Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies podcast series one, second episode, Fairy Wives and Fairy Lovers.
Hello, this is Faye Hield and this is Caroline Larrington.
In the first episode in this series, we introduced our project, Modern Fairies and Lonely Ladies in this project.
We researched additional tales about fairies in the British Isles and then investigate Tascam contemporary musicians, writers and artists.
Re mediates or are inspired by those tales to make new works of art that speak to our modern lives.
In this second episode,
we're going to look at some stories about men and women who are stolen away by the fairies and the efforts their lovers may go to try to save them.
In some other stories, fairies have come into this world enticed or forced to marry human husbands to whom they bring wealth and happiness.
But it's a domestic joy that doesn't necessarily last for long.
And in one mediaeval romance, a fairy comes into this world to find the man she loves when his fortunes are at his lowest ebb.
She rescues him more than once and finally takes him willingly off to the fairy world with her,
as this world is too corrupt for a good night like him to prosper in.
Here's Brian McMahon reading for us. So landfall is a mediaeval romance recorded in middle English in the late 14th century.
It is based on an earlier tale from the late 12th century, originally composed in Anglo Norman French.
So landfall was a night of good birth at the court of King Arthur, but the queen disliked him.
And at the high festival, she gave everyone gifts but landfall. Eventually, he ran out of money and had to leave the court.
He took up lodging with a man who scorned him when he realised landfall was poor.
The unhappy night was riding in the forest one day when his horse shied at something and he fell off into the mud,
ruining his last set of decent clothes. Just then, two lovely women came toward him and invited him to come to meet their mistress,
who was waiting for him in a beautiful pavilion made of silk.
Their landfall found a gloriously beautiful fairy woman called Traymore,
who told him that she had long been in love with him and wanted him to be her lover.
Downfall very happily agreed, and they spent the day and night in lovemaking.
Next day, Traymore gave him a magic bottomless purse of coins and told him that whenever he wished to meet her,
landfall should go somewhere private and call her name. Then she would come.
But he must never mention her existence to anyone else.
Landfall returns to court where his standing is much improved by his endless wealth.
But he also attracts the Queen's attention. And one day she asks him to become her lover.
Landfall refuses. And when the Queen asks pointedly why he is the only night in the court who seems not to have a
lady of his own landfall snaps that he does have a lady who is much more beautiful than the Queen.
The Queen, enraged, complains to the king that landfall has tried to seduce her and has insulted her.
And landfall is ordered to make good on his boast by producing his lady.
Landfall goes off to someone, Traymore. But he has broken the taboo and now she will not appear.
The king puts landfall on trial for his life and although his fellow knights support him, landfall fears that he is doomed.
On the day of the trial, as he waits miserably for the verdict. Two lovely women ride into court.
Everyone exclaims that their beauty but landfall shakes his head.
Neither is his beloved. Then two more women appear bearing the message that their mistress is on her way.
Again, landfall does not recognise them. But finally, Traymore appears in her radiant beauty and splendid gown and shows herself to the court.
All agree that she is far lovelier than Queen Gwyneth here.
And landfall is saved. Gwyneth, it is furious. The trio more blows on her eyes, blinding her trio, more remount her horse and rides away.
And landfall leaps up on the horse behind her and vanishes with her to the Isle of Ruin.
The other world. And once a year he comes back to offer combat with any knight who will meet him to keep his chivalric skills well honed.
Here's the meeting between lound, fall and tremble in middle English.
He found in the pavilion the king's daughter of Olive Hoon damed three or more.
That height, her father was king of Fairy of OSINT Fair and NIJ, a man of Muckle MCT.
In that pavilion, he found a bed of price yield with per purpose.
That symbol was a site that in Lay that lady gent that after, say, landfall had a scent that left some limit bright.
For head to her clothes down, she did. All missed to her girdles stead.
Then lay she uncovered she was as we as Lillian May or snow that snow in winter's day.
Her sigh never known so pert. The red rose when she is new again is her road ness.
Not too few I Darwell say insert her hair Shawna's gold wire may no man read her attire.
No, no. Well, think in heart. She said, landfall, my lemon sweet,
all my joy for the elite Sweeting Padmore then is no man in Christene Tay that E loves so mocker as they king, neither emperor.
