{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/celt/ffcc/index.htm","path":"neu/celt/ffcc/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/index.htm","text":"| | The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries By W. Y. Evans-Wentz [1911] | \nThis is one of the most in-depth and scholarly attempts to explain the phenomena of the Celtic belief in fairies. Based on Evans-Wentz' Oxford doctoral thesis, it includes an extensive survey of the literature from many different perspectives, including folk-lore, history, anthropology and psychology. The heart of the book is the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Evans-Wentz, an invaluable snapshot of the fairy belief system taken just on the cusp of modernity. There are regional surveys of the fairy-faith in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany and the Isle of Man. Evan-Wentz later went on to become one of the leading authorities on Buddhism, and published many of the key documents of Tibetan Buddhism including the Tibetan Book of the Dead.\nEvans-Wentz examines each of the hypothetical explanations of the fairy phenomena. Among these are the theories that fairies were a reclusive race of dwarfs, that they are disembodied spirits, or that they are a figment of our imaginations. Evans-Wentz concludes that they may indeed be a manifestation of inhabitants of a higher reality that only some of us are able to view, let alone understand.\nWe come away from this study with a multi-dimensional view of the fairies, who, much like the grey aliens of UFO belief, inhabit a narrative which seems too consistent to be the product of insanity, yet too bizarre for conventional explanation.\nProduction Notes: This is a complete overhaul of this etext. I have added linked footnotes, anchored page numbers, the table of contents, a previously missing chapter, and corrected numerous formatting and transcription errors.\n--John Bruno Hare\n January 27th, 2004","title":"The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Index","type":"page"}