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E ELF (European) See also FAERY. “Elf” is a generic term for faery-folk who appear human except for their pointed ears. “High Elves” are tall and elegant and aristocratic. “Wood elves” are shorter, sometimes quaint fellows running through the woods wearing red caps and pointed shoes. High elves have the same relationship to wood elves as modern humans have with the genus “Redneck”. Jokes about their haircuts, clothing and personal habits are similar in tone: Q. What are a wood elf’s last words? A. “Watch this!” Q. How can you tell if a wood elf is a virgin? A. She can run faster than her cousin. Some helpful analogies: Wood Elf * pixie cut * pointed cap and red shoes * Aversion to cold iron * Evolved from Nature Spirits Redneck mullet billed cap and wife beater * Sullen expression when speaking to teachers or policemen * Didn’t pay attention during the Industrial Revolution Incest, self-destruction, attempts at meta-amphetamine production by persons who’ve never studied chemistry = about the same. These stereotype are grossly unfair to Wood elves; it might just as well be argued that “High Elf culture” is nothing more than a mockery of European aristocracy. The Elfquest series by Wendy and Richard Pini is a more reliable interpretation of Wood Elves, while High elves are best portrayed in Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. F FAERY* To begin with, “Faery” is a place, not a person. After many years, the creatures that live in Faery came to be known as “Faery folk” and “Faeries” themselves, and stories about contact with that parallel universe were generically called “faery-tales”. Faery is the magical country next to our own, the place where the Old Ones live, the creatures that ruled this planet before human beings came to power. This is the place where elves, pixies, nixies and gnomes are to be found, as well as the more dangerous goblins and undines and the great People of the Sidhe (pronounced “Shee”). Faery folk can either help us or harm us, as it suits them. Sometimes they are satisfied with playing harmless tricks on mortals; other times, being touched by Faery will change your life forever. Faeries are dangerous just as a wild animal or deep water can be dangerous; they must be treated with respect. Some Rules for Entering Faery Our world and Faery are intertwined, like two ropes tied in an elaborate knot. Each world is invisible to the other, but they meet here and there, in places like Pulnabrone in Ireland and in other secret places that act as doorways between the two worlds. For safety’s sake it is best to lay out some general rules before entering Faery. · Never speak directly of “faeries” or “elves”. Naming them will call them up and give them power to carry you away. Always use euphemisms such as “The Old Ones”, “The Little People”, “The Good Folk”, or “The People of Peace”. · Time does not mean the same thing in Faery as it does here. Many years of wandering in faery might take only a moment of our time; a short visit there might be a hundred years passing. · Be careful not to eat or drink anything while in the Faery world. To do so is to risk staying there forever. · Good manners and custom are paramount. The anarchic nature of reality in Faery is offset by the Faery folks rigid code of etiquette. A creature who thinks nothing of sucking your marrow through a straw would never cut in line or use a cell phone while driving. · Most Faeries are repelled by the touch of cold iron. Faeries are creatures of the Elder Dark, the time before humans took over the earth and drove them underground, and iron is a new, human invention. The gremlins are a dangerous exception to this rule, being modern faeries that specialize in sabotaging human machinery. There are many ways to enter the Faery world. Interested students are referred to Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came, “The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer”, and other classic sources. Details are not given here because of the danger that this website is not entirely secure from small children, drunks, and idiots. The Four Faery Groups Faery is not some little suburb of reality, but a large and complex world. There are far too many Faery creatures to list them all here, as they are found in every country and culture. For the sake of organization, they may be sorted according to the society they live in: · Social faeries live in large, organized communities very much like our own. These Faery societies are usually fun house mirrors of the human societies around them. The faeries of England, like those of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, have kings and queens and commoners. The “rock people” of Australia live in small tribal groups, like the Aborigines. The friendly household imps of Spain live in peasant cooperatives. Gremlin society follows the pattern of a modern multinational corporation. · Solitary faeries live alone. They are unpredictable and often dangerous, seldom taking part in the larger Faery community, following no law but their own impulses. These are creatures like the hobgoblins that eat small children and the trolls that lurk under bridges. · Household faeries live in close everyday contact with human beings. The brownies of Scotland, who assist with household chores, are a popular example. FA FAERY HILL (Ireland) There are mysterious place around the world where the remains