Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland was published in 1887. In it, Lady Wilde lets us look into the minds of the Irish peasantry of the time. She did this by interviewing the elders of a dying faith now referred to as the “fairy religion,” or sometimes simply as witchcraft. Sections of the book have not always been considered authoritative according to some sources, such as Sacred-Texts.com.
This should be taken in context, however. In the preface, Lady Wilde separates herself from the individuals whose stories she’s about to share. She explains the historical and cultural importance of the tales themselves. Wilde then reminds the reader that this might have been the last chance for anyone to record the stories from the dying generation before they would be lost forever. She also offers other reasons for being interested in the pagan subject as well, including a love for anything Irish. Finally, she concludes her apologetic preface by reminding the reader that she’s a woman.
Detail from The Legend of St. Stephen. The Devil steals a baby and leaves a changeling in its place. Martino di Bartolomeo. 15th century
Changeling. The widespread belief that fairies or other malevolent spiritual forces might secretly substitute one infant for another is amply represented in Celtic oral tradition. Irish corpán sídhe, síodhbhradh, síofra; Scottish Gaelic tàcharan, ùmaidh; Manx lhiannoo shee; Welsh plentyn a newidiwyd am arall (Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology).
The Fairy Changeling
(Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland. Lady Wilde. 1887.)
ONE evening, a man was coming home late, and he passed a house where two women stood by a window, talking.
“I have left the dead child, in the cradle as you bid me,” said one woman, “and behold here is the other child, take it and let me go;” and she laid down an infant on a sheet by the window, who seemed in a secret sleep, and it was draped all in white.
“Wait,” said the other, “till you have had some food, and then take it to the fairy queen, as I promised, in place of the dead child that we have laid in the cradle by the nurse. ‘Wait also till the moon rises, and then you shall have the payment which I promised.”
They then both turned from the window. Now the man saw that there was some devil’s magic in it all. And when the women turned away he crept up close to the open window and put his hand in and seized the sleeping child and drew it out quietly without ever a sound. Then he made off as fast as he could to his own home, before the women could know anything about it, and handed the child to his mother’s care. Now the mother was angry at first, but when he told her the story, she believed him, and put the baby to sleep–a lovely, beautiful boy with a face like an angel.
Next morning there was a great commotion in the village, for the news spread that the first-born son of the great lord of the place, a lovely, healthy child, died suddenly in the night, without ever having had a sign of sickness. When they looked at him in the morning, there he laid dead in his cradle, and he was shrunk and wizened like a little old man, and no beauty was seen on him any more. So great lamentation was heard on all sides, and the whole country gathered to the wake. Amongst them came the young man who had carried off the child, and when he looked on the little wizened thing in the cradle he laughed. Now the parents were angry at his laughter, and wanted to turn him out.
But he said, “Wait put down a good fire,” and they did so.
Then he went over to the cradle and said to the hideous little creature, in a loud voice before all the people–
“If you don’t rise up this minute and leave the place, I will burn you on the fire; for I know might well who you are, and where you came from.”
At once the child sat up and began to grin at him; and made a rush to the door to get away; but the man caught hold of it and threw it on the fire. And the moment it felt the heat it turned into a black kitten, and flew up the chimney and was seen no more.
Then the man sent word to his mother to bring the other child, who was found to be the true heir, the lord’s own son. So there was great rejoicing, and the child grew up to be a great lord him-self, and when his time came, he ruled well over the estate; and his descendants are living to this day, for all things prospered with him after he was saved from the fairies.
In Nature
Parasitic cuckoo birds regularly practice brood parasitism, or non-reciprocal offspring-swapping. Rather than raising their young on their own, they will lay their egg in another’s nest, leaving the burden on the unsuspecting parents, which are of another species altogether. More often than not, the cuckoo chick hatches sooner than its “stepsiblings” and grows faster; eventually claiming most of the nourishment brought in and may actually “evict” the young of the host species by pushing them out of their own nest (Wikipedia).
