In a spirit of confusion, Beachcombing thought that he would air then a nineteenth-century theory for the origin of the fairy-faith in the west of Europe, what might be called ‘the Pygmy Theory’ – the idea that fairies were no more than a distorted memory of a now extinct small race of humanoid or human. This question becomes particularly urgent given that as late as the nineteenth century – and in a handful of places at an even later date, even today… – rural communities did not just tell stories about fairies, they believed in them and, in some cases, individuals claimed to see the small ones. And he has particularly been interested at the different explanations that our ancestors – distant and recent – offered to explain the fact that ‘little folk’ lived in the cairn behind the church or in the dell near the standing stone. Beachcombing has been having a bit of a fairy phase recently, played out in his evening readings after he’s put little Miss B to bed.
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