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Spend Some Time with Fairies · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
0:13
Speaker 2: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry who's just
0:16
Speaker 2: flitting around us, sprinkling us with fairy dust so we
0:20
Speaker 2: can fly around with their fear and of course all
0:23
Speaker 2: that makes this stuff.
0:24
Speaker 1: You should know. That's right, a fairy petition.
0:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited about this one. I asked for this.
0:32
Speaker 2: I think fairies are cool, and we're going to talk
0:35
Speaker 2: about them because I realized I had a very limited
0:40
Speaker 2: understanding of what fairies are, what qualifies as fairies, where
0:44
Speaker 2: they came from, what they can do, what they do do,
0:48
Speaker 2: all that stuff. So we're going to get into it. Chuck,
0:50
Speaker 2: when we talk today about fairies.
0:53
Speaker 3: That's right, and I think it can be summed up
0:56
Speaker 3: best by saying, fairies have existed in many forms in
1:00
Speaker 3: lore throughout parts of Europe for a long long time.
1:05
Speaker 3: And sometimes they're good fairies, sometimes they're bad fairies, sometimes
1:09
Speaker 3: they're evil, sometimes they're fun.
1:12
Speaker 2: There you go, that's all you need to know.
1:14
Speaker 3: And now we're gonna talk about all of that over
1:17
Speaker 3: and over for the next forty minutes.
1:19
Speaker 2: Well, what's really weird that The first thing I didn't
1:22
Speaker 2: know is that fairies as we understand them today are
1:25
Speaker 2: relatively recent concepts. And that because, like you said, they
1:29
Speaker 2: pop up in lore all over the place at different times,
1:34
Speaker 2: going back a very long time. There's it's not like
1:38
Speaker 2: some groups said, hey, these are what fairies are and
1:41
Speaker 2: it just spread. Instead, groups around Europe in particular, came
1:47
Speaker 2: up with these concepts of things that had fairy traits,
1:51
Speaker 2: but they didn't they didn't put the whole thing together
1:55
Speaker 2: as fairies until much later. So no one can really
1:58
Speaker 2: agree on what exactly a definition of fairies are, aside
2:04
Speaker 2: from something that they're kind of human like usually and
2:09
Speaker 2: they're associated with magical powers some way or another.
2:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, because if you tried to do that, it would
2:15
Speaker 3: be like, well, here are Irish fairies from this period
2:18
Speaker 3: and they're like this, and here are Scottish fairies from
2:20
Speaker 3: this period and they're like this, and these come from
2:22
Speaker 3: Scandinavia in this period and they're completely different, and here's
2:26
Speaker 3: their stories, which is what folklore is. It's different everywhere.
2:31
Speaker 3: The actual word fairy is much more recent than the
2:36
Speaker 3: lore of the fairy. It didn't come around in the
2:39
Speaker 3: language until late medieval period, but the law of fairy
2:44
Speaker 3: goes back much, much, much further, and from the beginning.
2:48
Speaker 3: I guess we need to talk a little bit about
2:50
Speaker 3: elves because they are sort of in lockstep with fairies
2:55
Speaker 3: in that lore in a way. One way is that
3:00
Speaker 3: elves were not you know, the kind of fun, lovely elves.
3:04
Speaker 3: They're not making cookies in a tree back in the
3:06
Speaker 3: early days. They were usually associated in the early days
3:10
Speaker 3: with illness, with rash, with health problems. If your cows
3:15
Speaker 3: all died, it could have been the work of elves.
3:19
Speaker 1: Kind of an impy kind of creature.
3:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that demonstrates like the idea that they brought, say,
3:26
Speaker 2: disease or illness, especially mysterious suddenly on setting disease or illness,
3:32
Speaker 2: like that's associated with fairies or elves in this case,
3:37
Speaker 2: and that also pops up in other places too. But
3:39
Speaker 2: they just didn't call them elves. They called them other things.
3:42
Speaker 2: But you just kind of see some like underpinnings of
3:45
Speaker 2: things that came to be part of fairy lore. And
3:48
Speaker 2: eventually they were like, all this stuff is so different,
3:51
Speaker 2: We're just gonna have to chop the fairies up. Into
3:53
Speaker 2: different camps and categories, which they eventually did. We'll talk
3:57
Speaker 2: about that later, but one of the one of the
4:00
Speaker 2: things that they figured out, there's a guy named Ronald
4:03
Speaker 2: Hutton who as a folklore scholar from the Anglo Saxon period.
4:09
Speaker 2: He didn't live in that time, that's his his focus,
4:13
Speaker 2: I guess, And he said, there's like clues here there
4:17
Speaker 2: because nobody sat down for at the very earliest periods
4:21
Speaker 2: and said, here's what fairies are. Future historian, go tell
4:24
Speaker 2: everybody about it. They just pop up here there, and
4:27
Speaker 2: they seem to pop up not just in folklore but
4:29
Speaker 2: in actual like scholarly works from the early medieval period
4:33
Speaker 2: where people are like, oh, yeah, this guy ran into
4:36
Speaker 2: a fairy and here's his story.
4:38
Speaker 1: That's right, he did.
4:40
Speaker 3: You know, if you look at the name as far
4:41
Speaker 3: as like elves always being like empish or bad or monstrous,
4:44
Speaker 3: even that's not necessarily true because there is a name
4:48
Speaker 3: ae l f w I ny I guess would that
4:52
Speaker 3: be pronounced elf line off line?
4:56
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so that's a great band name.
4:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, not too bad. Ex it's an Anglo Saxon name,
5:01
Speaker 3: but it means elf friend. So that's an indication that
5:04
Speaker 3: you know, there were friendly elves and this came from
5:07
Speaker 3: Ronald Hutton. And when Ronald Hutton talks.
5:09
Speaker 1: People listen, Wow a joke for our genexen boomer friends.
5:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people say, well, okay,
5:19
Speaker 2: what would make the most sense is that elves, fairies,
5:23
Speaker 2: these kind of like supernatural creatures that live in close
5:25
Speaker 2: proximity and interact sometimes with humans, probably came from the
5:30
Speaker 2: early gods and the early nature spirits, and it wasn't
5:34
Speaker 2: until Christianity came along that they were kind of wiped
5:37
Speaker 2: out or demonized, literally demonized, and in Ireland in particular,
5:43
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, they're actually related to one of the
5:46
Speaker 2: last native indigenous magic using people who lived in Ireland
5:53
Speaker 2: before the modern Irish people like us alive today came along,
5:57
Speaker 2: in particular the Tua dey Donna. They were like, again,
6:02
Speaker 2: like a magic using people. They were people of the
6:05
Speaker 2: goddess Danu, who was also known as the Morrigan. And
6:10
Speaker 2: they said, okay, this is what elves and fairies evolved
6:13
Speaker 2: into from this group, this magic using group, as humans
6:17
Speaker 2: kind of came in and pushed them out into the
6:19
Speaker 2: rural areas.
6:20
Speaker 3: Did you just feel the entirety of our d and
6:23
Speaker 3: d audience stirring in their seat when you said magic user.
