But the peasant will not be our only teacher, for we shall also hear
much of first importance from city folk of the highest intellectual
training. It has become, perhaps always has been in modern times, a
widespread opinion, even among some scholars, that the belief in fairies
is the property solely of simple, uneducated country-folk, and that
people who have had 'a touch of education and a little common sense
knocked into their heads', to use the ordinary language, 'wouldn't be
caught believing in such nonsense.' This same class of critics used to
make similar remarks about people who said there were ghosts, until the
truth of another 'stupid superstition' was discovered by psychical
research. So in this chapter we hope to correct this erroneous opinion
about the Fairy-Faith, an opinion chiefly entertained by scholars and
others who know not the first real fact about fairies, because they have
never lived amongst the people who believe in fairies, but derive all
their information from books and hearsay. In due order the proper sort
of witnesses will substantiate this position, but before coming to their
testimony we may now say that there are men and women in Dublin, in
other parts of Ireland, in Scotland, in the Isle of Man, and in
Brythonic lands too, whom all the world knows as educated leaders in
their respective fields of activity, who not only declare their belief
that fairies were, but that fairies are; and some of these men and women
say that they have the power to see fairies as real spiritual beings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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