Other
According to Katherine Briggs in Fairies in Tradition and Literature (1967), the changeling is more often male than female. This stolen child usually has blonde hair and a fair complexion. Briggs says it’s believed the dark fairies steal human babies in order to use them for breeding; thus introducing “fair” blood into their fairy gene pool. Most accounts of changelings in the fairy tales can be traced to Lady Wilde’s Ancient Legends. Several other sources are given in Brigg’s text, however. Either book can offer insight into how to retrieve a stolen child if need be, or how to protect one’s own child from being stolen in the first place.
I’ve written about the Bridget Cleary case previously in the Hawthorn Ogham post. To recap: In rural Ireland in 1895, Bridget Cleary’s husband, neighbours, and relatives, murdered her and burned her body. The motive? They were convinced Bridget was a fairy changeling. The active participants of the murder (9 initially charged) maintained their story throughout the entire court case.
The following is a short Nuu-Chah-Nulth legend from the 1895 German book ‘Indian Myths and Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America’ by Franz Boas ~ Dietrich Bertz translation. What fascinated me the most about the Girl and the Ghosts tale was the similarities to many of the Celtic spirit-abduction stories:
Once upon a time there was an ill-tempered girl. When she was given food, she complained that it wasn’t good enough, and no one was able to satisfy her. One evening someone gave food to her parents and her, but she cried and wanted to have something better. When her parents had finished their meal and wanted to go to bed, she was still crying and didn’t want to go to bed. Her mother said, “Come to bed, my child! I cannot give you what you ask for.” Since she sat there obstinately, her parents finally went to bed by themselves and went to sleep.
After a while the woman woke up. She called her daughter, but received no answer, so she got up and looked for the girl, yet was unable to find her. Then she woke up her husband and asked him whether he had seen their daughter. He also did not know what had become of her, and all their searching was in vain.
Suddenly they heard the girl’s voice calling deep under the ground. “Oh, give me good food, only a very small piece!” Thereupon the father called the whole tribe together and they considered what to do to get the girl back.
They decided to dig after her. They dug ten deep holes, but were unable to reach her, so they gave up. When they had assembled for a council again, one of the men said, “The ghosts (of the dead) must have got her. You know, when a village is abandoned, the ghosts always come back and look at the houses. Let’s all move away! Two men shall hide, and when the ghosts come with the girl, they shall take her away with them.”
The people resolved to follow his advice. They loaded their canoes and set out. Two men hid on the roof-beam of a house. When it got dark the ghosts appeared. They lit a fire and sang and danced. The girl sat among them and the ghosts sang magic incantations in order to change her too, into a ghost, but these didn’t bring the desired effect. Before the men could rush at the girl, they were scented by the ghosts, who vanished into the ground with the girl.
So the two men went down to the river and washed themselves for four days. Then they returned to the house and hid again on the roof-beam. When it got dark, the ghosts came again to sing and to dance. This time they didn’t scent the men, who rushed upon the girl and seized her before the ghosts were able to pull her down into the depths with them.
This is the tale of the girl and the ghosts. If you are interested in more Vancouver Island ghost stories, check out my new book The Haunting of Vancouver Island.
Illustration by J. Semeyn from A. Carmichael’s Indian Legends of Vancouver Island, 1922
illustration by John Dickson Batten from Joseph Jacobs’ Celtic Fairy Tales. 1892.
The Fear Dorcha is a mysterious, malignant, fairy being, found in Celtic myth and legend. Despite modern associations with the word, the term “fairy” was once used to refer to spirits such as the Fear Dorcha. Unlike modern fairies, however, these spirits – or ghosts – were not usually inclined towards acts of kindness, generosity, or mercy. In fact, Ireland’s Fear Dorcha is a classic example of the type of dark fairy found throughout the lands of the Celts:
Far dorocha, fear dorocha [Ir. Fear dorcha, dark man]. A malevolent fairy, the chief agent of mortal abduction. Usually portrayed as the butler-like servant of the fairy queen, he carries out her commands without emotion or waste of energy. With equal aplomb he may serve the queen her tea or retrieve on his black charger a desired mortal. Silently obedient to his queen, he is able to make all surrender their wills to his command. Although many have journeyed with the far doracha [sic] to the fairyland, few have returned with him. – James Mackillop (the Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology)
Replace the word “fairy” with ghost and the term “fairyland” with Land of the Dead and you’ll start to get the picture! The Fear Dorcha was a terrifying shadow spirit of nightmares and darkness. He was feared because he served the Queen of the Dead herself.
