Fairies

By way of YouTube I’ve just had a look at Cottingley Beck as it still flows over rocks and is overshadowed by trees. Back in 1917 it was the favourite spot of two cousins, who regularly got into trouble for returning home wet and untidy after playing in and around the stream. Most kids would make some sort of excuse but the one made by 9 year old Frances Griffiths and her cousin 16 year old Elsie Wright was an absolute belter.

Cottingley Beck

When told off they said they went there ‘to see the fairies’. I’d loved to have seen the expressions on the faces of the families. I think I may have been quite impressed by such a tale. Anyway, Elsie borrowed her father’s camera and went in search of proof. It didn’t take long.

Elsie’s father Arthur was a keen amateur photographer with his own darkroom and all the equipment required to develop the image which shows Frances in front of several winged fairy figures. Elsie was interested in photography with a talent for art and experience in retouching photographs. Arthur Wright was suspicious. Even when the girls came back months later with a plate showing Elsie holding out her hand to a small winged figure, Arthur was unconvinced. He knew the girls had been up to something, he just wasn’t sure how they’d done it.

the Cottingley Fairies (i) 1917

Elsie’s mother Polly took the photographs along to a meeting of the Theosophical Society in nearby Bradford and the images appear to have caught the imagination and the enthusiasm of the society’s supporters, and of one of its leading members, Edward Gardner. The photographs were examined by photographic expert Harold Snelling, who confirmed them as authentic images of ‘what was in front of the camera’, a smart move. Gardner used the images in his lectures. Copies appeared in a spiritualist magazine where they caught the eye of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, a believer in spiritualism himself. He was about to write a piece on fairies for the Christmas edition of the Strand magazine, and asked Arthur and Elsie for permission to use the images.

The Strand Magazine, March 1921

It seems incredible now to think that such a person would be taken in by such a trick because the Cottingley fairies were fakes, probably created by Elsie and staged and photographed by both girls. They had been copied from images in “Princess Mary’s Gift Book”, published in 1914, and then had wings added to them. Three more fairy images were taken, the final one, “Fairies and their Sunbath”, in 1920.

Unbelievably, a debate on the authenticity of the Cottingley fairies continued until well into the 1960s. However, they were not entirely debunked until the 1980s, when Geoffrey Crawley, the editor of the ‘British Journal of Photography’, undertook a major investigation, concluding they were fakes. Extraordinary.

the Cottingley Fairies (ii) 1917

Elsie actually admitted to the trick in 1983. The cousins themselves were astonished at how readily people like Conan-Doyle had accepted the images. Perhaps not wholly wanting to relinquish the story, Frances maintained all her life that “Fairies and their Sunbath”, the fifth and last image, showed real fairies, not fakes.

Some of the information above is from Miriam Bibby (Historic UK) and from Meg Warlow (National Science and Media Museum).

As for a poem to suit the theme how could it not be this:

Fairies

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
It's not so very, very far away;
You pass the gardener's shed and you just keep straight ahead --
I do so hope they've really come to stay.
There's a little wood, with moss in it and beetles,
And a little stream that quietly runs through;
You wouldn't think they'd dare to come merrymaking there--
     Well, they do.

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
They often have a dance on summer nights;
The butterflies and bees make a lovely little breeze,
And the rabbits stand about and hold the lights.
Did you know that they could sit upon the moonbeams
And pick a little star to make a fan,
And dance away up there in the middle of the air?
     Well, they can.

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
You cannot think how beautiful they are;
They all stand up and sing when the Fairy Queen and King
Come gently floating down upon their car.
The King is very proud and very handsome;

The Queen--now you can guess who that could be
(She's a little girl all day, but at night she steals away)?
     Well -- it's Me!

                            Rose Fyleman, Punch Magazine, May 1917

            

Thanks for reading, Terry Q,