Landfall be held. That sweet white, all his love in her, was liked and kissed that sweet flower and sat her down her beside and said,
Sweeting, what's so betide I am to thine honour?
That was Brian McMahon.
So for long fall, then the meeting with the fairy in the Greenwood was a glorious surprise and a very kind of happy outcome for him.
And even though he was under a fairly strict taboo, which he breaks pretty quickly, she does forgive him.
She does. There seems to be an element of true love in this one as well, that she admires his actions before they've even met.
She she's developed a deep love for this human being because of how he behaves selflessly and his generosity and his valour.
And when he needs her, she comes for him. Yeah.
And I think her behaviour is pointed up very much against the behaviour of the queen,
who behaves rather like some of the more predatory fairy queens that we meet.
In other stories, the queen just wants long. And when he went to sleep with her, she takes it out on him and she concocts false stories about him.
So it's not surprising in a way that Long Vol is happy to go with his lady.
Love to hear more into the other world because this world has been tested and really found wanting.
And he's disobeying the rule to not expose this relationship that he has with the fairy.
He has to do it in order to maintain his moral position with a queen that she's
trying to seduce and she's trying to get him to do things you didn't ought to do.
And his only defence in it is to be honest about what's going on.
So it took me a while to puzzle the contradiction in this,
because normally if you if you go against a rule a fairy is given you, then you don't get your rewards.
And yet she does come back and he does go away with her. And I've been trying to work out why that would be.
And that's the only explanation I can find for it in that she understands why he had to do it.
If he'd been showing off about this amazing lover he's got in the fairy world.
I don't imagine it would've had the same outcome.
One of the things I think is so wonderful about this story is that once she's got him off the hook, as it were, she doesn't say anything to him.
She just gets onto her horse and prepares to ride away.
And he has to decide whether he's going to take that leap of faith and jump up behind her on the horse and go with her.
And he's got that split second in which to wave goodbye to her forever.
But he's now got his standing back in the court.
He can now be a respected knight or whether he wants to go with her, leave this world forever and just wholly commit himself.
Yeah. I think he made a good choice. I think he did, too. So in the long fall is quite a clear story going on there between this relationship.
But there's other songs which are a bit more complicated. And Tamlin is a great example of this.
So we have a human woman who is seduced in the woods by this figure, Tamlin.
And there is debate as to whether she is willingly seduced or if there is an element of rape there.
Right. And the result is that she is pregnant.
And she has to free the father of the child from the grasp of the fairies because he himself was captured by the fairies.
So Tamlyn is this strange fairy figure. And yet he's he's a human, actually.
And he has some of that danger, doesn't he, that you get with the stories of the the male fairies,
the kind of elf knights who do prowl around in the woods looking for the girl,
is looking for adventure and trying to seduce her or take advantage or even in some cases trying to murder her.
But then Tamlin turns out to be just another human and he's looking for his way to escape the fairy world in order to escape.
He needs somebody to care so deeply about him, to help him escape.
And the only way he can make somebody care so deeply is to get her pregnant so that she has to rescue him so that she can have a husband.
So he almost sets Janice up on Margaret's or whatever her name is put into the song,
sets her up to be in a situation that she then he is her saviour as well as her being his saviour,
because to be an unwed mother wouldn't be desirable for her either.
Yes, it's it's a dangerous situation for her. And I always wonder, as the poet Liz Lochhead does in her poem Tamlin, what happens afterwards?
What happens when Janet's or Margaret or whatever her name is from?
Got we've got Tamlin away from the the fairy queen who curses him and says, if I'd known what I was going to see this night,
I would have poked your eyes out, just as, in fact, the fairy mist just long vol blows on the Queen's eyes there and turns her eyes into into wood.
So she's blinded. So here the fairy pin would have blinded Tamlin if she'd known about the betrayal.
But then what happens after that? Is Tamlyn going to be happy? Back in the human world with Janet in domesticity?
Or is he going to perhaps get back to his old tricks and just disappear off with the fairies again?
You never know. And now we're going to hear you, Faye, singing parts of the ballad The Tamlin Lady Margaret Lady by her to say,
oh, oh, they see her and she's old Eastern Bloc.
Whoever thought came to her to run into the wall, then pull the flowers to her for her.
My boy is two purple flowers to.
Ha! She's hoisted up her petticoats a bit above her, nay, nay, nay.
