Elves and Fairies

Elves and Fairies

Glossary

A list of words and the meanings mostly used in these pages.

aborigine / cat / Christianity / coven / fairies / imp / Indo-European / witch / witchcraft

aborigine: This word is used in these pages to indicate peoples that inhabited Europe (and other regions settled by Indo-Europeans, qv) before the arrival of Indo-European invaders. Little is known of their racial origin or variety, but they appear almost invariably to have been shorter and darker-skinned than the invaders. Many of them also clung tenaciously to their own pagan religion, a distinctive style of dress, and other practices and mindsets foreign to the Indo-Europeans, especially after the arrival of Christianity (qv). These aborigines were, in fact, the fairies (qv).

broom, broomstick: witches are conventionally depicted as flying through the air, quite ludicrously seated on an old-fashioned twig broom with the twigs behind. Margaret A Murray makes it quite clear that witches, while going to coven (qv) meetings, would be clothed only in their robes and would walk with a broom between the legs. The broomstick was smeared with a hallucinatory drug and served as a delivery mechanism, the effect of the drug being that the witch experienced the sensation of flight while still walking. This of course puts the Harry Potter films, with their sequences showing Quidditch matches, into the realm of the ludicrously impossible.

brownie: defined conventionally as a small sprite supposed to do helpful work at night, especially domestic chores. The American Heritage Dictionary states that “the sprite was thought of as ‘a wee brown man’ ” – in fact it was a small brown person, a fairy (qv). The name comes from the fact that fairies were darker-skinned than Indo-Europeans. The “helpful sprite” might in fact have been a fairy who chose of his own volition to be helpful in a Christian household, but might also have been enslaved in some fashion.

cat: a small feline of the species Felis catus (or Felis domesticus). First domesticated among the Egyptians from the desert cat Felis lybica, they were in mediæval Western Europe kept exclusively by witches, as imps (qv); Christians maintained a superstitious fear of them.

Christians: Followers of the Faith of Jesus Christ; in mediæval Western Europe almost invariably Roman Catholics^[1] and almost exclusively Indo-Europeans.

coven: an assembly of 13 witches. A great amount of superstition attaches to the number 13 because of this. It is to be noted, however, that there were 13 people present at the Passover supper conducted by Jesus Christ on the eve of His crucifixion. [perhaps from Middle English covent, a gathering, from convent]

dancing: coven (qv) meetings invariably included dancing. Probably for this reason the Church has from time to time (and in different places) forbidden dancing, although it is not forbidden in the Scriptures; indeed King David danced before the Ark of the Covenant wearing an ephod. (2 Samuel 6) Many of the dance styles introduced to European Christian society from within Europe over the past three or four centuries (especially including the waltz) were of witch origin, and were in fact called witch-dances. However, no substance of witchcraft was in this way transferred to Christian society, so it is hard to see what harm it can do.

Devil: a word not used by witches themselves, but occurring in the records of witch trials. The witches would refer to the head, or priest, of their coven by the name of the god he represented. The inquisitorial (Catholic) priests would refuse to write or speak the name of any pagan deity, and would instead substitute the word “Devil” or its equivalent. For a non-member of a coven to speak in ordinary conversation of the god locally worshipped would result in coven members passing this information on to their priest, who would then arrive to visit the person who had spoken of him. It is from this that the expression “To speak of the Devil” is derived.

elf: a noble fairy (qv); a fairy king or queen. So named because of the white clothes they habitually wore. [Middle English elf; Old English ælf;^[2] from Indo-European albho- (white)]

fairy: a member of an aboriginal European society, practising a pagan religion. [Middle English fairie. The American Heritage Dictionary derives this from Old French faerie, faierie (enchantment), from fae (fairy), and in turn from Latin fata (the Fates), singular of fatum (fate). Margaret A Murray finds more of a connotation with fearie, meaning one who was feared.]

imp: conventionally nowadays a mischevous child, or in an older sense a small demon; an archaic meaning is a graft. Among witches, an imp was not a person but an animal used for divination, often a toad or a cat (qv). [Middle English impe, (scion, offspring or child); Old English impa (young shoot, sapling), from impian (to graft on) (derived from Latin and Greek)]

Indo-European: a word of modern coinage, sometimes given as Indo-Germanic.^[3] It indicates the spread of the languages derived from a tribal grouping that once roamed the steppes, but subsequently invaded both Europe (and as far north-east as Iceland) and the regions now known as Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Indian subcontinent (as far south as Sri Lanka). It also indicates a racial type, taller and fairer-skinned than the aborigines (qv) encountered in these regions.

ogre: conventionally defined as “a fabled man-eating giant or monster”. The American Heritage Dictionary derives the word from French, and as probably being derived from Orcus, Roman god of the underworld. However, the Encyclopædia Britannica states that it is a corruption of Hungar or Magyar,^[4] associating it with the notorious brutality (in mediæval times) of this invader people from the steppes.

pixy, pixie: conventionally defined as a small fairylike or elfin creature, of obscure origin. This word was used to indicate people of the fairy (qv) race.

