thereof. They, like the British brownies (a kind of domesticated fairy), are the causes of strange disappearances of things. To preserve houses from their influences, rue, that “herb of grace,” is kept in the apartments, and the name of Allah is constantly invoked. If this is omitted, things are stolen by the Jān.
They often bear animal names, and it is dangerous to call a cat or dog without pointing at the animal, for a Jinni of the same name may be present and may take advantage of the invocation. A man, in fun, called to a goat to escort his wife on a walk: he did not point at the goat, and the wife disappeared. A Jinni had carried her off, and her husband had to seek her at the court of the Jān. Euphemistically they are addressed as mubārakin, “blessed ones,” as we say “the good folk” or “the people of peace.” As our fairies give gold which changes into withered leaves, the Jān give onion peels which turn into gold. Like our fairies the Jān can apply an ointment, kohl, to human eyes, after which the person so favoured can see Jān, or fairies, which are invisible to other mortals, and can see treasure wherever it may be concealed (see Folk-lore of the Holy Land, by J. E. Hanauer, 1907).
It is plain that fairies and Jān are practically identical, a curious proof of the uniformity of the working of imagination in peoples widely separated in race and religion. Fairies naturally won their way into the poetry of the middle ages. They take lovers from among men, and are often described as of delicate, unearthly, ravishing beauty. The enjoyment of their charms is, however, generally qualified by some restriction or compact, the breaking of which is the cause of calamity to the lover and all his race, as in the notable tale of Melusine. This fay by enchantment built the castle of Lusignan for her husband. It was her nature to take every week the form of a serpent from the waist below. The hebdomadal transformation being once, contrary to compact, witnessed by her husband, she left him with much wailing, and was said to return and give warning by her appearance and great shrieks whenever one of the race of Lusignan was about to die. At the birth of Ogier le Danois six fairies attend, five of whom give good gifts, which the sixth overrides with a restriction. Gervaise of Tilbury, writing early in the 13th century, has in his Otia Imperialia a chapter, De lamiis et nocturnis larvis, where he gives it out, as proved by individuals beyond all exception, that men have been lovers of beings of this kind whom they call Fadas, and who did in case of infidelity or infringement of secrecy inflict terrible punishment—the loss of goods and even of life. There seems little in the characteristics of these fairies of romance to distinguish them from human beings, except their supernatural knowledge and power. They are not often represented as diminutive in stature, and seem to be subject to such human passions as love, jealousy, envy and revenge. To this class belong the fairies of Boiardo, Ariosto and Spenser.
There is no good modern book on the fairy belief in general. Keightley’s Fairy Mythology is full of interesting matter; Rhys’s Celtic Mythology is especially copious about Welsh fairies, which are practically identical with those of Ireland and Scotland. The works of Mr Jeremiah Curtin and Dr Douglas Hyde are useful for Ireland; for Scotland, Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth has already been quoted. Scott’s dissertation on fairies in The Border Minstrelsy is rich in lore, though necessarily Scott had not the wide field of comparative study opened by more recent researches. There is a full description of French fairies of the 15th century in the evidence of Jeanne d’Arc at her trial (1431) in Quicherat’s Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, vol. i. pp. 67, 68, 187, 209, 212, vol. ii. pp. 390, 404, 450. (A. L.)
FAIRY RING, the popular name for the circular patches
of a dark green colour that are to be seen occasionally on permanent
grass-land, either lawn or meadow, on which the fairies were
supposed to hold their midnight revels. They mark the area of
growth of some fungus, starting from a centre of one or more
plants. The mycelium produced from the spores dropped by
the fungus or from the “spawn” in the soil, radiates outwards,
and each year’s successive crop of fungi rises from the new
growth round the circle. The rich colour of the grass is due
to the fertilizing quality of the decaying fungi, which are
peculiarly rich in nitrogenous substances. The most complete
and symmetrical grass rings are formed by Marasmius orcades,
the fairy ring champignon, but the mushroom and many other
species occasionally form rings, both on grass-lands and in woods.
Observations were made on a ring in a pine-wood for a period of
nine years, and it was calculated that it increased from centre
to circumference about 8½ in. each year. The fungus was never
found growing within the circle during the time the ring was
under observation, the decaying vegetation necessary for its
growth having become exhausted.
FAITHFULL, EMILY (1835–1895), English philanthropist,
was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Ferdinand Faithfull,
and was born at Headley Rectory, Surrey, in 1835. She took a
great interest in the conditions of working-women, and with the
object of extending their sphere of labour, which was then
painfully limited, in 1860 she set up in London a printing establishment
for women. The “Victoria Press,” as it was called,
soon obtained quite a reputation for its excellent work, and Miss
Faithfull was shortly afterwards appointed printer and publisher
in ordinary to Queen Victoria. In 1863 she began the publication
of a monthly organ, The Victoria Magazine, in which for eighteen
years she continuously and earnestly advocated the claims of
women to remunerative employment. In 1868 she published a
novel, Change upon Change. She also appeared as a lecturer,
and with the object of furthering the interests of her sex, lectured
widely and successfully both in England and the United States,
which latter she visited in 1872 and 1882. In 1888 she was
awarded a civil list pension of £50. She died in Manchester on
the 31st of May 1895.
FAITH HEALING, a form of “mind cure,” characterized by the
doctrine that while pain and disease really exist, they may be
neutralized and dispelled by faith in Divine power; the doctrine
known as Christian Science (q.v.) holds, however, that pain is
only an illusion and seeks to cure the patient by instilling into
him this belief. In the Christian Church the tradition of faith
healing dates from the earliest days of Christianity; upon the
miracles of the New Testament follow cases of healing, first by
the Apostles, then by their successors; but faith healing proper
is gradually, from the 3rd century onwards, transformed into
trust in relics, though faith cures still occur sporadically in later
times. Catherine of Siena is said to have saved Father Matthew
from dying of the plague, but in this case it is rather the healer
than the healed who was strong in faith. With the Reformation
faith healing proper reappears among the Moravians and
Waldenses, who, like the Peculiar People of our own day, put
their trust in prayer and anointing with oil. In the 16th century
we find faith cures recorded of Luther and other reformers,
in the next century of the Baptists, Quakers and other Puritan
sects, and in the 18th century the faith healing of the Methodists
in this country was paralleled by Pietism in Germany, which
drew into its ranks so distinguished a man of science as Stahl
(1660–1734). In the 19th century Prince Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst,
canon of Grosswardein, was a famous healer on
the continent; the Mormons and Irvingites were prominent
among English-speaking peoples; in the last quarter of the
19th century faith healing became popular in London, and
Bethshan homes were opened in 1881, and since then it has
found many adherents in England.
Under faith healing in a wider sense may be included (1) the cures in the temples of Aesculapius and other deities in the ancient world; (2) the practice of touching for the king’s evil, in vogue from the 11th to the 18th century; (3) the cures of Valentine Greatrakes, the “Stroker” (1629–1683); and (4) the miracles of Lourdes, and other resorts of pilgrims, among which may be mentioned St Winifred’s Well in Flintshire, Treves with its Holy Coat, the grave of the Jansenist F. de Paris in the 18th century, the little town of Kevelaer from 1641 onwards, the tombs of St Louis, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena and others.
An animistic theory of disease was held by Pastor J. Ch. Blumhardt, Dorothea Trudel, Boltzius and other European faith healers. Used in this sense faith healing is indistinguishable from much of savage leech-craft, which seeks to cure disease by expelling the evil spirit in some portion of the body. Although