6:28
Speaker 2: And you get this one too cleric, They're.
6:31
Speaker 1: All like, what did he just Did you just say
6:33
Speaker 1: magic users?
6:34
Speaker 2: Did he say fighter instead of night?
6:36
Speaker 3: So those irish elves, like you said, descended from them
6:40
Speaker 3: and lived on in fairy forts or fairy mounds, these
6:45
Speaker 3: sort of raised structures. If you are an archaeologist, you
6:48
Speaker 3: will say, actually, those are not for fairies. They were
6:52
Speaker 3: where ancient humans lived. But that notion persists, the magical
6:58
Speaker 3: notion persists such today that still in some places you
7:02
Speaker 3: cannot build roads where there are these places because not
7:06
Speaker 3: of the fact that ancient humans might be buried there,
7:09
Speaker 3: but because of the supernatural menace that might befall you
7:12
Speaker 3: if you disturb it.
7:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I saw that archaeologists are like, great, for
7:16
Speaker 2: whatever reason we're preserving these archeological sites. That's fantastic. But yeah,
7:21
Speaker 2: the most recent I could find was there was a
7:23
Speaker 2: highway being built in County Claire in nineteen ninety nine
7:27
Speaker 2: and they were gonna they were gonna basically tear up
7:30
Speaker 2: a ferry bush, and people were like, you do not
7:32
Speaker 2: want to do that, and they actually built. They moved
7:35
Speaker 2: the road over so they didn't remove this ferry bush.
7:38
Speaker 2: This is almost in the twenty first century that they
7:41
Speaker 2: did this, you know. So there is this idea of
7:44
Speaker 2: you know, fairies do exist to some degree, the people
7:48
Speaker 2: believe in it. And it's not just from this ancient
7:52
Speaker 2: folkal or tradition. It actually was revived in the early
7:55
Speaker 2: twentieth century in Ireland became part of like nationalist pride,
7:59
Speaker 2: which is why it survives in such strength today as
8:02
Speaker 2: we'll see.
8:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, and was not you know, kind of Concurrently, while
8:05
Speaker 3: this was happening in Northern Europe, the British Isles like Scandinavia,
8:09
Speaker 3: Germany and the British Isles mainly, it was also at
8:13
Speaker 3: the same time coming out of classic Greek and Roman stories.
8:19
Speaker 3: Basically this is where the sort of the human appearing
8:25
Speaker 3: fairy kind of comes more into play. That lived these
8:27
Speaker 3: very lavish lifestyles. They had kings and queens stuff like that.
8:32
Speaker 3: Not necessarily saying they were human, because sometimes they were
8:35
Speaker 3: sometimes they were not, but they seem to always have
8:38
Speaker 3: some sort of connection to magic in some.
8:41
Speaker 2: Way, right, yes, and.
8:43
Speaker 3: Didn't like people, didn't like like real regular humans or
8:46
Speaker 3: at least didn't trust them.
8:47
Speaker 2: Right, And it's from this belief in nymphs and satyrs. Again,
8:51
Speaker 2: these are like wood dwelling sprites, magical people. They bear
8:57
Speaker 2: a really strong resemblance to elves and the British Isles.
9:00
Speaker 2: But again, these things evolved in an isolated manner. I think,
9:06
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the Romans did make it all
9:08
Speaker 2: the way to Britain, so I guess it's possible they
9:11
Speaker 2: brought the ideas of nymphs and satyrs with them, but
9:13
Speaker 2: I don't know. I definitely have the impression that this
9:15
Speaker 2: stuff evolved from the Celts independently. So, but the name
9:21
Speaker 2: fairy actually comes from the Roman mythology of the fates
9:27
Speaker 2: fairy well, fates led to fairy in English fay and fairy,
9:31
Speaker 2: fae and fae r i e. Were magical or uncanny.
9:37
Speaker 2: There was an adjective that described that, and in fact,
9:40
Speaker 2: if you came down with sudden illness you were considered
9:43
Speaker 2: to be fay struck or fairy struck. And get this, Chuck,
9:47
Speaker 2: I saw that the word stroke today for becoming suddenly paralyzed,
9:53
Speaker 2: comes from elf stroke, which was what they used to
9:57
Speaker 2: call it in the medieval era when somebody suddenly had
10:01
Speaker 2: a stroke. That's what the that's what it came from.
10:03
Speaker 2: You were stricken by elves, you were ELFs.
10:05
Speaker 1: Stroke el Strokes another good band name.
10:09
Speaker 2: I think that that's alf Wind's debut album.
10:13
Speaker 3: Did you know that actor Aubrey Plaza had a stroke
10:16
Speaker 3: when she was twenty years old?
10:18
Speaker 2: No? I didn't. Wow, she's solely recovered. Huh oh.
10:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I think it had been out before,
10:24
Speaker 3: but she recently was on I think Howard Stern and
10:27
Speaker 3: talked about it, like in depth. Not maybe not for
10:30
Speaker 3: the first time, but I think it it's been amplified recently.
10:33
Speaker 3: But yeah, very scary.
10:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I'm sure, man. I think it's scary at
10:37
Speaker 2: any age, but especially when you're younger too, you know.
10:40
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, all right, So we're in the twelfth century now,
10:44
Speaker 3: Aubrey Plaza's won't be around for a long long time.
10:48
Speaker 3: There were a lot of traditions by this point firmly
10:51
Speaker 3: established about these again human looking or at least human shaped,
10:54
Speaker 3: little supernatural creatures. Sometimes they you know, they weren't angels
10:58
Speaker 3: or devils. They kind of danced in between sometimes depending
11:01
Speaker 3: on the lore and the story, and they lived in
11:05
Speaker 3: a human like society sort of parallel to us, and
11:08
Speaker 3: were a lot like us.
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Speaker 1: They lived a lot longer. It's now occurring to me
11:13
Speaker 1: that Ruby and I a few.
11:16
Speaker 3: Years ago read a whole fairy series of books that
11:19
Speaker 3: was kind of fun about these children who find these
11:21
Speaker 3: fairies and go to their magical land. And it's very
11:24
Speaker 3: now that I know this stuff. It's very much based
11:29
Speaker 3: on all this sort of traditional lore.
11:32
Speaker 2: Is it. But was it positive or were those kids
11:34
Speaker 2: in danger?
11:35
Speaker 1: Well, they were a little bit of both. The kids
11:37
Speaker 1: weren't in danger.
11:38
Speaker 3: It was kind of like a Narnia thing, like once
11:40
Speaker 3: they went in there, there was like kind of good
11:41
Speaker 3: and evil to combat, gotcha.
11:43
Speaker 2: So yeah, that definitely does follow in the tradition of
11:47
Speaker 2: how there was a duality among fairies, and it wasn't
11:50
Speaker 2: even necessarily like in this world, these fairies are good
11:53
Speaker 2: and these are bad, although some some cultures did separate
11:58
Speaker 2: them like that, but it could just be different folk
12:01
Speaker 2: beliefs that the same fairies, depending on where you encountered them,
12:07
Speaker 2: how you treated them, how you spoke around them, could
12:10
Speaker 2: go from good to evil, and it just like the
12:14
Speaker 2: flip of a switch.
12:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did this in these books too.
12:17
Speaker 2: Actually okay, great.
12:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
12:19
Speaker 2: A good example to me, Chuck of how just randomly
12:22
Speaker 2: different fairies can be. What can be considered a fairy
12:26
Speaker 2: is Merlin from the Arthurian Legends, Like he's considered a fairy.
12:33
Speaker 2: His dad was either a demon or a fairy, and
12:36
Speaker 2: Merlin was at least half fairy, which would explain his
12:39
Speaker 2: sorcery skills. And then Morgan le Fay was also part
12:44
Speaker 2: of the Arthurian Legends, and they think that she is
12:48
Speaker 2: descended or based on the Irish Morgana that we talked about.
12:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
12:54
Speaker 3: One of the kind of maybe surprising things to learn
12:57
Speaker 3: is that at the time, if you were a in
13:00
Speaker 3: medieval times.
13:01
Speaker 2: You.
13:04
Speaker 3: May write it as a like this is a real
13:07
Speaker 3: natural phenomenon that we just don't haven't studied yet and
13:10
Speaker 3: don't fully understand yet. Like it's looked upon as lore
13:14
Speaker 3: all these years later, but at the time a lot
13:16
Speaker 3: of this stuff was kind of put out in historical
13:19
Speaker 3: accounts of the day, even not just like folklore books
13:22
Speaker 3: and stuff, as like, hey, this is the thing and
13:24
Speaker 3: we just don't understand it yet.
13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very Fordian in nature, you know.
13:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
13:30
Speaker 2: And then kind of wrapping up the medieval era. In
13:34
Speaker 2: the thirteenth century, Christianity stepped up and said, no, these
13:39
Speaker 2: fairies you're talking about, they are mentioned nowhere in the Bible,
13:43
Speaker 2: so therefore they're evil, they're devils, they're in disguise, they're
13:47
Speaker 2: meant to lead you astray. Stop talking about fairies. And
13:51
Speaker 2: if you know a fairy, stop talking to that fairy.
13:54
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to be friends with them any longer.
13:57
Speaker 2: That's right, And it led to a great schism among
14:00
Speaker 2: some really wonderful fairy human friendships. But eventually it recovered.
14:05
Speaker 2: And when we come back, we'll pick up starting around
14:07
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century when things really got hot again.
14:37
Speaker 3: All right, here we go with that two everybody fairies
14:41
Speaker 3: true story. We're in the nineteenth century. Now, we're jumping
14:45
Speaker 3: ahead a little bit. We'll probably jump back as well.
14:49
Speaker 1: That's right.
14:49
Speaker 3: But interest in the traditions I think you mentioned earlier,
14:53
Speaker 3: like these sort of old traditions are being revived because
14:56
Speaker 3: of national pride. All this old folklore is kind of
14:58
Speaker 3: coming back. Of course, central to a lot of these
15:03
Speaker 3: stories were the brothers Grim Jakopp and Wilhelm, who we
15:08
Speaker 3: did I think a two parter on the Grim brothers
15:13
Speaker 3: didn't we Yeah.
15:14
Speaker 2: We did one on the fairy Tales, and I can't
15:17
Speaker 2: yeah or the other one I guess.
15:18
Speaker 3: It was, I think, yeah, just on the Grim Brothers themselves.
15:21
Speaker 3: So those are from a while ago, but those are
15:22
Speaker 3: good if you want to check those out. But if
15:24
Speaker 3: you look at their eighteen twelve collection, this is I
15:28
Speaker 3: believe before that they were telling sort of oral stories
15:33
Speaker 3: and before they put them into like real literary works
15:36
Speaker 3: that had a lot more religion and a lot less
15:38
Speaker 3: of the sexy stuff. A lot of these were like
15:41
Speaker 3: really really violent tales and feature you know, things, you know,
15:46
Speaker 3: like little folks living inside of a mountain, magical creatures,
15:50
Speaker 3: helpful elve sometimes but also really awful like violence and
15:54
Speaker 3: stuff like that, which of course fairies were a part of.
15:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fact that they're called fairy tales demonstrates
16:00
Speaker 2: what I was talking about earlier, that fairy was an
16:02
Speaker 2: adjective for anything magical or uncanny, so it encompassed all
16:07
Speaker 2: sorts of magical stuff, not just flying little humans or
16:12
Speaker 2: imps that tried to trick you into stuff.
16:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this stuff is growing via previous folklore obviously,
16:20
Speaker 3: but now like real literary works are starting to write
16:23
Speaker 3: about this stuff more and more in the nineteenth century.
16:26
Speaker 2: Right, so people are, like you said, they're starting to
16:29
Speaker 2: have kind of a response or reaction to modernization. And
16:32
Speaker 2: there one of the first responses was to kind of
16:35
Speaker 2: try to preserve the original traditional folklore. And it wasn't
16:39
Speaker 2: just the Grims that did that. There was a novelist
16:41
Speaker 2: named Anna Eliza Bray and she collected folk stories from
16:46
Speaker 2: her native Devonshire, England, and she published them in eighteen
16:50
Speaker 2: forty four. And what she found by going out in
16:52
Speaker 2: the countryside and interviewing the rural people there is that
16:56
Speaker 2: basically everybody believed in Pixie's fairy, that kind of thing.
17:01
Speaker 2: They were just part of the fabric of life, and
17:04
Speaker 2: in particular, the people of Devonshire associated them with the
17:08
Speaker 2: souls of unbaptized babies who didn't go on because they
17:14
Speaker 2: hadn't been baptized, but they didn't go to Hell or
17:16
Speaker 2: anything like that. They just turned into fairies, which is
17:18
Speaker 2: a pretty pleasant thing to think totally.
17:22
Speaker 1: I love it.
17:23
Speaker 3: Also, late in the nineteenth century, none other than William
17:26
Speaker 3: Butler Yates published I don't know if it was the
17:29
Speaker 3: first one, but maybe one of the first big guide
17:32
Speaker 3: books almost about fairies. It was called Fairy and Folk
17:36
Speaker 3: Tales of the Irish Peasantry, published in eighteen eighty eight,
17:40
Speaker 3: and you know, retold popular stories, reprinted some stories. It
17:44
Speaker 3: sounds like a pretty easy gig if you asked me
17:47
Speaker 3: for Yates.
17:48
Speaker 2: Well, you know what that reminds me of, Chuck is
17:50
Speaker 2: do you remember that big coffee table gnome book from
17:53
Speaker 2: the seventies.
17:55
Speaker 1: M like garden Homes.
17:57
Speaker 2: Yes, it was an illustrated guide to gnomes and how
18:00
Speaker 2: they lived and where they lived.
18:02
Speaker 3: It was I don't remember that. I bet I would
18:05
Speaker 3: recognize it if you like showed me that. I know
18:08
Speaker 3: we did not own that, but it was probably in
18:10
Speaker 3: a lot of coffee tables.
