Yeah, that’s a bug
Long story short: Englishwoman hears the roar of a motorcycle, then the smack of something against her front window, examines the CCTV footage and decides she was visited by a fairy.
Um, no.
But you know what I immediately thought, right? Cottingly Fairies is what.
Long story short: during WWI, two little girls in England took pictures of themselves in the garden surrounded by terrible paper cutouts of fairies. For some reason, quite a lot of people believed they were real, included Arthur Conan Doyle. Astonishingly, this was still the subject of controversy when I first got into photography in the Seventies.
I’ve never understood why. Honestly, they’re terrible fakes. They’re not even good illustrations (and so much of their era). I was always particularly struck by #4, in which our fairy sports a modern Flapper bob. I mean, geez — is that a Marcel wave?
Anyway, one of the little girls confessed in 1981 (when she was no longer a little girl, duh) that she’d traced the fairies out of a 1915 picture book, thereby laying to rest one of the dumbest controversies ever.
Posted: October 22nd, 2014 under britain, history, personal.
Comments: 20
Comments
Comment from OldFert
Time: October 22, 2014, 8:47 pm
The linked article headline says “Is this a real-life fairy caught on camera for the first time?” Don’t they realize Bawney Fwank was on TV a whole lot of times?
Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: October 22, 2014, 9:30 pm
The English have such magnificent stories.
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: October 22, 2014, 10:08 pm
Heh. Introduce her to Cat Sith (Dresden Files version) http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121208151728/dresdenfiles/images/8/84/Tumblr_m4a1diFxXM1rn4tc0o1_400.jpg
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 22, 2014, 11:06 pm
Just drive around SE Missouri on a summer evening: you’ll get fairy-splats the size of small pterosaurs on your windshield.
The thump is awesome, and it takes a paint scraper to get them off.
Comment from Toornyp
Time: October 22, 2014, 11:55 pm
Ye Oulde Englande’s pleasant green gannet-guano covered isles offer an ideal fairy habitat.
The fact that a motourbike might have been involved does not rule out anything.
Meanwhile, in colonial United Steezy the domestic partner of the highest bureaucrat dances with the vegetable. And what a spectacular (Adam’s) apple we are shown!
Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: October 23, 2014, 12:03 am
“…hears the roar of a motorcycle, then the smack of something against her front window, examines the CCTV footage and decides she was visited by a fairy.”
Heh…indeed.
So, then – did someone volunteer to go on over, and explain all about rather large, night-flying moths, and how they tend to bang into windows now and again, ‘specially when a bit fuddled by reflections of street-lamps in the glass and all, or what?…
Comment from Veeshir
Time: October 23, 2014, 12:08 am
Fairies don’t ride motorcycles, they ride scooters.
Or white Miata’s I guess.
Comment from Mrs Compton
Time: October 23, 2014, 12:24 am
I’ve always enjoyed Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairies.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: October 23, 2014, 12:29 am
Uhm…. The fairies flew in World War I, not World War II; starting in 1917 to be precise.
http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/the_cottingley_fairies/
The mention of Conan Doyle’s authentication tipped my eyebrow meter… He was born in 1859 and passed away in 1930.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: October 23, 2014, 12:40 am
Oh, and this:
Goin’ home, late last night
Suddenly I got a fright
Yeah I looked through a window and surprised what I saw
Fairy wear boots and dancin’ with a dwarf, all right now!
Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies
Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes, all right now!
Comment from mojo
Time: October 23, 2014, 2:10 am
Fairies may not ride motorcycles (too much iron?), but I have it on good authority that they do wear boots.
Comment from mojo
Time: October 23, 2014, 2:12 am
Delenda Est SomeVeg!
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: October 23, 2014, 5:39 am
OldFert @ October 22, 2014, 8:47 pm: Don’t they realize Bawney Fwank was on TV a whole lot of times?
Long after Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Noel Coward…
Comment from Comrade O’Brien
Time: October 23, 2014, 7:49 pm
Fairy – Homophobic.
Replaced by
Petite airborne humanoid which possesses magical powers.
The term fairy should be avoided
when discussing these mythical beings,
regardless of how gay they may appear.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 23, 2014, 7:52 pm
…but…but…I didn’t get it wrong, Some Veg. I said WWI. That whole “Flapper” thing only works if it’s Twenties (the first photo was 1917).
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: October 23, 2014, 7:56 pm
Sadly, Some Veg, Conan Doyle was a sucker for the supernatural.
Doesn’t fit with his output, does it?
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: October 24, 2014, 3:44 am
If this Vegetables has offended,
He apologizes, and hopes all is mended,
Think I foolishly error’d here
And saw ‘II’ where naught but ‘I’ did appear.
And, as I am but an honest vegetable plucked
Fresh from the dirt, my reading suck’d
Now in future to ‘scape the serpent’s eye
I will some eyeglasses shortly buy
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And I hope that I have made amends.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 24, 2014, 7:37 am
An apology in verse. AND that shit rhymes.
Color me impressed.
Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: October 24, 2014, 5:17 pm
Also, a rather nice re-take on the ending to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, W. Shakespeare’s “comic” paean to woodland fairies and various similar mythic fancies…
Well played, Sir Veg.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: October 24, 2014, 9:51 pm
🙂
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