Читать книгу THE ELEMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAIRIES: An A-Z of Fairies, Pixies, and other Fantastical Creatures - Lucy Cooper - Страница 15

Invisible lands across the sea, hollow hills that raise themselves up on legs at full moon, revealing the twinkling lights of the fairy homes within, underwater palaces and castles in the sky, streams, lakes, mountains, forests, woods, trees, and flowers, under a rock or at the bottom of the garden—fairyland, like fairies themselves, comes in many different guises.

In the county of Cornwall alone, descriptions of fairyland and fairy dwellings range from the fantastical to the everyday. In “The Lost Child” in Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England (1865), a little boy who follows the sound of exquisite music into the woods describes being led by a beautiful lady into a fabulous palace with glass pillars and glistening multi-colored arches hung with crystals. In contrast, another account states that one of the favorite haunts of the fairies are simply “places frequented by goats.”

From otherworldly palaces to mundane hillsides, fairyland is elusive, remaining always just around the corner—glimpsed briefly, disappearing in the twinkling of an eye.

Celtic tradition abounds with tales of mythical enchanted isles located somewhere across the western sea, visible only briefly to mortal eyes before disappearing again into the mists. Tir Nan Og, Land of the Ever Young, is where the Tuatha de Danann are supposed to have resided since being chased from the mainland by the Milesians. In Manx folklore, it is the Isle of Emhain, Land of the Women. To the Britons, the Isle of Man was a magical land. In “The Magic Legs” in Fairy Tales of the Isle of Man (1963), Dora Broome tells of the mist-hidden island that Mannanon, Son of Lir, could make invisible at will. In Wales, sailors told tales of isles of enchanted green meadows off the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

The land of Avalon is one of the most famous of the fairy lands across the sea. This is where some believe King Arthur lies sleeping, awaiting the hour when he will return to rule again.

In Old Norse mythology, there are Nine Worlds which are home to the various types of beings, including humans, elves, gods, and goddesses, that make up the Old Norse worldview. These worlds are held in the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Alfheim is the world of the elves. Asgard is the world of the Aesir tribe of gods and goddesses, located in the sky, invisible to human eyes but linked to the human realm by the rainbow bridge Bifrost. Midgard is the name given to the human world.

“Gard” is derived from the old Germanic idea of innangard and utangard. Literally meaning “inside the fence” and “outside the fence,” the terms applied to the physical or geographical location of a place as well as the mindset of its inhabitants. The human world’s name of Midgard, or “Middle Enclosure,” implied that humankind sat somewhere between the ordered, innangard world of the gods of Asgard, and the chaotic, utangard world of the giants of Jotunheim.