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Saw an entry on TV Tropes describing the Narnian creatures as "fae," which is funny because I was re-reading The Discarded Image for research and C.S. Lewis takes a moment to talk about how he's averse to using the term "fairy" due to how it's now associated with Victorian images of cute, little people with wings which he feels cheapens the image. In the actual book/lecture he used the term "longaevi" (long-livers).

It does seem notable to me that the only time the word "fairy" is used, it's by Uncle Andrew and Digory when discussing Andrew's godmother (and there it's unavoidable because the two are British and that was just the common terminology for their time period regarding magical creatures).

#the chronicles of narnia #narnia #narnians #cs lewis #the discarded image #longaevi #fair folk #fairies #my thoughts #text

THE FAIRY AND THE BIBLE-READER

On a still Sabbath evening in summer, an old man was seated, reading his Bible in the open air, at a quiet spot upon the Ross-shire coast. A beautiful little lady, clad in green, drew near, and addressing him in a silvery voice, sought to know if for such as she Holy Scripture held out any hope of salvation. The old man spoke kindly to her; but said that in those pages there was no mention of salvation for any but the sinful sons of Adam. On hearing this, the fairy flung her arms despairingly above her head, and with a shriek plunged into the sea.

(via Scottish fairy and folk tales)

#Longaevi #elves

The word “demon”

The word “demon” in this context should be emptied of much which later enters into it. When it begins to be used in the New Testament, there is no sense in which it means a fallen angel or is synonymous with “devil” or that a demon is a minion of Satan. In fact, Jesus states otherwise (Matt. 10:25). A “demon”, before the dominance of Christianity, is practically neutral (see, for instance, Plato and Apuleius). Even in the New Testament, where demons are enemies, they are treated by Jesus almost as pitiable (Matt. 8:28-34), certainly by his disciples as hucksterish (Acts 16:16-18). We may be closer to the connotation of the word daimon if we were to think of it as similar or synonymous with “sprite,” “fairy,” “boggart,” or "longaevi," etc. If this strikes you as a dangerously innocuous portrayal of something truly frightening, then you have not read a real fairy tale. I cannot think of anything more demonic than the Snow Queen or the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell—both of whom exhibit the “demon heuristic” above and both of whom sound right at home in an ayahuasca trip.

~ Robert Cotton

#demon #devil #minion #satan #huckster #daimon #sprite #fairy #boggart #longaevi #snow queen #jonathan strange and mr. norrell #demon heuristic

One of the central mysteries of the study of fairy belief is how and why it survived Christianisation, and whether fairies can be said to be ‘pagan survivals’ in any sense. Central to the argument of Twilight of the Godlings is that the ancestors of fairies were, in all likelihood, culturally constructed in parallel with the process of Christianisation in the early Middle Ages rather than survivors of what came before. While folkloric survival is not impossible, in most cases a careful examination of claimed ‘survivals’ reveals them to be something else; a form of creative reinvention based on contemporary needs and circumstances. While Britain’s fairies are not Christian, therefore, they are largely cultural constructions of a Christian world whose genesis lies in the interaction of elite and popular culture. Twilight of the Godlings attempts to peel back the veil of accreted folklore to reveal the influence of texts like Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies on learned speculations about almost human beings, which in turn filtered down to the level of popular belief.

(via Everything You Know About Fairies Is Wrong: Introducing Twilight of the Godlings)

#Christian and pagan #Longaevi #elves