Sabina said..
>>As the late, great Katharine Briggs and other folklore scholars have long
noted, in European folklore there is significant overlap between the spirits
of the dead, fairies, and at times witches.<<
Yes, in Dianne Purkiss's (most excellent) book "At the Bottom of the Garden:
A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins and Other Troublesome Things" New York
University Press, 2000, she really focuses on the Fairies being The Dead and
has fascinating examples to illustrate her thesis (which I'm not including
here as reading the book is better than anything I could say, well... except
that she even says Peter Pan and the Lost Boys are "Dead" !). Actually,
Purkiss talks a lot about infanticide and baby death in that book... the
section on the Scottish Witches like Bessie Dunlop and the interaction they
had with fairies after childbirth is utterly compelling and haunting.
As for fairies being though to be the Children of Eve, or Fallen Angels... I
read in W.Y Evans-Wentz (not sure exactly *how* he is considered by
academics today?) in his book "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries" that not
*everybody* saw them as part of the Biblical mythos, I can't remember which
parts of Britain and Ireland did see fairies in a Christian light and which
didn't, but it was not a uniform view over the whole area.
~Caroline.
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