18:11
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'll buy it and then bring it over
18:13
Speaker 2: to you and so you we'll sit on the couch
18:15
Speaker 2: and go through it together. Okay, Oh that sounds nice.
18:18
Speaker 2: So okay, So, like you said, W. B. Yates created
18:21
Speaker 2: this guide book to the Irish fairies, and it actually
18:24
Speaker 2: became like kind of one of the authoritative homes on
18:28
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And one of the things that I
18:32
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier I think is really important. I didn't realize this,
18:34
Speaker 2: but in the British Isles, in Ireland and Cornwall and
18:38
Speaker 2: Wales and the Scottish Highlands. They as in the nineteenth
18:43
Speaker 2: centuries it kind of wore on. They really grabbed on
18:46
Speaker 2: to that tradition, that folklore of fairies and just absorbed
18:50
Speaker 2: it into their modernizing national belief and pride. I had
18:56
Speaker 2: no idea about that, but it certainly does explain why
19:00
Speaker 2: still this at least kind of a winking belief in
19:03
Speaker 2: fairies in the area still too, which I think is great.
19:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, cool to rediscover those old traditions nuts too, specifically
19:11
Speaker 3: like thumbier nose it, you know, the modernization of science
19:15
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
19:15
Speaker 2: But any way, in America, I'm kind of jealous because
19:19
Speaker 2: in America we don't have fairies. We just have like baseball.
19:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, baseball's pretty great there, it is, but it's
19:25
Speaker 3: no fairies.
19:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
19:28
Speaker 3: Also, in eighteenth century literature was when we first saw
19:35
Speaker 3: wings on these things. I don't think we mentioned yet
19:37
Speaker 3: that up until this point these were not sort of
19:39
Speaker 3: the tinker bells that you might picture flying around when
19:41
Speaker 3: you think of fairies with their little flitty wings. That
19:44
Speaker 3: happened in the early eighteenth century in literature a little bit,
19:48
Speaker 3: but really the Victorian period is where we get this
19:51
Speaker 3: idea of these sort of tiny little insect like things
19:56
Speaker 3: usually looking like women, or at least shaped like women,
19:59
Speaker 3: and that more commonplaces what you think of as fairies
20:02
Speaker 3: is the Victorian era.
20:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the wings are typically done like kind of
20:07
Speaker 2: like a really beautiful, colorful, translucent butterflies wings. I've also
20:12
Speaker 2: seen that they are sometimes depicted with bird wings or
20:16
Speaker 2: bat wings, which I didn't like that last one. One
20:20
Speaker 2: of the guys who really kind of advanced our modern
20:23
Speaker 2: conception of fairies is, you know, little beautiful humans with
20:26
Speaker 2: wings was a painter named John Anster Fitzgerald, and his
20:31
Speaker 2: paintings are just a joy to look upon. My favorite
20:34
Speaker 2: so far is Rabbit and Fairies, and I mean it
20:38
Speaker 2: does what's on the label. It's a rabbit surrounded by
20:40
Speaker 2: fairies in this cute little grassy area and it's just
20:45
Speaker 2: heartwarming stuff. It's like looking at old care bears images.
20:52
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm looking at that now. Is that a
20:54
Speaker 1: great point? I mean, it's beyond the whimsy of it.
20:58
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, very very lovely, but not expected like bright colors.
21:03
Speaker 1: It's very beige.
21:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let's not overlook that whimsy because it is important.
21:10
Speaker 3: No, it for sure is because these are fairies, after all,
21:14
Speaker 3: not all art depicted them depicted them like that, though
21:17
Speaker 3: it wasn't always these beautiful things, or at least that
21:20
Speaker 3: wasn't the reason behind it. Because there's a little something
21:23
Speaker 3: in the art world back then called the fairy loophole,
21:27
Speaker 3: and that is, if you lived in a place at
21:29
Speaker 3: the time that had pretty bad censorship for butts and
21:35
Speaker 3: breasts and paintings, a little workaround was to just paint
21:39
Speaker 3: it as a fairy because they were usually not clothed
21:42
Speaker 3: at that point, and so you could say, hey, sensor,
21:45
Speaker 3: you can't say anything. There's a fairy that's not a woman.
21:48
Speaker 2: See the wings, dummy beat it. This is actually what
21:53
Speaker 2: inspired me to do this episode on Fairies, Chuck. There
21:56
Speaker 2: was a buzz it great.
21:58
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, why, I just wonder where that came from.
22:01
Speaker 3: And now it all makes sense. We should have just
22:02
Speaker 3: done this one as.
22:03
Speaker 2: A short stuff. So we're going to do a short
22:07
Speaker 2: stuff within a larger episode right here, right now, we're
22:10
Speaker 2: going to great talk about the Cottingly Fairies hoax, which
22:12
Speaker 2: was arguably the greatest fairy hoax of all time.
22:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was in nineteen seventeen. Photography was a thing
22:21
Speaker 3: at the time, and there was a sixteen year old
22:23
Speaker 3: named Elsie Wright and her nine year old cousin, Francis Griffiths. Griffiths,
22:28
Speaker 3: that's a tough one. And I even have teeth who said, hey,
22:32
Speaker 3: we photographed some fairies by the stream near our home
22:35
Speaker 3: in Cottingley, England.
22:37
Speaker 1: Everybody look, look.
22:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this was a time we did an
22:41
Speaker 2: episode on spiritualism and we talked about how it was
22:44
Speaker 2: a big response to so much death during the Civil War,
22:47
Speaker 2: the in World War One. And I think Elsie's mom, Polly,
22:53
Speaker 2: was into the spiritual movement and she took these pictures
22:56
Speaker 2: to the Theosophical Society, which is also intoitulism at the times,
23:00
Speaker 2: said look at what my daughter captured. Here's some fairies
23:04
Speaker 2: in photos. And everybody just went wild, like they just
23:08
Speaker 2: like if something can go viral in nineteen seventeen is
23:12
Speaker 2: what happened with these photos. They were spectacular photos of
23:16
Speaker 2: Elsie or Francis interacting with these beautiful little winged fairies
23:21
Speaker 2: flitting around in the air around them.
23:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had seen these somewhere. I don't know if
23:26
Speaker 3: you sent these to me or if I just came
23:27
Speaker 3: across them at some.
23:28
Speaker 1: Point in my path.
23:28
Speaker 3: Pretty famous, no, well yes, but also just like great
23:34
Speaker 3: and like super cool that this sixteen year old and
23:37
Speaker 3: nine year old pulled this hoax over because it looks
23:41
Speaker 3: pretty darn good for the time. What they did was
23:44
Speaker 3: they copied images from a children's book and cut them out,
23:50
Speaker 3: added wings to them, and then use hairpins to hold
23:53
Speaker 3: that paper up and took pictures.
23:55
Speaker 1: And I think it probably helps it.
23:56
Speaker 3: It was nineteen seventeen style photography, but.
24:00
Speaker 1: Pretty fun, little tricky thing to do for these two
24:02
Speaker 1: young girls.
24:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were like they you know, they didn't
24:06
Speaker 2: mean for this thing to become like a national phenomenon.