She's tripto the pipeline until she came to the Mary Green bow and she's bow then her chest down.
No, she's pulled them branches. Oh, certainly.
She's by the final man. Still needs the tree.
Say how hell you pull those branches down without the bath.
Me lady without the leave of me.
She say, is this a little while? Oh it is my love.
We. My father gave it to me and I composed these branches down without the leave of the young.
Without the leave of the. He's taken by the only body turned on by the chorus green sleeve.
He's laid her down at four. No, he never wants us to leave, my boy.
He never once asked. When it was doing.
She has turned herself about to was Kirchherr, who loves my birching.
Nothing so nothing. Her nolder were screwed him bowis.
No, the wounds grew. The only true young term, she said.
Hey, I thought a lot about you. Oh, I know, lies Lady Margaret, who said I was Christian.
The same as the. I was Kurson. The same as the the Tesi Road.
Now daughter called and that night from off me home signed for the Queen above London.
She took me and gone grain hell to do in law then to go green.
Hell to do. This is nine.
So it is who we who.
And they of course will write in if you would your true load.
When. By the old mill bridge. You must buy me loads by the old mill bridge you must buy.
That was face singing some excerpts of Tamlin. So Lin was in the end.
Happy to be taken out of the fairy world and to be rescued from that life by Janet's loving persistence in holding on,
holding on to bring him out of his enchantment.
But in some of the other stories, it's the fairy who's dragged out of her own world into the human world, sometimes by force.
And she's not always best pleased about it. In the story of Wild Edrick, there's a fairy who is forced into a human marriage and things don't go well.
Here's Brian again. Wild Edric.
Shropshire men must have been well acquainted with the fairies five hundred years ago,
it was reported then that our famous champion, Wild Edric, had had an elf maiden for his wife.
One day, we are told, when he was returning from hunting in the forest of Cloon, he lost his way and wandered about till nightfall alone.
So for one young page at last, he saw the lights of a very large house in the distance towards which he turned to his steps.
And when he had reached it, he beheld within a large company of noble ladies dancing.
They were exceedingly beautiful, taller and larger than women of the human race, and dressed in gracefully shaped linen garments,
their so-called round with smooth and easy motion, singing a soft, low song of which the hunter could not understand the words.
Amongst them was one maiden who excelled all the others in beauty, at the sight of whom are heroes.
Heart was inflamed with love, forgetting the fears of enchantment, which at the first moment had seised him.
He hurried round the house, seeking an entrance and having found it.
He rushed in and snatched the maiden, who was the object of his passion from her place in the moving circle.
The dancers assailed him with teeth and nails, but backed by his page.
He escaped at length from their hands and succeeded in carrying off his former captive.
For three whole days, not his utmost caresses and persuasions could prevail on her to utter a single word.
But on the fourth day, she suddenly broke the silence. Good luck to you, my dear, she said,
and you will be lucky to enjoy health and peace and plenty as long as you do not reproach me on account
of my sisters or the place from which you snatched me away or anything connected with it for on the day.
When you do so, you will lose both your bride and your good fortune.
And when I am taken away from you, you will pine away quickly to an early death.
He pledged himself by all that was most sacred to be ever faithful and constant in his love for her.
And they were solemnly wedded in the presence of all the nobles from far and near whom Edric invited to their bridal feast at that time.
William Norman was newly made king of England who hearing of this wonder, desired both to see the lady and to test the truth of the tale,
and bade the newly married pair to London, where he was holding his court thither.
Then they went and many witnesses from their own country with them,
who brought with them the testimony of others who could not present themselves to the king.
But the marvellous beauty of the lady was the best of all proofs of her superhuman origin.
And the king let them return in peace, wondering greatly. Many years passed happily by till one evening.
Edric returned late from hunting and could not find his wife. He sought her and called for her for some time in vain.
At last she appeared. I suppose began here with angry looks.
It is your sisters who have detained you such a long time, have they not?
The rest of his upbraiding was addressed to the at. For the moment, her sisters were mentioned.
She vanished. Patrick's grief was overwhelming.
He sought the place where he had found her at first, but no tears, no laments of his could call her back.
He cried out day and night against his own folly. And pined away.
And died of sorrow. As his wife had long before foretold.
So poor Edric there lost his wife for. Was he to blame in that?
