Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)

Subject: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: open mike
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 12:44 AM

with cupids, leprechauns, trolls and all manner of little people around these days, what about elves? fairies? gnomes? goblins?

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Peace
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 12:59 AM

www.howarddavidjohnson.com/pixies.htm
(The above will not allow a link)

http://www.fairychildren.com/
http://www.randi.org/library/cottingley/

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Bert
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:01 AM

They would, but the don't have a gnome to go to.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Teresa
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:10 AM

I'ma lookin' fer a gnome, I'ma lookin' fer a gnome. ...

I like the way charles de Lint, the urban fantasy writer, depicts them. Just on the edges of perception, and there to help when you least expect it.

Teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Bert
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:13 AM

Charles de Lint, I haven't heard of him. I'll have to look him up I love good fantasy wrtiters, they are few and far between.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: open mike
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:19 AM

pixies

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Teresa
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:22 AM

I love his characters, he's a good spinner of yarns, and he's a folkie! Here's his home page

Teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Cluin
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:28 AM

Yep, De Lint's a great talespinner (kind of in the vein of Stephen King, but more fantasy oriented) and a good picker, fiddler and whistle player too. He used to play with an old buddy of mine, Nathan Curry.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: open mike
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:03 AM

glad we have found a musical angle to this thread.
sadly i fear it might be doomed to below the line,
but for this! let's see...songs about fairies, etc?
Sounds like a great author, Teresa! thanks for sharing
the links.
look here for Tam Lin!

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Cluin
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:21 AM

There was this old thread

And this one, too.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Teresa
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:29 AM

Thank you, cluin, very much. I bookmarked those on my personal page. :)

Teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Owlkat
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:33 AM

You better believe it. And this time, they've got lawyers. Be afraid, be very afraid...

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Dead Horse
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 04:08 AM

A little at a time. A little at a time.............

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: EagleWing
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 05:58 AM

"let's see...songs about fairies, etc?"

Interesting that, when you do find songs about the fairy folk they're never like the Victorian ideas of inch high winged beings. They're more like Tolkien's elves but rather more vicious (see Tam Lin)

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Tobyjug
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 06:10 AM

I thought Elves were alive and well and living in Las Vegas, or was that Elvish?

The film trilogy of "Lord of the Rings" certainly put elves back on the map. Or was that last year?

Pixies never left Cornwall, unless they had a gig at CeciL Sharp House.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 08:07 AM

Aren't they properly called "Piskies" when they're from Cornwall?

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Chris Green
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 10:42 AM

Have you tried contacting the National Elf Service?

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: John C.
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 11:39 AM

Not too keen on Charles deLint - personally I think that his rather mawkish 'Elves in Toronto' type rubbish has ruined modern fantasy. But then there is a tendency, these days, to 'domesticate' everything and turn it into soap opera - presumably so it sells to the lowest common denominator.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: open mike
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:37 PM

oh neither of those previous threads came up in search because of faery
vs fairy spelling.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: Teresa
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:51 PM

That's an interesting take, John. Personally, I don't care for fantasy very much; at least not the kind with the stock elves and such, and the twit nobility. :) I like urban fantasy and magical realism, and I like de Lint especially, because he works folk music into his stories. In one, a woman gets to meet the harper Taliesin. I can relate a bit better to all of it, and have a good escape at the same time. :)

Teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback?
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 03:15 PM

Good call, Teresa. de Lint is one of my favourites, too. I also love the way Elizabeth Scarborough blends in folk music in her Songkiller Series.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: Teresa
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 03:37 PM

Thanks, Kat; I've never read hers.

There's Sharon mcCrumb (though no elves) and there's Manley wade Wellman (no elves, but lots of critters and other-worldly things in Appalachia in his "John the Balladeer" stories.) I love finding authors that play with folk music. :)

teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music inclu
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 04:15 PM

Thanks, teresa. Love McCrumb's, too. Here's a good write-up/synopsis of the The Songkiller Saga all three volumes.

kat

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 05:41 PM

Ladies (and Bert):

Try the Kelly Armstrong novels, about "Women of the Otherworld"--good writing and NOT about vampires, for a change.

Lin

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: Cluin
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 07:52 PM

R.A. MacAvoy is pretty good too.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music inclu
From: open mike
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 09:53 PM

Ah ha! Manly Wade Wellman!
We did a hillbilly musical
based on his baladeer...the
Ballad of Silver John...where
the hero carries a silver stringed
guitar and banishes evil!!
Appalachian back woods hill
country stories and songs..
the playwrite was a local
fellow who did it as a class
project for his drama degree
i believe..i was in the
"orchestra"! The plot contained
mythical images--spirits and spooks.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: Teresa
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 11:56 PM

That's just it! They're wonderful stories, OM!

teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: John C.
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 12:03 PM

I know that this is only skirting the very fringes of folk music but fairy lore, both in folklore and fiction, has always fascinated me.
For the folklore try the books of Katherine Briggs. I'm just re-reading one of her books called 'The Anatomy of Puck'(pub. in 1959)about fairy beliefs in England in the 17th Century - I bought this at a folk festival over 30 years ago - so it sort of counts. She also wrote 'A Dictionary of Fairies'(1976). I'm not sure how easy either of these are to find.
For fictional elves/fairies try 'The King of Elflands Daughter' by Lord Dunsany and 'Lud-in-the-Mist' by Hope Mirlees; interest in these two was revived by the American fantasist Lin Carter, back in the late 60s, and they've gone in and out of print ever since.
For more up to date stuff you've just got to try Jack Vance's 'Lyonesse' trilogy - the fairies in this are magical, mystical, mischievous, malign and both unbelievably strange and borrow from virtually all the fairylore of the past. I have to say that Vance is my 'fave rave of all time' and if you haven't discovered him yet you're in for a treat and I envy you!
You might also like to try two books by Poul Anderson - 'The Broken Sword' (c. 1950) and 'A Midsummer Tempest' (1974). I have always found Anderson a bit of an uneven writer but these two are brilliant. The first is about the elflore of Scandinavia whilst the second is a fantasy set in 17th Century England and draws heavily on the fairylore in Shakespeare.
Finally, also try John Crowley's great fantasy classic 'Little Big'. This is sort of set in modern times (thus contradicting what I said about Charles deLint) but it's so strange and so utterly unique that I forgive him!

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 01:57 PM

Of course there are elves, pixies and fairies around. One day my husband's damp clothes are strewn all laundry room. In time they have miraculously been dried and put away. Who does this, if not the fairies?

Who picks up the beer bottles in the church parking lot? Who puts away the music stand and books while the choir Young Adults socialize? Who if not the Little People?

[And who corrects spelling and HTML problems?]

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: Teresa
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 02:54 PM

Well, we can dream, can't we? :)

teresa

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 04:21 PM

The Forum Faeries?

Don't offer them a new suit of clothes or they stomp off in a huff and burn down your modem.

Subject: RE: Are Elves making a comeback? (some music included)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 01:14 PM

Oh, don't offer them a suit! Nobody wants to be a suit nowadays.

I am serious - my husband is sometimes involved in public hearings, and in the last few years he has been told not to wear a suit. The general public is suspicious of men in suits. I suppose TV has a lot to do with it. Have you ever seen a mob boss that wasn't wearing a suit?