You
are wondering far from home when you encounter a fairy which offers you a
simple meal of bread and butter. Should you accept it?
Many
would say no, assuming that gifts of food from the fairies are dangerous.
In
the ballade the Childe Rowland Merlin, for example, warned the protagonist who
was setting into fairyland to rescue someone that they should “bite no bit, and
drink no drop, however hungry or thirsty you be; drink a drop, or bite a bit,
while in Elfland you be and never will you see Middle Earth again.”
Lady
Wilde points out that in Ireland it was believed that to eat fairy food was
fatal.
Often
fairy food turned out to be foul and dangerous things, glamoured to appear like
food.
So
at first glance you might think you should avoid eating fairy food, after all
there are many stories where this turns out to be dangerous.
Yet
nothing in fairyland is ever so simple as this. For the fairies are our
neighbors and they frequently care about us.
a
man from the City of Doualan who was struggling to feed his family. One evening
while he was returning home he pasted over Crokelien hill when he encountered a
woman who asked him why he was grieving. He told her that it was because he
couldn’t earn enough to feed his family.
“If
you want you can send your son to keep my cows and I will give you as much
money as you’d like,” the woman told him.
She
then led him underground to great heaps of gold and wheat and beef. So he
filled his pockets and returned home. The next day he sent his son out to watch
the woman’s cattle. When dinner time came the woman fed the young man a meal
more wonderful than he’d ever eaten.
Other
times ploughmen would ask for loaves of bread and find them on plates at the
edge of their fields. In another story from the Alpes an old fairy gives lost
children food and keeps them safe through the winter, and they are fine.
Indeed,
one needed to be careful, for not accepting food from the fairies could also
lead them to feel so insulted they might killyou anyways. In Scotland, for example,
A
ploughman while engaged at his work heard, or fancied he heard, a sound of
churning, and said he wished his thirst “was on the dairymaid.” In a short time
after a woman appeared and offered him a drink of buttermilk. Her green dress
and sudden appearance made him refuse the offer, and she said that next year he
would not need the drink. When the twelve months were nearly out the man died.
The
Project Gutenberg eBook, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland, by John Gregorson Campbell
I’m
reminded of Scandinavian tales which makes this clearer, with two friends
encountering the fairy who offers them each a bit of butter, the one who
refuses is cursed and the one who accepts is blessed.
Another
similar story comes from the Isle of Man, where Wentz records that one woman was
offered butter milk by a fairy. “but the thirsty woman, ignorant of
fairy customs and the penalty attending their infringement, declined the kind
offer of refreshment, and immediately found herself a prisoner in the hillock.
She was led to an apartment containing a chest full of meal and a great bag of
wool, and was told by the fairy that when she had eaten all the meal and spun
all the wool she would be free to return to her home. The prisoner at once set
herself to eating and spinning assiduously, but without apparent result, and
despairing of completing the task consulted an old man of very sad countenance
who had long been a captive in the hillock. He willingly gave her his advice,
which was to wet her left eye with saliva each morning before she settled down
to her task. She followed this advice, and gradually the wool and the meal were
exhausted. Then the fairy granted her freedom, but in doing so cursed the old
man, and said that she had it in her power to keep him in the hillock for
ever.’ (wentz)
As
stated, one had to be careful refusing fairy food, for doing so might lead to
curses, imprisonment, and death.
Fairies
were dangerous neighbors but they were neighbors as shown by a story from Britanny
France in which a family lived above a fairy family, and the two of them could
hear each other talk and pass things back and fort on occasion. One night, when
there wasn’t a crumb of bread left in the house and the human woman’s child was
hungry. She told her child to knock on the hearth and ask for some bread.
"Here, my boy, here is enough to eat all your life and
give it to no one but your parents."
Such stories, of fairies providing people with bread that
never ends are fairly common and are often a pleasant surprise, rather than
something which is asked for.
One should perhaps keep in mind that fairies often need
human food to survive. This is likely in addition to their own food of course,
but there does seem to be some magic in human food that keeps many fairies from
growing sickly.
Generally,
if you are in fairyland or there is a party of fairies the food is dangerous,
but if you are in the human world or being offered a humble meal by a humble
fairy within our world, even if you enter the fairy’s cottage, it is generally
dangerous not to eat. Again, this latter case likely exists because fairies
were our neighbors and could come to care for us, in their own, nonhuman sort
of way.
Except this isn’t entirely satisfying. We can now turn to a
more abstract question. Why does eating food at a fairy party or deep in fairy
land lead to imprisonment?