24:09
Speaker 2: But I think one of them later said, I think
24:11
Speaker 2: it was Francis, who's like, you could see the happins
24:14
Speaker 2: in the picture if you look closely enough. And yet
24:17
Speaker 2: that didn't matter, because the adults who were into spiritualism
24:21
Speaker 2: wanted so badly for some evidence that the supernatural existed.
24:26
Speaker 2: Some any fairy pictures will do that, they just bought
24:30
Speaker 2: the whole thing, hook line and sinker. And in fact,
24:32
Speaker 2: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, he got
24:36
Speaker 2: into spiritualism toward the end of his life, and because
24:39
Speaker 2: he was just such a trusted authority on things like
24:42
Speaker 2: mysteries and rationalism and all that stuff, he wrote a
24:46
Speaker 2: paper and when the paper was released, he was saying, essentially,
24:50
Speaker 2: this is real. I consulted a photography expert and the
24:53
Speaker 2: expert said, these pictures show whatever was in front of
24:56
Speaker 2: the camera when the photo was taken. They haven't been doctored,
25:00
Speaker 2: and it is true.
25:00
Speaker 1: The guy was right, no, no, that's true.
25:02
Speaker 2: But he was saying, like, they haven't been doctored, they
25:04
Speaker 2: haven't been messed with, like this is a real picture
25:07
Speaker 2: of what you're seeing. And Conan Doyle said, okay, they're fairies.
25:11
Speaker 2: This guy proved it. These are real deal things, and
25:14
Speaker 2: not everybody believed it. I think there was a headline
25:17
Speaker 2: in one of the London papers when Doyle released his
25:21
Speaker 2: article that said, has Conan Doyle gone mad? Like it
25:27
Speaker 2: was not necessarily well received by everybody, but in the
25:31
Speaker 2: spiritualist movement it was like we approof finally.
25:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
25:35
Speaker 3: I wonder if the last line of that article said,
25:37
Speaker 3: perhaps as best if he just sticks to Sherlock, he.
25:40
Speaker 2: Stays in his Sherlock lane, and that was the first
25:44
Speaker 2: instance of people using the word lane like that in
25:47
Speaker 2: a smarmy way. So I want to say also, Francis
25:51
Speaker 2: and Elsie were from what I can tell, Elsie went
25:53
Speaker 2: to her grave never admitting it was a hoax, really,
25:56
Speaker 2: because Francis did admit it until nineteen eighty three.
26:00
Speaker 1: Oh jeez.
26:00
Speaker 2: And she was saying like she didn't feel bad because
26:03
Speaker 2: obviously the adults wanted to believe this very obvious hoax,
26:06
Speaker 2: So you know, more power to them. I don't think
26:09
Speaker 2: said the last part. I'm paraphrasing.
26:12
Speaker 3: She said of men without hats concert, they're all dancing
26:15
Speaker 3: the safety dancer.
26:16
Speaker 2: She was like, hey, guess what that has something to
26:19
Speaker 2: get off my chest?
26:23
Speaker 1: There be good.
26:25
Speaker 3: So nineteen fifty seven there comes another paper from a
26:28
Speaker 3: folkloress named Catherine Mary Briggs who did another sort of
26:35
Speaker 3: categorization of fairies that involved what is this one, two, three, four, five, six,
26:43
Speaker 3: I guess seven categories, and we're going to go over
26:46
Speaker 3: those quickly here. The first is heroic trooping fairies. These
26:51
Speaker 3: are the kinds I was talking about. There were a
26:52
Speaker 3: little more aristocratic that had the king and the queen.
26:55
Speaker 3: Not to be confused with the second grouping homely trooping fairies,
27:00
Speaker 3: which were you know, kind of farm dwellers who can
27:03
Speaker 3: maybe change in size, who might reward a human for help,
27:07
Speaker 3: who might punish a human for not helping or being unkind,
27:11
Speaker 3: and might even steal from humans.
27:12
Speaker 2: Yes, there's another one, solitary fairies. They're usually tied to
27:17
Speaker 2: a place, usually in the countryside, say like the moors
27:21
Speaker 2: or something like that, and they will often like pose
27:24
Speaker 2: as something like a needy stranger or something like that,
27:28
Speaker 2: and to test the traveler's kindness to strangers. And if
27:32
Speaker 2: they pass the test, they might be rewarded with something.
27:35
Speaker 2: If they fail, they'll probably be punished by this magical fairy.
27:39
Speaker 2: Leprechauns are one of them. They're usually tricksters. There's one
27:43
Speaker 2: named Tom tit Tot who I read the story of
27:45
Speaker 2: and it's great. It's got a kind of a rumpel
27:48
Speaker 2: stilt skinny vibe to it. But I think I like
27:51
Speaker 2: Tom tit Tot's a little more, so I say, go
27:54
Speaker 2: check out Tom tit Tot in his story.
27:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:58
Speaker 3: And you know, it seems like a lot of this
27:59
Speaker 3: as it's occurring to me more and more. It sort
28:01
Speaker 3: of falls into the category of the what's the story
28:05
Speaker 3: that you tell when it's are you going to do
28:08
Speaker 3: the good thing or the bad thing?
28:09
Speaker 1: Is it a fat no.
28:12
Speaker 2: More agacy tale?
28:13
Speaker 1: Yeah?
28:14
Speaker 3: Like as a moral yeah, I think sort of fables
28:17
Speaker 3: and morality tales where they're saying, well, good things will
28:21
Speaker 3: happen to you or bad things will happen to you
28:22
Speaker 3: according to your behaviors and whether or not you're like
28:25
Speaker 3: kind to the stranger passing through town. It's actually a
28:28
Speaker 3: fairy or a leprechaun. YEA, well, well I'll be what
28:33
Speaker 3: else we got? We got three more categories?
28:35
Speaker 1: Uh?
28:36
Speaker 2: No, we've got two. No, we have three? Year, you're right.
28:39
Speaker 1: Three is a catch all tutelary.
28:42
Speaker 2: Fairies fun to say, but also include my favorite fairies,
28:46
Speaker 2: which are brownies, which are household helpers, and people will
28:51
Speaker 2: still leave out a little bit of bread, a little
28:53
Speaker 2: saucer of milk, or something like that as a thank
28:56
Speaker 2: you gift to the brownies that live in their house
28:58
Speaker 2: and help them out with household chores. The very very
29:01
Speaker 2: famous fairy tale about the cobbler who was helped out
29:05
Speaker 2: by fairies who made shoes for him every night and
29:08
Speaker 2: eventually made him a very wealthy man. Those are brownies.
29:11
Speaker 2: I remember that anybody helping out around the house, that's
29:14
Speaker 2: a brownie. And I just think that's the cutest, most
29:18
Speaker 2: down to earth folksy concept ever, that there's little tiny
29:23
Speaker 2: fairies that help out around the house. And the other
29:26
Speaker 2: thing that they do, which I think is hilarious, they
29:29
Speaker 2: punish lazy servants who aren't doing enough work by pinching
29:33
Speaker 2: them while they sleep.
