Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies - 500 AD to the Present
Ceri Houlbrook & Simon Young (Ed.)Today British and Irish fairy-interest has recovered its old luster, and gathered here is the latest learning from leading folklorists and historians. A tidal-wave of new fairy sightings has been uncovered by the digitization of British and Irish newspapers and ephemera. There are fairy sightings in urbanized locations and remote rural areas; characters and means to ward off evil fairies vary radically from place to place. In Sussex, there is the helpful ‘Master Dobbs’ or Dobby, while in Ireland fairies may be the dead, and Scotland harbors the terrifying Who pity Stories. In addition, Magical Folk includes findings from The Fairy Census, the first scholarly survey of modern fairy sightings in Britain and Ireland, demonstrating that the connection with the past continues unbroken. Another new discovery is that fairies travelled across the Atlantic well before Tinker Bell made it onto the silver screen. The most homesick fairies may have been the ones who dunked one Roderick repeatedly in the Atlantic Ocean as they dragged him to Ireland and back to his Canadian home!