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

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  • A troll in New England? The story of the “Somerville Troll”

    Yesterday I went to Ninigret Park in Southern Rhode Island to see the giant trolls that Danish artist Thomas Dambo has constructed out of recycled wood. Two trolls are on display at the park: “Greta” and “Eric.” Six other Dambo trolls can be found in New England, five in Maine at the Coastal Botanical Gardens…

  • Why do fairies become attached to humans?

    At the weekend, I gave a talk on New England fairy lore at the Fortean Fest in Sanford, Maine. After the talk, a woman with clairvoyance came up to me and told me that while I was speaking, she anticipated every word I was about to say. More importantly, she claimed that one of the…

  • “A mischievous fairy called Hob”: The story of Hob’s Hole in Plymouth, Massachusetts

    I recently wrote about Hob’s Hole outside Hartford, Connecticut, and the possibility that its name, which arose sometime in the seventeenth century, derived from a supernatural being called a hob. In that post, I explained that the English tradition of incorporating the word hob into the names of natural formations (such as holes, caves, and…

  • Did a hobgoblin live in a hole north of Hartford, Connecticut?

    In 2019, folklorists Simon Young and Chris Woodyard published a survey of North American place names containing the word hob. Hob denotes a supernatural being most often found in Yorkshire, England. As mentioned recently on this blog, a hob was a solitary spirit that entered farmhouses to perform good deeds for the family who lived…

  • Literal fairies, figurative fairies: A reflection

    I started watching Bodkin this weekend, a new Netflix show set in the fictional town of Bodkin in County Cork, Ireland. I was fascinated to hear one of the main characters, an Irish journalist, offer the following response to two older gentlemen talking about fairies: It’s not literal. No one actually believes there are tricksy…

  • Robin Goodfellow: Demon or Merry Jester?

    I’ve become increasingly interested recently in how, throughout history, folkloric characters once deemed evil are rehabilitated as figures of fun and how figures deemed good sometimes become threatening or evil. British fairy folklore specialist Francis Young drew attention to this phenomenon (in his book Twilight of the Godlings) when he pointed out that: the devil…

  • My visit to H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dark Swamp”

    I’ve just returned from the wilds of Rhode Island’s Durfee Hill region, where I found “Dark Swamp,” a strange location that appears on an 1851 U.S. Geological Survey Map. The Swamp is famous today because cosmic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft set out to find it with a friend in 1923 and failed. The story of…

  • Fairies in “The Water-Babies”

    This post is focused on the fairies of Old England rather than New England, as I’ve recently been reading the classic Victorian children’s novel The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley. I’m interested in the book’s depiction of fairies, because they’re very Victorian fairies, which makes a change from the fairies I usually think about. Whereas fairies…

  • The real Perry Boney, “fairy man” of Sherman

    In May 2023, I traveled to Sherman, Connecticut, to research the story of a man called Perry Boney who for many years was depicted in local folklore as a “fairy man” or “fairy seer” who communicated with fairies. When I went to Sherman, I was half-convinced Perry didn’t exist, that his story and its fairy…

  • New England Fairies: Cover Reveal

    I’m excited to share the cover of New England Fairies: A History of the Little People of the Hills and Forests, out August 5, 2024 (published by The History Press). The book is now available to preorder.