Celtic and Faerie Lore
Two doll-sized faerie men took shelter from the freezing wind beneath a bush. As the wind whipped at the bush’s branches above them, one faerie man murmured to his friend, “Particular weather we are having.”
His companion nodded. “It would be no surprise to me if we had a blizzard in July or August.”
Both men shook their heads before vanishing to a warmer place.
Tom, the Brownie, tells me he stands over eight inches tall barefoot.
“It is true,” says Tom. “I am tall for a Brownie fella. I also love to walk upon Mother Earth with my bare feet. So does Deidre!” says Tom, gesturing towards his wife, who is standing next to him. Deidre smiles and nods, as does her friend, Greta, who is standing next to her.
“It is healing to walk upon our Mother Earth barefooted,” Tom claims. “Also,” he continues, “only by walking barefoot upon her can we truly sense what she is feeling. It is good to walk barefoot whether the day is sun-filled with a gentle breeze caressing the leaves on the trees, or a stormy day with banshee-shrieking winds crashing through the trees, breaking off their dead limbs and hurling them to the ground. It is good to experience all types of weather walking upon Mother Earth barefoot.”
Greta adds, “We are quite proud of you for walking barefoot all the way to your mailbox yesterday.”
“Thank you,” I reply, “but it was quite nerve-wracking trying to avoid all those sharp, pointed sticks and rocks lurking in the grass.”
“Sometimes it takes great courage to walk barefoot, and you were very brave,” Tom says with a big smile. Deidre and Greta blow me kisses, while Tom gives a cheery wave before disappearing.
Tom and his wife, Deirdre, a doll-sized brownie couple, stand beside the stream watching the other faerie folk play in its freezing waters. Shivering in the cold wind, I ask them, “Do you know what’s coming?”
Deirdre replies, “Do you ask this question because your new leaders do not believe in the suffering on Mother Earth?” My frustration causes me to choke up.
“Worse weather,” responds Tom. “More suffering for everyone. Not just for humans, but for all of us.” He pauses, “You know, we faerie folk pray for humanity to finally ‘get it’ – that you are not separate from Creation. When will humans realize that you need Mother Earth as much as she needs you? We are all connected to one another, and we need each other. Even we faerie folk are connected to you humans and you to us.
“You must understand, every part of Creation is important from the smallest creature to the largest mountain. It is all worth protecting, worth saving. Everything put here on Mother Earth by the Mother – Father Creator has the right to exist. Who is man to decide otherwise?
“You ask what is coming? We believe Hope is coming. We faerie folk believe, against all odds, that human hearts will suddenly wake up to Mother Earth’s suffering. Then you will know we are all part of one another. We are all brothers and sisters of Creation, basking in the love of God.”
Tom falls silent. Then with a shrug, he adds, “I am a bit overheated.” Gesturing to the freezing cold waters of the stream, he offers, “Want to go swimming with us? We can all use a cooling off.”
I shake my head no and thank them for the talk. Deirdre gives me a playful wave as I rush back to the warmth of my house, escaping the bite of the freezing wind.
I watch a small group of spirits pass through our yard. “They are on their way to visit their loved ones living nearby,” says Tom, a small Brownie man standing next to me.
I think upon the foster family who raised me – my mom, dad, brothers, aunts, uncles and both grandmas – all of them now living in the spirit lands. Now and then I feel their loving presence near me.
Tom, reading my thoughts, gives my leg a few pats. “Do not worry, lad. Your family has not forgotten you. Why here they are now!” He vanishes as I hear my name called.
Sloan, a red-haired Brownie man sitting on the deck railing, points out, “It is easier to see everything as enchanted under the Autumn light. That is because the Autumn light pulls back the curtain on the mundane things of your world. You then see everything for what it truly is . . . enchanted. You see, we faerie folk know nothing in Creation is truly mundane. That is an illusion suffered by humans. It is as if you are all under a sleeping curse from which you need to be awakened. So wake up, the lot of you!”
Clapping his hands, he vanishes into the fading Autumn light.
A brownie man named Edwin spoke with me this Friday morning. Edwin is a red-haired fellow with bright green eyes. He wore a green cap atop his red hair, along with a green vest over a yellow shirt, brown pants and boots. We chatted while we sat on my front covered porch, I sitting in a chair rapidly writing down our conversation, while Edwin perched calmly on the porch table talking and peacefully smoking his pipe.
“So, what did the tree whisper to you through her trembling leaves the other day?” asked Edwin, referring to the day when I was sitting beneath the branches of the Tulip Poplar tree that looms over our back deck. The wind suddenly picked up, rustling the leaves on the nearby trees, and the tree whispered to me. “Well?” Edwin waited, puffs of smoke balls circling about his head like small planets.
“I’m not sure,” I replied with some hesitation.
“Not sure?” Edwin raised his eyebrows.
Clearing my thoughts, I tried to recapture the exact words I thought the tree whispered to me. I think it said, “Why can’t my children love each other the way I love them?”
“The tree said that?” Edwin inquired.
“There’s more,” I admitted.
“Well?” Edwin stared at me intently.
“The tree claimed to be God speaking.”
“The tree claimed to be God?” Edwin repeated back to me, his pipe momentarily forgotten.
“Well, no,” I responded. “The tree didn’t claim to be God, but that God was speaking through the whispering leaves of the tree.”
“Do you have some doubts it was God speaking to you?”
“Well, yes, I do.”
Edwin waved his pipe about, “Why is it so strange to believe it was God speaking to you? God is speaking to us all the time, if we just care to listen.” Edwin paused. Smiling, he asked, “Would you have believed it was God talking to you if the tree was on fire? Like Moses’ burning bush?” Edwin paused, trying to keep from laughing, “Did the tree tell you to take off your shoes because you were sitting on holy ground?”