The Far Dorcha, or dark-man, is not to be confused with the Far Darrig (the red man), Far Gorta (the man of hunger) or Far Liath (the grey man).
According to Mackillop, the red man is basically a “gruesome” practical joker who likes to scare the living hell out of his prey. The man of hunger, on the other hand, pretends to be a beggar. He rewards those who have given him charity, but with what we can only imagine. Finally, the grey man takes the form of a fog or mist. He does this to cause ships to smash onto rocky shores, or for people to stumble and fall to an untimely death. His motives for these heinous acts are entirely unclear.
Fear Doirche, or dark-man, is also the name sometimes given to ‘the Black Druid of the Shee.’ In James Stephens 1920 book, Irish Fairy Tales we find one such example:
“I beg your protection, royal captain.”
“I give that to all,” he answered. “Against whom do you desire protection?”
“I am in terror of the Fear Doirche.”
“The Dark Man of the Shi?”
“He is my enemy,” she said.
“He is mine now,” said Fionn. “Tell me your story.”
The Fear Dorcha, or Black Druid, is also known as ‘the Black Sorcerer’ in some versions of the tale. It’s this Black Druid who finally steals Fionn’s wife. Much to Fionn’s dismay and never-ending searching, she was never seen or heard from again. We can only assume that she was forced to be Fear Dorcha’s bride – and would still be to this day – in the Land of the Dead.
Interestingly, there actually was a man whose name was Fear Dorcha MacFhirbhisigh (1600?). Very little seems to be known about him. The MacFhirbhisigh family celebrated pagan roots, however, and employed themselves as bards, judges and historians. It’s likely that the MacFhirbhisigh family recognized and honored existing druidic traditions. While Fear Dorcha may be a generic term, MacFhirbhisigh’s name may also be more than a coincidence and is worth noting. As is well known, many legendary stories have roots in actual historical places, people, or events.
The Fear Dorcha from Celtic folklore was a predator of the weak and an enemy of the strong. He existed only to serve the whims of the Queen of the Dead, or himself. Ultimately, this would make him a powerful figure in that otherworldly realm, and in ours, as well.
Not much else is known about the Fear Dorcha. Some modern sources give him attributes never mentioned in the old tales. It would be fair to agree, however, that Samhain would have been Fear Dorcha’s greatest day of strength. It would have been a day of great power for all of them, though. For it was on this night – Samhain – that the veil between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead were at their very thinnest.
This one’s a little different, but I wanted to share a bit of the story behind Way of the Wraith. Trust me, this isn’t your average fairytale…
Way of the Wraith was originally conceived in the army shacks of Edmonton, Alberta. It was a cold winter’s day, and we’d just handed in our paperwork containing our funerary arrangements and wills. We were infantry, and death was a real possibility. Morbid or not, it was this practice of death preparation that actually saved a lot of families extra grief in the long run. Still, drawing a map from my hometown to my mom’s house was sobering. I imagined a black car driving through those white frozen woods, slowly inching towards her gated driveway. Walking home that day, the cold air felt thick and heavy. It was in that moment that the burden of our commitment began to sink in. At least it did for me.
I was different than a lot of the other guys in barracks. For one, I was a lot older. I had just spent the last ten years of my life arresting “junkies,” mostly in Vancouver’s notoriously seedy downtown. A lot of bad things had happened down there over the years. For most of the incidents I was in a loss prevention management position. We did a lot of fighting in those days. At times, for extra money, I had also been a bouncer. In my other life I liked to consider myself a writer.
I had just finished my Criminology prerequisites – for policing – when I got the call. The phone rang and I suddenly had a choice to make. I would now be eligible to apply for the police forces, true, but the army was also on the table. It was very strange timing to be honest, as I’d actually tried to join the military a few years before. There were, apparently, some paperwork issues. Regardless, I decided that I would take the opportunity (it would still be a long road) sign up, get trained, and finally try to go to Afghanistan as an infantry soldier. It would take me a few years to do it, and it would be a tough slog, but I believed I could. I decided it would be worth it. If all went well I could always apply for the police afterwards.
I was in my thirties, had management experience, was reflective and liked to write. I had different tools to prepare me for going overseas. Ultimately, everyone would go through the mental preparation for tour in his or her own way.
