The Fairy Glen
In 1595, William Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Whilst the play is primarily set in Classical Greece the woodland scenes including Oberon, the fairy King, Titania, the fairy Queen and the mischievous spirit, Puck, are deeply routed in the folklore of Elizabethan England.
Whilst in many places that folklore has been forgotten or overwritten by new narratives, in some of the more remote places the memories remain strong.
In his 1935 book about Skye, ‘The Misty Isles’, the author J A MacCulloch notes:
But if fairies do not abound, stories about the do, and are firmly believed…
The Fairy Glen, near Balnacnoc, is one such place.
An ancient landslip has created a land that could easily be Elfame or Fairyland, the home of the Queen of Elfame (a place recorded in Scottish Witch Trials) or Hobbiton – the home of Bilbo Baggins in of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
One of the hills still has its basalt top intact and is nicknamed ‘Castle Ewan’ as it resembles a castle from distance!
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All images © W N BISHOP