-spawned fantasies of our own, are cut off from this source of reinforcement against a world that lies constantly. Invest a bit of time in reading them — and give Professor Tolkien’s essay a read. Just as his own masterful fantasy, the Lord of the Rings has led many a reader to Catholic reality, so may visits to Faerie or the Celtic Otherworld give the reader a far clearer view of the realities in which they actually dwell.