warlock: a word conventionally used to indicate a male witch qv, a wizard or a demon. It was not used by mediæval witches, and its use by Christians was insulting and condemnatory. [Middle English warloghe, Old English wærloge, oath-breaker (from wær, faith or pledge)]

Wicca: conventional name for a cult claiming to be a revival of mediæval witchcraft (qv) or witch-religion, now recognised in the United States as a religion. Since many of the secrets of the mediæval witch cult died with their practitioners, it is to be doubted whether modern Wiccans actually practise much of the religion (and sorcery) of mediæval witches.

witch: a follower of a pagan religion, especially one recruited into it from an Indo-European society; a member of a coven (qv). [Middle English wicche, Old English wicce (feminine), wicce (masculine); from Indo-European weik-², which is described in the American Heritage Dictionary as occurring in words connected with magic and religious connotation in both Germanic and Latin. It is the root of the words guile, wile, bewitch (from Old English wiccian, to cast a spell) and the Latin victima, an animal used as a sacrifice, root of the word victim]

witchcraft: conventionally defined as “black magic or sorcery” or as “a magical or irresistible influence, attraction or charm”. It encompasses all the craft (practice or knowledge) of witches (qv), including their orgiastic religion. Advocates of “white witchcraft” distinguish between their own beneficial practices and those of “black witches”. However, “white magic” also entails dealing with spirits and other matters forbidden in the Scriptures to Christians and Jews.

wizard: a sorceror or magician; also conventionally used to indicate a male witch (qv). Its older and perhaps more proper meaning is a wise man, or sage. [Middle English wysard; from wys, wis (meaning wise or smart)]

^[1] There were various exceptions to this:

The Basques – the ethnic group settled longest in Western Europe, whose language is unconnected with Indo-European and whose blood types are even entirely different – were converted to the Christian Faith at an early stage.

The Pictish royal family of northern Scotland was also converted to Christianity. But it is highly likely that the few Picts who remained in England formed an important part of the fairy communities which were found in that country in the Middle Ages.

The Jews were naturally not Indo-Europeans (the linguistic and ethnic group to which Hebrew belongs is Semitic), but they usually adopted the language of the country where they settled. In Britain and most of France they formed a community which was thinly spread, and was often forced by persecution to move. However in southern France there was a sizeable Jewish community which established itself there in the years when Narbonne was conquered by the Moors, and which was connected with the Jewish population of Spain and Portugal, which was expelled in the time of the Inquisition.

^[2] The letter æ was used in Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) to indicate a sound resembling the letter a in apple. The letter a was used for a sound more like the a in the Afrikaans or Dutch word appel, or the German Apfel.

^[3] The Indo-European peoples of Europe were the Celts and the Italic, Hellenic, Germanic and Slavic peoples.

The Greek language (Hellenic) was spread by the conquests of Alexander the Great across the eastern Mediterranean, while the Roman Empire spread the Latin language (Italic) across Western Europe, giving rise to the Romance languages: Portuguese, Castilian (also called Spanish), Catalan, French (including Provençal, Occitanian and Franco-Provençal), Rumantsch, Italian, Sardinian and Romanian.

The Celts include the Gauls of what is now France and northern Italy, the Britons, the Bretons and the Irish (who in Classical times were called Scotti), as well as groups like the Helvetii of present-day Switzerland, the Boii of Bohemia, and the peoples who gave their name to Galicia in north-western Spain, Galicja in Poland and Galatia in Asia Minor.

The Germanic peoples had their beginning with the blending of Indo-Europeans with the earlier inhabitants of a land in the vicinity of present-day Niedersachsen, which was called Phalia or Dalia (this name survives in the German regional name Westphalia). They split up into:

The Western Germanic peoples, ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons (who invaded Britain), the Franks (ancestors of the modern-day Netherlanders and Flemish-speakers of Belgium, and of the Germanic people who invaded Gaul and established a kingdom there), and of the various tribes which settled Germany, Austria and German Switzerland.

The East Germanic peoples (who invaded the Roman Empire [initially attacking Constantinople] through the country we now call Bulgaria and afterwards devastated the Balkans, Italy, southern Gaul, Spain and North Africa before settling down). They included the Visigoths and Ostrogoths (Western and Eastern Goths) and the Vandals.

The North Germanic peoples (the Scandinavians [not including the Finns], who were also known as Vikings and included the Normans).

Also Indo-European are the Gypsies (known among themselves as Rom; their language is Romany), a travelling people of Indian origin who are known to have been in Persia around AD 1000 and subsequently entered Europe. They were initially pagan (Hindu), but later adopted the religion of their host countries. (“Gypsy” means “Egyptian”; the names for them in various European languages reveal a widespread ignorance concerning their origins).

^[4] The Magyar or Hungarian people, whose language is related to Finnish, Estonian and other languages spoken in the far north of Russia (Finno-Ugric family, Ural-Altaic group), arrived relatively late in Europe and settled in their present homeland in the 9th century, conquering the resident Slavs and Huns, but also raiding further afield, as far away as Bremen, Orléans and Constantinople. They were later converted to Christianity.