Hi everyone, and welcome to this special Halloween edition of Britain under the microscope. 欢迎来到【闲话英文】的万圣节特别版. Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu .Hi, everyone.

Is that time of the year?

Yes, so for this Halloween, I thought I'm gonna tell you something that's really scary, frightening, fairies.

Fairies?

Yes, fairies.

Okay.

I'm assuming you're not talking about like Disney versions of fairies 那种仙女.

No, I’m not talking about all of those beautiful little girls with wings that fly around with magic wands, granting wishes. No, I'm talking about fairies.

但迪斯尼就是把这种小仙女小精灵都叫做 fairies.

Yes, so we're talking about the true origins of fairies and a traditional idea of what is a fairy and why they are terrifying.

Now you're speaking my language.

For those of you who have been listening to the show, you know that I'm really into a cold…I'm really into all these supernatural things. So I know for a fact that fairies, the original meaning from medieval Britain is something probably more akin to spirits or even like little monsters.

Pretty much. They were known as the little people or the hidden peoples, people were actually a little bit too scared to mention them by name.

我觉得在中文里它就不应该被翻译成仙女仙子, 因为安澜也知道中文里的“仙” is a very positive word. It means you're above people. You're superior.

Yes.

You're immortal. However, fairies I would say they're mischievous, they are sometimes evil.

They are. To be honest, it is a bit tricky to translate the term because it's changed so much in the centuries really.

我觉得更像精怪, 你说精灵精怪可能会更合适一点.

I think that would probably be the nearest translation to it.

这种山精野怪

Because they were believed to cause disease and play tricks on people, so they were sometimes good, sometimes bad. They were quite almost neutral in many cases.

They are kind of… you said they like playing tricks on people, so they're like kind of tricksters.

They’re basically, I would say a sort of shadow society. So they're like humans. So, as you have good people and bad people, sometimes good people turn bad, and bad people turn good. It's that same sort of idea, fairies are society that live among us. But we cannot see them.

We cannot see them, I think many cultures have that idea. They might not always call them fairies but where’re they from, are they from things in nature?

People… scholars aren't really sure where the idea comes from. Some people think that they are the spirits of the dead. Other people think that they are fallen angels, so they weren't good enough for heaven, but they weren't bad enough for hell.

So they're stuck on earth.

They're pretty much stuck on earth, but I would say they do have their origins in ancient Greece and Rome, where kind of as many societies in ancient times believed that trees, rivers, the natural world had its own spirits, a little bit like Japan nowadays.

Yeah, you say Japan but actually in Chinese lores, there are also lots of stories. When there's a lot of nature, especially if you consider people in the past in ancient times, they didn't really know that much about nature, nature is largely mysterious. You hear rustling in the woods could be hidden people.

Yeah. That is where the idea comes from, the creatures that could be easily offended, but they can also be helpful.

You know you mentioned hidden people, right, isn't that what they call it in Iceland? 在冰岛有一个叫做什么…翻译过来也叫hidden people.

Yeah. So Iceland, they believe in elves, and that's kind of somewhat similar to fairies. But I would say they all have their common roots really, so that creatures that should be, how should I say, you should be careful of offending. They have a lot of power, a lot of influences, they can do some really bad things if you make them angry.

They can be very menacing.

They can be.

One thing I've heard of, I don't know if it's about fairies changeling.

Yes. That is probably one of the sort of more terrifying aspects of the myth, where it was believed that fairies would steal babies or even adults and replace them with a fairy child or a fairy that looks exactly like the person that was stolen.

You see this idea or you see this type of stories in a lot of like anime or like cartoon. So they’re just lores.

There's actually an English expression, to be away with the fairies, and it just means to be distracted or acts like you're in a dream world.

And that is actually part of that belief is the fact that fairies could take someone and the replacement may start getting ill. They might start showing some strange behavior.

So if I say, 安澜, you seem to be away with the fairies, that means you're not all there.

I'm not all there. I'm distracted. I'm thinking about other things.

Or you’re just being replaced by a fairy?

Or I’ve just been replaced by a fairy, also possible. But it's amazing when you think about this belief that how long it lasted for. For example, there was a story in Ireland in 1895 where a woman was killed by a husband because he was obsessed with the idea that she had been replaced by a fairy. So he accidentally killed his wife because there was a belief that fairies are scared of fire. He accidentally killed his wife because…

Try to get the fairy out.

Try to get the fairy out, and try to encourage the fairies to bring back his wife.

His real wife.

Yeah.

These kind of the danger of folklore sometimes, most people nowadays would think they're just harmless stories. But in the olden times from people truly believed, folklores to be 100% realistic, a lot of tragedies can happen.

Yeah. So there was actually another famous story involving fairies or apparently involving fairies. In 1917, there were two young children, and one of them was playing with a camera and took a photo of her cousin sitting with fairies.

Okay.

Yeah, so there was this famous photograph and it shows this young girl sitting with fairies flying around.

OK, then I'm assuming it's manipulated.

Well, yeah, it was fake, except for one person who actually believed that they were real, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Writer of Sherlock Holmes.

The writer of Sherlock Holmes.

You would imagine him as a very logical being, someone who's not going to buy into these kind of fake photos.

But people actually believed it at the time, and he believed it. So he published the photos in the magazine called the Strand, which is also very famous for being where Sherlock Holmes’ stories were published; and it was only in the 1980s when the girls were much, much older, they were elderly women, they actually admitted they were fake, we just use photos or pictures of dancers that one of them copied from a book.

You know I just imagine back in the 1920s, on the Strand, the famous magazine that published Sherlock Holmes, on this page you have Sherlock Holmes investigates; on the second page is fairies dancing with little girls.

Yeah, as investigated by the person that created Sherlock Holmes.

That is probably a more light-hearted story about fairies.

Yeah, and I would say that now lot of people have forgotten what fairies and the traditional folklore around them, where they actually comes from.

Largely thanks to Disney and Peter Pan.

Yep, Peter Pan, Disney, Cinderella. The idea of the fairy godmother.

Fairy godmother is the one that helped Cinderella.

Yeah, also tooth fairies.

So you guys also believe in tooth fairies in the UK?

Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, and I lost my teeth, I lost my baby teeth, put it under the pillow, and I wake up the next morning and find a pound coin in it, underneath my pillow.

就是牙齿仙子或者牙齿仙女, 在有一些西方国家就是小孩子的乳牙掉了就放在枕头底下, 爸爸妈妈就会说晚上 tooth fairy会来把你的牙拿走, 然后给你钱. I think it's really cute.

You have to try and persuade the child not to kind of try to lose as many of their teeth as possible.

Exactly

But it’s a nice, little cute story.

And earlier on, you mentioned fairy godmother, nowadays when we say fairy godmother, if we say it jokingly usually means this is someone who is very helpful. He or she can grant you every wish.

Yeah, so now it's a lot more innocent, but behind all of that is a terrifying folklore. It's some scary stories.

That explains why sometimes fairy tales might not just be these Disney version of cute stories, might actually just be dark fairy tale.

Yes.

On that note, we're gonna wrap up this special edition. If you have heard any of these similar fairy tale or folklore that you would like to share, leave us a comment in the comment section. We'll see you next time.

Happy Halloween.

Bye.