1 00:00:16,440 --> 00:00:23,490 Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies Podcast, Series two, Episode four, Fairies and the Environment. 2 00:00:23,490 --> 00:00:33,210 Hello, I'm Faye Hield. And I'm Caroline Larrington. This is the fourth episode in our second Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies podcast series. 3 00:00:33,210 --> 00:00:38,030 And here we're going to be talking about fairies and the environment. 4 00:00:38,030 --> 00:00:44,540 One of the most interesting angles that the artist took on the fiery topic was the connexion between Fairies and the environment. 5 00:00:44,540 --> 00:00:50,570 Fairies and other supernatural beings have long retreated away from human spaces deep into the woods. 6 00:00:50,570 --> 00:00:58,460 But they're now vanishing like various natural species and habitats because of human intervention into the places where they live. 7 00:00:58,460 --> 00:01:06,380 There are still places where the fairy world makes contact with ours. But the sense that the world is permeated with unseen presences is vanishing. 8 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:15,020 And there's perhaps a call for the reconnection with the supernatural realm to help us in rebuilding the natural environment in the human world. 9 00:01:15,020 --> 00:01:22,820 Ingar wrote a song about fairies whom she calls winged warriors, creatures who are stirring beneath the marsh. 10 00:01:22,820 --> 00:01:30,010 They remember how old they are. And they say, we are old, that the trees are older. 11 00:01:30,010 --> 00:01:36,900 The song shows us how the fairies have been driven deeper down and further away by human activity. 12 00:01:36,900 --> 00:02:44,870 But they all regrouping. They're ready to come back and to fight for the natural world. 13 00:02:44,870 --> 00:02:53,790 Crowds with. He ran there all his life. 14 00:02:53,790 --> 00:03:00,870 Life sustaining sparks fly from pores. 15 00:03:00,870 --> 00:03:33,190 Why? We. Oh, but the trees are old. 16 00:03:33,190 --> 00:03:39,300 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 17 00:03:39,300 --> 00:03:44,030 Of mankind came to reason. 18 00:03:44,030 --> 00:04:20,500 Drive land her father. Some cast spells to replanning. 19 00:04:20,500 --> 00:04:25,170 Not saying the Kobe. 20 00:04:25,170 --> 00:05:07,260 A gift from God to you. For Reebok, bemuse, receive a filing fee mind. 21 00:05:07,260 --> 00:05:15,300 That's quite a scary song, isn't it? Nature's protectors and not just warning, but actively fighting in their marshy places. 22 00:05:15,300 --> 00:05:18,740 Harnessing other living beings. 23 00:05:18,740 --> 00:05:26,930 Youmans film of being human draws on voices he found through YouTube, discussing the magical world and its importance to human habitation. 24 00:05:26,930 --> 00:05:30,860 His black and white film depicts wild places and cityscapes, 25 00:05:30,860 --> 00:05:36,290 giving a backdrop to the archaic and contemporary calls for action in rebuilding the natural world. 26 00:05:36,290 --> 00:05:42,080 Yes, U.N. uses a whole range of voices talking about ancient beliefs and traditions. 27 00:05:42,080 --> 00:05:47,780 Personal encounters with the fairies or the supernatural. And wonderful images of the wild. 28 00:05:47,780 --> 00:05:51,620 The film persuades us rather like some of the work we talk about it. 29 00:05:51,620 --> 00:05:55,640 So to the very space is right next to ours. 30 00:05:55,640 --> 00:06:00,470 And we can glimpse it if we just look past the corner of our eyes. 31 00:06:00,470 --> 00:06:08,390 Terry wrote a poem about the trees, about how the trees can speak, and that they have spirits in our community that can tell us tales. 32 00:06:08,390 --> 00:06:19,160 Here's Terry reading that at the Sage Gates said show. The thing you need to know, child, is that trees do speak. 33 00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:28,040 They do telltales. They sing when they have a mind to. They are gigglers, gossip's grumblers, cataloguing every ache and pain. 34 00:06:28,040 --> 00:06:33,200 And yet they hold no grudges, claim no debts, speak ill of no creature. 