Mysterious Britain & Ireland

Category: Folktales

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales

Midwife For A Nixie

A midwife in Westerhausen was sitting one evening at home when someone knocked on her window and shouted that she should come outside. She did so, and there stood a nix, who told her to follow him. They walked to the Beck [a deep pond near Westerhausen], and the nix took a rod and struck the water with it. The water separated, and with dry feet they walked to the bottom.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Irish Fairies / Irish Folktales

The Midwife Of Listowel

"Why do you call the fairies ‘good people?’" asked I.
"I don’t call them the good people myself," answered Duvane, "but that is what the man called them who told me the story. Some call them the good people to avoid vexing them. I think they are called the good people mostly by pious men and women, who say that they are some of the fallen angels."

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Mabinogion / Occult / Occult Traditions / Welsh Fairies / Welsh Folktales / Witchcraft

Llyn Cowlyd

On the edge of the Carneddau range of mountains in Snowdonia lays the deepest lake in North Wales, Llyn Cowlyd. The lake has been dammed so it is unnaturally deep, but it has given soundings of 229 feet, and has a mean depth of 109 feet. The lake is almost 2 miles long, and a third of a mile wide, with the adjacent hills dropping steeply to the lakes edges.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales

Danish Elf Midwife

According to ‘The Science of Fairy Tales’ (1891) by Edwin Sidney Hartland ‘A Danish tradition tells of a woman who was taken by an elf on Christmas Eve down into the earth to attend his wife.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales

Earthman And The Midwife

In The Science of Fairy Tales (1891), Edwin Sidney Hartland gives the following account of a Swabian* story where a human midwife is called to aid an Earthman’s wife (a name given to this type of fairy) give birth.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Manx Fairies / Manx Folktales

Farmer Who Lost His Way

According to ‘The Science of Fairy Tales’ (1891) by Edwin Sidney Hartland, ‘A Manx tale, which can be traced back to (George) Waldron, narrates the night adventure of a farmer who lost his way in returning home from Peel, and was led by the sound of music into a large hall where were a great number of little people feasting.

English Fairies / English Folktales / Fairies / Folklore / Folktales

Fairy Ointment

Once upon a time there was, in this celebrated town [Tavistock], a Dame Somebody, I do not know her name, and as she is a real character, I have no right to give her a fictitious one. All I with truth can say, is, that she was old, and nothing the worse for that; for age is, or ought to be, held in honor as the source of wisdom and experience.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Irish Fairies / Irish Folktales

Fairy Nurse

There lived a woman in Innish Shark — one of the group of islands on the eastern coast — named Biddy Mannion, as handsome and likely a fisherman’s wife as you would meet in a day’s walk. She was tall, and fair in the face, with skin like an egg, and hair that might vie with the gloss of the raven’s wing.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales

Troll Labor

Thomas Keightley in his The Fairy Mythology, Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries (1850) gives the following account which was narrated in the form of a legal declaration.