Most people view the various folkloric races and rites in this series as being foreign to Christianity, perhaps even positively anti-Christian. After all, the argument goes, there’s no mention of fairies in the Bible; Jesus doesn’t amble around preaching against mermaids, or telling the apostles to beware of wurms when they build their churches.
Before refuting this argument textually, it’s worth looking at what those that believed in supernatural creatures thought of their own beliefs. It’s true that the Bible says nothing in particular about Northern European fairies. However, even though the folklore we know today was remarkably long-lived – we find it referenced in Celtic place names prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasion – we don’t know precisely when it arose, on account of a lack of writing done by Northern Europeans earlier than the end of the 5th century. Folklore has been at least as static as Christianity itself, yet few modern American or Western European Christians would accept the Christianity practiced at the end of the 5th Century. Why, then, should we insist that the folklore that Jesus knew be the same as that which a folklorist knows today? Furthermore, Jesus was not a Northern European. Although polar bears, seals, and heather all existed in Jesus’ time – and would surely have been accepted as components of God’s Creation had Jesus known about them – Jesus says as little about these creatures as he does about elves. Geographical differences between the Holy Land, Scandinavia, and the British Isles do not make the former alone a part of Christendom.
Among the Northern European peasantry, there were three widespread explanations for the existence of fairies, and all of them were distinctly Christian. Here’s the least popular of these:
One day, Eve is at home in Eden with her many, many children. You see, she and Adam have been busy. Well, she hears God walking up to the house and is embarrassed about the size of her brood, so she hides half of them just before God comes in the door. Unfortunately, Eve has forgotten that God is omniscient, so when God asks if these are really all the children she has, Eve answers, “Yes.”
“As you will,” God replies. “The other children are no longer yours and will live as fairies on the earth and merfolk in the water.”
The following is almost as homely an explanation:
Satan’s revolt against God has been crushed, and the fallen angels are pouring out of Heaven and into Hell. After a while, Jesus begins to get worried. So many angels were in league with Satan that Heaven is starting to empty. So, Jesus calls out, “Father! Unless you do something now, you won’t have any angels left!” God, realizing that Jesus has a point, takes action and orders the closing of the gates of Heaven and Hell, adding that “whoever’s in is in, and whoever’s out is out.” This leaves a whole host of angels stuck in the middle between Heaven and Hell. Those who fall to earth become fairies, and those who fall in the water become merfolk.
The most important of the popular explanations for the origin of fairies is also the most interesting for our purposes:
Satan’s revolt against God has been crushed, and those angels who were in league with him have been banished to Hell. There are, however, a great many angels who had refused to take sides and support Satan or God. Since these are neither good enough to remain in Heaven nor evil enough to go to Hell, they are cast down to the world of man. Those who fall to earth become fairies, and those who fall in the water become merfolk. A somewhat parallel idea is that fairies are the souls of dead pagans who – not being Christian and all – cannot be admitted to Heaven but are, nonetheless, too good-hearted to go to Hell.
While only a relatively small number of learned churchmen (that is, well-read intellectuals, not small-town preachers) ever ascribed to any of these concepts, the masses had the general idea that fairies existed somewhere between good and evil. No matter what, fairies had their place in Christianity just as surely as Satan and God. As noted previously in this series, the majority of intellectual Protestant churchmen saw fairies as devils, but some of their more sympathetic brethren used biblical arguments to refute this. Interpretation of the New Testament’s John 10:14-16 troubled theologians immensely over the centuries, and although most people today see the passage as referring to the Jews, it was sporadically viewed as explaining the fairies. Here, Jesus says:
“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”
Competing with the “other fold” theory in the minds of sympathetic intellectuals was a theory of which one hears next to nothing today. This identifies the fairies as the offspring of the Watchers. The Watchers appear briefly in the Old Testament (Genesis 6:1-4):
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
Here, the Bible seems to explicitly account for fairies as the offspring of the union between angels (the Watchers) and humans. Although these angels were fallen due to their lust, they did not fall as severely as Satan’s proud comrades did. Still, the passage from Genesis is terribly vague, and theologians from the early days of the organized church onwards turned to what would become the Apocrypha (the non-canonical biblical texts) for an explanation. The apocryphal Old Testament Book of Enoch provided a far more complete description (Book of Enoch 6-7):
“And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’ And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: ‘I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.’ And they all answered him and said: ‘Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.’ Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And these are the names of their leaders: Samlazaz, their leader, Araklba, Rameel, Kokablel, Tamlel, Ramlel, Danel, Ezeqeel, Baraqijal, Asael, Armaros, Batarel, Ananel, Zaqel, Samsapeel, Satarel, Turel, Jomjael, Sariel. These are their chiefs of tens.
“And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.”
The end result of all this havoc created by the Watchers is God’s cleansing of the Earth, via the Flood. How, indeed, the Watchers’ fairy children were meant to have survived alongside Moses, I can’t really say.
If you’ve been reading this article in hope of a bit of information relevant to Magic: The Gathering, well, here it is: The word translated by the King James’ Bible as “giants” in this context is the Hebrew nephilim. Yeah, those weird-o things from Guildpact. Who would’ve known?
The Book of Enoch, and the other apocryphal texts, were excluded from the Bible-proper because they were seen as falsifications, usually because they clashed with more general Church doctrine. A well-known example of this is the Song of Solomon, an Old Testament text that was too sensuous for the canon but also too well-known to be left out of the King James’ Bible.
For more apocryphal, or rarely spoken-of, biblical folklore, you’ll have to read tomorrow’s column. And let me warn you, if you think you learned about the Bible in Sunday school or Hebrew school, you’re in for a shock.
Skål!
Adam Grydehøj
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