Author: A Solitary Pagan

Use this fairy water out in the garden as well as using it as an astringent and in the bath! Sprinkle a few drops here and there along with some glitter! If that doesn’t make the wee ones want to visityour yard, nothing will! Ingredients:1 cup apple cider vinegar1/4 cup fresh red rose petals1/4 cup mint leaves1/8 cup sage leaves1/2 cup rose water Gently heat vinegar and pour over rose petals and m...

A frightening goblin of English folklore. The bogie is described as little, black, and hairy. It is considered dangerous, mischievous, sly, and is renowned for its intelligence. Parents would use the threat of the bogie to frighten young children into good behavior.    

Isobel Gowdie, Scotland’s renowned witch who voluntarily confessed in 1662, said she had frequent doings with fairies.Gowdie went often to Fairyland, entering through various caverns and mounds.The entrance of Fairyland was populated with elf-bulls, whose “roaring and skoilling” always frightened her.She often met with the King and Queen of Fairy, who were finely dressed and offered her more meat ...

The ghostly Reid appeared many times before Dunlop, beseeching her to go away with him to Fairyland or to deny the Christian faith, in exchange for which he would grant her every wish.She denied him repeatedly, she testified.One day, Reid appeared with a company of eight women and four men. Reid explained that they were “good wights” (fairies) who lived in Elfland.They asked Dunlop to accompany th...

A few years later, in 1588, Alison Pearson of Byrehill was charged with invoking the spirits of the Devil.She also was said to have a fairy familiar: her cousin, William Sympson, a physician who had been kidnapped by a Gypsy and had died.One day while Pearson was traveling, she felt ill and lay down.A green man (Sympson) appeared and said he would do her good if she would be faithful to him.The gr...

In 1566 John Walsh of Dorset was accused of witchcraft.He admitted being able to tell if a person was bewitched, a gift bestowed upon him partly by fairies, he said.The fairies, he claimed, lived in great heaps of earth in Dorsetshire and could be consulted for one hour, at either noon or midnight.Walsh also defined three kinds of fairies: green,white and black, and said the black were the worst.B...

Fairies and witches. According to British anthropologist Margaret A. Murray and others, real “little people” gradually became identified with witches. In the 16th and 17th centuries, when fairy beliefs were at their height, fairies and witches were often blended together. Both could cast and break spells, heal people, and divine lost objects and the future. Both danced and sang beneath a full moon...

Some fairies were said to suck human blood like vampires. On the Isle of Man, it was believed that if water was not left out for them, they would suck the blood of the sleepers in the house or bleed them and make a cake with the blood. The fairies would then leave some of the blood cake hidden in the house; it had to be found and given to the sleepers to eat, or they would die of sleeping sickness...

In the early Middle Ages, fairies were said to be visible to all. As time went on, they acquired more and more supernatural powers and became invisible to all but those with second sight. Fairies who were captured by mortals were said to pine away and die quickly if they could not escape. Mortals who visited Fairyland, an enchanted land beneath the ground, discovered that time passes very slowly f...

Like the Fates, fairies love to visit the newborn babies of mortals and will not hesitate to steal those that are unbaptized, or “little pagans,” substituting in their place changelings—wizened fairy children. Fairies particularly desire fair-haired children, to improve their own hairy stock. To protect infants against kidnapping by fairies, an open pair of iron scissors traditionally was hung ove...

Fairies are nocturnal creatures and like to drink, dance and sing. Their music is exquisite. Their color is green, which is also identified with witches. Green clothing perhaps helps them to blend into their forests; some are said to have green skin. They keep many animals, including dogs, cattle, and sheep, which usually are red and white in color, but they do not keep cats or fowl. In Irish folk...

When won over by a mortal, fairies may be very generous with gifts, either material or psychic such as clairvoyance or the ability to heal. Some are evil and malevolent. Many are lascivious and enjoy seducing mortals; some even marry mortals. In general, it is considered bad luck to talk about fairies and their activities. To do so invites a beating from them and the instantaneous disappearance of...