Harry wrote: "Are there European stories of people going to live with
the dead and then coming back alive years later?"

In Sardinia, where I did fieldwork in the 1980s and 90s, there are legends of people dancing with the dead, and then returning to the living -- sometimes years later, as time passes differently when one is in contact with the dead.  In one legend, a shepherd coming back from his pasture sees a circle dance at a country chapel.  Thinking there is a festa, he puts down his saddlebags and joins the dance.  But as he links arms with the other dancers, he notices that they are not corporeal; his arms go right through them. Then he realizes they are the dead, and he has joined the dance of the dead.  Quickly he leaves the dance, grabs his saddlebag and runs away as fast as he can, making for the nearby village. And so he saves himself.  For if he had stayed and contined to dance with them, he might have returned hundreds of years later, or died altogether. (see my book _The Two Madonnas_ (1993, 2005) for a full-text, annotated version.)

This legend is so substantially similar to stories of dancing or feasting with or visiting the fairies (in Northern European lore) that it points to a pan-European substrate of belief in which categories of fairies and the dead overlap substantially.

It's not that people "invent" a category of fairies when they already have one of "ghosts;"  it's that these two categories appear differently and serve different functions in legends.

Best,
Sabina

Sabina Magliocco
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University - Northridge
18111 Nordhoff St.
Northridge, CA  91330-8244
________________________________________
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Harry Roth [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 8:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Fairies

Caroline Tully wrote:

> Hi Harry,
>
>>> Is she saying that fairies are just a human metaphor for the dead?
>>> Or is she saying they are the dead in folklore?
>>
> Harry Roth<<
>
> What's the difference? Can you clarify for me? Purkiss is certainly
> saying that fairies are a human metaphor for the general dead, as well
> as for things people don't want to know about or admit like neonatal
> death, women dying in childbed, infanticide, incest, disabled
> children. This is also explored in "The Good People" by Peter Narvaez
> (ed) (Kentucky University Press 1991). In Angela Bourke's "The Burning
> of Bridget Cleary" fairies are also the dead (in Ireland in the late
> 19th century). So whether that's 'folklore' or 'human metaphors' I'm
> not quite sure I understand the difference. Is it the difference
> between beliveing something (from the inside) and analysing that
> belief, from the outisde?


I think there is certainly a difference between believing something and
analysing that belief, even though I think we can do both at the same
time. To me saying the fairies are a metaphor for the dead is not the
same as saying that the fairies are the dead. From what I know of fairy
folklore, for instance, people could sometimes go and live with the
fairies and never come back or even end up dead because of them, but
people could also go and be with the fairies and then come back alive
years later. I think this is mentioned in Wilby's "Cunning Folk" (where
at least one of the Renaissance witches has a familiar who is a fairy)
and in "The Cooper's Wife Is Missing" by Hoff and Yeates (also about the
Cleary case). Are there European stories of people going to live with
the dead and then coming back alive years later? I'm not familiar with
any. And there is a clear distinction between fairies and the dead in
the lore. Someone might join the fairies or be forced to stay with them,
but most dead people didn't end up with the fairies, and fairies were
thought to be non-human. It seems odd to me that if fairies were a
metaphor for the dead, fairies would intersect with dead people in the
lore, since the purpose of a metaphor is to stand for something that is
absent. Also, I would want to know why people would invent the category
of fairies when they already had ghosts to represent the dead.

Harry Roth