GoldenxChild
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https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/fau/fau01.htm
It could seem tedious but immersing yourself in legend and folklore often sparks racial roots as well as creative imagination. For me at least. This is just a sample writing from "Fairies" by Gertrude M. Faulding
[1913].
. . . And at last they reach the meteorites, and, bestriding them with riotous laughter, they tease them and cajole, prick them with fantastical jests, spur them with a hundred quips and taunts, madden them with the barbs of their delicate mockery, till at last their steeds, the little ramping lions and the bold fire-spurting dragons with curly tails, dash full of gay madness from their accustomed path, and are guided earthward by the mischief-loving elves. Then follows the smooth, gliding, silent movement, better fun, the riders think exultantly, than any flying, down the long blue steeps of the ether, till as they near the misty earth air closes about them, air infinitely delicate, it is true, far too fine for any mortals to breathe, yet so much coarser than the ether that it checks the speed of the heavenly invaders. They find themselves met on a sudden by invisible foes, the small wandering spirit-winds who come whispering, lifting and combing the black manes and the golden, till the marvelous hair, streaming wildly behind, begins to glitter and crackle with ruddy sparks of fire; and the meteorites themselves glow with anger at the hostile, unknown element. But the fairy riders, as the air thickens, shout with triumph and urge their coursers onward and downward, till they reach the earth at last in one glorious rush, and behold they are changed into stars of burning flame. We have all, on summer nights, watched their swift passage across the sky, in showers but seldom, sometimes in twos and threes, often alone. Who can doubt but that this is Puck's own method of sweeping back to earth ? Others before us may have suspected this, for there is, in the " Anatomy of Melancholy," a significant passage in which Burton speaks of the fairies and goes on to discuss the dewy grass-rings always associated with them; "they leave that green circle which we commonly find in the plain fields, which others hold to proceed from a meteor faIling."
What if both theories be correct What more glorious incident could there be in the elfin revels than some such swift return of a fairy traveller--the starry courser driven from highest air to where his brother sprites are "by moonshine leading merry rounds" ? We can imagine the tinkling hubbub of welcome, the fantastical dizzy stories of adventure, the wonder of the stay-at-home fays, and to the wanderer the caress of the cool fragrant earth which for all his journeyings he loves the best. It is likely that despite his many hundred summers he has not even yet exhausted all the treasures of his own planet. The fairies have power to explore so many regions which have long been closed--are still, some of them--to the enterprise of man. Virgin forests and trackless mountains, the silent polar worlds of ice, the darkness of the deepest ocean, even the fiery heart of the earth with its boiling vapours and molten treasure hoard--all these are open to the blithe spirits whose privilege it is
to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire,
to ride On the curl'd clouds. . .
It could seem tedious but immersing yourself in legend and folklore often sparks racial roots as well as creative imagination. For me at least. This is just a sample writing from "Fairies" by Gertrude M. Faulding
[1913].
. . . And at last they reach the meteorites, and, bestriding them with riotous laughter, they tease them and cajole, prick them with fantastical jests, spur them with a hundred quips and taunts, madden them with the barbs of their delicate mockery, till at last their steeds, the little ramping lions and the bold fire-spurting dragons with curly tails, dash full of gay madness from their accustomed path, and are guided earthward by the mischief-loving elves. Then follows the smooth, gliding, silent movement, better fun, the riders think exultantly, than any flying, down the long blue steeps of the ether, till as they near the misty earth air closes about them, air infinitely delicate, it is true, far too fine for any mortals to breathe, yet so much coarser than the ether that it checks the speed of the heavenly invaders. They find themselves met on a sudden by invisible foes, the small wandering spirit-winds who come whispering, lifting and combing the black manes and the golden, till the marvelous hair, streaming wildly behind, begins to glitter and crackle with ruddy sparks of fire; and the meteorites themselves glow with anger at the hostile, unknown element. But the fairy riders, as the air thickens, shout with triumph and urge their coursers onward and downward, till they reach the earth at last in one glorious rush, and behold they are changed into stars of burning flame. We have all, on summer nights, watched their swift passage across the sky, in showers but seldom, sometimes in twos and threes, often alone. Who can doubt but that this is Puck's own method of sweeping back to earth ? Others before us may have suspected this, for there is, in the " Anatomy of Melancholy," a significant passage in which Burton speaks of the fairies and goes on to discuss the dewy grass-rings always associated with them; "they leave that green circle which we commonly find in the plain fields, which others hold to proceed from a meteor faIling."
What if both theories be correct What more glorious incident could there be in the elfin revels than some such swift return of a fairy traveller--the starry courser driven from highest air to where his brother sprites are "by moonshine leading merry rounds" ? We can imagine the tinkling hubbub of welcome, the fantastical dizzy stories of adventure, the wonder of the stay-at-home fays, and to the wanderer the caress of the cool fragrant earth which for all his journeyings he loves the best. It is likely that despite his many hundred summers he has not even yet exhausted all the treasures of his own planet. The fairies have power to explore so many regions which have long been closed--are still, some of them--to the enterprise of man. Virgin forests and trackless mountains, the silent polar worlds of ice, the darkness of the deepest ocean, even the fiery heart of the earth with its boiling vapours and molten treasure hoard--all these are open to the blithe spirits whose privilege it is
to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire,
to ride On the curl'd clouds. . .
