Week 13: The Fairy Meeting

     It was traditional for this group of friends to gather once a month to drink and talk. They had to be mindful of where they met; after all, they were fairies, and while they were friendly towards humans, they didn’t want anyone coming across them. They changed up the locations where they met, but no matter where they had the same ritual. They’d conjure up mushrooms to sit on, and have lively discussions while drinking.

     Tonight, the topic fell on humans who couldn’t keep quiet. The fairies had plenty of stories about that, of course.

     “Remember that one old fart we found asleep on the ground?” groused one fairy. “We took him back to the palace, showed him around, then when he fell asleep again we took him back to the same spot and left him enough gold for the rest of his life! And what did he do? Told his wife the instant he got home! I tell you, I don’t think we should give gold anymore. It would be quicker just to give the humans the cockle-shells first!”

     “Oh now, some of them aren’t so bad,” said another. “Remember that little boy I told you about? I left him a sixpence under a stone in the wall every day, and he never told a soul willingly. His dad threatened him, that’s the only reason he told. And I think he likes the shells anyway; he still takes them.”

     The first fairy gave a snort. “That just means this starts early, when they’re young. I still say humans can’t be trusted.” The fairy took another swig of their drink.

     “What about that mother with the child?” piped up a third fairy. “Remember? We’d visit her at night to sing and dance, and left her some money for her trouble. Then she got married and had a baby, and told her husband all about us one night!” 

     The first fairy nodded vigorously. “My point exactly! I mean, we had to change the baby to set a warning, otherwise humans will do whatever they want. Not that the warnings seem to mean much. Humans still talk!”

     “Oh, it’s in their nature to talk,” said a fifth fairy. “And there are some who keep quiet, rare as they may seem. They just don’t make it known, of course. Let’s not give up totally on humans.”

     At this point, it was getting time for them to wrap up their meeting. Everyone gathered their things and left, some on foot, some in the air, and some on the backs of corgis. All that was left was a ring of mushrooms.

Source

Reading Notes: Welsh Fairy Tales, Part B

For this week, I decided I like to read more of the short stories about fairies, from Welsh Fairy-Tales and Other Stories, by Peter H. Emerson.

Reading Notes: Robert Roberts and the Fairies

• Robert Roberts was a hard-working carpenter who could never resist talking.
• One day, a little man came up to him and told him to dig under a certain tree, and he would be rewarded.
• Robert Roberts did, and found a box of gold; he visited twice more, and found a box each time.
• However, as he grew rich he started to boast about his “mysterious friends,” and eventually he confessed it was fairies that were giving him the gold.
• The next time he went to the tree, which was located near a hill, rocks came rolling down and barely missed him.
• Robert Roberts ran from the tree and never went near it again.

Reading Notes: Ellen’s Luck

• Ellen, a good and pretty girl, was walking in her town on a Sunday when she passed an open gutter and saw a copper coin laying there.
• After that, every Sunday she found a copper in the same gutter; Ellen would hoard her money.
• One day, her mother found the coins, and Ellen told her where she got them.
• After that, Ellen never found another copper, no matter when she walked past the gutter.

Reading Notes: The Fairies’ Mint

• A miller noticed one day that something was off in the mill; he felt that someone was working in his mill in the night. 
• He and a friend decided to investigate one night.
• They went to the mill near midnight, and were surprised to see that it was clearly running. 
• The miller crept to a window and saw little men operating the mill; while he couldn’t see what they put into the millstones, what was coming out was not flour, but coins.
• The miller immediately unlocked the door and ran in, and the lights went out suddenly, and there were sounds of people running. 
• When the lights came back on, the mill was empty, except for the cocker-shells lying all over the place.
• After that, the miller left the fairies alone to mill their coins, even when many people reported seeing the mill operating at midnight.

Apparently corgis were how Welsh fairies preferred to travel. (Source)

Reading Notes: Welsh Tales, Part A

To kick off this week’s reading, we have three short stories about welsh fairies from the Welsh Fairy-Tales and Other Stories, by Peter H. Emerson. These all have the common theme of why you don’t talk about the nice things fairies do for you.

Reading Notes: The Old Man and the Fairies

• Back when one could see fairies dancing in the Welsh mountains, an old man who was traveling back from the fairs fell asleep in a small valley, dropping his bag by his side.
• When he was soundly asleep, some fairies came along and carried both him and his bag under the Earth.
• When the old man awoke, he found himself in a gold palace surrounding by dancing and singing fairies; the fairies showed him around the palace and danced around him until he fell asleep again.
• When he was back asleep, the fairies took him back to the same valley, so when he woke up he thought he had dreamt the whole thing.
• However, when the man tried to lift his bag, he could hardly move it, because it was full of gold.
• He eventually managed to pick it up, and he went home to his wife.
• When he got home, he put the gold in a box under their bed; his wife nagged him incessantly about where he got the gold, until he finally told her.
• The next morning, when he opened the box, instead of gold he found the box to be full of cockle-shells.

Reading Notes: Tommy Pritchard

• On his way to school, Tommy Pritchard thought he heard someone singing on the other side of a stone wall; when he investigated, he moved a stone and found a sixpence underneath it.
• After that, every morning on his way to school Tommy would look under the same stone, and every day he would find a sixpence.
• Eventually his father noticed that Tommy always had money, and worried that Tommy was stealing from someone. 
• Tommy refused at first to tell his father where the money came from, but relented after his father threatened to beat him.
• After that, Tommy always found cockle-shells in the place where he had once found the sixpence.

Reading Notes: Kaddy’s Luck

• A tall young woman was constantly visited by fairies in the night; the fairies would sneak through the keyhole into her room, and while she could hear them dancing and singing around, she never saw them, just the small amount of money they left her each time.
• Eventually the woman married a tall young man, and they had a big child.
• One night, they went to a fair, and went to one side of the fair to listen for the fairies coming.
• While they waited, the woman told her husband about how the fairies used to visit her and leave her some money.
• When they got home, everything with their baby seemed normal, so they went to bed.
• But the next morning, the mother found that her baby was now very small, and the child never grew very big, for the fairies had changed the baby out of spite.

The cockleshells the characters from the first two stories found (Source)