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Fairies Of Eathie Burn
Simon Young’s account of the Wollaton Gnomes [FT417:29] brought to mind an account of “The Fairies of The Burn of Eathie” – a footnote in Hugh Miller’s book The Old Red Sandstone (1841). The book itself is a geological exploration of parts of Scotland and the fossils found therein. It is fascinating in that it was written before Darwin’s On The Origin of Species was published and long before knowledge of tectonic plates and mass extinctions caused by asteroid strikes. In fact, Hugh Miller died just one year before Darwin published the book that totally changed the way we view fossils.
In Miller’s book there is a remarkable description of the fairies of the Burn of Eathie. “On a sabbath morning all residents of a hamlet had gone to church except a herd-boy and his sister. They saw a long cavalcade ascending out the ravine through the wooded hollow… The horses were shaggy, diminutive things, speckled dun and grey; the riders, stunted, misgrown, ugly creatures, attired in antique jerkins of plaid, long grey cloaks, and little red caps, from under which their wild uncombed locks shot out over their cheeks and foreheads… the last rider, who lingered a few yards behind the others… ‘What are ye, little mannie? And where are ye going?’ inquired the boy… ‘Not of the race of Adam,’ said the creature, turning for a moment in his saddle: ‘The People of Peace shall never more be seen in Scotland.’”
Dr Peter WH SmithWatton at Stone, Hertfordshire
Glass delusion
There have been many incidents of previously perfectly sane adults all of a sudden believing that they have parts of their bodies that are made of glass. This glass delusion was quite prevalent in the Middle Ages and has been documented accordingly. Cervantes, Descartes and Locke all refer to it. One famous early sufferer was King CharlesVI of France, who refused to allow people to touch him and wore reinforced clothing to protect himself from accidental ‘shattering’.
This bizarre phenomenon has been encountered in more recent times, as during the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and the Arab states, the commander of the Egyptian air force could not stand