Well, he does pine away and die when he loses his wife.
He did, I suppose, truly love her, that you've got to ask some questions in some ways about snatching your wife, forcing her into marriage with you.
And even though she becomes a respectable wife and she brings good fortune and wealth and she's so famous,
even William the Conqueror comes to Inspecteur.
There's something about his expectations of how she should be back home ready, cooking his dinner, presumably when he comes back from hunting.
And then when he shouts at her, perhaps it's indicative of the way that some marriages work, particularly when the bride is unwilling.
But there is always a mistake. Yes. And the consequence is that he frees her and then she can go back to where she was longing to be herself.
And off she goes as fast as she possibly can, which is not unknown.
Is it in those stories of animal brides? Yes.
Well, it's got echoes of a salkey stories which are Cele women, so mythical beasts that live in the water, who come onto the shore at certain times,
remove their seal skins and dance as beautiful women, and then dress again in the skins and return to the water.
And a chap steals away one of the skins to to ensure that this beautiful woman he's fallen in love with cannot return to the sea.
A must come home with him. So again, it's the same story of entrapment.
And it's it's so sad because it's borne out of an utter love and desire for this beautiful creature rather than a selfish, rapey culture.
It's more of a I need you because I love you so much.
And that she doesn't have choice in it. She has to go back and she's trapped and they have children in the Salkey story.
And so at some point,
she she rediscovers her skin and has this terrible choice to make as to whether she should stay a land bride in the house that she's got.
It's been a fine marriage and they've they've produced these wonderful children
or if she should leave her family and and world and return back to the sea,
which I think she ultimately does. Yes.
And it's interesting that in one of the best known of the selfie stories, she already has a husband amongst the selkie folk.
So when she gets her skin back and she dashes back into the waves, a huge male seal rises up to meet her.
And that makes you realise it's it wasn't just snatching an innocent girl away and
introducing her to marriage in the way that human marriage marriages always work,
that the reluctant bride has to leave her family and marry somebody.
But this is a story where an already existing relationship is disrupted.
And yes, her husband loves her and she makes the best of it in many ways and she gives him these wonderful children.
There must be so hard to make that decision to leave your children behind.
Yeah. And so heartbreaking for the husbands as well.
We started with we started with Rich pining away and dying after his wife left back to the fairy world.
And again, it's kind of borne out of a desire to please the woman and create the most amazing world for her.
But it's lacking the thing that she needs. So she must return.
And I suppose it may be some comfort that in some stories about fairy brides and even I think in some selkie stories,
the fairy mother or the selkie mother can come back to the beach or to the lake that she lives speare beneath and make contact with her children.
And in one fairy story, the lady clearly ran. The fairy woman returns to the lake that she lives in,
but she comes back to see her children and teaches them healing law so they don't lose all the contact with their mother.
And I'd like to think that in the the Orkney stories of the selkies, that the children to be who are, after all,
help selkie can go down to the edge between the salt water in the sea strand and call to their mother, who will come to see them.
And that is very unusual to my understanding of fairies.
It's either this world or this world this time or this time, and there's choices to be made there.
But that very much bridges the gap. Yeah, well, when children are involved,
I think that really does kind of tug on the heartstrings and and storytellers recognise that it can't be as as black and white,
as decisive as all that. Here's Brian giving us the best known of the Orkneys selkie stories.
Selkie story, The Good Man of Westernness, A Tale from Orkney.
The good man, or Westernness, was a handsome, well-to-do young fellow, strong, well-liked and with a profitable farm,
it will come as no surprise to learn that many of the unmarried local girls had their sights on him.
However, despite their ample attentions, the good man was a man who was simply not interested in marriage.
So it came to pass that one fine day, the good man was down on the beach at the ebb tide when he saw a short distance away.
A number of selkie folk lying out on a flat rock.
Some of these selkie folk was sunning themselves, while others jumped and played in the clear water.
All were naked with unblemished skins as white as snow.
Their seal skins lay strewn carelessly on the sand and rocks around them.
The good man crept closer as he neared the place. The silky folk played.
The good man leapt to his feet and ran toward them for all he was worth.
With a shriek, the selkie folks snatched up their sealskins and quickly retreated to the safety of the sea.
However swift as they were, the good man was quicker,
and he managed to seise a skin belonging to one beautiful seal maiden in the hasty rush to safety.