29:36
Speaker 1: That's got to be where brownie points comes from, right.
29:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably, don't you think? Probably? Yeah, because you do
29:42
Speaker 2: want to score points with the brownies to keep them happy.
29:44
Speaker 2: Because yeah, in addition to happening out, if you don't
29:47
Speaker 2: reward them, they will sometimes start stealing. They'll make your
29:50
Speaker 2: milk go bad. They'll make it impossible for butter to
29:53
Speaker 2: churn into butter. They can't mess you up. You don't
29:56
Speaker 2: want to mess with them, but if you keep them happy,
29:59
Speaker 2: like I fully want a brownie in your house.
30:02
Speaker 3: They make your fart hang in the air long after
30:04
Speaker 3: it's it's fast.
30:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that kind of brownie.
30:11
Speaker 3: Finally, there are nature fairies. These are the kind of
30:15
Speaker 3: water sprites and river sprites you were talking about, These
30:17
Speaker 3: spirits that dwell in nature.
30:20
Speaker 1: It's very.
30:22
Speaker 3: Self explanatory. They protect animals usually and deal with the
30:25
Speaker 3: animals out there. And then there's the catch all category
30:28
Speaker 3: that I mentioned, which are the scariest ones, like the
30:31
Speaker 3: giants and the hags and the monsters of the group.
30:34
Speaker 2: Like, yes, I get that that is part of original
30:38
Speaker 2: fairy lore and like the widest possible use of the
30:41
Speaker 2: term fairy. But we've evolved so far beyond that. How
30:43
Speaker 2: are you going to include like a monster and a
30:45
Speaker 2: giant into the fairy categories?
30:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
30:49
Speaker 2: Giants and giant exactly, They're their own thing. Don't do
30:53
Speaker 2: any like them. Yeah, I say we take our second break, Chuck,
30:57
Speaker 2: and come back and wrap this up and talk some
30:59
Speaker 2: more about get this fairies, okay, Chuck. So, by the
31:29
Speaker 2: nineteenth century, early twentieth century, like fairies were starting to congeal,
31:33
Speaker 2: all these different threads were starting to kind of come together,
31:36
Speaker 2: and yeah, they were solidifying like so much jello pudding. Yeah,
31:42
Speaker 2: remember the skin on top of that stuff?
31:44
Speaker 3: Buh of, just like jello or the pudding.
31:48
Speaker 2: The jello pudding, I don't remember.
31:51
Speaker 1: If it sat out, would I get a little topper.
31:53
Speaker 2: As it sat it would almost invariably like create like
31:57
Speaker 2: a shell a skin at the top and it was
32:01
Speaker 2: limsay and rubbery and like you did not want it.
32:03
Speaker 2: But I think some real sickos liked the skin of
32:06
Speaker 2: the pudding.
32:08
Speaker 3: It's right here that I have to quickly sidetrack about
32:10
Speaker 3: a movie I just saw called The Substance.
32:13
Speaker 1: Have you read about this yet?
32:14
Speaker 3: No? It's the new movie with Demi Mour and Margaret
32:19
Speaker 3: Qually That is a body horror film. Oh, just say
32:23
Speaker 3: the least. If you're into body horror, this is the
32:29
Speaker 3: going to go down in history. Is the all time
32:31
Speaker 3: leader in that category. It is the most foul, horrifying,
32:36
Speaker 3: disgusting but great thing that I've ever seen in my life.
32:39
Speaker 2: I gotta see this.
32:41
Speaker 1: Are you into that kind of thing?
32:43
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I like all kinds of horror. Body
32:45
Speaker 2: horror is not my leading type of horror. It's usually
32:47
Speaker 2: a good ghost story, but I like body horror.
32:50
Speaker 3: Well, go see The Substance. It is really something. I
32:55
Speaker 3: got the strongest stomach for that kind of thing. And
32:56
Speaker 3: I was literally feet pulled up in the theater, peeking
33:01
Speaker 3: through eyes like a small child.
33:03
Speaker 1: So are you and holding my ears?
33:04
Speaker 2: Are you into body horror?
33:07
Speaker 3: I like a Cronenberg thing, But This is like Cronenberg
33:10
Speaker 3: on ten million milligrams of steroids. However much that is,
33:15
Speaker 3: it's beyond the pale of anything that you could imagine
33:18
Speaker 3: for body horror.
33:18
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm telling you, I'll see that in the meantime.
33:22
Speaker 2: You see, there's a classic body horror movie called Society
33:25
Speaker 2: from the mid eighties. Don't know that one, and it's
33:29
Speaker 2: widely considered the all time leader in horrible, horrific body horror.
33:33
Speaker 2: So anymore I will be I can't wait to see
33:36
Speaker 2: the Substance Man.
33:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's got a great message. I can't remember
33:39
Speaker 3: the woman who made it, but her first movie is
33:41
Speaker 3: called Revenge and it was great, total sort of I
33:45
Speaker 3: spit upon your gravestyle Revenge film that you can watch
33:48
Speaker 3: now it's out on streaming. And she's just a very
33:52
Speaker 3: unique voice in film making these days. And a great
33:56
Speaker 3: message in this new one about women and aging and
34:00
Speaker 3: youth obsession with youth culture and stuff like that.
34:02
Speaker 2: From what you described the messages.
34:06
Speaker 1: Yes, it's tough. I cannot get some of the stuff
34:10
Speaker 1: out of my head.
34:10
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's get back to fairies, shall we.
34:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, that all started with putting skin, by the way, Yeah, fairies.
34:17
Speaker 3: Lets your mind run wild with that association.
34:20
Speaker 2: Okay, so by this time fairies have are they're kind
34:23
Speaker 2: of becoming dual. They can be different kinds of sizes.
34:27
Speaker 2: They can be ugly or beautiful. And then from that
34:31
Speaker 2: point on, like they either have one or the other,
34:34
Speaker 2: usually polar extremes. Right, so, like they're either immortal or
34:38
Speaker 2: they don't have souls, so when they die they just
34:40
Speaker 2: perish completely, or they're they're fallen angels but they're not
34:45
Speaker 2: demonic or wait, member, there may be unbaptized babies, like
34:49
Speaker 2: there's they're as desparate and weird as it sounds like.
34:53
Speaker 2: It's still way more put together than the threads used
34:58
Speaker 2: to be before the nineteenth.
35:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Sometimes there are solo fairies. Sometimes they
35:04
Speaker 3: are in little small communities or families. We have mentioned
35:08
Speaker 3: that a lot of times they live out in rural
35:10
Speaker 3: areas and caves and wells and heidi holes other sort
35:16
Speaker 3: of bucolic rural spots, mounds and holes in the ground,
35:19
Speaker 3: things like that. Sometimes there is a fairy land like
35:22
Speaker 3: in these books that I read Ruby, where things are
35:24
Speaker 3: just magical and wonderful or can go really wrong. A
35:29
Speaker 3: lot of times the beauty is an illusion. So there
35:32
Speaker 3: are some stories like if a human comes along and
35:35
Speaker 3: says the right spell or applies to magic ointment, they
35:38
Speaker 3: will be awakened to the true reality that everything is all.
