THE ELEMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAIRIES: An A-Z of Fairies, Pixies, and other Fantastical Creatures

In Sweden it was said that the fire must be kept burning in the room of a baby who had not yet been baptized—unbaptized children being particularly at risk from the incursions of fairies was a common theme across many cultures. As protection, a piece of steel such as a needle should be attached to the child’s swaddling—the preferred color of which was red, to simulate fire—and the water the child was washed in should not be thrown out. In China, the ash of dried banana skin was used to draw the sign of a cross on an infant’s forehead and a fisherman’s net placed over the cradle to guard against evil spirits. In Egypt, it was widely believed that a human child left unattended was at risk of being swapped with a djinn child.

Many tales across cultures stated that babies were particularly at risk of being taken by fairies during the first six weeks of life and were most vulnerable during the first three days. It was advocated that a fire be kept lit near the child at all times and that the parents keep constant watch. This had obvious practical benefits in safeguarding the child against accident, injury, and disease. Of course, in modern-day childcare it is still important to keep a baby warm and under the watchful gaze of its parents—not for fear of fairies, but to ward off illness and because infants cannot conserve heat for the first four weeks of life.

Accounts of changelings continued to be reported into the late nineteenth century. In 1895 in Ireland a woman named Bridget Cleary was killed by her husband, family, and neighbors, who claimed that she was a fairy changeling. The ordeals she was subjected to in order to cast out the fairy and return the “real” Bridget resulted in her death.

Though reports of this type are thankfully a thing of the past, changelings continue to capture the imagination and appear in many works of art and literature. A famous example is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which revolves around a squabble between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies, over a changeling boy. W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” was inspired by Irish tales of children spirited away to fairyland. More recently, Maurice Sendak, children’s author and illustrator and creator of Where the Wild Things Are (1963), drew on changeling lore in his book Outside Over There (1981), in which Ida’s baby sister is taken by goblins and replaced with a changeling made of ice. Ida must go the goblin realm and rescue her sister by playing her horn. Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth (1986), developed in conjunction with renowned fairy artist Brian Froud, acknowledges Sendak as an influence. Featuring David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, it tells the story of Sarah, who must rescue her baby brother from the domain of the goblin king.

Changeling stories deal with themes that continue to resonate, such as panic when a child goes missing, the fear that a child is sick or weak, or—from the point of view of the changeling—the feeling of not fitting in. Perhaps this is why changelings continue to be a source of inspiration for films, art, and literature today.

Chin Chin Kobakama

Japanese fairies. A Japanese fairy tale, written down by T. Hasegawa in Chin Chin Kobakama (1903), tells the story of a lazy little girl who ate plums and hid the stones under the matting on her bedroom floor. Eventually this angered the fairies and they punished her. Every night at 2 a.m., known in Japan as the Ox Hour, the fairies rose up from the matting as tiny women dressed in bright red robes, singing:

Chin-chin Kobakama,

Yomo fuké soro,

Oshizumare, Hime-gimi!

Ya ton ton!

“We are the Chin-chin Kobakama, the hour is late, sleep, honorable noble darling!”

Though the words were kind enough, they were sung to taunt the little girl and the fairies pulled faces as they sang.

After many nights of this, the girl became tired and frightened. So, one night her mother sat up with her to see the fairies. When the little women appeared, she struck at them and they fell to the floor—as plum stones. So, the girl’s laziness and naughtiness were discovered. After that she was a very good little girl and never dropped plum stones on the floor again.

Churnmilk Peg

Guardian of Yorkshire nut thickets and orchards, she disapproves of laziness in humans, but takes a fairly laid-back approach to her duties, passing the time by smoking her pipe while protecting nuts and fruit from human hands. Melsh Dick carries out the same task.

Cipenapers

Welsh version of the word “kidnappers,” sometimes used to talk about fairies.

Clap Cans

Lancashire bogie that can be heard but not seen, so-called because of the sound it makes, like that of banging together cans or pots. It is one of the less frightening of the bogies.

Cloud Master, the

SeeNuberu, El (#litres_trial_promo).

Cloud People, the

Spirits of the clouds in the mythology of the Pueblo peoples of North America. According to Hopi legends, the Rain Cloud clans performed ceremonies to the Cloud People to bring rainfall. They sang songs until a mist began to form, then heavy rains fell and frightful bolts of lightning came from the sky. After this display of power, the Rain Cloud clans were invited to join the Hopi pueblo.