In the lore of many steppes people, of which the
Indo-Europeans likely hail from as well we see that when someone would try to
pull a spirit of the dead from the land of the dead, such as a shaman or the
Greek Goddess Demetrus, if a person of Goddess ate food in the land of the dead
they were trapped there, and there was no getting them out, at least not
completely.
Eating food in the land of the underworld then is a sign
that you accept your place within it.
In an Irish story a woman is taken to fairyland and
essentially appears as a ghost after to tell her husband” "Do not be
disturbed, dear husband," said the appearance; "I am now in the power
of the fairies, but if you only have courage and prudence we may be soon happy
with each other again. Next Friday will be May-eve, and the whole court will ride
out of the old fort after midnight. I must be there along with the rest.
Sprinkle a circle with holy water, and have a black-hafted knife with you. If
you have courage to pull me off the horse, and draw me into the ring, all they
can do will be useless. You must have some food for me every night on the
dresser, for if I taste one mouthful with them, I will be lost to you forever.”
Even closer to the idea of the human as a ghost, taken to
fairyland comes from the story of Bridget.
“It happened when she was about nineteen years of age that
she fainted one day on the street before the house, where she was washing the
spuds for dinner. The mother and sister went out for to carry her in, and they
laid her down on the bed—the poor girl never rose from it more. Maybe a week
she was lingering dying, not a word ever came from her lips and she used no
food at all.
Not a long after the burying her mother heard a rapping on
the window, close upon midnight. She rose and she says, “Oh Bridget dear, is it
you?”[164]
“It is indeed, mamma,” says a voice. “Let you give me a
drink of sweet milk and a small taste of bread.”
“I’ve heard tell of the dead were uneasy, but never of one
needing food,” says the mother.
“The fairies have me away,” answers Bridget. “’Tis myself is
living this day, and you are after giving decent burial to an old thing they
left in my place.”
With that the poor mother brought milk and bread to the
window and handed it out.
"Will you ever contrive to get home, my poor Bridget?” says
she.”
In another Newfoundland story there are girls are seeking to
avoid being pulled into the underworld forever by sneaking off when they can to
eat human food. They are essentially living as ghosts, neither in the
underworld with the fairies nor in the land of the living.
This might be in part because there is some magic in the
food of humans, the food of the land of the living, and food made under the sun
and fresh air. This could explain why fairies needed human food in the first
place, for many were like ancestor spirits in many places crave human food.
They need human food to remain healthy.
Wentz recorded an Irish story in which
The fairy queen was “fretting her life out for want of some
milk that has the scent of green grass in it and of the fresh upper air.”
In Denmark People would often see these trold dancing at
night. However, one of these trold told a man that they were going to move.
“Why?” The man asked. “We can’t survive here anymore,” the trold told him. “You
see the trold have been surviving by stealing food, but people have started
putting a cross over everything so we have to move or starve to death.”
What fairies have then is insubstantial food, at least much
of the time, for they exist in a liminal state.
This
might give us a better answer about human and fairy food. For much of fairy
food might very well be a liminal and dreamlike thing, perhaps even a thing of
the underworld and the land of the dead in some cases. Thus, it is something to
be avoided. On the other hand while many fairies have connections to lands of
the dead or other liminal spaces, many dwell within our world or places of paradise,
so their food can be the same or better than ours. This then becomes a question
of what you think the source of the fairy food is.
Is
it liminal and illusionary food from the land of the dead or something rotting
they are trying to pass as food?
Is
it food from our world that they now have?
Is
it food from the a sort of heavenly otherworld that is even better than our
own?
It
is difficult to tell, of course, but you can generally trust fairies if they
are giving you food out of sympathy, as payment for your work or goods, or they
are fairies that live close enough to you that you have at least heard them and
they have heard you frequently. They aren’t trustworthy if they are acting
flippant or you had to enter the otherworld to meet them, without any agreement
before hand.
Still,
this doesn’t answer the question we began with. What do you do if you are far
from home and a fairy offers you food?
I
don’t know of any stories with this scenario, for they are all deep in
fairyland or in lands where the fairies would be your neighbors. And so I can’t
help you with it. After all, this fairy isn’t your neighbor, per say, but
fairies did sometimes help travelers. Yet other lands are often considered to
be part of the otherworld and the fairies from them could be dangerous.
So
flip a coin and hope that luck gives you the right answer, for sometimes
fairyland is just dangerous. Also, if you do survive this type of encounter,
please say something so we can all learn.
Perhaps some of the most common questions on the internet involve fairy flight, such as do fairies have wings? can fairies fly? how do fairies fly? etc.
We’ve all seen the images of fairies with wings, so it might surprise you to hear until the 20th century those who described their encounters with fairies never included wings in their descriptions of them.
