Fairies of New England: The Little People of the Hills and Forests

I put together the following timeline—which shows the history of belief in “elf-shot” in Appalachia—using ChatGPT. For the record, I had to feed all of this into ChatGPT and correct it a lot, because the program invents a lot of folklore (reading between the lines and speculating). It also invents references in books that aren’t there and sometimes invents books and authors. However, I think the following timeline is quite solid.

By way of introduction—“elf-shot” was the belief, deriving from Anglo-Saxon times and spreading throughout England, Scotland and Ireland, that elves or fairies shot cattle with arrows to make them sick. Prehistoric arrowheads were often identified with these arrows and were called elf-bolts or fairy darts. While the idea definitely came to Appalachia with the Scots Irish and English who settled there, fairy/elf-related elf-shot references are rare (most likely because the phenomenon came to be associated more often with witches). That being said, the fact that both historian James Adair (in 1775) and postman Tom Fields (in ~1920) associated Cherokee arrowheads with fairies suggests that some Appalachians must have remembered the fairy / elf-shot connection.

1775 – James Adair

• Observes Cherokee arrowheads, most likely in North Carolina.
• Notes similarity to Irish “elf-stones” (prehistoric flints thought magical, as shot by “night fairies,” and used as a remedy against disease in cattle).
• Suggests European settlers in North America recognized the connection to elf-shot folklore from their homeland.

Late 1700s – Early 1800s

• Scots-Irish settlers bring folk beliefs about elf-shot: invisible darts harming humans or livestock.
• Flint arrowheads (both European artifacts and Native artifacts) are mentally coded as potential “elf-bolts” or protective charms.
• Belief mainly survives as a concept or motif, not necessarily involving literal fairies in everyday speech or the term “elf-shot.”

Mid–Late 1800s

• J. Hampden Porter (1894) notes fear of elf-shot among mountain whites.
• Porter’s framing is somewhat comparative: he draws on British/Irish analogies but documents Appalachian fears of unseen projectiles and remedies.
• The agent causing elf-shot is unnamed; elsewhere, it is sometimes attributed to witches or general malevolent forces.

Early 1900s – Tom Fields (~1920)

• Rare instance of literal fairy attribution: Tom Fields reports his horse being shot by fairies in eastern Kentucky. He keeps the “fairy arrowhead” as a charm.
• Demonstrates that the European elf-shot motif survived verbally and conceptually, and could occasionally be interpreted literally (that is, shot by fairies).
• Likely reinforced by the continuing material culture association of flint arrowheads with magical projectiles.

Key takeaway

• The literal belief in fairies as shooters was rare in Appalachia.
• The broader motif — unseen projectiles harming humans or animals, remedies with stones/flints — survived robustly.
• The combination of:
  1. European elf-shot folklore,
  2. Folk memory of elf-stones, and
  3. Encounter with Native flints

. . .creates a plausible pathway for occasional literal fairy associations like Tom Fields’ testimony.

NB. The image in the header is a sketch of a silver-mounted elf dart from the book The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).