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This article explores how everyday concerns related to Irish emigration are symbolically addressed in a range of supernatural legends documented in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It seeks to illuminate how uncanny tales that feature emigrants departing from Ireland relate to the shared worlds of meaning of those who told and listened to them, showing how legends about affliction and miraculous abundance both draw on and construct cultural scripts. It also considers stories that articulate and reinforce traditional ideas about community members who were said to be abducted by the fairies and living in their midst. This was just one aspect of supernatural beliefs that was condemned as part of a larger rationalist and religious campaign by the Catholic Church and others to root out vernacular customs or "superstition," a theme that informs a number of legends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Asrai is a nocturnal fairy popularly attributed to British folklore, most memorable for the fact that any exposure to sunlight will cause it to melt into water. Rather than developing from oral folk tradition, like most legendary creatures, the Asrai may have originated and evolved through literary sources, beginning with the poetry of the Scottish author Robert Buchanan in the 1870s. Since appearing in a folklore account of uncertain provenance in 1970, the Asrai has come into use as a fantasy creature with international spread, developing in a dialogue between print media and the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the more remarkable satires of English society and thought of the 1880s came in the guise of a fairy story, That Very Mab (1885), in which the eponymous fairy queen is driven out of Samoa by imperialists and on her return to England finds it overrun by evolutionists and the proponents of modern material progress. Written by the satirist and popular Punch contributor May Kendall, That Very Mab excoriates Victorian England by satirizing its passion for explanatory frameworks, including scientific materialism, philistinism, nihilism, novel metaphysics, evolutionary progress, and imperialism, all subjects that Kendall also attacked in her comic verse (published between 1885 and 1894). Kendall has recently received critical attention for her satiric poems about evolutionary science, materialism, and modern disenchantment. While That Very Mab's satiric concerns in many ways dovetail with those of these poems, the wider scope of its fantastic narrative allows Kendall to enact a more sustained assault on the concept of empire and its justifications from evolutionary anthropology. Highly skeptical of teleologies that promote a belief in the evolutionary progress of humankind, her fairy fantasy links evolutionary anthropology to the dishonest blandishments, corruption, and violence of imperial adventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty mermaid place names relating to landscape features have been identified in Britain (including the Isle of Man). The names are attested from the 16th to the 21 st Century: some are extremely well documented, while others have only passing written references. Taken together these names allow us to distinguish different folklore traditions in different parts of the island. For instance, there is a freshwater 'mere-maid' in eastern England; and a more familiar marine mermaid attested in the southwest of England. There are also - just as interestingly - large areas of Britain for which no mermaid place names are recorded. The article concludes with a reflection on the 'Archetypal Modern Mermaid' (AMM) that dominated in British culture by the 1 800s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many examples of Irish folklore reflect and instill enduring conceptions about the workings, vulnerability, and viability of community, which is understood to be a doing, a project in need of continual maintenance. Arguably, there has been no more devastating blow to the vernacular understanding of community as social contract for mutual support than the mid-nineteenth-century Famine in Ireland. If folklore provides models for contemplating and reproducing ideas about how community may be enacted, it also bears witness to the haunting consequences of abandoning community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Fairy Tern Sternula nereis nereis is a seabird that breeds along the coast and whose small populations are dispersed over vast stretches of the Australian seaboard and nearshore islands. In recent years, citizen science programs have been developed to bolster monitoring efforts to better understand breeding success and identify site threat profiles. The development of protocols that facilitate the collection of consistent measurements is important for long-term monitoring of this threatened (Vulnerable) species. This study describes plumage development and age-related behaviour in juvenile Australian Fairy Terns using direct observations and photographic recapture of individually marked birds. This information may be used as the basis for the development of a field ageing guide, enabling the collection of standardised information on colony demographics and juvenile development. A temporary colour-banding study was trialled by painting nail varnish onto 15 Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme (ABBBS) incoloy bands, avoiding the need to band nestlings with additional readable or PVC colour-bands. The varnish remained intact, albeit chipped, on four surviving birds that were resighted ≤80 days after banding, enabling the identification of individuals away from the colony site, without the need for recapture. The temporary marking of ABBBS bands using nail varnish offered an effective short-term solution for identifying individual juvenile Fairy Terns in the field and for describing plumage changes over a period of c. 3 months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The images, characters, and events featured in a charm enter into