Fairies, could fly without wings, however, for as Kirk writes in a “Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies” (1691) fairies would “swim in the air near the earth.” And Scottish fairies would kidnap or attack people by flying.
Katherine Briggs states that “It is very rare in traditional fairy tales for Fairies to travel by means of wings. They generally fly through the air on transformed ragwort stems, twigs or bundles of grasses, using them as witches use broomsticks, and most commonly levitated by a magic password.” Such as horse and hattock.
Yet, as with all fairy magic, fairy flight seems to be limited by function. For while they fairies would fly as a form of play, to steal from humans, to move about quickly, to shoot curses at people, etc. But not as a means of escaping people intent on capturing them. I can’t think of a single story where a fairy flew to escape someone who trying to catch them.
This might be because humans have the ability to thwart fairy spells with their gaze. Stare unblinking at a fairy in folklore and they can’t vanish, for example.
That said there is a story where the fairies helped a human to escape a death sentence by flying him away.
In this story a young boy is in the wilderness when he comes across a cottage with a friendly lady who allows him to stay the night. During the night, however, the ladies of the house show their fairy nature by donning white caps and saying “Here’s off” at which point the fly away. Afraid to stay in the hut alone the boy grabs another cap and says “Here’s after” at which point he flies to where the women are dancing around a fairy ring. Then they all fly off again, this time down a chimney and into a wealthy mans cellar, where the boy drinks so much wine he passes out and is caught. Just before he is hung for the theft the fairy lady comes to him, puts a hat on his head and they fly away
Here the fairy explained that she had been displeased by his taking her magic cap, and that if befriended by fairies, he must never in future take liberties with their property. This he promised, and after a good meal, was allowed to depart to his home.
It is fairly typical of fairies living in cottages to be kindly disposed towards people, although there are no guarantees in fairyland. Not that that’s relevant to the current discussion, I just thought it was an interesting aside.
Kathrine Briggs believes that this story has more in common with witches’ tales, and I would tend to agree, primarily because the boy and women manage to fly away from danger, something, as I’ve said the fairies seemingly didn’t do. Except for a Danish tale in which some fairies are carrying a woman off and someone forces them to drop her and then drives them away. Although in this story the fairies were already flying when the man approached them.
Fairies, after all, were often responsible for witch flight in stories.
As Emma Wilby Says “several contemporary anecdotes relate how ordinary people could find themselves transported in 'fairy whirlwinds'
Where they would dance with the fairies.
Regardless of the means of flight, however, what we see is that in most cases then fairy flight is clearly a spell, often associated with a magical object and magical words,
Okay, so where does the idea of fairies’ as being winged come from?
It's likely it started with a German Alchemist named Paracelsus (1493-1541) who determined that there were four classes of elementals, with air being represented by sylphs and they were depicted as having wings.
It is worth noting at this point that fairies were rarely ever associated with the air. Rather they were the spirits of rocks, of lakes, earth mounds, and the like.
In any case sylphs began to appear in English plays in the 16th century, for example Ariel in Shakespeare’s play, although she wasn’t a fairy she acted much like one of the fairies from Midsummer Night’s Dream would have, thus the association was easy to make. Something that seems to have happened by the 17th century when fairies began to wear winged costumes in Masque plays for the wealthy.
Outside of these plays, even in drawings, fairies were still depicted as wingless. Still, theatrical fairies grew in popularity and so they influenced pop depictions of fairies, but it does seem that most people at the time could still tell the difference, as again fairies weren’t mentioned as having wings for another three hundred years in encounters with people.
How would
cultures react to zombies, the presence of blood thirsty armies, or a kaiju
attack? In a fantasy world magical monsters, weather rare or common are a
reality. So it can be interesting to ponder h ow cultures would adjust to their
presence.
It can be
tempting, of course, to turn any world filled with monsters into a grim dark, a
nightmare realm with sorrowful peasants. However, it is worth remembering that
a few years after Joan of Arc’s village had been burned to the ground by marauding
armies, and raided on multiple occasions, after disease had killed many of the
people she loved she described her village in idyllic terms and talked about
how much she’d loved working with her mother and the other members of the
village.
This was
during the height of the 100 Year War. It is important to remember that the
bright and often vibrant cultures we know today developed under some of the
worst wars in history, the 80 Years War in the Netherlands, the 30 Years War in
Germany, etc.
Obviously
monsters and war are different and how monsters would affect cultures is
entirely speculative; there is no good research on the subject of how the
presence of a dragon would impact the psychology and culture of a village. But
there is a lot of research on how different catastrophes, from tsunamis, to
plagues, and of course wars will impact a culture which I will be using in my
speculations.
