BEACHCOMBING ON FAIRYS.

There is a melancholy time in rural communities when belief in fairies dies – a moment in a village life comparable to the moment in a child’s life when he sees his grandfather’s face behind the Santa beard. Wentz examined this fairy death in Ireland and Scotland and Wales in The Fairy Faith in Celtic Lands (another post another day), while in much of England the death of the little folk was connected with the Reformation. However, there were some outlying English regions where belief in fairies continued up into the nineteenth century.

Beachcombing particularly enjoys the following story that straddles the period of belief, disbelief and, inevitably, incredulity. Come, reader, to Ilkley in deepest Yorkshire at the Wells, the local baths. The event described took place in about the year 1815 and we are in the company of William Butterfield ‘a good sort of a man, honest, truthful, and steady, and as respectable a fellow as you could find here and there’.

Read on