The Fair Folk do not exist within nature. Though they are not
animistic beings, there are places in mountains and fields where people may
find passageways to their world. These are the remnants of the great
roads from long ago where processions would travel, and sages and seers
would bring their disciples for advanced learning. During the large
festivals, the Fair Folk would visit, and give blessings to the children
and the crops. They would bring empowered objects to the fairs and market
places at that time, and those who had the sight would buy bottles of
healing water, clothing which gave strength and fertility, and seeds that
grew plants with the colors of their world.
Those who could not see did not understand why inexpensive items were
highly priced, and simply thought the disguised Fair Folk were impractical
merchants from far away.
Some of the stories have been carried down in the mythology, fairy tales,
and folklore in books. However, many of the stories were distorted over
time, and the gods have been turned into heroes, cowards, immortal kings,
and local despots. Their divine nature was lost as it was never understood
in the first place, and later Christians changed the stories so that there
would be no competition for their own gods and kings. Their religion was
described as being spread strictly through its own virtues. The military
and economic threats that they made were lost over time.
Nobody wanted to go against the priests of any religion, and they took this
respect and used it against those who followed and respected the Fair Folk
to malign and dominate them. They wanted to close the passageways to the
other worlds, as when they blocked up the holy rivers and sacred wells, and
then rededicated them to their saints. They sat churches and monasteries on
the doorways to the other worlds, and the weight of their hostility sat
heavy upon those who had been the friends and companions of the Fair Folk.
The Fair Folk do not go where they are not wanted, and they left the land
to those who were looking to a religion that would give them the best
supernatural deal.
When the Fair Folk felt unwelcome, they no longer came to visit. The roads
became dusty and full of dead leaves, and the air along the way was no
longer clear and bright and sharp as it once was, and still is today in the
world of the Fair folk.
The older Fair Folk today look at the people on earth as distant relatives
with whom they have lost touch. Long ago the two worlds were in conflict.
Perhaps with the opening of interest in the older traditions, they will
come to be more in harmony.
There was a time when the two worlds shared their arts and music and dance
and drama, and cultural forms could move between one universe and another.
The Fair Folk liked the Greek, Roman, and Celtic arts and festivals, and
some early forms of Christianity were celebratory and non-monastic. But
when the ascetic and power-oriented elements came to dominate, the
tradition became more and more alien to the Fair Folk. They could
appreciate the Renaissance, but not the inquisition and the preoccupation
with Satan after the Black Death (plague).
The Fair Folk never appreciated industrialization, minimalism, and the
emphasis of technology as a substitute for dance and song. They do not
seek to return to the ignorant and savage past. They see the past as a time
of sharing and mischief, for learning about new worlds like China and
India, and the World of the Fair Folk. They were all new and different and
exciting and the worlds were close so an explorer never knew where he would
come out when the mists descended. Now, the ancient
roads to the world of Fair Folk
are seldom traveled but we still find each other today by accident on rainy
mountains in the Irish countryside.
