Alicia's Blog 6 - References

Haven't had time to blog or build over the last week because I'm trying to finish the last couple pieces of my art portfolio. Here I just have a bunch of different references regarding the different parts of the build/plan (I probably won't end up finishing this build before the end of the year.)

References for the Concepts Behind the Build

Underground

‘Partly underground castle, inside a hill’ plays on the whole ‘under the mountain’ aspects of fairie lore where they are known to lure people under the mountain where they are forced to dance forever(*see eternal dancing below). To make the build possible in the amount of time given, the castle design needs to be reasonable simple, and not too extreme. Possibly a dance floor to symbolise above, and possibly a kitchen and/or nursery. 

• Aristocratic Trooping Faeries are gregarious, they live in communal groups under mounds or hills and in other underground areas [Ref: www.medbherenn.com/faerie-lore.html]
• Fairies…within the little hillocks they most haunt… [Ref: Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, Stirling: Eneas McKay, 1933, pp 67-68]

Faerie Food

The kitchen to symbolise tales of talking about how if you eat faerie food, you’re stuck with fairies forever. 

• ‘Maybe you’ll starve to death, never able to eat human food again, maybe you’ll end up trapped forever’ [Ref: Kat Otis, Faerie Food www.dailysciencefiction.com]

Dark History

The nursery to symbolise the changeling stories. Inside the castle it’ll be a darker theme, symbolising the dark history of faeries and showing that they aren’t all ‘tinkerbell’. 

• ‘where no human habitations…then the imagination rushes to fill the woods with something other than blank darkness; nymphs, satyrs, elves, knomes, pixies, fairies.’ ‘Fairies are what we create to fill the dark places’. [Ref: Diane Prukiss, Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairie Stories]
• Dark Fairie Types from Celtic Histories
• Banshees - a form of faerie who foretells death - Irish
• Baobhan Sith - a succubus faerie - Irish
• Changeling - a fairy who replaces infants with fairy kind - Welsh
• Korrigan / Gwragedd annwn - faeries of lakes and streams that lure and drown people - Breton / Welsh

   [Ref: www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html]

• Lore Podcast: Episode "Black Stockings" was so shocking considering the time when it took place. It's about the Irish folklore of the "changeling" or faerie. When a person or baby is believed to have been taken by a fairy and in their place, is a "changeling" something that looks exactly like them, but acts differently. [Ref:  http://lorepodcast.libsyn.com/episode-11-black-stockings#Ze7t6uGD3LI6RBeO.16]

Faerie Rings

The mountain will be surrounded by trees and faerie rings, it will have a much lighter atmosphere, symbolising the modern day faerie lore. Inside the faerie ring around the mountain I might add in things to symbolise oder day faeries such as brighter colours, mushroom rings, giant mushrooms, bridges between trees, trees/mushrooms that are houses, streams/waterfalls if they will fit. 

• ‘Whoever lives in a house built over a faerie ring will wondrously prosper in everything’ [Ref: Translation Ellis T.P. and John Lloyd, The Mabinogion, a new translation: ‘Lady of the Fountains’, Oxford University Press, 1929]
• A "fairy ring" in Ireland, said to be a portal between worlds. #lorepodcast #history https://instagram.com/p/5-oltqTOCa/ [Ref: https://twitter.com/lorepodcast/status/628697948738711552]
• Faerie Rings as mythical mushroom portals of the supernatural [Ref: www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-folklore]

Eternal dancing* and Glass Domes

Possibly adding glass over the fairies ring, with rings of coloured glass through it to give a kind of bubble or forcefield effect.

• A poem:

In airy dalliance

Precipitate in love,

Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above

Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance

Like a dome of many-coloured glass

Stains the white radiance of eternity

Until Death tramples it to fragments, die’

[Ref: Rajendra Nath Mishra: Search for belief in the poetry of Robert Frost, Anhinau Publications, 2003]

• ‘People could enter the (fairy) ring, and find themselves trapped, dancing for a lifetime, and invisible to the outside world, unable to escape.’ [Ref: Laura Starling, Faeries are Scaries www.critic.co.nz/features/article/5973/faeries-are-scaries]