I came home that night and I set up my laptop in the barrack room I shared with a couple of other guys. I then turned on that old Acer laptop and started to write. I don’t know if I knew what I was going to write, or not, but I knew I didn’t care. I suppose, in a metaphorical way, I was trying to say goodbye. These are the types of things you sometimes do when you’re a writer. Don’t ask me why.
As the tour approached I continued to write Way of the Wraith. Finally, in Afghanistan, from the old war-torn schoolhouse we sometimes called home, I would write a lot more. In fact, I wrote through my whole tour. I wrote when I was on leave. Portions of the book had already been written from several places in Canada, but this geographical list would ultimately include India, Cyprus and Dubai as well. In an extremely dark way, the whole writing process gained a life of its own.
While I was serving in Afghanistan, a family member was murdered back in Canada. It was hard not to be there for my mom and stepdad. I felt so far away. The whole legal process carried on a long time and was actually pretty despicable. The killer had no remorse despite asking for leniency due to addiction. The justice system also seemed lackadaisical. It was a hard time for a lot of people. It was hard to watch them suffer like that. Even from afar.
In Afghanistan, an IED explosion in the province of Kandahar killed one of my friends. This was also pretty tough. I look back now and I’m thankful I never knew more people that died. There were some hard times, for everyone, but it’s a little bit easier when the dead you see are strangers instead of friends. It sounds cold but its true. I wasn’t there when he died so I guess it made it easier. I think I see him in movie theatres sometimes, in crowds or in pictures.
These were some difficult times. My writing became a way for me to process what was happening in my life and to make sense of the world around me. My pagan-Buddhist philosophies carried me the rest of the way.
It was not all bad either. I would sometimes stop and gaze upon that foreign land around me. It would dawn on me that the landscape looked the same, as it must have looked a thousand years ago. It was easy to dream of an even stranger land while exposed in this way. The moon was different, for example. The two points of the crescent both reached skywards instead of to the side. That’s a little detail, but there were differences everywhere. It was beautiful, to be honest, but a lot of the guys would disagree.
It was no holiday. In Afghanistan we were constantly under the threat of ambush. In fact, death was all around us. We would respond to explosions only to discover that IEDs couldn’t discriminate between a Canadian soldier and an Afghan civilian. Sometimes we’d get shot at. This was usually by poorly trained snipers. Other shots fired were accidental; what some call “friendly fire.” The worst of these was a machine gun incident that should’ve killed – or at least wounded – some of us. Perhaps prayers do get answered? The incident lasted just long enough, that I’d logically concluded we were all about to die. I don’t feel I came to that conclusion quickly, either. Surviving was confusing.
Coping, for a solider, seemed to require an embracing of the warrior spirit. Those who did not surrender their life to a higher power, or cause, seemed to have had a more difficult time overall. There was a philosophy found that the Samurai would have called a willingness to die. This surrender-state allowed us to patrol through hostile villages, over proven IED grounds, and through opium fields that ultimately belonged to the Taliban. When something is real, when it’s right in front of you, you truly have no other choice but to deal with it. You either become afraid, you pretend that you’re not in danger, or you embrace whatever it is that you have to embrace. On some level a warrior simply decides that what will be will be.
I would have been considered old for the infantry. I was in my thirties while most of the other guys were in their early to mid twenties. These were selfless young men (there were no women in my platoon) who had given up everything to serve their country. You might think a whole generation can be selfish, but you’re wrong. Here were 20-year-old guys leaving home for the first time and they were giving up girls, education, drinking and every little comfort other people unwittingly took for granted! In my books that’s got to count for something.
It was more than age or life experience, though. I was a trained reservist placed with 1PPCLI for predeployment training. This meant I had even more to prove to the guys I would serve with because I wasn’t really one of them. Not at the start. Most reservists never even got this chance. To be part of a battle group meant that I would be patrolling through villages instead of standing guarding a gate somewhere. I could handle being an outsider for a little while. Some of these guys had been in the big fights of 2007. This was where I wanted to be. It felt like home.