35 00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:38,720 They have the tempers. Yes, tantrums of branches lashed in gusts and gales. 36 00:06:38,720 --> 00:06:44,960 But then they come to rest in stillness. Spent humming contentedly You've heard them, dear. 37 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:48,860 Just yesterday you thought it was only the wind. 38 00:06:48,860 --> 00:06:58,880 The thing you need to know is that each morning every tree stands tall and chance its name, its history, its kinship, web and lineage. 39 00:06:58,880 --> 00:07:03,980 You've heard them, dear, but thought it was the dawn chorus of the birds. 40 00:07:03,980 --> 00:07:10,100 The thing you need to know is that the trees tell stories older than the oldest tales of humankind. 41 00:07:10,100 --> 00:07:14,220 By dusk, by night, by starlight, you've marked their midnight. 42 00:07:14,220 --> 00:07:20,450 Murmuring You told me so, but thought it was just water rushing through the stream. 43 00:07:20,450 --> 00:07:25,970 The thing you need to know, child, is that trees do speak in their own language. 44 00:07:25,970 --> 00:07:31,790 They mutter in the crackle of autumn leaves. They sighs. Snow settles at their feet. 45 00:07:31,790 --> 00:07:42,140 They utter exquisite Borio poems. As each tender young leaf firms, they laugh and shivers of green and gold when tickled by a summer's breeze. 46 00:07:42,140 --> 00:07:47,750 The thing you need to know, child, is that trees do speak in the tree language. 47 00:07:47,750 --> 00:07:58,930 And yes, you will understand their speech one day they route child sweet sapling. 48 00:07:58,930 --> 00:08:03,280 Ben Nichols did some fascinating research into Air Chief Marshal Hughes, 49 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:11,560 doubting the man who commanded the RAAF through the Battle of Britain and who was pushed aside after that phase of the war was over, 50 00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:17,150 partly because of disagreements over strategy and General R.A.F. in fighting. 51 00:08:17,150 --> 00:08:23,120 But he was also a keen spiritualist and very much alive to the supernatural. 52 00:08:23,120 --> 00:08:34,420 He claimed that the spirits of dead fighter pilots visited him in his sleep and importantly, he was a member of the Ferry Investigation Society. 53 00:08:34,420 --> 00:08:44,960 Ben decided to mash up the story of doubting with the Somerset folktale called the war between the Pinsky's and the Fairies in this very short tale. 54 00:08:44,960 --> 00:08:52,070 The fairies and the Pinsky's that's the devant name for the equivalent of fairies go to war with one another. 55 00:08:52,070 --> 00:08:58,730 And eventually they agree that the Pinsky's will reign in Devon and the fairies will have ruler for Summerset. 56 00:08:58,730 --> 00:09:08,570 Ben wrote a short play with Tim Darling, using two actors in McGlocklin and Dunwell McBride playing Dowding and the King of the Fairies. 57 00:09:08,570 --> 00:09:15,800 There was a time when the fairies who dwelt in Somerset lands the east of the river part wanted to cross the border and. 58 00:09:15,800 --> 00:09:24,160 They wanted to settle and extend the territory westwood's. However, the Devonian Pinsky's already lived there, refused them entry. 59 00:09:24,160 --> 00:09:30,220 Soon a war began between the two groups and it violently and terribly raged across the landscape. 60 00:09:30,220 --> 00:09:43,270 The conflict pushed to its limits by the fairy king. Our scouts have returned with terrifying reports of new activity from the edges of our rail. 61 00:09:43,270 --> 00:09:50,470 Giant metal beasts large enough to carry a thousand fairies when it goes, feels like swans launching from a lake. 62 00:09:50,470 --> 00:09:55,400 They take the skies climbing to a height where they are almost out of sight. 63 00:09:55,400 --> 00:10:00,160 Suspicion. The biscuit has developed. A new animal war proved to be unfounded. 64 00:10:00,160 --> 00:10:09,090 A far more dire source has been discovered. The humans have found ways to shape and control a metallic bird beast. 65 00:10:09,090 --> 00:10:13,020 We will seek the route to their attentions. They've laid waste to our lands, all of history. 