OTHERWORLD ALLEGIANCES

Sometimes you have to be a bit careful what you are talking about, because these inner loyalties we have don't necessarily want to be broadcast all over the internet. But I want this to be a place I can talk about these things without too much disapproval from the Otherworld 😏 And I guess I want to say as a kind of declaration, an affirmation, that the fairy realm has a claim on me.

And these are not the Christianised tiny pink things that we perhaps get told about as children, but the big mothers who are not good or bad (human ideas) but are what they are, part of the natural world, with their own power and their own point of view. They are maybe invisible to us because we modern humans have been brainwashed into thinking literally, so that if something can't be pinned down and tested and measured, then it isn't real. The loss is ours. But it is also a loss to the Otherworld, because to perceive is to exist: this idea is natural to indigenous people, and has been turned into a school of thought, 'Philosophical Idealism', by moderns on the right track, but who often confuse rationality with experienced reality.

 

Fernworthy Reservoir, Devon

So as we stop giving offerings to the natural world and treating her with reciprocity, then by the same token we deny the fairies their existence, and there less place for them. They are beings in their own right, as is the natural world in her wholeness and aliveness. And that is something you can't pin down, and just as well.

 

Like my mother, who came from the west of Ireland and who used to wander off to the woods on her own as a child and hang out with the little people. And she gave me a detailed description once of these beings, and a few months later I repeated back to her what she had said, by way of confirmation, and she replied "Did I say that?" No, you can't pin the fairies down, and you couldn’t pin my mother down.

 

And if you marry a fairy woman - or one who has been claimed by the fairies, and is maybe in some ways not all here as a result, like my Mum - then she will find your way round you. Like my Dad who was English and very straight, decided maybe before I was born that I would be called 'Barry', and what he said went. He didn't realise for a moment that Barry is derived from Fionnbharr, who was king of the fairies at a mound at Knockmaa near Tuam, about an hour from where my Mum grew up.

 

And then I called my son Finn, the other half of Fionnbharr, not realising the connection at the time, and so the fairy lineage continued through my mother then me and now my son. And when he was a baby he had a laugh that was like bells from another world. He is in a bit of a muggle phase right now, and good on him, but we will see what the future brings.

 

Finn was born in 2000, just after Fenny Castle, a 12-acre field near Glastonbury, fell into my hands, a site known locally as 'The Last Refuge of the Fairies'. This was when I first had an inkling that these guys had a claim on me. And I could feel them following me around the field, these big mothers, taller than me. Half the field was hill, and that part didn't feel like human territory, it wasn't mine to do with as I willed. You went there with respect. One guy who put his yurt on the hill went into a kind of dream and I had to ask him to leave the field, and he did not forgive me for years. But my fault for letting it happen.

 

Venford Falls, Dartmoor

I moved to Devon in 2010 and later sold the field, and it seems now to have a worthy steward who has planted trees (as I did) and kept the field unnoticeable, as I am sure the fairies want. I was back there a few months ago and the connection was very strong, I felt treated like royalty in the presence of the sidhe. And they are right, it is time to be what I am. Maybe Queen Oonagh will in time show herself too? If you visit the field, please bring an offering with you and you will be welcomed. These guys want to be known, but not in a celeb kind of way, and need their kingdom respected.

 

Be that as it may, I find myself walking on Dartmoor several times a week, and there is no shortage of fairy places here. Wistman's Wood, Vennford Falls, and down below Birch Tor, to name a few. And now I bump into someone who has her own list of fairy places she visits on Dartmoor, and who wants to write an illustrated book on them. So the fairies have given me some kind of job to do here, and it is one I do willingly and with delight. For the fairies are a kind of fate, a claim over oneself, a loyalty, a world to which one has allegiance. And I will defend them when necessary, like I did in my satirical broadside against Richard Dawkins in 2014 when he said children shouldn’t be read fairy stories because they are ‘not true’.

 

Fenny Castle

And my plan is early next year to look for a place I can buy with a bit of land that people can come to, and the money should be in place by then. And the fairies will take care of you if you honour them, and the place I get will be found in association with these so-called 'little' people. They are also the power of the natural world and the ways in which she will help us if we honour and promote the life within her.

The natural world has a subjective dimension just like we do. It is alive and has its own point of view, whether it is an animal, a plant or a rock. Just as Matter is the objective dimension of our experience, so is Spirit the subjective dimension. And the fairies get forgotten because we think only the 'objective' is real. More fool us. Above is Fenny Castle from years ago. There are more trees there now.