The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends

by Katharine M. Briggs

An internationally known folklorist interweaves legends and stories about fairies with a discussion of the origins of fairy beliefs, kinds of fairies, and fairy powers, sports, and mortality in addition to indexing types of tales and motifs

Genres: Folklore, Nonfiction, Mythology, Research, Fairies, Fairy Tales, History

218 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Early Life Katharine Briggs was born in Hampstead, London in 1898, and was the eldest of three sisters. The Briggs family, originally from Yorkshire, had built up a fortune in the 18th and 19th centuries through coal mining and owned a large colliery in Normanton, West Yorkshire. With such enormous wealth, Katharine and her family were able to live in luxury with little need to work. Briggs's father Ernest was often unwell and divided his time between leafy Hampstead and the clear air of Scotland. He was a watercolourist and would often take his children with him when he went to paint the landscape. An imaginative storyteller, he loved to tell his children tales and legends; these would have a great impact on the young Katharine, becoming her passion in later life. When Briggs was 12 her father had Dalbeathie House built in Perthshire and the family moved permanently to Scotland; however, tragedy struck when he died two years later. Briggs and her two sisters, Winifred and Elspeth, developed a close bond with their mother, Mary, after this - all living together for almost fifty years. As Briggs and her sisters grew older their main passion was for amateur dramatics. They wrote and performed their own plays at their home and Briggs would pursue her interest in theatre throughout her education. After leaving school she attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, graduating with a BA in 1918 and an MA in 1926. She specialised in the study of traditional folk tales and 17th-century English history.

The Folklorist Briggs continued her studies largely as a hobby, while living with her sisters and mother in Burford, Oxfordshire. She collected together traditional stories from across the country and the wider world, but did not publish them yet. Together she and her sisters performed in plays with local amateur dramatics groups and Briggs wrote historical novels set during the Civil War (also unpublished). When the Second World War started Briggs joined the WAAF and later taught at a school for the children of Polish refugees. After the war Briggs threw herself into her folklore studies, completing her PhD on the use of folklore in 17th-century literature. In 1954, the first Katharine Briggs book was published, titled The Personnel of Fairyland, a guide to the folklore of Great Britain. This was followed by Hobberdy Dick (1955), a children's story about a hobgoblin in Puritan England. Though these books brought a small amount of interest, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s, following the deaths of her sisters and mother, that Briggs became a renowned folklorist. In 1963 she published another children's book, Kate Crackernuts, and became involved with the Folklore Society of the UK, later being elected as its president in 1967. Now a preeminent expert on fairy stories and folklore, she began to lecture across the country and by the 1970s she had been invited to give lectures in the United States and was regularly interviewed on television. In 1971 she published her masterpiece, the four-volume A Dictionary of Folk-Tales in the English Language. This work remains the definitive collection of British folk stories, becoming a vital resource for writers, academics and storytellers. Katharine Briggs died suddenly at the age of 82 on 15th October 1980. At the time of her death she had been working on a memoir of her childhood days in Scotland and Hampstead, where her love of folklore began.

Information taken from http://www.foliosociety.com/author/ka...

Reviews

[Mary Catelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book on the themes in northern European -- British, German, Scandinavian -- folklore, with some bits roving farther afield on some themes.

Each chapter has a theme -- passage of time in Fairy, slower or (less typically) faster -- the fairies' moral views (and double standards) on lying and stealing and other things -- types of fairies -- fairies' human captives -- and more. Some themes weave through it, like the ambiguous relationship between the fairies and the dead. (not just that apparently dead people might really have been taken; fairies were really and truly dead.)

I liked the examples given. Some of which were new to me even with some familiarity with the folklore. The first "King of Cats" tale recorded was of a troll disguised as a cat to hide from an unreasonably jealous husband. Some fairies can turn into doves but shrink a little every time they return to their native form. One woman told her husband how to rescue her from the fairies; it involved milk from a certain cow, unwatered. Alas, he had remarried, and his new wife watered it, and the fairies murdered the first wife. Mermaids have a knack for herbs and healing. One fairy bride lived with her husband only as long as he did not mention death to her.

