For the past few years at Midsummer, I’ve posted my recommendations for speculative fiction with fairies. June 20th is this year’s summer solstice ushering in the season of summer in the geographical (astronomical) sense. Midsummer, Midsummer Eve–these have been recognized and celebrated by humans since there were humans. I’m speaking of the Northern hemisphere, of course, for in the Southern, the same dates on the calendar begin the tilt into winter.
But in this northern half of the globe, even very ancient people have taken note of this day of the year when the sunlight lasts longest and the night is shortest. In western and northern Europe, ancient peoples erected stone circles as a kind of clock and calendar to track the moment. The English monument Stonehenge is the most well-known of these. Find out more here. The Wikipedia entry will give you a great overview, as well as many sources for follow-up. Certain structures in Meso-America, such as the Pyramids of the Moon and Sun in Teotihuacán, Mexico, may serve a similar function. Find out more about them here.
Ancient peoples used such structures for practical reasons. But folklore grew up around the coming of summer, especially in a non-scientific age. The light lengthening, the darkness shrinking, the veil between the known and the shivery unknown thinning–irresistible. In western and northern European cultures, fairies are said to come out at Midsummer to do their mischief. People in those cultures mark this most fascinating and most dangerous time of year through a variety of celebrations, festivals, and of course stories. For a quick summary, take a look here.
Storytellers before writing, or before writing was widespread, passed these legends and practices along orally in what we call folktales or fairytales or folk songs. As European cultures gained literacy, storytellers wrote the legends down. Traditionally, most of these Midsummer celebrations took place on June 24 or 25, a bit later than the actual scientific solstice (June 20 or 21). Many of these traditions and stories involved or referenced the fair folk. The fairies, in their alternate world usually invisible to the rest of us.
Now it’s my turn. How shall I, in this blog, celebrate Midsummer fairy madness?
What is more fairy-mischievous than abducting a hapless human and whisking it away to fairyland?
Folklore
Folktales, folksongs, fairytales–many feature people taken by fairies off to fairyland. One of the most well-known is the Scots folktale/folksong Tam Lin. In the story, a young woman picks a flower in forbidden territory. Tam Lin magically appears and takes her virginity. When she gives birth, she reveals that the father is Tam Lin. And who is he? He’s a human abducted by the fairy queen into the land of fairy. After many trials and tribulations, the young woman rescues him from fairy bondage, and he becomes her knight. The ballad, listed as Child Ballad 39 and number 35 in the Roud Folk Song Index, is known in many variations. Here’s a good one.
Literature
The absolute classic of the fairy-abduction genre is, in the English-speaking world, William Shakespeare’s 16th century play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of his most beloved. In this play about fairy magic in general and the magic of love, an ordinary guy gets stolen by the fairy queen Titania to be her paramour–except that her jealous fairy king Oberon has blinded her eyes to the ordinary guy’s less than ordinary physique. Oberon has sent his minion Puck to magically skew Titania’s judgment so that she, the most powerful and elegant of fairies, has fallen for a crude unlettered silly man. As an extra turn of the screw, Oberon has magically fastened an ass’s head on the poor human, a “rude mechanical” named Peter Quince.
Oberon’s jealousy began when Titania, who has abducted a human boy for a plaything, refuses to give him up to the fairy king, who covets the boy for himself (for what purpose? don’t ask, and Shakespeare didn’t go there). Meanwhile, this fairy plot intersects with the bumbling buffoonish efforts of the “rude mechanicals” to put on a play at the wedding of their own human king. It also intersects with human King Theseus’s efforts to make wise decisions for his subjects while putting on a big do to celebrate his marriage to a foe he has subdued in battle, the warrior woman Hippolyta. More abduction. Finally, the fairy craziness intersects with two interchangeable pairs of lovers stumbling around a magical forest trying to figure out which one loves which other one, and why. The play is a work of genius, and huge fun, as the scales fall from the eyes of all the characters, human and fairy, and they see how inappropriately they have fallen in love, yet how irresistible love is.
Ain’t it the truth. As the play itself notes (Act V, scene 1), “The lunatic, the lover and the poet/Are of imagination all compact.” All share the same crazy rush of emotion. And I, along with the play, blame the fairies.
Here’s an even older story from the same region, England
Another compelling tale of fairy abduction! Sir Orfeo, an anonymous 13th/14th century Middle English poem, repackages the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the hands of this unknown poet, the myth becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of falling asleep under a tree at Midsummer when the fairies are on the prowl.
In the Greek myth, if you recall, Orpheus the great musician mourns his dead wife Eurydice so terribly that the gods grant him permission to go to the underworld to rescue her. The gods set one condition: if Orpheus looks back to see if Eurydice is following him, she’ll slide back into Hades forever. He does, and the story ends tragically.
The medieval English poet takes the story and gives it a different twist. In his version, Orpheus the harper becomes Sir Orfeo–still a harper, but also a medieval knight, and the lord of his lands. His wife Herodys (Eurydice) does not die but is abducted when she falls asleep (at midsummer! at the woo-woo hour of noon!) and the fairy king spots her. He takes her through a portal in a rock to fairyland. Like Orpheus, Sir Orfeo wanders the world looking for his lost love and playing sad songs. One day he comes upon the fairies parading into their rock, and in their train, he recognizes his wife Herodys. He follows them into fairyland. His music so enchants and moves the fairy king that he allows Herodys to go back to the human realm with her husband. They live happily ever after! Not only that, but the steward Sir Orfeo puts in charge of his lands while he wanders around for years and years is a faithful steward–not the evil guy so many of these fairytale stewards turn out to be–and he gives Sir Orfeo his kingdom back. What an HEA.
If you can find it, the translation I like best is by none other than that great scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Here’s how to find it. This is hard Middle English, unlike Chaucer’s, which anyone can read with a bit of effort (because it’s the Middle English that evolved into our own modern English). So unless you are a very good scholar of Middle English, a translation is a good idea.
WHAT DO PRESENT-DAY WRITERS DO with the fairy-abduction story? For a midsummer treat, go on to my next few posts for novels that explore that very tricksy matter.
Fantastes 
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