The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. W. Y. Evans-Wentz
and Human Life.—
Q.—(1) Is it possible, as the ancient Irish thought, that certain of the higher Sidhe beings have entered or could enter our plane of life by submitting to human birth? (2) On the other hand, do you consider it possible for men in trance or at death to enter the Sidhe world?
A.—(1) ‘I cannot say.’ (2) ‘Yes; both in trance and after death. I think any one who thought much of the Sidhe during his life and who saw them frequently and brooded on them would likely go to their world after death.’
Social Organization of the ‘Sidhe’.—
Q.—You refer to chieftain-like or prince-like beings, and to a king among water beings; is there therefore definite social organization among the various Sidhe orders and races, and if so, what is its nature?
A.—‘I cannot say about a definite social organization. I have seen beings who seemed to command others, and who were held in reverence. This implies an organization, but whether it is instinctive like that of a hive of bees, or consciously organized like human society, I cannot say.’
Lower ‘Sidhe’ as Nature Elementals.—
Q.—You speak of the water-being king as an elemental king; do you suggest thereby a resemblance between lower Sidhe orders and what mediaeval mystics called elementals?
A.—‘The lower orders of the Sidhe are, I think, the nature elementals of the mediaeval mystics.’
Nourishment of the Higher ‘Sidhe’.—
Q.—The water beings as you have described them seem to be nourished and kept alive by something akin to electrical fluids; do the higher orders of the Sidhe seem to be similarly nourished?
A.—‘They seemed to me to draw their life out of the Soul of the World.’
Collective Visions of ‘Sidhe’ Beings.—
Q.—Have you had visions of the various Sidhe beings in company with other persons?
A.—‘I have had such visions on several occasions.’
And this statement has been confirmed to me by three participants in such collective visions, who separately at different times have seen in company with our witness the same vision at the same moment. On another occasion, on the Greenlands at Rosses Point, County Sligo, the same Sidhe being was seen by our present witness and a friend with him, also possessing the faculty of seership, at a time when the two percipients were some little distance apart, and they hurried to each other to describe the being, not knowing that the explanation was mutually unnecessary. I have talked with both percipients so much, and know them so intimately that I am fully able to state that as percipients they fulfil all necessary pathological conditions required by psychologists in order to make their evidence acceptable.
Parallel Evidence as to the Sidhe Races
In general, the rare evidence above recorded from the Irish seer could be paralleled by similar evidence from at least two other reliable Irish people, with whom also I have been privileged to discuss the Fairy-Faith. One is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, the other is the wife of a well-known Irish historian; and both of them testify to having likewise had collective visions of Sidhe beings in Ireland.
This is what Mr. William B. Yeats wrote to me, while this study was in progress, concerning the Celtic Fairy Kingdom:—‘I am certain that it exists, and will some day be studied as it was studied by Kirk.’[21]
Independent Evidence from the Sidhe World
One of the most remarkable discoveries of our Celtic researches has been that the native population of the Rosses Point country, or, as we have called it, the Sidhe world, in most essentials, and, what is most important, by independent folk-testimony, substantiate the opinions and statements of the educated Irish mystics to whom we have just referred, as follows:—
John Conway’s Vision of the ‘Gentry’.—In Upper Rosses Point, Mrs. J. Conway told me this about the ‘gentry’:—‘John Conway, my husband, who was a pilot by profession, in watching for in-coming ships used to go up on the high hill among the Fairy Hills; and there he often saw the gentry going down the hill to the strand. One night in particular he recognized them as men and women of the gentry; and they were as big as any living people. It was late at night about forty years ago.’
Ghosts and Fairies.—When first I introduced myself to Owen Conway, in his bachelor quarters, a cosy cottage at Upper Rosses Point, he said that Mr. W. B. Yeats and other men famous in Irish literature had visited him to hear about the fairies, and that though he knew very little about the fairies he nevertheless always likes to talk of them. Then Owen began to tell me about a man’s ghost which both he and Bran Reggan had seen at different times on the road to Sligo, then about a woman’s ghost which he and other people had often seen near where we were, and then about the exorcizing of a haunted house in Sligo some sixty years ago by Father McGowan, who as a result died soon afterwards, apparently having been killed by the exorcized spirits. Finally, I heard from him the following anecdotes about the fairies:—
A Stone Wall overthrown by ‘Fairy’ Agency.—‘Nothing is more certain than that there are fairies. The old folks always thought them the fallen angels. At the back of this house the fairies had their pass. My neighbour started to build a cow-shed, and one wall abutting on the pass was thrown down twice, and nothing but the fairies ever did it. The third time the wall was built it stood.’
Fairies passing through Stone Walls.—‘Where MacEwen’s house stands was a noted fairy place. Men in building the house saw fairies on horses coming across the spot, and the stone walls did not stop them at all.’
Seeing the ‘Gentry’.—‘A cousin of mine, who was a pilot, once went to the watch-house up there on the Point to take his brother’s place; and he saw ladies coming towards him as he crossed the Greenlands. At first he thought they were coming from a dance, but there was no dance going then, and, if there had been, no human beings dressed like them and moving as they were could have come from any part of the globe, and in so great a party, at that hour of the night. Then when they passed him and he saw how beautiful they were, he knew them for the gentry women.’
‘Michael Reddy (our next witness) saw the gentry down on the Greenlands in regimentals like an army, and in daylight. He was a young man at the time, and had been sent out to see if any cattle were astray.’
And this is what Michael Reddy, of Rosses Point, now a sailor on the ship Tartar, sailing from Sligo to neighbouring ports on the Irish coast, asserts in confirmation of Owen Conway’s statement about him:—‘I saw the gentry on the strand (at Lower Rosses Point) about forty years ago. It was afternoon. I first saw one of them like an officer pointing at me what seemed a sword; and when I got on the Greenlands I saw a great company of gentry, like soldiers, in red, laughing and shouting. Their leader was a big man, and they were ordinary human size. As a result [of this vision] I took to my bed and lay there for weeks. Upon another occasion, late at night, I was with my mother milking cows, and we heard the gentry all round us talking, but could not see them.’
Going to the ‘Gentry’ through Death, Dreams, or Trance.—John O’Conway, one of the most reliable citizens of Upper Rosses Point, offers the following testimony concerning the ‘gentry’:—‘In olden times the gentry were very numerous about forts and here on the Greenlands, but rarely seen. They appeared to be the same as any living men. When people died it was said the gentry took them, for they would afterwards appear among the gentry.’
‘We had a ploughman of good habits who came in one day too late for his morning’s work, and he in excuse very seriously said, “May be if you had travelled all night as much as I have you wouldn’t talk. I was away with the gentry, and save for a lady I couldn’t have been back now. I saw a long hall full of many people. Some of them I knew and some I did not know.