35:41
Speaker 3: The treasure is garbage, and the food is poison and
35:43
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
35:44
Speaker 2: I found that interesting because the magic ointment jumped out
35:47
Speaker 2: at me because they also prescribed a magic ointment for
35:50
Speaker 2: witchcraft and to become a werewolf. And I don't remember
35:54
Speaker 2: what drug they what hallucinogen they thought was in that
35:57
Speaker 2: magic ointment, but I suspect yeah, referring to the same
36:00
Speaker 2: magic ointment that would make you trip balls.
36:04
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, that's funny. Not Jim Wall's trip balls. They
36:13
Speaker 3: can't cross rivers usually, or any kind of running water.
36:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one.
36:17
Speaker 1: Holy water is not great for them, right.
36:19
Speaker 2: No, And this is where the influence of the Christian
36:22
Speaker 2: Church came in. They don't like holy water, they don't
36:26
Speaker 2: like cold iron. Church bells really drive them. They sound
36:30
Speaker 2: like nails on a chalkboard to them. And in fact,
36:33
Speaker 2: like just talking about religion can set a fairy off
36:38
Speaker 2: that one historian from the fifties, Katherine Mary Briggs, said
36:42
Speaker 2: it is tactless in the extreme to mention Sunday to
36:46
Speaker 2: a fairy. That's one of the best lines I've ever read.
36:50
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the other thing you don't want to
36:52
Speaker 3: do is if you meet a fairy, don't call that
36:54
Speaker 3: fairy a fairy, right.
36:56
Speaker 1: They don't want to hear that.
36:57
Speaker 2: No, they want to be called fair folk people of peace.
37:00
Speaker 2: One thing that everybody now agrees on about fairies is
37:03
Speaker 2: that they really respond to flattery and that they're very
37:07
Speaker 2: easily upset.
37:09
Speaker 1: Right, Sorry, I had a joke.
37:12
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna tell Okay, you can tell me later.
37:15
Speaker 1: I'll tell you later.
37:16
Speaker 3: One thing that you can do, like, let's say you've
37:20
Speaker 3: got some disturbing fairy stories banning about that have to
37:24
Speaker 3: deal with human children and maybe a fairy, you know,
37:28
Speaker 3: swapping them out for a fairy like they've become a changeling. Essentially,
37:32
Speaker 3: if you're an unchristened baby and you think your baby
37:35
Speaker 3: is at risk to be carried off by a fairy,
37:38
Speaker 3: you wrap them up in daddy's clothes, put a bible
37:40
Speaker 3: under their pillow.
37:41
Speaker 1: That's a good way.
37:42
Speaker 3: Or if you live a little dangerously, you can hang
37:46
Speaker 3: some iron fire tongs or some giant iron scissors over
37:50
Speaker 3: their cradle.
37:50
Speaker 2: Which seems like a really bad idea.
37:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd go with the Bible under the pillow, And
37:55
Speaker 1: that's me talking.
37:56
Speaker 2: You don't want iron scissors to fall under your baby's crip.
38:01
Speaker 2: So this is where it gets really dark. In fact,
38:05
Speaker 2: there was a long standing folklore all the way through
38:09
Speaker 2: the late nineteenth century that when a child started to
38:12
Speaker 2: develop disabilities or was suddenly struck ill or i think
38:16
Speaker 2: was also born with like physical abnormalities, the folk belief
38:22
Speaker 2: was that the fairies had stolen the actual baby, the
38:26
Speaker 2: human baby, and replaced it with a fairy changeling, right, yeah,
38:31
Speaker 2: And so you would kill the fairy changeling because you
38:36
Speaker 2: wanted your baby back in hopes that they this would
38:39
Speaker 2: help get your baby back. And it was actually one
38:43
Speaker 2: of those things where probably some people, especially long ago,
38:47
Speaker 2: believed that what they were doing was actually killing a
38:50
Speaker 2: fairy baby. But it also served a really grim but
38:54
Speaker 2: kind of necessary for the time purpose of removing the
39:01
Speaker 2: baby that was never going to be able to help
39:03
Speaker 2: out on the farm, but was gonna need some of
39:06
Speaker 2: the food from that farm to stay alive, from a
39:09
Speaker 2: very poor family to have to take care of that kid.
39:12
Speaker 2: And that is about as dark as fairies get and
39:15
Speaker 2: there's some dark parts to fairies.
39:17
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
39:18
Speaker 3: And I would also like people to write in if they,
39:20
Speaker 3: like me, were singing the Chile's Babyback Ribs commercial in
39:23
Speaker 3: their head the third time you said babyback.
39:26
Speaker 2: Oh, oh yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet that happened. Nice.
39:30
Speaker 2: That's a gift to you, buddy.
39:33
Speaker 3: I think we should close with some famous fairies, because
39:37
Speaker 3: we mentioned that they had been had long been written
39:41
Speaker 3: about in literature, and some have some of that cream
39:43
Speaker 3: rises to the top everybody, and the wheat is separated
39:46
Speaker 3: from the chaff, and you get some genuine fairy celebrities.
39:50
Speaker 3: Puck is the one I would love to mention because
39:53
Speaker 3: Puck was not just from the mind of William Shakespeare.
39:56
Speaker 3: Puck was a fairy or a demon, depending on, of course,
40:00
Speaker 3: various factors of medieval folklore and Shakespeare by the time
40:04
Speaker 3: he got around to writing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck
40:08
Speaker 3: was a very mischievous character who Shakespeare leaned on in
40:12
Speaker 3: that story. Puck as a character would help with chores
40:15
Speaker 3: around the house, maybe get rewarded with some bread and
40:18
Speaker 3: milk from the midwives, but could also play tricks on
40:23
Speaker 3: people like that spoiled milk again or maybe trip an
40:26
Speaker 3: old lady walking through the forest.
40:28
Speaker 2: Right. He also appeared on the first season of Real World.
40:32
Speaker 1: That's wasn't the first season, but yes.
40:35
Speaker 2: So thank you for saving me a ton of emails. Yeah,
40:39
Speaker 2: first season was London, Josh. He also had a great nickname,
40:43
Speaker 2: Robin Goodfellow. Did not know that. Yeah, I'll just keep
40:47
Speaker 2: moving on. But you said that Shakespeare used him in
40:51
Speaker 2: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare was the champ of using
40:56
Speaker 2: and describing and writing about fairies. And it turns out
40:59
Speaker 2: they think actually venting fairies because one of the most
41:02
Speaker 2: legendary fairies was the fairy queen Queen Mab, who's described
41:06
Speaker 2: in Romeo and Juliet and just kind of spread from there,
41:11
Speaker 2: and they can't figure out where Shakespeare got this, so
41:13
Speaker 2: they actually think he might have made up this really
41:16
Speaker 2: definitive fairy Queen Mab, which is pretty impressive.
41:21
Speaker 3: And I think we have to close by talking about
41:24
Speaker 3: the two most famous fairies of.
