Fairies

March 24, 2025

Greetings from the seelie,

I think most of my life I have taken a somewhat skeptical stance on the mystical and mysterious things in life.  I have a practical attitude about things I cannot see or cannot prove.  I almost added something about science, but I don’t understand most of that, and so it might just as well be magic too.

Last year I crossed paths with a woman in Scotland.  We would have likely never had reason to speak except we were both storytellers.  She worked in a restaurant where we’d stopped for lunch, and somehow we stumbled into this thing we have in common.  Her name was Rose, and she was a part of a storytelling legacy that would last fifty years before she was done.  It was, by far, a more serious dedication to the craft than I’ve ever considered.  But such was Scotland. 

We mentioned we were going to the Fairy Pools, a natural tourist attraction on the Isle of Skye, waterfalls and ponds in a green, rocky crease in the mountains.  Rose tsked, clearly not approving. 

  It had only just become an attraction a generation ago.  “They’re na real faeries thar,” she said, seriously. 

Later we chuckled a little at this.  “Fake fairies, ha-ha, not like the real fairies we believe in,” we joked, in our superior American skepticism.  We live in the new world where all that folklore was left behind along with kings and queens.

We walked along between the small rivers sluicing amidst the mossy rocks, far enough from where we parked the car to start to feel like we were exploring.  The place was lined with other visitors, some sitting in the pools, others dangling their heads into the wet where the water frothed and foamed. 

In truth, I hadn’t learned why they were called fairy pools, so I was looking for clues.  There was one small waterfall, away from the crowds, where the water spilled over trays of rocks and entered the air between like fine woven lace.  I wondered if this was the magic, if this was what inspired the idea of fairies. 

For a moment, I could imagine sitting there, with no contemporary distractions, and seeing a living thing in the water.  Then I remembered Rose didn’t believe in fairies there, and then I remembered I didn’t believe in fairies anywhere.  And then it was just another creek in a tourist stop.

In Scotland you are never far from ancient things.  Beyond castles and walls and roads that are a thousand years old, though that’s a start. It seems as though the land, the low mountains, the surreal rock formations, the treeless places and the dense heather, is from another time. It feels like you can glimpse what the world was like before we explained everything away.

When I was young, I was delighted by fables and fairy tales and the magic of Santa and the bunny that comes in the spring, along with leprechauns and unicorns and talking animals in picture books.  As a child I hadn’t learned what was impossible, and I can still feel that innocence sometimes.  It’s usually when I am alone in the woods, when the quiet sounds could be anything.  Could be fairies. 

I hear the mythology of fairies and I roll my eyes.  A little.  They are mischievous, sometimes helpful sometimes not. They can be beautiful or invisible.  They are often associated with angels, sometimes interwoven with other religious stories. Depending on what culture you explore, they have various magic powers which can be employed for great good, or cause illness or bad luck.  It’s far more complex than I can describe, which made me think of this.

Imagine trying to explain modern technology to a Scottish peat farmer 1000 years ago.  How we can speak into a box, and someone can hear us miles away, or our voice can be saved for generations to be heard by our descendants.  Or imagine telling him about Bluetooth, or radar, or sonograms.  He would nod and say, “Ach, aye, sure you mean the faeries,” and then cross himself.

At some point in our lives we experience things we cannot explain and we find something to put in that place of not knowing.  We say ‘coincidence’ or name a saint from our religion or touch a crystal or consult our horoscope.  Or we turn to science and make a hypothesis based on what facts we can assemble.  All of these responses just came to us recently, in the context of world history.  Fairies, in some form or other, have been around since 500 BC.  Who knows what we will be reaching for in another thousand years?

I know that’s not a fair comparison when talking about the evolution of civilization, but it does remind me of a truth in my own life.

When the world is stripped away, when there are no screens or noise or petty forgettable sins of my neighbors to distract me, there is a possibility. When I am sitting in the wild, under a dome of stars, under a canopy of life, I can feel what some of what my ancestors felt.  I don’t look for fairies in the woods, don’t expect to see them flitting from one green thing to another in the glens and hollows of the forests I explore.  But…

What happens when the logical, civilized, educated me gets sanded down a bit, when I am a little closer to my basic self, something becomes exposed.  And so, when I have been very afraid, and remarkably, when I have been nearly insane with joy, I am closest to believing in fairies.  And magic and ghosts and other dimensions filled with people who are trying to reach us, and all the myths and anything in the preternatural basket.  Still.  To this day.

Science and religion and history will all scoff at magic, will not allow the possibility of fairies.  Even Rose, who believes in fairies, doesn’t believe in all fairies. Miracles and magic are only one fraction away from being science and religion. The Fairy Pools at Skye, once their myth solidifies in a hundred years, will be legitimate. So, who are any of us to say? And, to borrow a phrase from contemporary faith, fairies don’t need us to believe in them, to exist.

Hope this finds you wondering,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith