CHAPTER XI

SCIENCE AND FAIRIES

'Puzzling and weird occurrences have been vouched for among all nations and in every age. It is possible to relegate a good many asserted occurrences to the domain of superstition, but it is not possible thus to eliminate all.'--SIR OLIVER LODGE.

Method of Examination: Exoteric and Esoteric Aspects--The X-quantity--Scientific Attitudes toward the Animistic Hypothesis: Materialistic Theory; Pathological Theory; Delusion and Imposture Theory--Problems of Consciousness: Dreams; Supernormal Lapse of Time--Psychical Research and Fairies: Myers's Researches--Present Position of Psychical Research--Psychical Research and Anthropology in relation to Fairy-Faith, according to a special contribution from Mr. Andrew Lang--Final Testing of the X-quantity--Conclusion: the Celtic belief in Fairies and in Fairyland is scientific.

METHOD OF EXAMINATION

The promise made in the Introduction to examine the Why of the belief in fairies must now be fulfilled by calling in the aid of modern science. To adduce parallels when studying a religion or a mythology is worth doing, in order to show the fundamental bond which unites all systems of belief in things called spiritual; but it is more important to try to understand why there should be such parallels and such a unifying principle behind them. Perhaps there has been too much of a tendency among students of folk-lore, and of anthropology as a whole, to be content to do no more than to discover that the Eskimos in Greenland hold a belief in spirits parallel to a belief in spirits held in Central Africa, or that the Greek Pantheon (and possibly the Celtic one as well) consists of goddesses which are apparently pre-Aryan and of gods which are apparently Aryan. We, too, have drawn many parallels between the Celtic Fairy-Faith and the various fairy-faiths throughout the world; but now we should attempt to find out why there are animistic beliefs at all.

This chapter, then, will confine itself to a scientific examination of the more popular or, as it may be called, the exoteric aspect of the Fairy-Faith, which has come to us directly from the masses of the Celtic peoples. The following chapter, which is corollary to the present one, will deal especially with the mystical aspect or, as this may be called by contrast, the esoteric aspect of the same belief, which, in turn, has come to us from learned mystics and seers, who form, in proportion, but a very small minority of the modern Celts. Each of these complementary aspects of the Celtic religion undoubtedly has its origin in the remotest antiquity. This is probably more readily seen with respect to the former than to the latter. The latter has been esoteric always, and in our opinion shows an unbroken tradition (if only a very incomplete one) from druidic times; and it depends less upon written records, because the Druids had none, than upon oral transmission from age to age. Both aspects of the Fairy-Faith have in modern times absorbed many ideas from non-Celtic systems of religion and mystical thought. As Mr. Jenner has suggested in his Introduction for Cornwall, and as certain details in