Tale of the Cottingley Fairies

 Author: Mesha

Fairies, what are fairies? As we would normally describe, fairies are mythical creatures that can take the form of many creatures like, dwarfs, spirits, or mischievous creatures. The are reported looking like tiny humans who have wings, magical abilities, and playful nature. They found in European cultures like the French, Slavic, Germanic, and Celtic. Fairies are rarely spotted and when they are, mostly children report having seen them.

One of these phenomena is the story of the Cottingley Fairies. It started of as one young girl Frances Griffith playing by the creek and her shoes getting dirty then she confronted by her mother. Her explanation was she was “playing with the fairies.” Her cousin Elsie Wright wanted to help her, so she suggested to her father to hold his camera to capture the fairies Frances were playing with. In the image below it shows Frances surrounded by dancing fairies.

Frances and the dancing fairies

Shockingly the girls came back with two photos to show the family, they could not believe it. But the photos were there. Two years later Elsie’s mother took the photos to a fairy talk which was being taught by Edward Gardener and the photos the girls took then caught his eye. The photos then got back to Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who took an interest in the supernatural. From then Doyle was adamant about proving wither the photos were fake or not, so he had many experts look at the photos and get their input before publishing them in 1920.

After the publishing of the two photos, Doyle wanted more photos so he bought cameras for the girls so they could produce more evidence. They went on to capture three more photos.

As time went on the story would fade then come back, and the cousins would say the same thing every time, “the photos were real.” Then in the 1980’s Frances and Elsie had an interview where they admitted the photos were fake and how the fairies were made.

They said they did not trick anyone because the people choose to believe, they wanted to believe in the supernatural. One mystery still remains, the two cousins say all the photos were faked, all except the fifth and final photo.

Wright, Elsie. The first Cottingley captured on photo. Photograph. BBC News. 4 December 2020. Web. 7 November 2024

Wright, Elsie. “Frances and the Leaping Fairy.” Photograph. Wikipedia.org. 26 September 2024. Web. 7 November 2024

HistorianR42. “Story behind the Cottingley fairies (includes interview with Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright).” YouTube.com. 15 July 2022. Web. 30 October 2024

Links to further research:

The story of the Cottingley Fairies hoax.

This YouTube video goes into depth of life during that time and the people involved with making the story so big.

The Cottingley Fairies.

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Fairies-of-Cottingley/.

This article tells us why Doyle was so easy to believe in the photos because of this belief of the supernatural.

1976: COTTINGLEY FAIRIES: FACT or FANTASY?

https://youtu.be/1Z7zSGzdgTU?si=kJ4_M6FDQUERWa5k

This YouTube video has a first had video of Elsie Wright giving an interview in the very place the fairy photos were taken

Changeling

 

Author: Dallas Hitt

When you think of fairies , you probably think of this nice and sweet little creatures with wings and an little wand, that has glitter on it. You probably don’t think of little thieves that still children. That is not the case with the Folklore creatures, Changelings. Changelings are fairies that were left in the place of the child that the fairies stole from the humans.

Children would be taken and replaced with a change for one of several reasons. The first reason is that it would be taken is for the child to act as a servant to the fairies. Another reason the fairies would take the child was so that the change could get the love from the humans like a human child, and the last reason would be so that the fairies could get revenge on the humans for something. Sometimes the fairies would replace the child with an elderly fairy so that it could live out the rest of its life in the care of the humans. People would notice their baby become ill or become not bale to properly function and they would assume it had been “fairy struck.” The people would say the children had been replaced by a changeling and they abandoned them or sometimes even killed them.

There were a few ways to identify if your child was a changeling. Irish legends say that changelings might look sick and not grow to full size like normal humans. Changelings also had a very large apatite and would eat a lot more food than a normal human child.

One theory that folklorist and historians studied was that people would substitute their children for changelings during raids and attacks on their villages in thoughts that they might be saving their children by doing this. Another theory about the origin of the changeling was a lot different than the other. Some people believe that changelings came from a very dark part of the mind from pre-industrial Europe. If a family felt that they wouldn’t be able to care for their child, especially if the child that had a disability or had an illness or deformity, it was easier for them to lose their child thinking it had just been talking by fairies, rather than believing they were just letting their child die. Some physical characteristics that a changeling had that you might be able to notice was they had long teeth and scraggly hair.

Changelings would continue to appear again and again in folklore in Europe. Doctors say this list of diseases from today’s time such as: cystic fibrosis, Down Syndrome, spina bifida, PKU, Williams syndrome, Hunter syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, progeria, Hurler syndrome, and Prader-Willi Syndrome, match the description of what changelings might have been like. Now adays in the modern world no one would really believe in changelings, but doctors say that a lot of autistic children might have been labeled as changelings in that time.

Works cited:

Https://Static.Wikia.Nocookie.Net/Mythology/Images/2/29/Changeling2-800x0-c-Default.Jpg/Revision/Latest?Cb=20180713191804. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023. 

Dimri , Bipin. “Your Child Is Not Your Own? The Horrific Tales of Medieval Changelings.” Historic Mysteries , 6 Oct. 2021, www.historicmysteries.com/changeling/. 

 Post, Irish. “Exploring Irish Mythology: Changelings.” The Irish Post, The Irish Post, 22 Dec. 2021, www.irishpost.com/life-style/exploring-the-irish-mythology-changelings-170347.

Links for Further Research:

1.     Encyclopedia Mythologica
https://encyclopediamythologica.com/changeling
This website will tell you about different myths from other parts of the world about changelings.

2.      Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling
This website will just give you a very good overview of changelings if you just really want to find out more about them.

3.     BMJ Journals
 https://adc.bmj.com/content/90/3/271#
This website will tell you more about how diseases were in involved in changelings like autism.