Tag Archives: fairies

Banshees

Nationality: Irish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Athens, Georgia
Performance Date: 3/15/19
Primary Language: English

Main piece: It is said that the howling winds of the Irish coast are formed from the screams of women suffering and dying – otherwise known as banshees. Therefore, any time you hear a particularly loud or chilling gust of wind, a woman is in agony somewhere.

Context: The informant (BN) is half Irish and half American. Her mother’s side of the family is originally from and still resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Her paternal extended family live in Sligo, Ireland. She grew up culturally Catholic, but she does not consider herself religious. Our conversation took place in February on my couch at home in Atlanta after she began recounting her recent trip to visit family in Ireland. BN originally heard this myth that explains Ireland’s winds from her cousin and godmother, who both reside on the coast of Ireland. As she told me about banshee winds, she visibly sunk in on herself and god chills multiple times. “Those winds will always be branded into my memory, because it’s kind of traumatizing as a child, since they really do sound like screams.” When asked if she believed in the myth in a literal sense, she said that only when she’s in Ireland does she truly believe: “everything in Ireland is just so magical and ancient.”

Personal thoughts: What I find most intriguing about this myth is that it touts the age-old trope of a woman’s suffering becoming immortalized through nature or supernatural occurrences. It is not difficult to realize that you don’t see many folk tales, legends or myths that emphasize male suffering – rather, male-centric stories tend to be about heroism or strife that is overcome through perseverance. Women, however, are historically known for subjugation and suffering, which is perhaps why when people first heard the harsh winds of Ireland, they thought of a dying woman rather than a dying animal, a shrieking child, or even just harsh weather at face value. Additionally, what makes the banshee wind myth of Ireland a myth is that it seeks to explain a very prominent and ancient natural phenomenon in Ireland with a concept we are familiar with: female suffering. For external reference of this myth, see “THE BANSHEE.” The Louisville Daily Journal (1839-1868), Nov 25 1839, p. 2. ProQuest. Web. 18 Apr. 2019 .

The Tooth Fairy

Nationality: American
Age: 50s
Occupation: Event Planner
Residence: Excelsior, Minnesota
Performance Date: 4/14/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant: “When [my children] were growing up and their teeth fell out, we would tell them to put the tooth under their pillow, and during the night the tooth fairy would come and leave a dollar under their pillow and take the tooth.”

Collector: Where did you first hear about the tooth fairy?

Informant: “Well, I first heard it from my mother when I was little. My mom told me to take the tooth and put it in this little pouch with a picture of a tooth on it, and when I woke up there would be a quarter in there. I guess the tooth fairy has upped the amount of money she gives up nowadays [laughs].”

Collector: Do you know why the tooth fairy wanted teeth?

Informant: “Oh that’s actually a really good question, I’m not really sure… Wow, that’s weird, we’ve been doing this for who knows how long, and no one’s ever asked what she does with the teeth. I guess I just never thought to ask because for me it was always just you wake up and ‘ooh! A Quarter!’ and then not really think about it. I’m not even sure if she actually needed the tooth, I remember one time I actually physically lost my tooth, and I was really bummed because I wouldn’t get my quarter, so my mom told me to put a white bean under my pillow instead, and that was supposed to work because the tooth fairy would think it was a tooth or something. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I remember hearing that she used the teeth to string necklaces or make stars or something like that”

Informant is a middle aged mother of three who lives in the suburbs in the Midwestern United States. She identifies as of “American” heritage, which she bases on her admission that she never particularly looked into her family’s European heritage. The informant’s daughter is a recent college graduate.

Collector Analysis: This particular folklore is actually (in the collector’s opinion) fairly widely spread in the United States, and in fact this collector actually heard a similar story growing up. The most curious aspect of this story is that most of the people who have heard of the tooth fairy have little to no idea why this fairy is collecting teeth. Of course, the experience of losing one’s baby teeth as a child is a nearly universal aspect of human life, and it is quite possible that this story originated as a way to encourage children to report their lost teeth to their parents, who of course would be interested in the dental health and developmental progress of their children. It also may have been meant as a way to encourage children to remove their loose teeth, as it is possible that keeping a loose tooth in one’s mouth for too long could potentially cause health and/or hygiene complications.

“Some Stuff About Fairies”

Nationality: German, Polish, Irish
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Performance Date: April 29th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic, Hebrew

I. To keep fairies away, you keep iron around—because fairies are “allergic” to iron, which is where putting a horseshoe above a door came from (because fairies can’t come through a door if it’s got iron on it).

II. Rings of mushrooms—those are fairy rings, and at night fairies come out to dance in them and you’re not supposed to walk through them, because if you do the fairies will take you away and leave a changeling in your place…

III. Changelings are like fairy babies put in the human world because fairies want human children so they leave fairy babies, or fey, in their place.

I vaguely remember a story where a girl is a changeling and nobody knows it for a really long time, but eventually they figure it out and the reason there’s a changeling, and the way they figure out she’s a changeling is because she’s allergic to iron.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “I probably got this through family or read these things somewhere, but I’m not sure… possibly my grandmother told me.”

Other information: “these are just some general things I’ve heard about fairies, individually, not necessarily forming a coherent story.”

These are just bits and pieces of existing folk beliefs, supposedly deriving from the Irish tradition/”fairy faith,” but handing them down, even in this fragmented form, keeps them alive and shows the resilience of folk beliefs against mainstream or popular culture, which has trivialized these beliefs into commercial and often comical representations (such as Disney’s Tinkerbell character).

Clovers

Nationality: Romanian Italian American
Age: 53
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/17/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant grew up in a town outside of Springfield, Ohio, in a relatively small community.  According to her, there wasn’t much to go out and do, so one of the things she loved to do was pick clovers and knock them into a necklace similar to a Hawaiian lei.  Some of her other friends would also make these necklaces with her.  Also she and her friends use to take these clovers and make them into a sort of potion for the fairies, and in exchange for this potion, they believed that the fairies would grant them three wishes.  My informant says she and her friends used to wish for stuff like having the longest hair of anyone they knew, but later in life they started making their first wish to be for a hundred extra wishes, which made the wishing get out of hand.

While I never made potions for fairies, there were certainly times in my life, especially after watching the movie Aladdin, where the topic of conversation between me and my peers turned into “if you had three wishes, what would they be?”  And almost everyone’s first wish was for a hundred extra wishes, or a million extra wishes, or infinite wishes, or something.  Usually we said stuff like that wasn’t allowed.  We certainly weren’t the wish police or the wish distribution bureau, so we didn’t care about fairness per se, but the point of the game was to see what kinds of things people wanted, so limiting someone to thee wishes was in the interests of a fair personality test.

Irish Banshee

Nationality: Irish
Age: 30
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: May 5, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Celtic

The Banshee was another story I was told about, but not by my parents. My brother used to tell me this to scare me. At night we were outside and there was like a howl, or uh, something that I didn’t recognize, and um, he knew what it was but told me it was a banshee, which is . . . like a woman spirit/witch wanders about at night time crying out with high wails when there is going to be, like, a death in the family and whoever hears it, their family will be effected. Needless to say it scared the hell out of me and I was relieved when no one was dead the next morning! Ha, haha!

Legends about fairies and elves are very important in Ireland. “Believing” in the fair folk, whether you actually believe or not, is considered patriotic. Children raised in Ireland are expected to know of and participate in the belief of the fair folk, although, as is the case with my friend, they largely grew out of the belief of these legends as they grew older.