The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove: December 12, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This month Chris and I have been enjoying, on the Boggart and Banshee podcast, a fascinating fairy encounter at Sennen Cove, a hamlet, in Cornwall. In 1888 two young women go out to the well at midnight, up on the hill behind their house. I’ve put on this Victorian OS map a red line for the possible sites.
Here, while getting water they come face to face, at the witching hour remember, with three strange dancing beings. The first thing they hear is squeaking.
I looked round, and there on the grass and about five feet in front of me were three little things like dolls, about as high as a chair seat, dancing round and round with hands joined as fast as they could go. They were covering I should say as much ground as a big tray. They were dressed in very thin white stuff like muslin, drawn in at the waist, and thrown all over their heads like a bride’s veil, so that I could not see their faces, and coming down over their arms. Their arms were stretched out rather drooping from the shoulder, and their hands were joined. I saw their hands very plainly, but did not distinguish fingers. They were as white as snow, hands and all. They were all alike; I didn’t see any difference. They had very small waists, no larger than the neck of that jug. Their dresses swelled out at the bottom from the dancing; they were very long, and I don’t think I saw their feet, but they appeared to be dancing with a movement as though they were working their legs. They did not glide around. They went round pretty fast, as fast as real people. I’ve played like it before now. I watched them a minute, not longer; and they went [193] around two or three times at least, as they were going as round as fast as they could. They went round in the direction of the hands of a watch; and as gently as possible, with no sound of footsteps or rustling of dresses, but the squeaking noise kept up all the time. It was too pretty a sound for mice, and louder, quite loud, one could have heard it, I should think, at a little distance.
It is an extraordinary account and I’ve published the whole thing in the new Pwca publication: Magicians, Red Heads and Small People: The Legends and Folklore of Sennen and Sennen Cove (UK, US)
I’ve also published in the same booklet an account from Evans Wentz who a generation later went sniffing around Cornwall looking for fairy accounts. Wentz had an informant at Sennen Cove who stated (among many other things):
My mother said that Joan Nicholas believed the fairies had changed her baby, because it was very small and cross-tempered. Up on the hill you’ll see a round ring with grass greener than anywhere else, and that is where the small people used to dance.
What are the chances this fairy ring ‘up on the hill’ is one and the same place as the well where the two Cornish girls had their encounter with the impossible? Given that fairies are often seen near wells I’d put it at evens…