Interesting stuff.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

By no means bad but, at the same time, slightly disappointing given its status as a beloved classic. There is nothing here that is not already available in much older works, say Hartland’s “The Science of Fairy Tales”, or „British Goblins“ by Sikes. If anything, I recall Hartland’s presentation being more compelling, and his selections of folk stories representative of each subject (changelings, fairy midwives, lapse of time in otherworld) being more memorable and entertaining.
I suppose that this would make for some entertaining introductory reading on this subject but, for anyone with some prior familiarity with it, this book can’t help but feel repetitive and skin-deep.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

AWESOME collection of fairy lore. If you loved Brian Froud's Faeries, you will recognize a lot of the beings and tales related here -- you can tell that Froud plumbed Briggs's many writings for his source material. This book sports a thorough bibliography and a valuable glossary of fairy creatures.

[Sasha Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is informative enough, but I'd hoped for more analysis from a book with this publication date and by an author with a scholarly reputation. It's really more a compilation of lore, similar to those of the late 19th- and early 20th-century collectors.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briggs pulls together scholarship from numerous sources to tell the reader all the thoughts and speculations about the origin of fairies, their culture and ways, the many different types, and their interaction with humans. She also incorporates folktales to illustrate her points. Fascinating reading.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite, if not favourite books on Faerie legends, easy to read and absolutely magical. I love all of Katherine's Briggs works, and am a huge fan of her writing, so my review may be a little biased.

[J. Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise introduction to fairy legends and myths from around northern Europe, but particularly Britain and Ireland. Packed with various stories from different, more localized fairy tale collections, it makes a great starting point for understanding this vast topic.

[Tyler Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected. I very much enjoyed reading the exerpts from the fairy tales and legends themselves, but did not care so much about how they came to be. It lost my interest before 50 pages in, unfortunately.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully informative and full of well told and well curated stories.

[Amanda Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and on my birthday list!

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katharine Briggs was a well-respected British folklorist, and is considered one of the leading authorities on fairy folklore. In The Vanishing People she gives an overview of the fairy lore of different European cultures, structuring the book into chapters on specific themes: the passage of time in fairy land, the trooping fairies, house spirits, fairy captives, changelings, etc. Briggs also examines the varying origins of fairies, from their earliest incarnations as the Fates and elemental spirits, to their associations with the Dead and with semi-fallen angels. Today, Briggs is one of the few authorities that can be trusted on fairy lore. She does not paint them as the good, flowery innocents that modern culture seems to adore, but explores their capriciousness, their infamous double-standards, their fiery wrath, and their trickster-like nature. The Vanishing People is a great introduction to fairy folklore, and European folklore in general. One of the most delightful parts of this book is the many excerpts Briggs gives of earlier folktale collections, now long and well out of print, which are given in their original dialects and alternate (almost medieval) spellings.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The fairy people in the British Isles, not to say all over the world, vary so much in character, size, appearance and powers, that it is not surprising to find that they inhabit all kinds of places on land and water, under the earth and above it". So writes Katherine Briggs in a chapter introduction, and in this exhaustive study, she draws upon folklore, oral history, and scholarly research to illustrate the extraordinary range of "others" once believed to live along side humans, though usually invisible. As in many things, different cultures all over the world held amazingly similar beliefs about this topic, considered rather esoteric today. This collection of tales and traditions is fascinating, but perhaps even more valuable is the appendix to The Vanishing People, in which she includes a glossary of the types of fairies (woodwives, water horses, and their like), an index of tale types (visits to fairyland, changelings, etc.), and an index of motifs (taboo, transformation, and magical substances, for instance.) Interesting reading and a great reference as well.

[Donna]

This has been on my book shelf for a long long time.....judging by the Goodreads reviews, it appears this quite a good book!


Sadly I could not get stay interested...I suppose I rather read the fairy tales instead of how they came to be.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to the faery folklore of the British Isles. Highly recommended.

[Savannah Foley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Very inspiring and educational.