66 00:10:13,020 --> 00:10:19,350 So what new threat is this or faries? You must become the eyes and ears of our people. 67 00:10:19,350 --> 00:10:27,390 The future of us all depends on each and every one of you. May the 10th, 1940. 68 00:10:27,390 --> 00:10:33,910 He spent the day tidying in the garden, a job that's long overdue, thanks to how busy we've all been. 69 00:10:33,910 --> 00:10:40,730 And I think I will have even less time soon. Blackbird has been building a newnes. 70 00:10:40,730 --> 00:10:45,500 Derek has promised to help me with some tidying if he has an hour or two. 71 00:10:45,500 --> 00:10:50,260 This helped to clear my mind, ready for the meeting with Churchill tomorrow. 72 00:10:50,260 --> 00:10:54,460 I will have to make him listen as we simply can't go on like this. 73 00:10:54,460 --> 00:11:00,160 We need the squadrons back for defence. If they stay in France, we will lose them all. 74 00:11:00,160 --> 00:11:04,190 Once we get this out of the way, I shall arrange another social evening. 75 00:11:04,190 --> 00:11:11,010 Good for morale. After Dowden and retired from the RAAF, he went to the United States or more business. 76 00:11:11,010 --> 00:11:13,080 And there he heard about gremlins, 77 00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:21,000 the supernatural figures that fighter pilots of every Air Force glimpsed as they flew at altitude in a life or death situations. 78 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:25,500 Hanging onto the wings or messing with pipelines bent on damaging the aircraft. 79 00:11:25,500 --> 00:11:32,400 Just so the fairy king explains how the building of air strips in his part of Somerset is degraded habitat. 80 00:11:32,400 --> 00:11:40,140 Driving his people out of their homes. And he begs them to unite behind him, to fight back against the humans as gremlins. 81 00:11:40,140 --> 00:11:44,730 We are inside their sky place. The fight back has begun. 82 00:11:44,730 --> 00:11:48,840 The appearance of strange visions vary creatures. 83 00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:53,370 Some call them Gremillion, our bravest warriors, some risking certainly death, 84 00:11:53,370 --> 00:11:57,660 but wrenching a ripping pieces from the machines pulling out the tubes of burning liquid. 85 00:11:57,660 --> 00:12:06,600 Jeremy got the wild wings of the great iron birds. An American B seventeen pilot heard a strange sound coming from the engine. 86 00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:17,040 Instruments on the panel started going haywire. When he looked outside to his right, he saw a freakish creature latched onto the plane. 87 00:12:17,040 --> 00:12:24,390 It was three feet tall, with abnormally long arms, grey hairless skin, deep red eyes, 88 00:12:24,390 --> 00:12:29,550 a gaping mouth full of teeth and pointed is with tufts of black hair. 89 00:12:29,550 --> 00:12:38,740 At the end, like owl is just staring in at him from the wind and bitter cold beyond the glass. 90 00:12:38,740 --> 00:12:45,330 In the final moments of the drama, Dowding is up on the moors near a stone circle lost in the mist, 91 00:12:45,330 --> 00:12:54,040 where the invisible fairy king speaks to him, taunting him with his failure to see what humans have done and are continuing to do. 92 00:12:54,040 --> 00:12:59,250 Let's hear a bit more from the play. It's all about frequencies. 93 00:12:59,250 --> 00:13:03,660 There are so many signals that are there. But we are not attuned to them. 94 00:13:03,660 --> 00:13:11,910 Quentin Crawford of the Ferry Investigation Society is convinced that it is very similar to a radar projection. 95 00:13:11,910 --> 00:13:19,750 Oh, dear. My on the wrong frequency, commander. We've been trying to contact us. 96 00:13:19,750 --> 00:13:26,100 The presence was almost like electricity. Now I have to confess, I sensed it was not a friendly presence. 97 00:13:26,100 --> 00:13:31,760 You may be right, Commander. You show me you were trying to contact not your dead wife. 98 00:13:31,760 --> 00:13:36,440 I was suddenly filled with thoughts and memories of Clarise. 