Most students of tradition would, I think, agree with Professor Krappe’s statement of the problem, which be proceeds to elaborate in brief compass. He shows that both Teutonic dwarfs and Celtic fairies possess characteristics which appear to identify them with the dead, dwelling as they do underground, and luring the living to their subterranean abodes. Moreover, they appear in the guise of ancestral spirits possessing superhuman wisdom and are associated with certain localities and families. Also they receive gifts or oblations of food, and thus seem to be the governing spirits of a definite cultus, as ancestral forms are everywhere. They preside over the growth of the crops, as do the dead ancestors, and they haunt barrows and stone circles known to be places of ancient sepulture.
But Professor Krappe warns us that we must not draw any hard and fast line between the ancestral cult and the worship of elementary or nature-spirits. In saying as much, he is at one with the leading exponents of modern folk-lore. As the late Mr. Sidney Hartland laid it down in his Science of Fairy Tales, no very clear division can be made between the fairy and the ghost, in the folk-lore sense. They have the same traits, the same taboos are exercised against both, the same stock legends and stories are common to both. As to the third theory to which Professor Krappe alludes, that which embraces the idea that Faerie may be due to reminiscences of the former inhabitants of a country, and especially to small and undersized races, it is evident that he denies this in toto. I believe that the main element in the tradition is that which regards the fairy belief as associated with the spirits of the dead.
As regards the actual proof of the theory that fairies are no other than the dead in the belief of primitive man, past and present, that is of a nature so extensive that I despair of being able to place it adequately before the reader in the compass of a few paragraphs. Here I can deal only with its main outlines and superscriptions, but I can assure my ,readers that it has received the overwhelming acceptance of many folk-lorists of standing. Primitive man did not and does not believe, as we do, that death is a thing inevitable. He regarded it, and regards it, as brought about by magical means of some kind, and out of this idea has arisen that description of story which tells how people might be rescued and regained from the Land of the Dead.
Let us glance at some of the instances of that body of proof which serves to maintain the theory that the fairies were in the main the spirits of the departed. In Wales, for example, as Wirt Sikes tells us in his interesting study, British Goblins, “the popular theory of the fairies is that they are the souls of dead mortals, not bad enough for hell, nor good enough for heaven”.
“We are confronted,” writes Mr. L. C. Wimberley, in his Folk-lore of the English and Scottish Ballads, “with striking resemblances between the ballad ghost and the ballad fairy”, and he proceeds to illustrate the theory by a wealth of instances culled from British popular lays.(33) “When analysed,” says Wentz, “our evidence (culled from Celtic lands) shows that in the majority of cases witnesses have regarded fairies either as non-human nature-spirits, or else as spirits of the dead . . . the striking likenesses constantly, appearing in our evidence between the ordinary apparitional fairies and the ghosts of the dead show that there is often no essential or sometimes no distinguishable difference between these two orders of beings, nor between the world of the dead and fairyland. . . . The old people in County Armagh seriously believe that the fairies are the spirits of the dead, and they say that if you have many friends deceased you may have many friendly fairies.” Steven Ruan, a piper of Galway, told Wentz that “there is one class of fairies who are nobody else than the spirits of men and women who once lived on earth”.
The Scottish evidence for this widespread belief is equally definite. Dalyell tells us that a witch of Orkney beheld the fairies “rise out of the kirkyard of Hildiswick”, and in the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries numerous Scottish witches bore witness that they encountered dead friends and relations in Fairyland, whither they themselves had been spirited away. Canon MacCulloch, in the article on “Fairies” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, remarks that “fairies have many things in common with ghosts and are repulsed by the same taboos”. They have in some cases succeeded ghostly tenants of tumuli or barrows, or have become merged with them.
Dear Sir,
My grandmother, who was from Derry, Ireland saw the banshee just prior to her sister, Josephine’s, death many years ago. My grandmother lived in Florida and Josephine was living in Canada. My grandmother said she first heard the banshee wailing loudly and mournfully outside her door. Then she saw the old woman in white in a horse-driven carriage going by her house. She noted the date and time and later found out that her sister had died around the same time. My grandmother was a MacDonagh.
