Phantasmagoria: On Witches, Fairies, Ghosts and Goblins

NEAR THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, Irish poet William Butler Yeats became actively involved in magical circles, joining The Golden Dawn, one of the legendary occult societies of the time. Yeats would say that it was a “chief influence upon his thought.”

Yeats believed in fairies, not in the abstract, but as real creatures, according to at least one of his biographers. Yeats collected the folklore of Ireland directly from the people, and his notes and writings are invaluable for recording the beliefs of the Irish. He wrote “”We had a regular servant, a fisherman … (My mother) and the fisherman’s wife would tell each other stories that Homer might have told, pleased with any moment of sudden intensity and laughing together over any point of satire. There is an essay called Village Ghosts in my Celtic Twilight which is but a report of one such afternoon, and many a fine tale has been lost because it had not occurred to me soon enough to keep notes.”

He explained his technique for gathering stories, ” Yes, he noticed, if you are a stranger, you will not readily get ghost and fairy legends, even in a western village. You must go adroitly to work, and make friends with the children and the old men, with those who have not felt the pressure of mere daylight existence, and those with whom it is growing less, and will have altogether taken itself off one of these days. The old women are most learned, but will not so readily be got to talk, for the fairies are very secretive, and much resent being talked of; and are there not many stories of old women who were nearly pinched into their graves or numbed with fairy blasts?”

The Fairy Pedant

by William Butler Yeats, 1895

Scene: A circle of Druidic stones

First Fairy: Afar from our lawn and our levee,
O sister of sorrowful gaze!
Where the roses in scarlet are heavy
And dream of the end of their days,
You move in another dominion
And hang o’er the historied stone:
Unpruned in your beautiful pinion
Who wander and whisper alone.

 

All: Come away while the moon’s in the woodland,
We’ll dance and then feast in a dairy.
Though youngest of all in our good band,
You are wasting away, little fairy.

 

Second Fairy: Ah! cruel ones, leave me alone now
While I murmur a little and ponder
The history here in the stone now;
Then away and away I will wander,
And measure the minds of the flowers,
And gaze on the meadow-mice wary,
And number their days and their hours–
All: You’re wasting away, little fairy.

 

Second Fairy: O shining ones, lightly with song pass,
Ah! leave me, I pray you and beg.
My mother drew forth from the long grass
A piece of a nightingle’s egg,
And cradled me here where are sung,
Of birds even, longings for aery
Wild wisdoms of spirit and tongue.
All: You’re wasting away, little fairy.

 

First Fairy [turning away]: Though the tenderest roses were round you,
The soul of this pitiless place
With pitiless magic has bound you–
Ah! woe for the loss of your face,
And the loss of your laugh with its lightness–
Ah! woe for your wings and your head–
Ah! woe for your eyes and their brightness–
Ah! woe for your slippers of red.

All: Come away while the moon’s in the woodland,
We’ll dance and then feast in a dairy.
Though youngest of all in our good band,
You are wasting away, little fairy.
She’s wasting away, little fairy.

From the album Phantasmagoria: On Witches, Fairies, Ghouls and Goblins

 

Excerpt from from the book “The Story and Song of Black Roderick”

AND I BID THEE REMEMBER how the little pale bride was wont to sit upon the mountain and watch the far lights in her father’s home quench themselves one by one.

So now of how she died shall I tell thee, and of what came to her in her passing, lest thou thinkest so innocent a child had laid violent hands upon her life, who only had met death through the breaking of her heart.

Here sat she on the mountain, and the wild things spoke of her in her silence. The red weasel, the bee, and the bramble, and many others, moved to watch her. Well have they known her in her young joyfulness; here had she made the place she loved best—the high brow of the hill where she sat as a child and watched—on the one side the far-off city and the white towers that held the wonder-knight of her dreams. Here had she sat and seen the gleam of his spear as he went with his hunters through the valley; and here, too, had her mother come to tell her of her betrothal, so she had nigh fainted in her happiness, in looking upon the white tower that was to be her home.

Here had she learned the sweet language of the birds and flowers, and they, too, had partaken of her joys; but of her sorrows they would not understand, for our joys and our laughter, are they not as the singing of the bird and the dancing of the fly, who weep only when they meet death? In our griefs do we not stand alone, who have in our hearts the fierce desires of love and all the tragedies of despair?

Now, as the young bride turned her slow feet up the mountain, down where her glad feet had turned as a maid, she sat her there by the lake.

The little creatures she was wont to love and understand gathered about her and wondered at her state.

“She hath returned,” said the red weasel; “see where she sitteth, her head upon her hand. I slew a young bird at her feet, and she spake no word, nor did she care.”

“It is not she,” said a linnet, swaying on a safe spray, “for had it been she her anger would have slain thee.”

