Michelle McLaughlin

[As always, when this is on the Currently Reading shelf I'm not done and will continue adding bits to this review. Also I may start off saying something about a book and then change my mind before I get to the end - and then I'll edit this. So until I remove this blurb take none of this as final!]


Contents:

The Recovered Bride (Ireland)
- Captured wife to husband: "The fairies got power over me because I was only thinking of you and did not prepare myself as I ought for the sacrament. I made a bad confession and now I am suffering for it."
- No info on what she was up to during the time with the fairies, she just shows up in a procession of well-dressed people on horseback. Which honestly doesn't seem very terrifying.

Taken by the Good People (Ireland)
- Mother taken at birth of her child, though everyone thinks that she's died (Wait, did they not bury a body?! Fairies can leave body doubles?)
- Mother was not only taken but married again.
- Another "find us, we'll all be at point X, on horseback" plan
- Captured wife to husband, about man who's her new husband: "You will know my man, for he is the only one of them that has a red head."
- fairy or good people aren't mentioned - the kidnappers referred to as men - which is frankly what the warring tribes of this country were doing a lot of (raiding, stealing, etc.)

Twenty Years with the Good People (Ireland)
- Husband is snagged by...someone when on a journey to get leather for shoemaking - only his cart and ass return home.
- Captured husband, now returned, tells them: "...I can't tell you for some time where I was since I left you. But some time I might have the power, but not now."
- Story teller: "...he never tould her or any one where he was, but of course everybody knew that 'twas wood [with] the good people."

Jamie Freel and the Young Lady: A Donegal Tale (Ireland)
- Here the good people are actually in the story a bit more: "...he had neighbours, of whose opinion he was ignorant, neighbours who lived pretty close to him, whom he had never seen, who are, indeed, rarely seen by mortals, except on May eves and Halloweens." and "Numbers of little people, the largest about the size of a child of five years old, were dancing to the music of flutes and fiddles, while others drank and feasted."
- Jamie Freel is invited to dance and feast with them, and then they take him along on a trip to "steal a young lady"
- when you hang out with fairies your horse can be made to fly
- The capture: "He saw the young lady lifted and carried away, while the stick which was dropped in her place on the bed took her exact form."
- Hero Overhears Fairy Plans (for beings that are supposed to be uber powerful, fairies are apparently bad at realizing humans are listening to them)
- When the captured girl is finally returned to her parents they don't believe it's her until Jamie tells her story. Oddly no one thinks about digging up the body (the stick!) they buried, thinking it was her.

Ethna the Bride (Ireland)
- Finally, some detail on the why's of capture: "The fairies, as we know, are greatly attracted by the beauty of mortal women, and Finvarra the king employs his numerous sprites to find out and carry off when possible the prettiest girls and brides in the country. These are spirited away by enchantment to his fairy palace at Knockma in Tuam, where they remain under a fairy spell, forgetting all about the earthly life and soothed to passive enjoyment, as in a sweet dream, by the soft low melody of the fairy music, which has the power to lull the hearer into a trance of ecstasy."
- Ethna is stolen and her husband goes to Finvarra for help, thinking Finvarra is a friend - and of course it's Finvarra that's had Ethna kidnapped
- Hero Overhears Fairy Plans

Ned the Jockey (Wales)
- Ned wanders into a group of fairies who send him off in a guest of wind (or possibly he'd been drinking and this was a great way of explaining how he ended up in someone else's garden)

The Old Man and The Fairies (Wales)
- The old man is carried off while sleeping: "...when he awoke he found himself in a great palace of gold, full of fairies dancing and singing. And they took him and showed him everything, the splendid gold room and gardens, and they kept dancing round him until he fell asleep."
- The fairies apparently enjoy toting sleeping humans around - they put him back in the spot they'd found him, filling his bag full of gold. Gold turns into shells after he tells his wife where he'd been.

A Visit to Fairyland (Wales)
- Man is entranced by a group of fairies dancing and playing music, and somehow seven years pass
- Rip Van Winkle effect: his parents are dead, his sweetheart has married another, and he dies of a broken heart

Four Years in Faery (Isle of Man)
- Two sentences of note: "Like the Welsh fairies, the Manx ones take men away with them and detain them for years." and
"The other world, however, in which he was for the four years was not far away, as he could see what his brothers and the rest of the family were doing every day, although they could not see him."

The Lost Wife of Ballaleece (Isle of Man)
- A man's wife disappears: "Some persons said that she was dead and others that she was taken by the Little People." - which makes you wonder if people often vanished without a trace like this.
- Man married again but his first wife appears to him at night (it always seems to be at night): "...I was taken away by the Little People, and I live with them near to you."
- Once again it's the Rescue from a Group on Horseback Scenario!
- Second wife sabotages the rescue, and first wife is never seen again. Of course if he had rescued her he'd have suddenly found himself married to two women.

On Fairies (England)

The Lost Child

The Fairies' Hill

The Stolen Lady

Touching the Elements

The Aged Bride

A Smith Rescues a Captured Woman from a Troll

The Sea Nymph




Of course this makes me want to write a list (everyone loves lists, right?) - How Not To Be Kidnapped by Fairies
1) Try not to live in Ireland. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot there. ...Also Wales. ...And actually, to be safe, avoid the British Isles altogether.
2) Pay attention in church/confession - do not daydream about your fiance.
3) If pregnant be sure to have some folk ready to guard you when you give birth, at which point you can be snatched away and somehow everyone will believe you're dead.
4) Don't go on a journey alone. (However if you do, and are delayed for any amount of time, you can always hint that you were with the Good People, and this might be a believable excuse. To some.)
5) Never go to sleep. If you must, be sure you're guarded. Don't worry, no one will think you're at all paranoid.
6) Don't be too good looking. If you are, try not to flaunt it. Tip: Hide indoors a lot.
7) If you see a group of fairies or hear their music, do NOT go over and listen or talk to them.… (altro)