41:26
Speaker 1: Them all, who tinker Bell and that tooth fairy.
41:29
Speaker 3: Oh tinker Bell, of course, created by the great and
41:33
Speaker 3: wonderful Jay and Barry, author of the play, and then
41:36
Speaker 3: eventually the novel Peter Pan. What a great character and
41:41
Speaker 3: what a great just thing that Jay and Barry launched
41:45
Speaker 3: into the world. Like all about Peter Pan. I've always
41:47
Speaker 3: loved Peter Pan and all the stories and iterations from
41:50
Speaker 3: the various movies and cartoons to the actual books themselves,
41:53
Speaker 3: and that book about Jay and Barry or the movie
41:56
Speaker 3: about jan Berry, which was very good.
41:58
Speaker 2: J and Barry also invented the concept of fairy dust.
42:02
Speaker 2: And there was a Guardian article that describes why I
42:06
Speaker 2: actually think. I found it on Reddit to tell you
42:07
Speaker 2: the truth. In the article, I say that Berry invented
42:10
Speaker 2: fairy dust. So, originally Peter Pan was a play and
42:13
Speaker 2: then a few years later it became a novel, and
42:15
Speaker 2: the fairy dust appears in the novel because in the
42:19
Speaker 2: interim between the play and the novels released, kids were
42:22
Speaker 2: trying to fly like Peter Pan. So we introduced fairy
42:25
Speaker 2: dust to say, like, you can't fly, kid, you don't
42:27
Speaker 2: have fairy dust. You have to have fairy dust to
42:29
Speaker 2: be able.
42:29
Speaker 1: To fly, So don't jump out of your window for gotcha.
42:32
Speaker 2: Exactly because it's not gonna work.
42:35
Speaker 3: That's called a Janberry CoA original.
42:38
Speaker 2: And then the Tooth fairy, you said, right.
42:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course everyone loves the tooth fairy.
42:43
Speaker 1: Of course.
42:44
Speaker 3: This is the tradition of when your child looses their
42:47
Speaker 3: baby tea, they put it under their pillow or maybe
42:49
Speaker 3: in a little pocket of a tooth pillow that you
42:52
Speaker 3: might have bought for eight bucks or whatever. In my case,
42:57
Speaker 3: Janet Barney gave us a tooth fairy pillow, which was
42:59
Speaker 3: very sweet as a gift, and you get some you
43:02
Speaker 3: get something in there, like a little bit of money
43:05
Speaker 3: or a little treat or something like that. And that
43:09
Speaker 3: originated in Norse tradition in the thirteenth century, when parents
43:13
Speaker 3: would pay a tooth fee.
43:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would pay a tooth fee because baby teeth
43:17
Speaker 2: were considered good luck. So they were essentially buying the
43:20
Speaker 2: lucky tooth from their child.
43:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, buying it out.
43:24
Speaker 2: But the the first appearance of the actual tooth fairy
43:27
Speaker 2: as we understand it today, that didn't come about until
43:30
Speaker 2: nineteen oh eight, when apparently a Chicago Tribune writer just
43:33
Speaker 2: made it up.
43:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was around long before that, but yeah,
43:39
Speaker 3: in print for sure.
43:40
Speaker 2: And then we also can't not name check all of
43:44
Speaker 2: the Disney fairies, including tinker Bell. There was the fairy
43:47
Speaker 2: godmother in Cinderella. Yeah, there were fairies and fantasia.
43:52
Speaker 1: All over the place.
43:52
Speaker 2: Sleeping Beauty had three great fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather
43:57
Speaker 2: the greatest. And that's all you really need to mention.
44:00
Speaker 2: The list goes on, but we're going to stop there.
44:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I could remember the name of that
44:06
Speaker 3: book series. Let me see if I can find it
44:08
Speaker 3: real quick. Why don't you talk intelligently for ten seconds?
44:11
Speaker 2: Oh god, let's see a little more about fairies. Fairies
44:15
Speaker 2: are great. Everybody typically agrees that was one scholarly finding
44:21
Speaker 2: Backyard Fairies.
44:22
Speaker 1: I believe that is it?
44:24
Speaker 2: What was that? That was the series?
44:26
Speaker 1: I think I think it's Backyard Fairies. Okay, I might
44:29
Speaker 1: be wrong.
44:30
Speaker 2: You sounded like you knew what it was a second ago.
44:33
Speaker 1: Well i'm looking.
44:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Backyard Fairies by Phoebe wall w A h L.
44:39
Speaker 3: It's wonderful and there are a lot of books and
44:43
Speaker 3: they're a lot of fun if you have a kid,
44:46
Speaker 3: that's you know, like six ish.
44:49
Speaker 2: Okay, great, thanks for read too, Thanks for that. Yeah. Well,
44:53
Speaker 2: Chuck recommended a children's book series which, as everyone knows,
44:58
Speaker 2: unlocks listener mail.
45:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna mention this a quick mistake we made,
45:06
Speaker 3: and this is from Brad. A few people have written
45:07
Speaker 3: in and this is something we've mistaked on before.
45:11
Speaker 1: Mistake on.
45:13
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, have just finished listening to your History of
45:14
Speaker 3: Glasses episodes and noticed a little mistake and figured you'd
45:18
Speaker 3: love when people right into correct you. When Josh was
45:21
Speaker 3: listening Famous where monocles, you mentioned Monopoly guy rich uncle
45:25
Speaker 3: Pennybags is apparently his name a great example of the
45:28
Speaker 3: Mandela effect, guys, because he never wore a monocle. I'm
45:32
Speaker 3: pretty sure you even mentioned this in your episode about
45:34
Speaker 3: the Mandela effect, and probably in your Monopoly episode as well,
45:38
Speaker 3: so this may be a three timer. Any who, You
45:40
Speaker 3: guys are the best ever. I hope you make episodes
45:42
Speaker 3: for at least another couple of decades.
45:45
Speaker 1: Rock on, Brad, Rock on yourself.
45:48
Speaker 2: Brad, that was a great email and we appreciate it.
45:50
Speaker 2: We appreciate you thanks for pointing that out. It is
45:53
Speaker 2: so interesting when that Mandela effect comes up.
45:56
Speaker 1: Agreed, I thought he had a monocle.
45:58
Speaker 2: Two. I just I even don't believe what Brad's saying
46:02
Speaker 2: right now. I'm so convinced he had a monocle at
46:05
Speaker 2: some point.
46:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked it up.
46:07
Speaker 3: I double checked, and there have been drawings of him
46:10
Speaker 3: with monocles, but nothing that's not canon, like no official.
46:15
Speaker 1: Monopoly stuff.
46:16
Speaker 3: And I've been playing Monopoly, we've been playing as a family,
46:18
Speaker 3: so I'm surprised it got past me.
46:20
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, great, you got anything else?
46:24
Speaker 1: Got nothing else?
46:24
Speaker 2: And that was from Brad.
46:26
Speaker 1: That's from Brad.
46:27
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want to be like Brad and
46:29
Speaker 2: get in touch with us, send us an email too.
46:30
Speaker 2: Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
46:36
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
46:39
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