Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
William Allingham (1824-1889)
Do you ever wonder where the folklore of the little people came from?
Much credit can be handed to Tolkien’s Bilbo and Frodo, in their quest for the ring of all rings. An avalanche of fantasy novelists all jumped on the train and a new genre in literature was born - some better than others - though every cook praises his own broth.
Since the invention of computers and later, the internet, a huge entertainment market has seen the light and is ever more increasing. Fantasy games are extremely popular and addictive – for example, according to BBC online, a company like Blizzard Entertainment sells 300 copies of World of Warcraft a day – where anyone can be a hero, either being an elf, dwarf or orc. No doubt, us darkly inclined have got a fantasy or gothic inspired game at home, or at least you have tried it!
The Shining
But where do these mythical beings, mentioned above, originate from?
If we start with the etymological origin of the word ‘elf‘, we discover a lot. The Old English ‘Aelf’ comes from Teutonic or Saxon roots (Wikipedia, 2008) and defined them as almost “divine creatures”, who “were brighter than the sun and symbolised fertility and the cult of eternal life”. Tolkien was well aware of Norse mythology, with its variations of Scandinavian and Germanic folklore. The wizard Gandalf, is actually the name of an old Norse king, according to the saga Heimskringsla, written in the 12th century.
But let’s look further into history than mediaeval folklore. According to geologists Christian and Barbara Joy O’Brien (1999), the old word El was used in old Mesopotamia to indicate a god or higher being, and actually meant ’shining’ in the Sumerian language. This word spread along Europe and became ‘Ellyl’ in Wales, ‘Aillil’ in Ireland, ‘Aelf ‘ in Saxon and ‘Elf ‘ in England. The plural of ‘el’ in Hebrew, is ‘Ellohim’, mentioned in the Bible to refer to the gods. El was later on used as a suffix, and in Celtic Cornwall ‘el’ was equal to the Anglo-Saxon ‘engel’ and the Old-French ‘angele‘, which became ‘angel‘ in English (Gardner, 2000). According to the Catholic Church, angels were to be considered as God’s messengers and pictured as beings floating in air and shining.
People from the gods
From elves and angels to faeries, is just a small step. Here we face another mythological creature with supernatural capabilities, such as flying and shimmering, but in other versions the pranksters and baby thieves. Tinkerbell from “Peter Pan” being the most famous example. The word faerie (faery, fey, fée), is originally Old-French with its roots in Latin: ‘fata‘ or faith, and became ‘fey‘ in Old-English, around 1400 AD. In the Celtic world, faeries and elves are most associated with the royal family, Tuatha Dé Danann, a race of people who arrived or invaded Ireland somewhere around 2000 BC. Their fate or destiny didn’t survive the conversion to Christianity, though much of their history has been preserved by medieval Irish literature. Which brings us to the core of folklore and mythology: history rewritten and altered by those who feared it.
Thuatha Dé Danann, means: ‘People of the Goddess Danu’. It is well known that the Church didn’t much appreciate goddesses, so who was this ‘Danu’? Some versions refer to the ancient Greek agricultural goddess Danaë of Argos, but if we use etymology again, we notice certain geographical and historical parallels. Based on place names such as the rivers Danube, Dnjepr and Don, we can assume these mother rivers were worshipped throughout the Celtic world.
Medieval Christian scholars are known for their bad eyesight, so what if it was spelled Tuadhe d’Anu in its oldest form; meaning: ‘People of Anu’? In Sumerian writings - and later for Assyrians and Babylonians (present Iraq and Iran) - ‘An’ meant heaven and the gods were called ‘Anunnaki‘; deities belonging to the Sumerian and Akkadian pantheon. Anu was a goddess, or the female equivalent of the god An. It is from this pantheon that the Israelites extracted their one male God, Yahweh, during their captivity in Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar (c.586-536 BC), as described in the book Genesis. Whilst the Hebrews primarily worshipped the female deity Ashtoreth – or Ishtar –, they adapted and absorbed the Babylonian religion, and created their one supreme God by conjoining deities into what would become Judaïsm (Gardner, 1996).
So where is the link with faeries and elves and the Tuadhe d’Anu? Mythology is written down for a reason and has its roots in real life events and experiences. Fact is, these Anunnaki – or ’shining ones’ – are the subject of the very first scribes, but who they really were and if they truly possessed magical powers, is an open question. Around 2000 BC, the cult of the Anunnaki seems to come to an end when Mesopotamia is invaded by unknown strangers, from the East, West and North (Wood, 1992).
Impressive looks
North of present Iraq is The Black Sea, in which the river Danube emerges. From Eastern Europe and Eurasia to the Ukraine and the Russian Steppes, adjacent to China, a horse-riding nomadic people, the Scythians, dominated this enormous area from around 1000 BC until the 2nd century AD. Would these have been those strangers?
