5. FAIRIES AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

The belief in fairies, as we have said, is a composite thing. Upon the materials provided by tradition—such as the memory, perhaps, of a prehistoric race—and by ancient religion—such as ideas about the pre-Christian Hades—poetry and fantasy have worked. Tuberculosis, lingering illnesses, inexplicable disappearances, and sudden deaths have all been explained by the intervention of fairies or the "Peaceful People" original: Gente de Paz, a common Gaelic euphemism for fairies. If superstition included nothing more than this, we might consider it a natural result of the imagination dealing with entirely natural facts in the ordinary course of things. But there are elements in the belief that cannot be dismissed so easily. We must ask ourselves whether the abnormal phenomena that have been so frequently discussed, forgotten, and revived do not fall into the general mass of folklore. They appear most notably in two branches of the fairy world: the "Pixies," as they say in Devonshire, who haunt the house, and in supposed examples of "second sight" the alleged ability to perceive future events or entities invisible to others. The first subject is the more obscure, if not the more curious. Let us examine, then, the facts that may have fathered the belief in dwarves and brownies or fairies that frequent houses. It may be argued, on one hand, that these appearances are real facts of nature—the workings of some as-yet unexplained forces—or they may simply be the consequences of some very old traditional method of imposture, vulgar in itself, but still historical. That form of imposture, in turn, may be the work of conscious agents, or performed unconsciously and automatically by persons under the influence of sleepwalking; or finally, the phenomena may be due in various cases to any of these three agents, all of which may possibly be true causes original: verae causae.

In Mr. Kirk’s book Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1691), we encounter "the invisible brownies that haunt houses... throwing large stones, pieces of earth, and wood at the inhabitants," but "doing them no harm." As we have said, Major (1518) calls these spirits "Fauns or Brownies"—that is, goblins—and says they thresh as much grain in one night as twenty men could do, and throw stones in every direction. The legend of their labor was common in Scotland, and a correspondent says that in Devonshire the belief in pixies who put the house in order exists among the grandparents of the current generation. But the playful aspect is more common than the kind nature of the brownies. Throughout history, we find them constantly causing objects to move without visible contact and "acting for fun, like jesters and fools." In his Letters on Demonology (p. 377), Scott gives examples where the jester or fool was detected and confessed that the rattling of dishes and the movements of objects were caused by an apparatus of threads or horsehair. He also cites the famous actions of the "Just Devil of Woodstock" in 1649, which so baffled and alarmed Cromwell’s commissioners.

Scott explains these nuisances with the confessions of Joe Collins of Oxford, "Funny Joe," whom he quotes from Hone’s Every-Day Book, while Hone quotes from the British Magazine of 1747. But the author of the British Magazine gives no references or authorities to vouch for the authenticity of Funny Joe’s confessions, nor even for the existence of Joseph. Scott could not find his original in the pamphlets of the British Museum, and some of the statements attributed to Joe do not agree with the official account and other contemporary documents collected in Sir Walter’s Woodstock. Joe claims, for example, to have been secretary to the Commission under the name of Giles Sharpe; but in the other accounts, the secretary is named Browne. A Royalist Brownie or Poltergeist term: Poltergeist — a German word for a "noisy ghost" known for physical disturbances lies under shrewd suspicion, but Joe’s very existence is unproven and his alleged evidence has no value. However, no person in their right mind can even dream of doubting that many Brownies have existed in flesh and blood, like the Brownie of Bodsbeck in Hogg’s story.

There remain the less explainable accounts of strange and humorous disturbances, accompanied by loud noises, knocks, movement of objects without visible contact, etc. 1

Perhaps we can best examine them by taking modern examples, collected by the Psychical Society The Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 in the first place, and then comparing them with cases recorded in distant eras and remote places. Some curious common characteristics are observed, and the evidence has at least the value of an unintended coincidence. Glanvil,