Apparently, a large number of adults in the UK believe in fairies. Many of whom live in Scotland. I mean the people, not the fairies. There are statistics about this, but can you be bothered? They are probably all skewed by the Wee Folk anyway. We have the Victorians to blame for the generic image of fairies; floaty skirts, transparent wings, and in most paintings of that period, astoundingly thick calves in white tights. Many fairies thus depicted have the bun-like features of the young Queen Victoria. This could be a stylistic reference to contemporary standards of beauty, or Q.V might actually have BEEN a fairy. She,as we know, was very small, and given to alarmingly sudden appearances,which frequently made Disraeli jump. He mentions this in his dairies;
" June 11th 1860. Her Majesty was pleased today to materialise suddenly in my breakfast room in Curzon St. She flew twice around the kedgeree dish, and landed on my shoulder.How fortunate that I was wearing my canary-coloured waistcoat, which I know her to admire.She graciously gave me an idea for my new novel, "Endymion", and we discussed matters of the day. In departing, she said "Don't tell Gladstone, he will have you put away," and flew off in the direction of Hyde Park".
There was ,of course, the famous hoax of the Cottingley fairies, in which a photograph of two pieces of paper in a tree was published in the "Gullibility Weekly Gazette" and convinced, amongst others, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. More recently, however, Dan Baines, a sculptor, created the ‘corpse’ of a dead fairy as an April Fools’ Day joke in 2007. He posted the pictures of an " unknown creature, about 8 inches in length, discovered by a man walking his dog on Firestone Hill" on his website,which consequently received more than 20,000 hits in one day. Despite him revealing that it was a hoax, many people refused to believe it. Mr Baines tired of this nonsense, and also of answering the four hundred e-mails he received from believers each day. He briskly put the dead fairy on Ebay, where it sold for £280. Naturally, investments in dead fairies may go down as well as up. I once discovered a "Faerie Shop" in Bath. It was a freezing morning just after Christmas, and we made a beeline for it, thinking there might be scones. It was run by two women of depressed aspect. They were wearing bedraggled fairy outfits, the hems covered in slush, beneath which their green wellies peeped out, ethereally. They had grey padded anoracks on over their frocks. One of them had a stye.
The shop was, predictably, stuffed with things of a fairy-related nature. It was hard to find something to want, but eventually I bought a tiny figurine . My fairy had wings on a spring, and a striking facial resemblance to Mariella Frostrup. During the purchase, (which took both women to effect, one to look for the paper bags and the other to dab anxiously at the till) my friends and I huddled around the one-bar electric fire,shoving each other. There was sad tinkly background music and a strong smell of bleach. Maybe we had picked a bad day, but it looked like the Wee Folk were withholding their bountiful blessings from this place and were seriously cheesed with the whole operation .
Ancient Fairies (Yes, I know, but I am resisting) were much more fun and far less soppy than the Victorians pictured them. In fact, they had a whale of a time. When they weren't bewitching cattle (Query; how does one KNOW when a cow is bewitched?) , they were whizzing down chimneys and stealing babies. Sometimes, they would leave a pallid, red-headed changeling child with leaf-green eyes,in the place of the human babe. This wouldn't have rung any alarm bells round our way, since most of our family had babies like that without supernatural intervention. My relatives might have yelled up the flue, "Oy! Can we have one that does Maths?" and considered it an improvement .
Which brings me back to the high levels of fairy visitation in Scotland. Could it be that the (no doubt rigorously scientific) researchers on this matter just think us gingery people are fairies? Did they run into a hen party in Sauchiehall St, and convince themselves that the mystical red-headed girls hitting each other with wands and flying through bar-room doors were the Good Folk?
I have decided to clap my hands and believe in them, just in case. If I do,I might see one,and it could introduce me to a Brownie. Now they are really useful,as they pop round when you are sleeping and brush your hearth. I don't have a hearth, but they could do the stairs and a pile of ironing? The Boy has believed in these creatures for years,but he calls them "Everyone Else's Mothers". I shall leave out some food for them (you have to do that). I wonder if they like fish fingers?
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