Celtic Fairylore

The faeries to whom the Irish refer are by no means the beautiful, butterfly-winged and benign Disney-sanitized sprites of our youth. They possess a far more capricious nature and the capacity for both great benevolence and great mischief, much like the Trickster in Native American culture.

This MP3 is entitled "Spirits of the World" is available here. The full CD "The Twilight Relam" is here.

Fairylore and Folklore

'The Twilight Realm' by Thane Tierney

In these days of zeroes and ones, where every decision seems to be reduced to a binary option, the need for myth and the metaphysical is perhaps even more compelling. Advanced as we believe ourselves to be, situations arise that neither fact nor faith seem to explain to our satisfaction; it's little wonder we sometimes tap into a deeper pool of our prehistory.

Musicians from Paganini and Mozart to Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix have been characterized as having gifts that seem to come from someplace beyond. Some say they were touched by the hand of God, others believe they made a deal with the Devil, but there is a third option, one which musicians of many backgrounds have cited: they were playing the music of the otherworld.

Artists in all media, verbal, visual or sonic, have a singular connection with the world around them. Scientists would have us believe that it's a right-brain function, and there's physical evidence that the corpus callosum, the bridge between our cerebral hemispheres, is actually larger in musicians than in others. While that sort of factoid seems to approach an explanation as to why musicians are often able to imbue their craft with emotion, it falls short of telling us about their wellspring of inspiration.

No matter their other qualities, artists are dreamers. In poet Jonathan Galassi's words, they "expand our notion of the true." And musicians, in the course of their waking dreams, whether envisioning new music or playing improvisationally, sometimes find themselves transported to a place they might call "the zone" or just "out." In Ireland, someone similarly conveyed would be said to be "gone [or off] with the faeries," a phrase that persists to this day.

The faeries to whom the Irish refer are by no means the beautiful, butterfly-winged and benign Disney-sanitized sprites of our youth. They possess a far more capricious nature and the capacity for both great benevolence and great mischief, much like the Trickster in Native American culture. [Those who have read J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan might recall that Tinker Bell at one point, in a fit of jealousy, tried to have Wendy Darling murdered. Very faerie-like behaviour.]

Faeries were the gatekeepers to the otherworld and were widely known to have an innate aptitude for music making, hence their strong affinity for human musicians. Their compositions were said to be extraordinarily compelling and of a higher standard than those of mere mortals. Some who received a musical gift from the otherworld were extraordinarily protective of it, refusing to play the tunes they learned in public or even mention their source, lest the impulsive otherworld guardians take offense and inflict havoc. Others were more forthcoming, and freely shared the wealth that had been bestowed upon them. In fact, two of the great 20th century fiddlers from County Donegal, Mickey Doherty and Neilly Boyle, routinely and unabashedly credited "the wee folk" for their contributions.

Musicians who visited the otherworld did so, at least to some degree, at their peril. The mythology is rife with stories of those who (much like Kurt Vonnegut's character Billy Pilgrim) got unstuck in time. They were sometimes said to have emerged years later, despite having spent (in a subjective sense) only a few minutes in the company of faeries. While brief visits to the otherworld were acceptable in bygone Irish rural culture, extended forays had serious consequences; "tarrying with the faeries" meant that crops mightn't be planted or harvested on time and other routine obligations might be neglected. So, while the community might be willing to overlook a brief out-of-time interlude, there was always the caveat that the otherworld was to be kept at arm's length, lest one be overwhelmed by its charms.

Not only did music come from the otherworld, but a substantial body of work was written about it. In a tradition that prefigured the magic realism of writers such as Castaneda, Borges and Allende, supernatural lore was common among the Celtic poets and musicians. They inhabited a world where encounters with selkies [sea creatures, most often female, who assume human form by shedding their skin], dryads and other mythic beings, while magical, were not uncommon. These themes are widely distributed through pre-industrial societies all over the world. [In fact, the universal nature of shape-shifter legend is explored in an excellent article by Patrick Harpur in the February 2002 issue of Fortean Times.]

Twilight loomed large in otherworld mythology, as that was the time the faeries came out to play, and it acted as a metaphor for the nexus between this world and the otherworld. In a much broader literary sense, it also represents that nether region between light and dark, sacred and sensual, a time of ambiguity and curious phenomena (such as the so-called green flash, often reported by sailors just as the sun dipped below the horizon). Under the unfolding blanket of darkness, inhibitions were shed and mischief ensued.

In the words of the Italian surrealist playwright Luigi Pirandello, "Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be - like the reality of yesterday - an illusion tomorrow." The otherworld has existed, and persists in its influence, in the hearts and minds -and fingers- of artists since the dawn of our earliest imaginings. So let's not run aground on belief's rocky shores, let's not draw a hard line between the physical and the metaphysical on our journey. Just relax your mind, let the cares of this world fall away like autumn leaves. Enter the twilight realm and allow the music to transport you.

Thane Tierney, October 2003

Products That Might Interest You:

Celtic Fairy Music 1 (MP3s)

Price: $6.93

Celtic Fairy Music 1 Sheetmusic (PDFs)

Price: $10.53

The Twilight Realm CD

Price: $14.99

Celtic Fairy Music 2 (MP3s)

Price: $6.93