“No!” I replied indignantly.
Edwin raised his hands, his pipe still putting out gentle puffs of smoke. “I am just teasing you, lad,” he chuckled. “So what else did the tree have to say?”
I paused, choosing my words carefully from memory. “Tell my children to stop hurting one another and to love each other and to show love for my Creation I made with my own hands.” As I told Edwin the words of the tree, I felt myself trying not to cry.
Edwin placed a small hand on my shoulder. “The things the tree said sound like God to me, lad. Like I said earlier, God is always talking to us, but do we ever care to listen?” With a smile, Edwin faded away, taking his small galaxy of circling puff balls of smoke with him.
Upon Faerie Hill’s green grass, tiny sheep graze. Newborn lambs stay close to their mothers. All are watched over by Brownie shepherds holding crooked staffs in their hands. On St. Brigid’s Feast Day – also known as Imbolc, the Celtic festival of lactating ewes – there will be plenty of milk for all.
Crows caw, the cold wind blows, but beneath the tattered remnants of winter, Brigid’s green mantle unfolds with the promise of spring.
I am sitting under my covered front porch with Tom, a small Brownie man, who is seated on the edge of the table next to me. Sitting next to Tom is his lovely wife, Deirdre. Tom, noticing the many mosquito bites on my arm, comments, “You surely are a grand feast for the mosquitoes, lad,”
“I can’t keep them off me,” I reply, scratching at my arms.
Tom smiles. “You know, the mosquitoes leave us Faerie Folk quite alone. You will not see a one of us running about waving our arms wildly in a panic, trying to keep them away from us.”
“That’s because in the human realm you’re mostly spirit.”
Tom laughs. “No, no, that is not right, lad. We are just as physical as you are. We are just more in harmony with Creation all around us. We do not have as many conflicting thoughts rambling about in our heads as most humans do. Quiet your thoughts. Make them all peaceful and harmonious, and the mosquitoes will not take notice of you.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Tom, with a twinkle in his eyes, says, “Just give it a try. Slow down your breathing and listen to the wind blowing through the trees.”
“What if there is no wind?” I ask, determined to be difficult.
“Then listen to your breath, which can sound like the wind brushing through the leaves, or maybe like waves coming in and flowing out from the seashore.”
“What if they keep biting me?”
Deirdre, smiling, replies, “Keep on trying. You know with practice the mosquitoes will leave you alone. They will stop noticing you sitting in your chair there.”
Tom gives her a playful nudge, “Or maybe, Deirdre, he is just too tasty for the mosquitoes to pass up.” Looking at me, Tom adds, “Stop being so tasty to the mosquitoes, lad, and they will leave you alone.”
Deirdre rolls her eyes at her husband. “Do not listen to his joking. Keep practicing good, peaceful thoughts, and the mosquitoes will leave you alone.”
Tom adds, “Did you notice there have been no mosquitoes since you have been talking to us?”
Tom is right. For the first time in days, the mosquitoes have left me alone. Quietly we sit, enjoying our mosquito-free afternoon.
Burdened with troubling thoughts, I watch the shadow puppets — made from the wind rattling leaves above — weave their tale of light and shadows upon the earth below.
I sense quiet movement around me. Looking up, I see a group of Brownies and Brees, both women and men. Their small hands are outstretched, palms outward toward me. These small folk are singing so softly that I can barely hear them, their song softly weaving with the wind.
“What are you doing? I ask.
“Singing your worries out of you, and casting them upon the wind, so they will be carried far away.”
“Won’t someone else get them?” I ask, a bit worried that my troubled thoughts will end up wrapping themselves around someone else’s head.
The Brownie man laughs, “No, lad, no need to fret about that. All that will be left of your thoughts will be the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and across the fields.”
“Should we continue?” asks a Bree woman. I nod my head, feeling their peace flow over me. Listening to their song, I look up and see the wind chasing clouds across the sky, like waves rolling over a sky sea of bright blue.
“Snake!” yowls my cat from the kitchen. I sit on the living room sofa, pretending I did not hear her correctly. “Snake!” she yowls again. I assume my imagination is playing tricks on me. Surely my cat is not yowling about a snake. “SNAKE!” yowls the cat yet again. “Come see!”
I reluctantly lift my tired bulk from the couch to go and see what all the kitty fuss is about. To my surprise, I find my brave cat standing victoriously over a worm lying very still on the kitchen floor. My proud cat stares up at me and yowls, “See, I told you it was a snake.”
“Good kitty, brave kitty,” I praise her, as I pick up the motionless worm with a paper towel. I think to myself that she must have brought the worm up from the basement as a gift.
I carry the worm’s small corpse outside, preparing to drop it over the deck railing. Before, I can do so, a small Brownie man points out to me that the worm is not really dead, but faking it. Suddenly, the Lazarus worm returns from the dead and begins to slither around inside the paper towel.
Startled at the worm’s sudden revival and mindful of my kitty’s yowls of “Snake,” I drop the wriggling worm onto the hot planks of the deck.
“Need dark, damp earth to crawl into, away from burning sun,” gasps the unhappy worm.
I quickly pluck the worm up from the deck and drop it into the cool, dark moistness of the miniature forest of green plants that dwell within a flower box perched upon the deck railing.
“Nicely done, lad,” remarks a second Brownie man.
“I told you he was faking his death,” the first Brownie man reminds me.
“Nay, he was not faking it. Poor wee thing passed out from fright,” announced the second Brownie man.
“Nay, he is a clever thing,” retorts the first Brownie. “He was only pretending to be dead.”
“He was either stunned or the poor fellow fainted,” the second Brownie declared firmly.
Shaking my head, I leave the two Brownies to their philosophical discussion of the cleverness of the worm and return to the cool interior of the house, where my brave snake catching kitty awaits me.
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