99 00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:41,060 I could vividly see her holding Derek when he was just a newborn baby. 100 00:13:41,060 --> 00:13:45,710 Yes, your son. You sent him into battle, didn't you? 101 00:13:45,710 --> 00:13:50,590 Well, you said safety by the desk, making all the plans. Were seeing the strategy. 102 00:13:50,590 --> 00:13:59,990 Some warrior commander he survived didn't do. He was is a hero and one of the hundreds of thousands of others who didn't survive. 103 00:13:59,990 --> 00:14:12,100 That you sent through your deaths. My dear, if I doughboys my chicks, I fought to save you, to bring you all back from France. 104 00:14:12,100 --> 00:14:20,900 Strategy. Defence. Not grand offensives. And I have heard your voices from the other side. 105 00:14:20,900 --> 00:14:26,630 Many voices. Hearing voices. 106 00:14:26,630 --> 00:14:32,510 A which are they don't start thinking your mouth, commander. In my sleep. 107 00:14:32,510 --> 00:14:35,570 In my dreams the voices came to me. 108 00:14:35,570 --> 00:14:43,100 My boys have travelled through to a different room and in that place they were still flying as spirits in fighters, 109 00:14:43,100 --> 00:14:48,680 taking off and landing from mountaintop runways made of light. 110 00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:56,390 So there is an afterlife, is there not? You want to believe that so much, don't you? 111 00:14:56,390 --> 00:15:02,030 But you know what, Commander? Yes. Hello. 112 00:15:02,030 --> 00:15:09,170 I can tell you about it. But even if you think you can hear the words I see. 113 00:15:09,170 --> 00:15:23,460 You won't remember. And you human, you can never truly understand. 114 00:15:23,460 --> 00:15:29,480 And finally, we have two poems that bring the fairy world into modern urban spaces. 115 00:15:29,480 --> 00:15:38,150 It's where the fairies become truly modern. First, we're going to hear Sarah Hesketh poem glitches. 116 00:15:38,150 --> 00:15:44,360 Otherwise, flow of morning, the scraps of dreams still stranded in our eyes. 117 00:15:44,360 --> 00:15:53,960 Commuters thrust inwards. Pretend there are other worlds than this on tracks that take us elsewhere from ourselves. 118 00:15:53,960 --> 00:16:04,370 Coffee smoke speaks modest spell's into the air. We plug our ears with tiny incantations, songs that only we can hear. 119 00:16:04,370 --> 00:16:14,060 Here's where the glitches live. And know you tell yourself it's just the tricks of the light as it lifts its way over concrete and glass. 120 00:16:14,060 --> 00:16:20,720 Each day you silently wish for them faces, forcing their way out of the stone, 121 00:16:20,720 --> 00:16:27,710 quick bodies etched in gold and jigging winking their way through the daybreak mass. 122 00:16:27,710 --> 00:16:35,420 Grass gives way to mineral or gazes harden as the city appears we saw. 123 00:16:35,420 --> 00:16:46,700 But we did not see the residents of the Edgerton's made flesh. 124 00:16:46,700 --> 00:16:54,260 Sarah talks about the commuters who are sitting on the train, commuting into town, listening to their music, reading stuff on their phones. 125 00:16:54,260 --> 00:16:59,390 But if you look up and out of the window, you may just see little glitches in reality. 126 00:16:59,390 --> 00:17:05,550 Other things barely glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. Patience's poem. 127 00:17:05,550 --> 00:17:13,170 We Dance to another tempo is a good plan to close this episode with patients takes up the old theme of dancing with 128 00:17:13,170 --> 00:17:20,640 the fairies in the woodland and losing track of time when the speaker in her poem goes down into the fairy club, 129 00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:34,890 the landscape above ground is full of trees. But when that speaker comes back up again, the trees have all gone, replaced by tower blocks. 130 00:17:34,890 --> 00:17:44,170 Paper mache paper, peach patch. 131 00:17:44,170 --> 00:17:52,920 Right. Paper mache keys. 132 00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:57,480 Paper mache. Humans. 133 00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:02,460 I enter ochre. Amber brown. Tribe of trees. 134 00:18:02,460 --> 00:18:06,300 Enter the order elder chant peach. 