:: Friday, November 25, 2005 ::

Don't Mess with the Boggarts

Fairies stop developers' bulldozers in their tracks Got to love this story from the Times. Local people halt development on a site containing a rock with a lot of history. Interesting to me as I just finished reading Susannah Clarke's excellent 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell'. And have followed it up with reading some of the source material, the scary folklore stories of Katherine Briggs in particular (and the wee folk in the Lothians seem especially nasty.)

The angle here is the funny bumpkins who believe in fairies, but many "fairy" stories and traditions are based on older beliefs. So the Celtic god Lug became leprechauns. This site was of significance to the Picts, and this is the likely origin of the "fairy story", older beliefs going underground in the face of the arrival of Christianity. But this is based on my limited reading, other better informed opinions welcome.




:: Alister | 11:34 am | save this page to del.icio.us Save This Page | permalink⊕ | |

2 Comments:

When I saw the word fairies, I thought, you were going to write on another subject (LOL).

Good analysis of Scottish politics and culture.

By Blogger Frank Partisan, at 6:15 am  

thanks, guess the word Boggarts might have been misleading too ;)

By Blogger Alister, at 10:19 am  

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