The Cloud People were expert basket-makers. They introduced this skill to the Hopi people and were the originators of the basket dance, which is still performed at certain ceremonies.

The Hopi continue to perform rituals at the winter solstice and in the spring to ask to the Cloud People to bring rainfall to ensure a good harvest. In these ceremonies the Cloud People are represented by kachina masks.

Cluricaune

(Pronounced kloor-a-cawn.) Irish cellar-dwelling fairy, similar to a leprechaun. Irish folk-tale collector Thomas Crofton Crocker described him as wearing a red nightcap, a leather apron, long pale blue stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. In some tales he acts like a buttery spirit, beleaguering drunkards and frightening unscrupulous servants stealing from the wine cellar. If the victim attempts to escape the cluricaune’s taunts by moving house, the cluricaune hops into a cask and accompanies them.

Coblynau

(Pronounced koblernigh.) Welsh mining fairies, similar to the Cornish knockers and English blue-cap. In British Goblins (1880), Sikes describes them as grotesquely ugly, about 18 inches (45 centimeters) tall, and dressed like miners. They helped miners by indicating where to find good lodes of ore. In Germany, these mine spirits were known as Kobolds.

Tom Cockle

An Irish household brownie who stayed with the same family for generations. When the family relocated to America, they were sad to bid farewell to their helper. But on arriving in their new home, they were delighted to find food set out and a fire already burning brightly in the hearth, for Tom Cockle, their loyal brownie, had come with them.

Coco, El

A bogieman in many Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. The myth of El Coco is thought to have originated in Portugal and Galicia and spread to Latin American countries such as Mexico, Argentina, and Chile with Spanish and Portuguese colonization. The name “Coco” is related to the Portuguese and Spanish for “skull” and the bogieman is sometimes represented as a coconut or a carved pumpkin. Like a dark counterpart to a guardian angel, he is said to take the form of a dark, shadowy figure, often sitting on the roof, where he watches over a child, ready to pounce at any sign of disobedience or bad behavior and spirit them away.

Coleman Grey

A little pisky boy who was adopted by humans, as related in Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England (1865).

Colepexy

Pexy or colepexy are the names of a Dorset pixy. In Dorset, an area of southern England renowned for its fossils, belemite fossils are known as colepexies’ fingers, and fossilized sea urchins are also called colepexies’ heads.

Sometimes described as a fairy horse, the colepexy haunts woods, and coppices, acting as a guardian of orchards, leading travelers astray, and occasionally luring unsuspecting folk into mounting him, whereupon he embarks on a wild ride across the Dorset downs, through thorny thickets and wetlands before bucking off his rider, leaving them stranded in a stream or ditch.

William Barnes, in Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect (1844), describes the colepexy’s activities thus: “To beat down the few apples that may be left on the trees after the crop has been taken in; to take as it were, the fairies’ horde.”

See alsoColt Pixy (#ulink_b766f897-e348-5428-82d1-a54db4c460ef).

Colt Pixy

Fairy horse of Hampshire whose neighing tricks other horses and travelers into losing their way, leading them into bogs, similar to a brag or dunnie.

In Somerset, the colt pixy is an orchard guardian who chases away scrumpers (apple thieves), and may be a variant of the colepexy.

See alsoLazy Lawrence (#litres_trial_promo).

Corrigan

SeeKorrigan (#litres_trial_promo).

Cottingley Fairies

When two girls in Bradford borrowed a camera to take photos of the fairies at the bottom of their garden, neither of them could have imagined the sensation that was about to follow. When the resulting images attracted the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the eminent writer with a keen interest in the supernatural, the Cottingley Fairies phenomenon had everybody talking. The excitement and speculation have rippled down through the years, sparking the idea for two films released in 1977, Photographing Fairies and Fairy Tale: A True Story, and the story continues to attract interest today.

It all began when cousins Elsie Wright, aged 16, and Frances Griffiths, aged 10, got into trouble for getting wet playing in the stream at the bottom of the garden at the Wrights’ home in Cottingley. The girls loved playing in the stream, not least, they said, because they saw fairies there. When their parents laughed at the notion of fairies at the bottom of the garden, dismissing it as fanciful, or merely an excuse for splashing in the stream, the girls set out to prove the grown-ups wrong. They persuaded Elsie’s father, a hobbyist photographer, to let them borrow his camera and set off for the stream. They returned triumphantly, in great excitement.