Skid Roche

Fairies by Janet Bord

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

This is a curious little book I picked up as background reading for a writing project I’m working on. I loved it as both pure entertainment and as a folkloric overview, but because it’s presented as alternative science, I found my skeptic buttons going ding-ding-ding… which I probably should expect from reading a book with this title and this cover. But then, I was reading it as folklore, whereas it seems to have been written (and published) as a New Age text.

I am not sure what the author believes — whether she is a fairy believer or merely documenting reported experiences. At no time do independent investigations enter into it, but she does refer to physical evidence and documented cases — like the “fairy shoe” found in 1835 and studied under a microscope at Harvard. Cases like that blow my mind.

The weird thing is that I found that Ms. Bord’s speculations take on the tone of belief when referring to UFOs, but not to fairies… which is downright bizarre in context. The book begins sounding entirely credulous about reports of encounters with the Fairies (mostly from the British Isles). Then in most of the first part of the book, Ms. Bord gives the sense of being somewhat skeptical — as if the silly Irishmen are just having a wee tipple, you know, and seeing what Irishmen see when they get drunk enough. Then, upon reaching the chapter on UFOs, everything is reported as absolute fact, with the speculation being sort of whether UFO visitors are from another planet or another dimension — NOT whether they (or the fairies) have any objective reality. We get choice sentences like, referring to UFO abductees: “It is unlikely that they have really been taken into a spacecraft, however; but it is possible that their captors have taken them temporarily into another world.” Kinda sounds a bit credulous; if her intention is to be even passingly objective, she doesn’t accomplish it.

My complaints, however, do not take away from the fact that I found this an immensely enjoyable and valuable book. Being, personally, of Irish extraction, fey as all fuck, and fond of a wee tipple, I love the bizarre accounts of fairy encounters in Ireland, which Ms. Bord has done a wonderful job of collecting. She leans a bit heavily on Katharine Briggs, but that’s all right, it doesn’t distract from a reasonable breadth that makes for a great read. She might have included more non-western sources of encounters with little people, but since that’s not my personal interest at the moment I didn’t mind it. There are some mentions of African, Asian and South Pacific encounters that will serve as interesting guides to further research.

Short version: Loved it, despite its moderate shortcomings.