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
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