135 00:18:06,300 --> 00:18:11,360 Words that would spell to each other. Hazel maple. 136 00:18:11,360 --> 00:18:15,540 Beech. Birch fire. Moist earth. Spiky roots. 137 00:18:15,540 --> 00:18:19,510 Metro's. Young. I shall know. 138 00:18:19,510 --> 00:18:36,950 The Retro Human cycle. Berg's youth. Belize birth that tells this human seeks other world where folks dance to choose mixed with heart beats. 139 00:18:36,950 --> 00:18:47,190 Tenth month said Bronwyn's shaped dates. Underworld calls in a voice stiff as drum skins knees. 140 00:18:47,190 --> 00:19:01,390 Earth opens its mouth until yours truly falls under ground, where heads small and tall for the grass green snakey que. 141 00:19:01,390 --> 00:19:06,240 Elves, frisk and giant scans guest list. 142 00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:16,170 In the pitch black Métro. Low pitch Hart Kinks as I enter the crypt. 143 00:19:16,170 --> 00:19:24,860 Drink my drunk's. Music maker makes vinyl Earth Quake. 144 00:19:24,860 --> 00:19:32,830 A dwarf plays piano, then horns honks. 145 00:19:32,830 --> 00:19:39,640 Faery woman takes stage right in white smoke dress. 146 00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:52,150 Plant a grass snake. Sings Three Satti notes and I drown in front vocal. 147 00:19:52,150 --> 00:20:00,020 Eight songs later, we share a drink. She speaks burnt Aspen. 148 00:20:00,020 --> 00:20:08,810 I speak razor sharp, very slender. She is beach, but which. 149 00:20:08,810 --> 00:20:18,280 I'm under her lingo. We twist limbs round retro tunes. 150 00:20:18,280 --> 00:20:28,200 We dance to an other tempo. Today. 151 00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:35,010 First light. Melts dance, blue lines crack. 152 00:20:35,010 --> 00:20:43,960 Very cheak piano notes. More. Earth spews me out like a plant. 153 00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:56,520 QET. Older Aspen elder Rowan Heysel, Maple Beach Birch don't exist. 154 00:20:56,520 --> 00:21:05,300 All the House, elder house. Tower, block of the tower block where trees lived. 155 00:21:05,300 --> 00:21:09,980 Human, human, human, feherty, human, human to human. 156 00:21:09,980 --> 00:21:15,840 Human, giant, human, human for humanity, for any human to human. 157 00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:21,380 Driven giant human feeling for a. Line Lytro human. 158 00:21:21,380 --> 00:21:26,360 Gentle, giant human shields. Size and colour. 159 00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:32,680 Other human nemko trained. Human shields. Size and colour. 160 00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:36,980 Human trained. Human size. Scientifically colour. 161 00:21:36,980 --> 00:21:49,810 Diabelli. Human dental trauma. All these works draw on age old themes of human action affecting the fairy world and causing their retreat. 162 00:21:49,810 --> 00:21:54,610 But there was a palpable call to arms within the artists positivity and a sense of 163 00:21:54,610 --> 00:22:00,670 potential collaboration with fairies to help in the human ecological crisis we're facing. 164 00:22:00,670 --> 00:22:08,410 One of the workshops we talked to, fairy gold turning to leaves when the humans returned to their own world in many interpretations, 165 00:22:08,410 --> 00:22:13,510 this is seen as a trickster behaviour. The fairies pulling one over on the humans. 166 00:22:13,510 --> 00:22:20,380 But as we saw it, the fairies were trying to show us what is of real value rather than the leaves being a worthless dupe. 167 00:22:20,380 --> 00:22:26,080 Perhaps wealth in the form of gold and commerce is of less value than our natural environment. 168 00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:28,810 Maybe we need to sit up and listen. 169 00:22:28,810 --> 00:22:37,200 Don't forget to take a look at the modern ferries Web site, where you can find more of our work with illustrations, a film and the performance. 170 00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:43,900 Sage Gates had a lots of interesting blog posts from our artists in the final episode of the series. 171 00:22:43,900 --> 00:23:02,984 We'll be looking at what the artist did with the theme of fairies and transformational change.