No, I take it back, there are some seventeenth-century Fairy- names: Fayraye Gill 1606 in Sedbergh (PN Yorks WR 6 p267) and Fayrye Hole 1641 in Hexton (PN Herts p112). This gets closer to the early sixteenth century, which I think is when ‘fairy’ replaced reflexes of ælf in regional vernaculars.

 

There must be a gap in time between the arrival of a word in the common vocabulary and its appearance as an element in place-names,  but how long is that gap? The old rhyme says that:

‘Turkeys, heresy, hops and beer

Came into England all in one year’,

and all four innovations proved lastingly popular, though I think only turkeys and hops feature in the onomasticon. But how long did it take between 1535 and their first appearance in place-names?

 

Jeremy Harte

 

 

Dear Diana, Dear All,

 

I’ve found place-names with ‘fairy’ as qualifier dating from the eighteenth century, oddly lagging about two centuries behind the use of fairy as the common vernacular term for, well, fairies. In some cases, like Fairy Knowes, the name is literal: that’s where the fairies were seen. In others, like Fairy Stairs, the sense is what I’d call fictive: it’s something like the stairs that you’d expect a fairy to have, if there were fairies, and if they did have stairs.

 

So far as I know, nobody associated fairies with luminous insects until the twentieth century – with art like Edward Robert Hughes’ Midsummer Eve (1908). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Robert_Hughes. Aaah!

 

Fairies and will-o-the-wisps – that’s a whole other story.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeremy Harte

 

 

Hello Diana,

 

I can’t say  anything on the subject of glow worms and Fairy Names. However, it does seem that glow worms have been sighted throughout Cumbria. https://www.glowworms.org.uk/cumbria.html 

 

Interestingly there is a Glow Work Rock in Rydal (not listed in EPNS Westmorland). http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/thelakes/html/lgaz/lk31968.htm

 

There appear to be ‘fairy’ names in both Cumberland and Westmorland but as you say, the EPNS volumes let them pass without comment. There is:

�.    Fairy Bridge, Caldbeck. EPNS Cumberland, P.278 suggesting comparisons with The Fairy Kettle and The Fairy Kirk as cited in Hutchinson, W. The History of the County of Cumberland, 1794

�.    Fairy Crag, Shap Rural. EPNS Westmorland p. 174. 1859 OS.

�.    Fairy Steps, Beetham. Not listed in EPNS Westmorland . https://www.visitcumbria.com/sl/beetham-fairy-steps/ There seems to be a suggestion here that The Fairy Steps were part of a ‘corpse road’ however impractical that seems given the photos. Does that add yet another dimension?

 

There also seems to be a book: Cleaver, Alans and Lesley Park, The Fairies of Cumbria which looks a s though it might have some folk etymologies. I don’t know the book or the authors and can’t vouch for any of them. A website: https://thefairytaletraveler.com/2014/01/22/fairy-sites-places-to-visit-cumbria/  looks fairly lunatic but does have some interesting picture of supposed ‘fairy’ name sites, including ‘Fairy kettles’.

 

Sorry, this is probably no use at all but it has provided me with an interesting and entertaining half hour of procrastinating when I should have been working on the newsletter.

Best wishes

 

Linda

 

 

 

 

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