“It is she,” said the red weasel, laughing in his throat; “but her eyes are hidden by her fingers, and she cannot see.”

“It is not she,” said a brown wren. “Her cheek was full and rosy and her song loud. This one sitteth all mute and pale.”

“It is she,” said the red weasel, “who sitteth upon the mountain, her face hidden between her hands. She sitteth in silence, and who can tell her thoughts? She hath been to the great city.”

“It is a small place,” hummed a honey-bee. “Once, long ago, she raised her white palm between her eyes and its smoke. ‘See,’ she laughed, ‘my little hand can cover it.'”

“It is so great,” said the red weasel, “that those who leave the mountains for love of it return to us no more.”

“Yet she hath returned,” said a lone lark hanging in the sky, “and I myself have sung beside her ear.”

“She came, yet she came not,” said the red weasel. “What did she answer when thou saidst that I had slain thy mate?”

“She sighed, ‘Thou singest a gay song, O bird!'” hummed a golden beetle.
“My grief! that she cannot understand.”

“She is lost to us indeed!” said a honeysuckle swaying in the wind, “for she trod me beneath her feet when I held my sweet blossoms for her lips.”

“And she tore me aside,” cried the wild bramble, “when I did but reach towards her for embrace.”

“She will know thee no more,” said the red weasel; “she hath been to the great city.”

“She laid her lips upon me ere she went,” spake the wild bramble, “and said she would return to us soon.”

“She bid me ring a merry chime,” whispered the heather, “and I move my many bells now for her welcome, but she will not hear.”

“She will speak with thee no more,” said the red weasel; “she hath walked in the city, like one goeth upon the fairy sleeping grass, and her soul hath forgotten us.”

“She is still and cold,” said a shining fly glancing through the air. “I have danced a measure under her eyes, and she did not see.”

“She is dead,” said the honey-bee, “for when she would not look upon me as before, I drew my sword and stung her sharply, but she did not stir. She sat and gazed into the distance where the smoke like a great gray web lieth heavy. She is surely dead.”

“She is not dead,” said the red weasel; “she hath been to the great city.”

“Maybe there she hath found Death,” said the shining fly, “for his web reacheth far, and he loveth the dark places and hidden ways. He hideth, too, in the cool arbors of the wood, stretching a gray chain for our undoing. Maybe she found Death. He spreadeth ropes of pearls across our path, and looketh upon us from the shade; when the dance is gayest he creepeth to spring. Maybe she hath reached for the pearls or hath danced into his net.”

And so the fly sang of the watcher in the wood, and his song I shall sing thee, lest thou grow weary of my prose:

   Deep in the wood’s recesses cool
I see the fairy dancers glide,
In cloth of gold, in gown of green,
My lord and lady side by side.

   But who has hung from leaf to leaf,
From flower to flower, a silken twine,
A cloud of gray that holds the dew
In globes of clear enchanted wine,

   Or stretches far from branch to branch,
From thorn to thorn, in diamond rain?
Who caught the cup of crystal wine
And hung so fair the shining chain?

  ‘Tis death the spider, in his net,
Who lures the dancers as they glide,
In cloth of gold, in gown of green,
My lord and lady side by side.

But a dragon-fly rattling his armor said, without heed of the singer, “She is dead,” for when she came among the heather the joyous spirit of the mountain met her and blew upon her hair and eyes. He kissed her worn cheek that he had known so fair, and the soft rain of his sorrow fell to see the pity of her brow. She passed all stiff and cold; she did not hear nor understand.

“Wind,” quoth she, “blow not so fierce.”

“She is not dead,” saith the red weasel; “she hath been to the great city.”

Now, when the young bride raised her white face from her hands and looked about her, she could neither hear the speaking of the birds nor see the beauty of the wild flowers, yet in her heart she had a memory of both. Turning to the little flying things that came about her with soft, beating wings, she said:

“Once ye spake to me, and could give comfort with your counsel and love.
Now ye are lost in the voices of the city that ring forever in my ears.”

Gazing upon the flowers, she said:

“Ye, too, your beauty hath faded. The gaudy flowers of the city have flashed their color in my eyes, so ye I cannot see or understand.”

Then she rose to her feet, though she scarce could stand, and, stretching her arms towards the great purple hills that surrounded her father’s far home, she said towards it:

“Why didst thou call me back since thou hast let me go from the sight of the heights that would have been always a prayer to uplift my soul? Ahone! that thy voice was loud enough to follow and give me unrest, that whispered always of my father’s house and the valley of my home. So must I come each eve upon this hill to look upon it from my loneliness.

“Unloved am I, and unwished for, by him whom I have wedded. So my heart dieth within my breast, and my soul trembleth on the brink of my grave.

“Here upon the mountains, unprayed for and uncoffined, shall my body lie, for thy voice hath called me forth.

