University of Exeter Press
Fairy Encounters in Medieval England
Landscape, Folklore and the Supernatural
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- 222 Pages
What is it like to meet a being from another world? This book collects testimony from eight hundred years of witnesses baffled by the supernatural breaking into their lives. Close reading of miracle collections, chronicles, saints’ lives and sermons shows how they depended on first-hand vernacular voices, never quite suppressed in the Latin of the clergymen who transcribed them.
When people saw spirits, surface identity mattered less than common nature. Whether manifesting as fairies, revenants, local saints or fiends, they came in stock types: goblins, lovers, hunters, pygmies, dogs, indescribable shape-shifting objects. Just as they had preferred forms, so they appeared in particular places. The tradition of English supernatural place-names, never before gathered into a corpus, matches the medieval texts to show what places were haunted and why. The dark pools into which otherworldly things were exorcised, the paths on which they led travellers astray, the hills onto which they descended in search of people to command and seduce, and the meadows where they danced—all these can be found on the cognitive map of the peasantry.
This book sheds new light on anomalous experience in medieval life and the relations it forged between vernacular life-stories and the gate-keepers of the written word. Fairies could cure as well as harm, prophecy as well as deceive: that made them a disruptive force in history, theology and morals. They challenge our ideas of a church-dominated society and once they are admitted into the picture, the Middle Ages will never look the same.
A significant and original contribution to the field, further enhanced by the constant liveliness, erudition and humour of Jeremy's writing.
Prof. Ronald Hutton, author of Pagan Britain and The Witch
In Fairy Encounters in Medieval England, Jeremy Harte brings a wealth of sources to the reader to delve into the elusive nature of supernatural beings in his usual insightful and engaging style. Combining close reading of popular narratives with a broader analysis of the cultural and geographical context of otherworldly encounters, Harte’s treatment of the material is both scholarly and accessible. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in medieval folklore and a testament to Harte's unique ability to bring sources to life for a modern audience.
Dee Dee Chainey, author of A Treasury of British Folklore
Fairy Encounters in Medieval England is both academically rigorous and an enchanting read, written with wit and grace. Each page is densely packed with disturbing accounts of little red men, black dogs, trios of terrifying women, demon lovers, shape-shifters and the walking dead. Short of travelling back in time, if you want to know more about the dangerous ‘fairies’ of medieval England, you cannot do better than read this book.
Katherine Langrish, author of Seven Miles of Steel Thistles
Harte’s latest work combines scholarship with wry, spine-tingling storytelling. It is useful, compelling, challenging and playful. It makes you pull faces of horror and mirth. I’m going to read this book three times, then keep it within arm’s reach of my desk.
Amy Jeffs, art historian and author of Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain
Preface
Part I: PEOPLE
1. Strange Meetings
2. Tales of Wonder, Tales of Sorrow
3. Inconstant Shapes
Part II: PLACES
4. Haunted Landscapes
Afterword
Elfin Place-Names: A Corpus
Notes
Sources
Index
- 222 Pages