mutual, organic relations with other images, characters, and events that are not explicitly included in the given text but contribute implicitly to the overall significance of the charm. The aim of the current article is to reveal the unspoken components of St. Elijah narrative file embedded in the deep horizon of beliefs and knowledge implied by a given charm. Following the charm step by step, I point out items that imply the unvoiced - but still present - level of images and beliefs taken from the non-charming narrative corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes nest desertion as a probable but previously undescribed anti-predator strategy for the Australian Fairy Tern Sternula nereis nereis. Deserted nests were observed at night for up to nine nights following the laying of the first eggs at a colony in southwestern Australia. Nocturnal nest desertion may provide the terns with a mechanism for assessing the occurrence of potential nest predators, maintaining reproductive synchrony, and reducing the total time a colony is detectable by predators. Additionally, temporary diurnal nest desertion for up to 80 minutes was observed following the predation of an adult tern. Diurnal nest desertion may be used to reduce the risk of adult mortality and, consequently, decrease colony visibility, thereby increasing reproductive success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Drawing on historical and ethnographic data from Gaelic Scotland and Ireland, as well as data from contemporary Chile, this talk explores the phenomenon of changelings. Changelings are cuckoo-like imposters, left in the place of humans abducted by fairy captors, and identical in almost all aspects to the humans they have displaced. Yet small indices of difference – voracious appetite, rapid ageing, and fear of fire and iron – lead kin to suspect that the people in their midst might not be whom they seem. What intrigues me, however, is that not just difference, but similarity too, comes to index alterity in surprising ways. The question then becomes not just an epistemological one of how we can know others, but an ontological one of what kinds of others do we think we know. This shifting configuration of similarity and difference within the changeling encounter reveal a micropolitics of alterity that I suggest resonates beyond the historical and folkloric record to find parallels in contemporary debates about kinship. In particular, the perpetual presence of alterity within the kinship relation might lead to a reconsideration of Marshall Sahlins’ recent insistence upon ‘mutuality of being’ as the essence of ‘what kinship is.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the three-year journey of teachers, children, and families as they explored a natural phenomenon and documented learning through the medium of art. Teachers identified strategies that supported and encouraged children to observe, research, and document their learning and ideas in two and three dimensions using a wide variety of media. Learning was made visible to parents and families through visual arts capturing their interest and involvement. Using Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of thinking to interpret the experiences provides understanding of how flexible teaching strategies can support complex learning over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I try to argue a broader and deeper notion of fairy tale, beginning from an overview of some of the key terminologies and classifications devised and employed by folk-narrative research, passing through an etymological and semantic scrutiny of the word 'fairy', and developing, eventually, a structural analysis purposely framed within the historical-cultural context of the Irish tradition. What I attempt to let emerge -- challenging to some extent the established concepts and theories -- is a more comprehensive narrative category, characterised by a specific epistemological and ontological value, through which a sort of intermediate, neutral space is modelled, where boundaries are crossed and elements more or less heterogeneous are connected. Thus, the fairy tale can express a multi-dimensional worldview and the potential for a more complex idea of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most probably written in 1595-96, A Midsummer Night's Dream is an enticing and enchanting play written by a master playwright William Shakespeare that still offers so much to intrigue, bewilder, and allure the readers and audience simultaneously. Even after the four hundred years of its publication and production, critical interpretations seem to strive to interpret this play from every possible angle. The play presents three freakish worlds in front of the people where characters of this play are acting and reacting absurdly and grotesquely. A Midsummer Night's Dream records the events and incidents of three different worlds dexterously: the world of duke of Athens; the world of fairies; and the world of six amateur artists, how these three different worlds are entwined with each other is the hallmark of this play. This Dream is an amalgamation of the world of deception and the world of reality and Shakespeare has interweaved fiction with truth in such a way that on the surface level, this play is a comedy but on a deeper level, the play depicts tragic insights into the characters and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changeling lore is the focus of a great deal of scholarship and there is a well-established associated typology in terms of Migratory Legends and of narrative motifs. This study considers the ways in which an unusual (and potentially unique) narrative relates to widely known changeling lore and to associated analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The element that brings together two apparently different writers such as Ion Agârbiceanu (1882-1963) and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776--1822) is their inclination towards the fantastic, the subtle mix of the real with the imaginary, as well as their belief in the existence of ghosts, of spirits of the underworld, a belief quite widely spread among numerous peoples. Legends about mining have been a generous source of inspiration for the authors of fantastic literature, the readers being fascinated with the miraculous stories linked to the fabulous fortunes hidden in the underground. As the mirage of money is universal, it is not by accident that a celebrated writer such as E. T. A. Hoffmann describes in the "Mines of Falun" a series of happenings that under numerous aspects are extremely similar to the stories told by Ion Agârbiceanu in the novel Arhanghelii (The archangels) or in his stories inspired by the mythology of the Western Carpathians: "Vâlva-Bãilor" (The fairy of the mines), "Valea-Dracului" (Devil's cove) and "Duhul bãilor" (The ghost of the mines). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the continuities and changes in shamans' beliefs and rituals in order to reveal the unique features of shamanism in the Song dynasty (960-1279) through a comparative perspective. First, the study finds that the structure of the shamans' pantheon changed during the Song period. Spirits which Song shamans and their followers worshipped but which occupied unimportant places in the register of sacrifices (sidian ...) or which were even omitted entirely-such as fairies (jingmei ...) and malicious ghosts (ligui ...) that usually turned into epidemic gods (wenshen ...), ancient shamans, and the so-called "ridiculous and false" deities-were later added to the pantheon by shamans and included in rituals. These developments are most evident in shamans' establishing of a great number of shrines throughout the country to settle their spirits and ward off or quell calamities as well as to ask for blessings. Further evidence comes in the form of frequently reported accusations or rumors of the so-called "killing people as sacrifices to ghosts" (sharen jigui ...) relating to shamanistic rituals. The "god-receiving ceremony" also attracted much attention. In addition to the original temples, some shamans' deities had many mobile shrines (xingci ...) located in different places. These mobile shrines expanded the geographic scope of a certain shamanistic cult. Song shamans routinely seized the occasion of cross-border festivals to gather audiences and amass wealth to carry out a pilgrimage with their followers. Officials, however, were frequently worried by shamanistic rituals and activities, and these were forbidden by the Song government. The imperial interdiction against shamanism in the Song was much more severe than during any earlier period, and this is indeed the most salient characteristic of Song shamanism. Still, it would be wrong to assert that shamans' power and authority in Chinese society gradually declined from Song times onward. It is similarly inappropriate to suggest that Chinese shamanism never changed. In conclusion, Song shamans not only inherited old shamanistic customs but also created or promoted new shamanistic fashions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The population of the North Sea archipelago of Shetland, UK possesses a distinct sense of ethnic identity, which connects the island’s present-day community to that of its Old Norse/Viking settlers from Scandinavia. This sense of Viking ethnicity, however, is relatively recent, first arising in the 19th Century. This paper argues that Shetland’s cultural identity must be understood in terms of the islands’ historical interconnectedness with trends in literature and scholarship in mainland Scotland, Britain, and Europe as a whole. Part II of this two-part paper looks at how the rise of nationalism and philological research into race and ethnicity in the 1800s both drew upon and contributed to Shetlanders’ understanding of their history and culture. In the 1890s, Edinburgh scholar David MacRitchie promoted a theory to explain European and Asian fairy folklore. This theory was grounded in the history of Orkney and Shetland and eventually made a significant impact in Shetland itself, being used by the author Jessie Saxby to promote a distinctive local identity concept. MacRitchie’s work also contributed to later research connected to the development of neopaganism and racist Nazi ideology. The conclusion concerns the role of isolated island communities within flows of cultural development and exchange. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Water sprites feature prominently in the myths of many countries. What these mythical tales have in common is the pivotal function of illusion in the structure of the narrative. The typical form of the narrative is that of a serpent or a water sprite materialized in the guise of a beautiful, irresistibly seductive young woman that makes a pact with a human partner. The latter, naturally violates the pact, thus provoking the wrath of the water sprite. In the end he learns the hard way that the whole experience of a blissful relationship with a beautiful female was an illusion and that he was a victim of a cruel deception: the beautiful maiden was really a serpent, and the wealth was nothing but a semblance of substance. This paper explores myths of the people of the sea (selkies), the water sprites (fairies, umamlambo, the Karina) and their illusionistic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Irish and in Scottish folklore, banshees are spirits or fairies that are omens of death and that wail and lament people about to die. In Christian mythology they are associated with demons and magic. However, the name, bean sidhe, women of the side (or women of the fairy mounds), suggests a pre-Christian origin, going back to pagan, Celtic mythology. The sidhe and the cairns, inherited by the Indo-European Gaels from the Neolithic civilization of the megaliths, are gates and portals to the Otherworld, inhabited by the magical people Tuatha De Danann. Mythical divinities of prehistoric Ireland, these "sons of Danu" are daimonic ancestors of the Gaelic people. Their women and daughters, seen as fairies, are land divinities or moiras. Their