Consider,
for example, monsters such as vampires, vampires, werewolves, cultists, demons
that can change shape or possess people. That is monsters that could pretend to
be ordinary people. As fairy tales show people would have to be extremely
careful with such monsters around, for example, one Romanian vampire tale
begins:
There
once was a woman who fell in love with a young man who seemed perfect in every
way. At last, the two of them were married and the women went with the young
man to his house. He led her into the kitchen, where he had a girl hanging from
meat hooks, for the young man was really a vampire. "Cook this girl for
our supper," the vampire told his new bride.
Even those
one knew could become a threat in such a world as seen in the following story.
Once
upon a time a boy and a girl loved each other, but the young man died and
became a vampire, though the girl didn't know this. That night, when she was
alone in the house, the vampire came. But, vampires can only enter unclean
homes, so because the girls home was clean, the vampire couldn’t enter it. The
vampire called up to the girl's window in his familiar and loving voice, and so
lured her out into the night. Although she was still undressed, he convinced
her that it was urgent that she come with him, and so he took her hand and led
her to his tomb.
Because of
this people would be cautious around strangers and even friends who might have
been turned. This is similar to the way people deal with pathogens and so would
likely impact cultures in a similar way.
Research
indicates “ethnocentrism, xenophobia and other specific forms of interpersonal
prejudice” and a strong disdain of deviation from social norms are strongly
correlated with cultures who have had to deal with pathogens. After all,
avoiding potential signs of pathogens and contact with outsiders is a good
survival trait when a disease is ravaging the land.
Fincher
Corey L, Thornhill Randy, Murray Damian R and Schaller Mark 2008Pathogen
prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in
individualism/collectivismProc. R. Soc. B.2751279–1285
http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094
It’s
important to keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that people would be dark and
brooding, rather people would likely seek to act in a way that is opposite to
the creatures that are threatening them.
If the
vampires are dark and brooding, people would go out of their way to be bright,
vivacious, and colorful. For the primary means of dealing with such creatures
would be to watch for signs that someone had didn’t fit with the social norms,
so the norms would be the reverse of the monster’s instincts.
Thus, in a
world with werewolves hiding among a populous meat might be eaten last, after
slowly eating many tiny vegetable dishes, as a means of trying to get the
hungry wolves to reveal themselves by obviously longing to eat the meat sooner.
In a world with the kitsune who tend to act wild and speak rapidly, people
would be more reserved, calmer, and controlled in hopes that the kitsune would
lose control and reveal themselves.
We can see
from these examples that often the response to the presence of most monsters
would be likely be some form of collectivism. As “Collectivism is characterized
by a strong value placed on tradition and conformity, whereas individualism is
characterized by a greater tolerance for (and encouragement of) deviation from
the status quo”
I.e. the
xenophobia people often develop as a result of dealing with plagues is
associated with collectivism.
You can
see in this chart the impact of pathogens on collectivist vs individualist
behaviors.
Fincher
Corey L, Thornhill Randy, Murray Damian R and Schaller Mark 2008Pathogen prevalence
predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivismProc. R.
Soc. B.2751279–1285
http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094
(Me)
Of course
this chart isn’t a perfect line, because while Pathogens are positively
correlated with collectivism they clearly aren’t the only factor. Which is why it's
important to remember that there are many things hat can impact culture and so
the presence of one factor doesn’t guarantee a culture will behave a certain
way.
This is
because distrust of outsiders and a strong adherence to social norms aren’t the
only response to monsters. Indeed, we might see the opposite effect on cultures
which frequently have to deal with dragons, kaiju, giants, and other massive
monsters which could show up, destroy their village, and leave.
Certainly
in such societies high levels of cooperation would be necessary for survival
when a dragon attacks, but this cooperation could extend to much larger groups
of people, sometimes from villages hundreds of miles away.
That is
when the dragon attacked people might seek refuge, food, and aid in fighting
the creature from other people, sometimes hundreds of miles away.
As a
result people would need to befriend people from other lands, which would tend
to make them more accepting of differences and likely to get along with people
outside their ingroup, which is one of the hallmarks of individualism.
Those
living in cities and ports, or who herd animals, who are in frequent contact
with many peoples from other lands will tend to be more individualist.
In
addition the need for innovations can also help encourage individualism. Thus,
a place that needed inventive wizards or clerics would be more likely to shift
individualistic.
After all,
“Individualistic values may promote other kinds of functional benefits. For
example, the discovery or spread of beneficial new technologies may occur more frequently
when individuals are encouraged to deviate from existing traditions and engage
in interactions with non-group members.”