No one else in our family has seen the banshee.
i was wondering where you got the name chapel of st. malvey i can trace my family name back to 1734 in ireland county cork
It’s not me that got that name, this article is The Celtic Spirit World
by Lewis Spence
from ‘The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain’
(chapter VII)
i dont want to be a pest but do you have any idea about the origin of the chapel of st malvey?
You’re not being a pest. And, no, I don’t know the origin of the chapel of St. Malvey. Sounds like a good topic for you to research, though (considering your last name).
Dear Sir,
my grandparents lived in Croatia. They have been born in a little village by the name Seona.
It´s an unusually name for a croatic village.
I can remember that ma granny teach me then I was a child a lot of fairys.
She believed in them and the other older pupil in the village , too.
I have heard stories about fairies in this village.
My granny says they always lived there with the people helped them or punished them.
She tells me, if I don´t lost the faith in them, one day I would see the fairies, too.
In the wood of this village is a spring and there was an old man living. The people called him brother John.
He lives like an eremit allone and he was praying for the ill people. He was healing the humans.
My grandmother shaws me the place there the fairies were dancing in the ring.
She gives me so lot my granny and I beginn to understand now.
Three months ago I became the idea to search about the name Seona in Slavonia (Croatia).
This is a name from scotish gaellic and comes from the name Seonaid (God is great).
I´m sure that in Seona the celts build one of them first villages, then they come to Croatia.
All this I tell a Dr. of archeollogy in Zagreb and he writes me back, that he has found some celtic graves and this story from me can be a way to find something more about our history.
Today,if you ask me if I believe in fairiey, yes do.
Why?
So I am catholic, but my grandmother tells me that god is great, he lives everythere and I can talk with him also in the nature.
I grove up with the belive in god and the fairies.
I loved them and talked to them, too. I see them as my sisters in soul.
Sometimes I can here them singing in the wood or crying on places there bads thing happening.
They are real the fairies. My granny says if the humans lost the faith they can´T never see the fairies again.
One day I was so tired, I hear voices from the door like children laughing. I think my children are coming home with my husband, but it was a litle green ghost.
He was small ,like a child from 6 years.
I can´t see a face only circle on his head with symbols like celtic art. He talks somthing to me, but I don´t understand. It was a language warm and deep. The louds sounds like drrhh, krch, shhr, chaarhh,,, somthing like this.
On the top of the wall from my room something litle flyes. They looked like small white princes and they laughed all time. The voice of them sounds like children laughing.
I have open my ices and I was thinking I´m dreaming, but in the next second I feel how thr little green ghost take my plaid from the bed and takes it over me. I was falling in a deep sleep.
Then I awaked I have feel so good. I never sleeped better.
It was a good feeling. This I will never forgett.
Bye, from Germany, yours Mirela
It’s been quite a while but I found out some info about St. Malvey the real name of the church is St Moluag’s church (locally known by its gaidhlig name of Teampull Mholuaidh) is a 13th Century temple in the village of Eoropie in Ness in the Isle of Lewis
Ed I located documentation including a reference from Charles Dickens. The church is still there and active. St Malvey was born in 590 AD and went with St Columba to bring Christianity to Scotland. Are you Molly’s son, brother Jimmy now Father Seamus , my cousin – email for me nihildat@yahoo.com Slainte
I have documentation on the church from a journal written by Charles Dickens in 1887. He calls it the church of St Malvey. I traced him back to 590 AD. He and St Columba et al were called the disciples of Ireland. I think you might be Molly’s son, brother Jimmy now Father Seamus, and my cousin.
i am indeed mollies son please reply cous
Ed
Hiya. Donald Trump’s mother was born on Lewis Island. It’s the largest island in the Outer Hebrides.
Does you know the Gaelic equivalent of the surname “Malvey”?
I had a dream about a year ago that seems to fit with your description of the ‘banshee.’ The dream showed an old woman in a white cloak who was sitting on this throne in a grove of trees. I entered and there was a large hewn stump with three “tree branch fairies” sticking out of it. They started singing a whimsical and melodious song. I didn’t get the feeling that the song was for me. since then there have been several deaths that may have been suggested by the banshee and other dream indicators. I’ve had numerous encounters with spirits, mostly in dreams, over the years who have taken the form of mythical figures. Please share any insights. Is there something I can do to intercede? I get the message that these dreams are to prepare, initiate or to avoid pitfalls. Thanks!