It was a matter of pride I kept up. Eventually, I began to earn their respect. In return, these guys gave me more than they could ever have imagined. Not only did they bring me home safe, through their actions they taught me about being a better person and what it truly meant to be a warrior. I was older, more reflective, and able to witness and meditate upon things that may have been less visible to many of them. Being a writer, though, I could write it all down. As a result, my time in the army lives forever in the world found in Way of the Wraith.
In May of 2010 I returned safely to Canada. I arrived with an eagerness to reconstruct my life once more. Truthfully, I was thankful for being given a second chance to start over. It was bitter sweet, though. Almost every relationship in my life had failed, changed or was about to change. I’d been gone a long time.
By the beginning of July, while still technically employed by the military, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. They were operating on me before I even knew what hit me. No one noticed I was missing because I was on leave and had just landed back in Vancouver. I had too much pride to reach out to anyone. I spent the time alone in the hospital. It was a huge contrast to my life only a few weeks before.
I was sent home to my week-old unfurnished apartment. I slept on the floor that night. I spent the next little while trying to get better. I had movers take my things out of storage. I tried to move on.
The hope was that the surgery had gotten all of the cancer. There was this uncertainty, at the time, however, whether or not it had spread. During this period of uncertainty I finally finished writing Way of the Wraith.
When I first wrote Way of the Wraith it hadn’t been something that I’d planned on sharing. It was more of a dark secret to be honest. The guys overseas knew I journaled. They would see me sit down with my laptop or notebook whenever we were holed up in one strong point or another. I was somewhat embarrassed by what I was actually writing, though. This tale was entirely dark and incredibly pagan. Despite being fictional, it was more honest in some ways than anything I’d ever written. It showed me my rage and fears. It revealed to me the core of my own discontent, my suffering, and my disgust in current political and ecological landscapes. It was graphic. It was violent. It was sexual. It would lay bare to anyone who read it the underbelly of my writhing and twisting black soul! My sister had read my notes and pushed me to share it. I wasn’t so convinced at first.
Previously, I’d been published in a Canadian criminology textbook and online. I had several letters from Afghanistan printed in smaller newspapers. There was also the blog I had written for a year and a half, which focused on retail loss prevention. This was called the Hunters of the Damned, and it shared my career of arresting, “those committing criminal offenses on or in relation to the property” of my employer. The blog focused on the shadow side of the industry. These stories included snippets involving a horde of unnamed junkies, organized gang activity, fraud committing employees, weapon incidents, robberies, sexual assaults and prostitution. I personally thought that it was rather interesting and in entirely good taste. My employer, on the other hand, disagreed. The blog came down. This was all before Afghanistan.
Now, publishing something like Way of the Wraith would be like completely starting over. It didn’t matter, I finally decided. I wanted to write about ghosts and monsters dammit! In retrospect, I don’t think I wanted to write about anything too serious after my tour. I wrote Way of the Wraith and I started a new blog that focused on Celtic mythology and folklore. I had fooled myself. My writing took on a very dark taint. Instead of being light, it shifted to become a symbolic study of death and dying. I suppose at some point, a person’s just got to play the cards they’ve been given and carry on.
In August of 2011 Way of the Wraith was published. It was at this time, however, that I was told I would probably be needing chemotherapy. That was if the lump in my abdomen got any bigger.
In the fall of 2011 I began to receive aggressive chemotherapy. The good thing, I suppose, was that I started to write Shadow Empire. The months that followed were brutal. I had an adverse reaction to the drugs and developed blood clots. One broke off and went into my lung. A lot of other things started to happen, as well. It was a pretty rough ride to be honest.
Now, the side effects of the chemo persist. I’m starting to see specialists for pain and other symptoms. It’s hard to forget that I was fit not so long ago, and now I’m not. Instead of activity, however, I spend my days writing and resting. I will be well again. Whatever happens from here on in, I’ll continue to write. I’ll always try to do it part-time, for sure, but for now it’s one of the only things I can do.
When I was a kid, people used to always tell me that Dead people went “to a better place” when they died. Who am I to disagree? I look into the face of this thing, this mirror, and I disagree entirely though. The world found in Way of the Wraith, in Shadow Empire, reflects this disagreement. It’s not a good place to be.
Inside an abandoned Afghan school. 2009
*All pictures on this page are copyright and subject to copyright law 2012