appearance, whether terrifying, ugly and old, or young, charming and convivial, depends on the quality of the hero who, be they of good or ill omen, has to engage in dealings with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the role of a specific fantastic creature in the popular European body of myths. Originally a major figure of ancient Greek mythology, a beautyful Libyan queen transformed into a repulsive childeating demon, Lamia penetrated the folk traditions of post-ancient world. Widely dispersed in oral literature, as a sort of sorceress or a fairy, she was identified with those women, young and old, ravishing and unsightly, who haunt the night with the rare desire for eating human innards. On the other hand, she could be a revenant, a female vampire that comes back from the dead in order to kill, to suck blood and particularly to mangle children's flesh. In addition, she could easily turn up as a nightmare or a succubus, asking unbearable pressure on her victims? chests or even having sexual intercourse with them. Thus, under a serpentine figure, with horse feet, irresistibly beauteous or irresistibly ugly, Lamia, representing an important piece of the ensemble of European demonic beings, adopted a large number of forms, manifesting different variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the question of the existence of Hungarian fairy magicians. Fairy magicians is a term to denote magicians who sustain a mediating connection with the fairy other world. One type of Hungarian fairies, usually called a szépasszony (fair woman), is closely related to the fairy world of the Balkans. The paper also analyses the way in which fairy beliefs radiated from the Balkans toward Hungary. The question is whether along with the fairy beliefs and narratives the Hungarians also appropriated the various methods of mediating communication with the fairies. In the light of a few recently published data and of recently discovered historical documents it can be stated that at least two types of Hungarian magicians (healers and weather magicians) as protégés and initiates of the fairies, did exist. There are a number of questions that can be answered better now than earlier, although even the totality of the old and the new data do not allow for a full reconstruction of the presumed system of Hungarian fairy magicians. However, the new data have outlined the geographic area where it is worthwhile to add further fieldwork to the research on contemporary issues. This is the contact zone between Hungarians, Croatians and Slovenians on the south-western borders of the Hungarian speaking area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on written and oral evidence, the present study focuses on Romanian Herodias' various hypostases: biblical queen, queen of the fairies, sovereign of the căluşari. The canonic, apocryphal and magical writings referring to Herodias are considered as some of the most significant testimonies about this character. Such texts present the image of Herodias as biblical queen who provoked the decapitation of John the Baptist, as it was promoted in 17th-18th-century Romanian literature; they also represent an important document for deciding whether a certain apocryphal tradition influenced Romanian folk beliefs related to the malevolent fairies. The study of the oral evidence investigates how Romanian folk beliefs assimilated the story of St John's decapitation and transformed it into traditional legends and inquires whether these new compositions had an effect on Herodias' traditional roles, those of queen of the fairies and patroness of the căluşari. Finally, the research attempts to describe how Herodias' beneficial functions are put into the shade by a powerful Christian opponent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the folk traditions of the British Isles, many musical tunes are said to have been learned from the fairies. The actual pieces vary in character, some being ordinary dance-music and others suggesting more fleeting, ethereal sounds. Although the title of "fairy tune" was sometimes used only to mark a piece's excellence, often it reflected an actual process of composition in which the musician was inspired by running water and other natural sounds. Players may have composed when they were in a meditative trance, for fairies are often associated with such altered states, and time itself takes strange shapes within the fairy hill. Mounds and ancient earthworks are shown as the places where fairy music was heard, reflecting older customs which sought gifts of healing and poetry through encounters with the dwellers in the hills. Traditions of fairy music thus embody archaic themes linking prophecy, poetry, music and the Underworld. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how the subjects of "homosexuality" and "fairy" were treated in 1800s, by analyzing unpublished police archives and a close study of the book "Comédie humaine" by Honoré de Balzac. The archives consists of hundreds of police reports depicting sexual activity of Parisian men while the Balzac study contains nouns and detailed tendencies described with complacency by the police.

Chinese fu sprang from Ch'ü Yüan's "Li Sao," which became the standard for poetry that depicted escapes to mystical fairylands by their authors. Poets after the Han Dynasty inherited a tradition of fu and tsu, which included three main types of fu: literati, historical, and philosophical. This article focuses on a few poems of each genre: for literati, "Yuan You" and Ssu-Ma Hsiang-ju's "Ta Jen Fu"; for historical, Pan Ku's "Hsi Tu Fu" and "Chung Nan Shan Fu"; and for philosophical, Yang Hsiung's "T'ai Hsüan Fu" and Hsüan T'an's "Hsien Fu." This article also investigates how people with different backgrounds incorporated fairylands into their poetry and the style and characteristics thereof. In particular, how did the grand fairylands in these masterpieces reflect the true dreams and desires of the authors? Also, did the authors exhibit the same spirit as Ch'ü Yüan? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]