of vanished civilizations can be seen. Some were built to measure the movement of the sun and moon, some to honor gods and heroes whose names we have forgotten. When the history of a place is lost, when the last knowledge of its true meaning slides into oblivion, it becomes a “faery hill” a magical entrance to a parallel universe. In Ireland you can still visit the faery hills left by people who were there and long gone before the Celts arrived, and lie on the giant grassy beds left by the lovers Diarmuid and Grainne as they ran from Finn Mac Cool, or watch the sun come up in the Paleolithic tomb at Newgrange. Not long ago there were plans to lengthen the runway at Shannon airport in Ireland, dropped because the runway would have cut through a faery hill. Such things are not trifled with. If you enter a faery hill, you might not come out for a hundred years. Many a traveler has lingered to long in Faery and then turned to dust when his foot touched the ground of his native land. Generations have passed and forgotten him. The Celtic nations—England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, Iberia in Spain and Brittany in France—are the most comfortable with faery hills. The poet Dylan Thomas remembered a shepherd with always took the time to step inside of faery rings and perform the rituals required by the Old Ones. When asked why he did this if he didn’t believe in faeries, he said “I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t!” FAERY RING (Worldwide) A faery ring is a natural phenomenon, a patch of mushrooms growing in a perfect circle. They are formed when mushrooms sprout together in a clump. As they exhaust the soild in that spot, the next crop will sprout around the edges of the original site, until the mushrooms spread out in a circular pattern. FAFNIR (Scandinavian) This is part of the tale of the Ring of the Niebelung. I will not tell all of the story, because it is very long, concerning gods and men and the roots of the world and the end of all things, and when it’s all over it ends right back where it started from. Wagner’s music, as Mark Twain, said, is really much better than it sounds. You might be happier with P. Craig Russell’s graphic novel of the Ring cycle. This is a small part of the story, concerning the were-dragon Fafnir. Long ago, the most powerful of the Norse gods—Odin the All Father, Thor the god of thunder, and the trickster Loki— were walking on the earth just as men do. They came to a riverbank and saw a huge otter sleeping in the sun. Loki killed it for their supper. At sunset they stopped at a stranger’s house and asked to spend the night. It was a house of men without women, a brutal father and three gigantic sons. Loki offered them the otter he’d killed. Their host cried out with pain and rage when he held it out to them—it was no otter, but their brother, a shape-shifter wearing the form of an otter, who had been murdered on the riverbank. They demanded wergild, “man-gold”, for the death of their brother, the price a killer must pay for the life of a kinsman. The gods agreed to pay, but when Loki brought them gold, it was gold he had stolen, and it had a curse attached: whoever possessed this treasure would one day be murdered for it. No sooner had the gods left than the family began to fight over the gold. The brother called Fafnir murdered his own father and brothers in order to possess the treasure. He was frightened still that it might be stolen from him. Fafnir transformed himself into a monstrous dragon. He sat upon his gold for many a long year, taking no joy from the treasure he killed for, waiting his own turn to die. Finally his death was brought to him; the hero Siegfried came armed with a magic sword, forged to kill the beast by a dwarvish blacksmith. The dwarf told Siegfried that he wanted no part of the treasure as payment for his help; he only asked that the boy cut out the dragon’s heart and cook it for the dwarf to eat. After Fafnir was slain, the hero tore out the grisly trophy and then prepared it for the dwarf’s supper, cooking the dragon’s heart on a spit over an open fire. While it was cooking, Siegfried accidentally burnt his thumb on the flesh. He stuck his thumb into his mouth to ease the pain, and when he did he himself tasted the dragon’s heart. Students of mythology know that if you eat a dragon’s heart, you will be able to understand the language of all living things. Siegfried suddenly understood the song of the birds that were singing in the trees above him. The birds were warning that the dwarf planned to do him harm, out of lust for the gold. The dwarf met his own death instead at the hands of Siegfried. The dragon’s treasure continued to work its evil, and went out into the world to work more mischief before it was finally thrown back where it came from, a story for another time. FENG-HWANG (Japanese and Chinese) This is the Asian phoenix, a rara avis of great good fortune. The feng-hwang has golden plumage, a ruby crest atop a willowy neck, and long tail feathers made of indescribable colors that shift and form patterns spelling out oracular messages as they are blown about by the wind. The feng-hwang appears only when rulers are especially great and virtuous; it is an emissary of Heaven that blesses the land. It does not appear in times of war or sorrow or corruption. When the feng-hwang flies, it is accompanied by a flock of songbirds from every species. Crooked politicians often claim to have seen the feng-hwang, a symbol of their own supposed virtue. Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek (“Old Peanut Head” to the cognoscenti) had a back room full of pheasants painted to look like phoenixes. It is wise to take such claims by little men with a grain of salt. They do say that if you become especially skilled playing the flute, a feng-hwang will appear nine times out of ten; and if a group of friends gather to play music, the birds may also be attracted. FENRIS WOLF (Scandinavian) The Fenris wolf is a gigantic beast of prey who lies chained and waiting for the end of the world. The Fenris wolf could not be contained, and he grew larger, more powerful, more voracious, dangerous and unpredictable every day. The gods of Asgard would not kill him—they were not sure they could kill him—so they decided to bind him up forever. They brought the strongest chain they could find and they teased the wolf into letting them wrap it around him so he could show how strong he was. Indeed, the wolf did just that, breaking every bond they tried on him. Finally they sent for the dwarves to fashion a magic chain that could not be broken. It was made out of magic things: the roots of a mountain, the beard of a woman, the breath of a fish, the sound of a cat’s footfall. The wolf was suspicious and would not let them wrap this chain around him. Without a moment’s hesitation, a hero of Asgard strode up and thrust his hand into the Fenris wolf’s mouth. “This will show you there is no trickery,” he said. “Show us that you can break the chain, and if you cannot, you have my right hand as a hostage.” The Fenris wolf strained against the magic chain, and realizing it could never be broken, he snapped off the hero’s hand. Now the wolf waits for the End of All Things, Ragnarok as the Vikings call it, fro the day when the Midgard Serpent awakes and the Fenris wolf’s chains will be broken, leaving him free to wreak havoc on the gods of Asgard. FERAL CHILDREN (Worldwide) These are not mythical beasts, but children raised by beasts. Heroes of myth are often related to animals because it gives them a purity and nobility of character not possible with a human upbringing. The “Law of the Jungle” --taught to Kipling’s Mowgli by wolf parents, Baloo the bear and the black panther Bagheera-- was not, as some think, an excuse for savagery, but a code of behavior for living in ecological accord with the world around us. Mowgli is not the anarchic savage found in human cities, but a child of Nature who can pass in safety through any part of the jungle if he calls out the password in the language of all the animals: “We be of one blood, Thee and I!” There are stories enough of feral children in both the mythical and the natural history of the world. The founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf. The heroine Atalanta was raised by a she-bear; she and her peers were taught at the hooves of the centaur Chiron. Pecos Bill was brought up by coyotes; Tarzan by apes. Juvenile delinquency drops when humans are raised by animals, and teachers allowed to cuff or savage the throats of reluctant readers. FIVE-TOED DRAGON (Chinese) FLITTERBICK (North American) The flitterbick is a killer flying squirrel. They travel at speeds so fast that a collision with a flitterbick can kill a full- grown ox. It is impossible to take evasive action, and consequently it is best not to go out into the woods at all. If you thought the Teddy Bears’ Picnic was a Big Surprise, wait till a flitterbick flies up your ass.

now with
ANTI-SNEER
PROTECTION

Nature spirits or Elementals
are the oldest and wisest Faery
creatures. They are made of the four
natural elements: earth, air, fire and
water. Their behavior follows the laws
of Nature rather than any social code.
Pixies and sprites, such as the famous
Tinkerbell, are air elementals.
Salamanders, which dance in human
hearths, are made of fire. Nixies and
undines are water elementals.
Gnomes, kobolds, and garden spirits
such as the devas found in the
Findhorn Garden are elementals
made from earth.

In ancient China the emperor’s place was
called the Dragon Throne, and the man who
sat there was “The Son of Heaven”: more
than human, next door to being a god, with a
dragon father and a mortal mother.
The emperors were jealous of their
privileges. If the emperor was offended, you,
your family, and your distant relatives might
be slowly strangled.
A law was passed to regulate the use of
dragons for decoration. A three-toed dragon
could be used by anyone, even the humblest
peasant. The four-toed dragon was reserved
for persons of importance, government
officials and minor royalty. The five-toed
dragon was to be used only by a member of
the imperial royal family.
The government monopoly on five-toed
dragons was taken very seriously. People
who owned dragon sculptures would
deliberately break off a toe or even an entire
foot, so that no one could accuse them of
social climbing.
Five toed dragons themselves are able to use
their opposable thumb in a human fashion, to
handle tools, manipulate chopsticks and
writing brushes, to lift a teacup or turn pages
in a book. Readers are urged to consult R.A.
MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon, a
seraphic work that should be brought back
into print.

For affable scholars and dracophiles:
FIVE-TOED DRAGON PRINT
Book titles, ideograms, even the wu-wei ("go")
game being played, ALL SINOLOGICALLY CORRECT!