“Here my black sins shall see and pursue me even to destruction; but in the city I could have escaped with the crowding souls that confuse Death to count.”

Then, as a remembrance of her sins came heavy upon her, she gave a loud cry and covered her face with her hands.

So she stood without help upon the mountains, and because she was blind with the city dust and deafened with its cries, she stood alone. The pitying wild flowers blew their fragrance to her eyes, but they would not open; the gentle birds spoke comforting whispers to her ears, but she could not hear; the great hills held their arms about her and breathed their peace upon her brow. But this she did not know, and so stood alone to face Death.

First turned she her face to where her father’s castle stood on a far hill, and again turned she to see the white towers where she had lived and loved so vainly. And when her eyes met the glisten of the walls, her heart broke with a little sigh, and she fell upon the ground. And she laid her weary body down beside the waters of the mountain lake. Her head with its loosened hair lay in the waters, so her lips, covered by the murmuring ripples, breathed a prayer as she died for her passing soul. And the little stream that ran from the lake down the hill-side carried the prayer upon its breast as thou hast been told.

Now, when the ghost of the little bride stood upright beside her fallen body, she was sore afraid, and trembled much to leave the habitation she had known in life.

She laid her spirit-hands upon the cold dead, and clung to it as though she would not be driven forth. Many and terrifying were the sights that met her when she opened her eyes, after passing through the change of death. Many and terrifying were the sounds that came to her ears, and she feared she would be whirled away with the great clouds that passed her and went like smoke into the skies. Cold she was and drenched with the rain that fell everywhere around her; gray and misshapen were the moving masses under her gaze; and only where her hands lay holding to her dead body did she see aught of the world she had left behind. There the sweet green grass lifted itself and a brier rose cast its blossom apart. There a bee sang, calling to her a little comfort among all the strange sounds that filled her ears.

As she listened, she found the noises that troubled her were the cries of many voices, and as she began to see more clearly in the great change that had come to her, she knew the shadowy clouds rushing upward were the spirits of the dead on their dangerous swift way to heaven. And as she raised her face to follow their flight the rain fell salt into her mouth, so she knew it was the repentant tears of the passing ghosts.

So crouched she in that misty world, seeing not the green earth and the purple hills, but only the whirling shapes about her on every side, flying from earth to heaven, pursued by their black sins.

From the album Phantasmagoria: On Witches, Fairies, Ghouls and Goblins

Ingram wasn’t a poet by nature perhaps, but he made a great song lyricist. Colorful, but simple and short, unlike most of the poets of the age.

He chose the moment before the Bell Witch first made her appearance to Betsy, when life was sane and magical, in a good sort of way. The truth of the story we’ll never known. We’ll never know whether the horrors inflicted upon Betsy Bell were real, mortal or supernatural. Ingram’s use of the word authenticated is to say the least, suspect.

But something happened in the wilds of Tennessee that still reverberates to this day.

Queen of the Haunted Dell

M.V. Ingram, Authenticated history of the Bell Witch, 1894

‘Mid woodland bowers, grassy dell,
By an enchanted murmuring stream,
Dwelt pretty blue-eyed Betsy Bell,
Sweetly thrilled with love’s young dream.

Life was like the magic spell,
That guides a laughing stream,
Sunbeams glimmering on her fell,
Kissed by lunar’s silvery gleam.

But elfin phantomas cursed the dell,
And sylvan witches all unsean,
As our tale will truely tell,
Wielded sceptre o’re the queen.

 

Edmund Spenser wrote Epithalamion for Elizabeth Boyle, his bride to be as wedding gift. It’s an account of their wedding day, from before dawn till late in the night, following the consummation of the marriage.

Consisting of 24 stanzas, corresponding to the 24 hours of Midsummer Day, it also contains 364 lines, matching the days in a year. It follows the cycle of life, from the energy of a young man, through maturity and ending with hopes of the future, which of course ties intimately to the hopeful results of the consummation.

Henry Hallam, writing in the 19th century about the poem says “The English language seems to expand itself with a copiousness unknown before, while he pours forth the varied imagery of this splendid little poem. I do not know any other nuptial song, ancient or modern, of equal beauty. It is an intoxication of ecstasy, ardent, noble, and pure. But it pleased not Heaven that these day-dreams of genius and virtue should be undisturbed” 

In this section of the poem, Spencer acknowledges the existence of the supernatural, the sources of fear, and banishes them one by one. A rather hopeful statement which unfortunately didn’t turn out to be true for the poet, who died, according to Ben Johnson, from want of bread.

