Worse than Pagans
Tom Shippey: The Church v. the Fairies, 1 December 2016
Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church
by Richard Firth Green.
Pennsylvania, 285 pp., £36, August 2016,978 0 8122 4843 2 Show More
by Richard Firth Green.
Pennsylvania, 285 pp., £36, August 2016,
“... detail, the fairies, along with the other inhabitants of Fairyland – in the mid-19th century Michael Aislabie Denham listed more than 150 species, ‘hobbits’ included – gave the medieval Church more of a headache than has been admitted. The main problem, we might say nowadays, was that they were ‘inadequately theorised’. What were fairies? Where ... ”