Fincher
Corey L, Thornhill Randy, Murray Damian R and Schaller Mark 2008Pathogen
prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in
individualism/collectivismProc. R. Soc. B.2751279–1285
http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094
Disasters help
to enhance traditional means of seeking comfort or survival. Thus, we would
expect those who must deal with monsters on a regular basis to have stronger
tendencies towards either aggression or caring, ingroup social norms or
outgroup alliances, and so forth, depending on the nature of the monster
involved. For example, Natural disasters remind people how powerless they are
and so can cause people to become more religious, such that even the children
of children of immigrants who experienced earthquakes are more religious than
their peers.
More than
just psychological changes, the presence of monsters would likely be written
into the very architecture of the village. Likely inspired by the real villages
built on lakes and rivers for defence in England’s past, Tolkien had Lake Town
built on a lake to make it easier for people to escape the dragon’s fire.
Thus, in
addition to walls a city in a fantasy world could include the presence of frequent
hardened canopies and gazebos with spikes atop them to stop wyverns or dragons
from landing on or taring their way through them. In addition there could be
vaults similar to panic rooms and tunnels throughout a village and perhaps even
under the fields where people farm, as a way of escaping from flying or
marauding enemies.
Stone
alcoves could be built into the city walls to allow people to duck away from
flame or acid breathed by dragons or fireballs flung by wizards.
In the
fantasy realm of Ogma De I wrote that every house has a few goats in it, so
that if a giant rips off the roof, it is more likely to grab a panicking goat
than a person who can quickly fling themselves down trap doors and who likely
has a sword nearby.
It might
even be that people would build multiple long thin cities beside each other,
rather than one large city, that way sewage could flow from smaller pipes into
the larger sewers that exist outside the city walls in order to prevent sewer
monsters from being an immediate threat.
In other
words, from the way people build their homes and towns, from the pets they
keep, to the way they think and feel could all be impacted by the presence of
monsters and actually thinking about these impacts could be very interesting.
Thinking
about what people might do to protect themselves from various monsters can
allow you to add interesting little details into the description of your
village.
Solid
infrastructure systems that include buildings, food storage, vaults, etc. isn’t
the most popular way people will seek to protect themselves in Fantasy TTRPGs,
however.
The most
popular method for dealing with monsters in games is by seeking help from
heroic adventurers.
Those
seeking help from adventurers who could potentially be anyone including
outsiders and the strange, uncouth kid from down the street that grows up to be
a powerful sorcerer, would likely come to accept odd quirks and differences
from the social norms. Indeed, those who are odd are typically more likely to fit
into unusual roles related to wizardry, paladins, warriors, sorcerers,
warlocks, and even great fighters.
As a
result of the need for those with unusual skills people would likely encourage
such things as self-actualization, and come to admire aggression,
competitiveness, and success. More than this they would be more likely to
question authority and hierarchies as anyone could be the hero they hire and
the leaders would be less important to them or might even come to be seen as a
hinderance.
That is
these cultures would be individualist, have strong motivations towards success
and achievement, and of course would have a low power distance on the Hofstede
cultural scale.
This is
contrasted by the fact that research has shown large infrastructure projects to
support agriculture and complex ocean fishing are associated with greater
cooperation and less assertive behaviors. More conformity to social norms, and
a greater respect for leadership. What’s more such societies are strongly
associated with a much more moralizing deity, one which punishes deviation from
social norms – or sin as some cultures would call it. After all in a strict
system where everyone must follow the rules to survive, people are more likely
to discuss gods that punish those who don’t follow the rules.
On the
opposite end of this coin, gods in heroic societies are likely to be less
concerned with moral behavior and more concerned with heroic behavior. Think
Odin, who accepts the souls of those who died in heroic combat, or the general
idea of Nordic Mythology that it is a virtue to obtain admiration and fame in
whatever one does.
The descendants
of the societies that spawned the Vikings, with limited infrastructure and
heroes who would go out to do battle, is high in the caring values and
individualism at the same time. This despite, or perhaps because of the fact
that they also once had to deal with frequent raids from each other as well.
What we see
then is that the presence of monsters and how people respond to these monsters
would affect their religion, psychology, and of course their social norms and
behavior in what are sometimes opposing ways.
This is
good though, because it gives us the opportunity to imagine many diverse
methods responses to monsters and cultures in fantasy worlds.
It would
be impossible in a single video to discuss every way in which culture is
altered or could be altered by disasters and wars, but in many ways it is
simply enough for you to write something believable and if you are world
building hobbyist, it can be fun to simply journal and daydream how your
cultures would adjust to a world filled with monsters.
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