 

Poem 19

Sir Edmund Spenser, (1552/1553 – 1599)

Let no lamenting cryes, nor dolefull teares,
Be heard all night within nor yet without:
Ne let false whispers breeding hidden feares,
Breake gentle sleepe with misconceiued dout.
Let no deluding dreames, nor dreadful sights
Make sudden sad affrights;

Ne let housefyres, nor lightnings helpelesse harmes,
Ne led the Ponke, nor other euill sprights,
Ne let mischiuous witches with theyr charmes,
Ne let hob Goblins, names whose sence we see not,
Fray vs with things that be not.
Let not the shriech Oule, nor the Storke be heard:

Nor the night Rauen that still deadly yels,
Nor damned ghosts cald vp with mighty spels,
Nor griefly vultures make vs once affeard:
Ne let th’unpleasant Quyre of Frogs still croking
Make vs to wish theyr choking.

Let none of these theyr drery accents sing;
Ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring.

 

The Sands of Dee is a poem within a novel, Alton Locke, written by Charles Kingsley in 1849. Like most great rock and roll, he pens the lines to impress a girl, to give words to an air she’s played on the piano. An air without words.

What is an air? To the Irish, an air is a song played on an instrument, wordlessly. As opposed to a tune, which is a melody never intended to carry words, usually for dancing.

Danny Boy, that crusty old piece of cheese, was once a truly heart felt sentiment before it fell into cliche. But it was written to fit an air called the Londonderry Air, among other things. The original words were long lost, likely because the tune was so beautiful that the words became superflous.

The young lady in question plays to the narrator an air which moves him deeply. It helps that she makes his heart, among other body parts, throb. He pledges to put words to the tune at her request.

“Perhaps,” I said, humbly, “that is the only way to write songs–to let some air get possession of ones whole soul, and gradually inspire the words for itself; as the old Hebrew prophets had music played before them, to wake up the prophetic spirit within them.”

As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding, if I recollect rightly, which hung on the wall–a wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind–a grey shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun–a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow desolate pools and creeks, their wet, red, and black hides glittering in one long line of level light.

They seemed thoroughly conversant with art; and as I listened to their criticisms, I learnt more in five minutes about the characteristics of a really true and good picture, and about the perfection to which our unrivalled English landscape-painters have attained, than I ever did from all the books and criticisms which I had read. One of them had seen the spot represented, at the mouth of the Dee, and began telling wild stories of salmon-fishing, and wildfowl shooting–and then a tale of a girl, who, in bringing her father’s cattle home across the sands, had been caught by a sudden flow of the tide, and found next day a corpse hanging among the stake-nets far below. The tragedy, the art of the picture, the simple, dreary grandeur of the scenery, took possession of me; and I stood gazing a long time, and fancying myself pacing the sands, and wondering whether there were shells upon it–I had often longed for once only in my life to pick up shells–when Lady Ellerton, whom I had not before noticed, woke me from my reverie.

From Alton Locke

Today, the Dee estuary, close to Parkgate is silted up, the docks empty.

Mary’s story is based on truth.

When the book was written, cattle were grazed along the estuary, which was essentially marshland. Mary was sent to bring the cattle back before the tide came in. She tarried, and the sands which she walked along were swallowed up by the sea, taking her as well.

According to legend, on misty evenings, people could still hear her calling the cattle, and the cattle calling out in reply. And then silence.

The Sands of Dee (from Alton Locke)

By Charles Kingsley (1819–1875)

‘O MARY, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee;’
The western wind was wild and dank wi’ foam,
And all alone went she.

The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see;
The blinding mist came down and hid the land—
And never home came she.

‘Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair—
A tress o’ golden hair,
O’ drownèd maiden’s hair,
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,
Among the stakes on Dee.’

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel, crawling foam,
The cruel, hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea;
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee.

Kipling included this little poem in his book Traffics & Discoveries in 1904. Some say it’s a children’t poem, an allegory. The Kipling society folks seem to think it’s about naval warfare. A political tale.

I love the imagery, the tone. In a few short lines, Kipling creates an impossible world, where witches and little blue devils can speak to one another, albeit in riddles that only they seem to understand.

The Egg Shell

By Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

The wind took off with the sunset—
The fog came up with the tide,
When the Witch of the North took an Egg-shell
With a little Blue Devil inside.
“Sink,” she said, “or swim,” she said,
“It’s all you will get from me.
And that is the finish of him!” she said,
And the Egg-shell went to sea.

The wind fell dead with the midnight—
The fog shut down like a sheet,
When the Witch of the North heard the Egg-shell
Feeling by hand for a fleet.
“Get!” she said, “or you’re gone,” she said,
But the little Blue Devil said “No!”
“The sights are just coming on,” he said,
And he let the Whitehead go.

The wind got up with the morning—
The fog blew off with the rain,
When the Witch of the North saw the Egg-shell
And the little Blue Devil again.
“Did you swim?” she said. “Did you sink?” she said,
And the little Blue Devil replied:
“For myself I swam, but I think,” he said,
“There’s somebody sinking outside.”