This poor creature had forgotten to retrieve his skin. The selkie folks swam out a little distance and turned to gaze mournfully at the good man.
He stared back and realised that also one had taken the shape of SEALs, grinning.
He put the captured seal skin under his arm, whistling a merry tune he set out for home.
No sooner had he left the ebb than he heard the most sorrowful, wailing and weeping coming from behind him turning, he saw a fair woman following him.
She was a most pitiful sight. Sobbing and howling in grief, she held her arms out and pledged to have her skin returned.
Huge tears ran from her large, dark eyes and trickled down her ivory cheeks.
Falling to her knees. She cried. Oh, handsome man.
If there is any mercy in your human breast. Give me back my seal skin.
I cannot live in the sea without it. I cannot live amongst my own people without my sealskin.
The good man was not a soft hearted man. But he could not help but pity the poor creature.
Pity, however, was not the only emotion he felt with the pity.
Came the softer and sweeter passion of love. The icy heart that had yet to love a mortal woman was soon melted by this seal maidens beauty.
Eventually, the good man managed to wring from the selkie wife a reluctant consent to remain with him as his wife.
She had little choice in this matter. For as all Orcadian, no, she could not return to her kin in the sea without her skin.
So the Sea Maiden went with the good man and stayed with him for many a day.
She turned out to be a thrifty, frugal and kindly wife. And although she was a creature of the sea, the good man had a happy life with her.
The selkie wife bore the good man, seven children,
four boys and three girls came from their union and it was said that there were no children as beautiful as them in all the aisles.
And all the while, the sea wife and her human husband seemed content.
And Mary. But all was not as it seemed.
There was a wait in the selkie wife's heart, many was the time that she was seen to gaze longingly out to the sea, the sea that was her true home.
So to all the islanders and to the good man himself. All seemed well with his family.
But as is always the case in these tales, the bliss was not to last.
One fine day, the good man and his four sons were out fishing in their boat with the menfolk out of the house.
The selkie wife sent three of the girls down to the app to gather limpets and welks for that tea.
The youngest girl had to remain at home because she had hurt her foot, climbing on the sharp rocks by the shore, as usual.
Soon as the house emptied the selfie, wife set to looking for her long lost seal skin.
She searched high and she searched low. She searched, but she searched Ben.
She searched out and she searched in, but to no avail.
She could not find the skin. The time passed and the sun swung to the west, lengthening the shadows,
the little last seated in a straw back chair with her sore feet on the creepy stool, watched her mother carry out the frantic hunt.
Mother, what are you looking for?
Oh, child, don't tell, but I'm looking for a pretty skin to make a shoe that would cure your soul feet, replied the selkie wife.
But, mother, I know where it is one day when you are out, and my father thought I was asleep in bed.
He took a pretty skin down, glowered at it for a short time and folded it and put it away in the ACS over the bed.
When the selkie wife heard this, she clapped for joy, rushed to the place where her long concealed skin lay fare thee weel.
P.D. Budo good bye, little child, she said to her child as she ran from the house.
Rushing to the shore, she threw on her skin and with a wild cry of joy, plunged into the sea, shifting again into her silky form.
She swam out through the waves where a selkie man was waiting for her and greeted her with delight.
All the while, the good man was rowing home and happened to see these two selkies from his little boat.
His wife uncovered her beautiful face and cried out to him.
Fare thee wheel good man or Westernness farewell to the I like the whale enough for you were good to me.
But I love better me man of the sea. Ferries are often predatory in their sexuality.
We can distinguish between the kind of ferry woman who wants to take her lover away to Fairyland for good or ill.
This is a pattern in which a supernatural woman wants to or is made to live in human world.
The fairies are difficult to escape from. But with courage and determination, men and women can rescue the people they love.
And the woman who is taken to live in a different culture, forced to confirm against her well,
may often snap and escape to her own place, even leaving her children behind.
And as we've seen here in the case of Bow, even knights are not immune to the problems of corruption and favouritism in the king's court,
and they too can find a better and fairer life amongst the fairies.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, join us in the next one in this series.
Well, we'll talk about positive interactions between fairies and humans.
And if you happen to be able to come to the Sage Gateshead,
there'll be a residency with open rehearsals and actual performances of the artist's new work in progress.
On April 26, 27 28, 2090.