Excavations have learned that these people wore tight trousers made of leather and high boots, long sleeved shirts of wool and most of all, pointed caps. Many figures in folklore are pictured with pointed caps; leprechauns, gnomes, pixies and elves. This Scythian homeland of the Thuadhe d’Anu, reached the borders of Hungary and Romania, where they mixed with the Sarmatians (the story of King Arthur has many versions; in the 2004 Antoine Fuqua movie, Arthur is said to be of Sarmatian origin).
Animal bone studies have shown that Scythian riding horses were being traded in Europe (Taylor, 1994), so these people – or part of them – must have emigrated from other parts of the ancient world. Even more astonishing, is that, well preserved mummified bodies were found in 1994, south of the Himalayas. The mummies had a light coloured skin, brown hair and light coloured eyes and were of extreme height; almost 2 metres tall - the female bodies, also reached a height of 1.80 metres. Again, pointed caps were found and the woven clothing indicates plaid pattern (Gardner, 2000).
Which brings us to the Celts (Keltoi or ’stranger’ in Greek), a race of people that originated during the shift of iron to bronze age, on the borders of eastern Europe, the Balkans and Caucasus. Greek and Roman writers characterised the Celts as “tall, with a pale skin and blond or red hair”. They wore tunics and capes with tartan motifs and patrons (Haywood, 2004). Haywood also asserts that their appearance was frightening as they were able to drive away their enemies.
All creatures great and small
Hence, when these Tuadhe d’Anu established themselves in Ireland – in mythology around 1897 BC, though more likely around 700 BC (Gardner, 2000) - they brought along a superior tradition and culture and became known as the ‘Sidhé‘: a powerful, supernatural race. Albeit, their looks and appearance must have made an enormous impression on the locals. In Gaelic, they were referred to as the ‘Dhaoine sidhé‘ or, ‘people of peace‘.
After the loss in battle against the Milesians (an indigenous people of Ireland, descendants of the Scythian King, Mil), the Tuadhe d’Anu agreed to retreat and dwell on the sidhé; the hills and mounds of Ireland. Every king of each tribe was given one mound and it is believed these are the ancestors of the Irish king Eire Ahmon, whose name became the title of Ireland. A ‘banshee’ – or ‘Behn Sidhé‘ – was a woman of the tribe, announcing an oncoming death by wailing and keening.
People with the same Scythian background were the ‘Pict Sidhé’, or the warlords of the Fir Bolg. The Fir Bolg were a Celtic tribe related to the Belgae (the shining ones), where Bel or Belo (the Celtic god), means “bright”. Often, Fir Bolg is translated as “the men with bags” (Fir = men; Bolg = bag), since they carried little bags or humps on their back, possibly with gold from mining. Much later, their warlord history would be minimised and they would be known as pixies or leprechauns.
These lords of the wood, were priest kings or druids. The word ‘druid’ was a Proto-Celtic word for ‘witch’ (feminine) or ‘wicca’ (masculine), which meant: to bow for, or surrender to. These druids bowed before the Sidhé until, after defeat, they left Ireland and chose to rule Caledonia instead, where they became the Fir Alban (men of Scotland).
When the lights fade
Alas, ancient Irish history has only been written in early medieval days, when Christianity was powerful enough to ban The Shining Ones into mythology.
The Tuadhe d’Anu were banished into the underworld (spirits of the dead and changelings), dwelling in underground chambers of their burial mounds, in a realm of shadows. Fairies were evil, casting spells and substituting babies, and amulets were made to avert them. Banshees were identified with vampirism. In Scotland, it was a common belief to place a bowl of water outside the house, so the vampire would drink this, instead of blood.
The Pict Sidhé became the little people or leprechauns, (from the Irish word ‘luchorpan’, meaning “little body”), and were destined to be cobblers or tanners. As leather was a favoured material with Scythian warriors (Gardner, 2000). In less friendly versions, they were equal to goblins, gnomes, ogres or sylphs, all related to the Devil’s work (Wikipedia, 2008).
Whatever mythical power or knowledge the original Scythian elves, faeries and dwarves possessed, their legacy has been kept alive throughout myths, folklore and legends. Thanks to modern day fantasy literature, roll-playing games, the internet and the movie industry, they are more popular than ever. The culture of myths and legends, the elves, faeries and the little people, comes from a Middle Earth, not far away in the Otherworld, but from our own inheritance.
References :
Joy O’Brien, Christian and Barbara, The Genius of the Few, Dianthus, Cirencester, 1999.
Gardner, Laurence, Realm of the Ringlords : The Ancient Legacy of the Ring and the Grail, Tirion Uitgevers BV, AH Baarn, 2000.
Gardner, Laurence, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, HarperCollinsPublishers, London,1996.
Wood, Michael, Legacy: A search for the Origins of Civilization, BBC Network Books, London, 1992.
Taylor, Timothy, Thracians, Scythians and Dacians 800 BC – AD 300, The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Haywood, John, The Celts: Bronze Age to New Age, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, Essex, 2004.
Witches Digest would like to thank Bart from Realm of Shadows for this article.
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From the Witches Digest Mabon 2008
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