• Business and Finance
• Family
• Computers and Internet
• Auto and Trucks
• Education
• Health
• Hobbies
• Home Improvement
• Legal
• Marketing

• Home
• Arthur's Articles Home
• Browse Categories
• Browse Authors
• Submit an Article
• Search for Articles

Home » Recreation And Sports Articles » Do You Believe In Fairies Evidence From Cottingley Beck

Do You Believe in Fairies? Evidence from Cottingley Beck

"Do you believe in fairies?" Peter Pan asked an auditorium full of British children in 1904, imploring them to save his pixie friend Tinker Bell. "If you believe, clap your hands!" Peter needn't have feared For Tink, for England was the very kingdom of fairies, and believers abounded. The public's belief in fairies was tried in a much more serious way a few years later in a small scenic village in the Aire Valley between Shipley and Bingley.

Frances Griffiths and her cousin Elsie Wright had been teased about their stories of playing with fairies, but in 1917 all this changed. In the Cottingley Beck, close to their home, the Yorkshire schoolgirls produced two of the oddest pictures anyone had ever seen. Borrowing her father's camera, Elsie set out one afternoon with her younger cousin for a romp in the nearby woods. When Mr. Wright developed the picture later that evening he would get a shock. There in the frame, dancing around his ten-year-old niece were the forms of four female fairies! He confronted the girls, who claimed nonchalantly that they often played with fairies in the beck. A month later another slide produced a picture of sixteen-year-old Elsie sitting in conversation with a gnome.

Their nonplussed attitude toward the matter affected Mrs. Wright greatly, and the parents set to looking in the girls' shared bedroom and the wastebaskets for scraps of paper or cut-outs. When nothing was found, the parents continued to look for evidence down in the beck. Still nothing turned up. Mrs. Wright was inclined to believe the girls, although her husband made the camera off-limits.

At first the photographs were only shared with close friends and family, but in 1919 Mrs. Wright attended a lecture on 'fairy life,' bringing the prints with her. By 1920 the prints had come to the attention of one of the leading Theosophists of the time, Edward Gardner, who examined them and had two new negatives made, clarifying the pictures.

The story of the Cottingley fairies gained more fame when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) got wind of it. A fervent spiritualist, Doyle immediately championed the girls' story and even wrote an article on the Cottingley fairies for the Christmas issue of The Strand Magazine. A second article in 1921 featured three new stills. Certainly, he conjectured, these photographs would end the debate about whether fairies existed!

Still, public opinion was split. Doyle published his book The Coming of Fairies in 1922, maintaining to his death that the fairies were real. Mrs. Wright insisted that such young girls could not have drawn the fairies, while baffled photograph experts at the time conceded that it did not seem possible that the fairies could have been made from cloth or paper. Furthermore, nothing could be seen propping the fairies up, additional evidence to their authenticity. When someone questioned a bump on the belly of the gnome, Doyle concluded that it was an umbilicus—proof that fairies were born in similar fashion to humans!

The girls held to their story, even as they aged. After the fairy affair Frances returned to her family in South Africa and later to Scarborough. She married a soldier and settled in Ramsgate. Elsie escaped the media hounding by going to America where she was married and had a successful artistic career. The couple moved to India, and finally returned to England in 1949. She repeatedly insisted that although fairies were wonderful, she needed to forget about them and move on with her life. In interview after interview the girls remained elusive, until 1983, when Elsie admitted in a letter of confession that the photographs were indeed a hoax. She explained that the girls had used Princess Mary's Gift Book to make the cut-outs, using hatpins to stand them up. The bump on the gnomes belly, she confirmed had indeed been the head of a pin.

In her confession Elsie insisted the girls had never meant harm. Elsie had concocted the idea when her mother and father had scolded Frances for getting her clothes wet one day while playing in the beck. Frances had claimed to be playing with fairies when she'd fallen, and the elder Wrights had scoffed and shamed her. Elsie had come up with the idea of taking the first pictures to have the last laugh.

There are still a few unsolved mysteries concerning the Cottingley fairies, however. For example, while Elsie claimed all five photographs were fakes, Frances insisted that the last one was real. Furthermore, both girls insisted that there really were fairies in the beck. And they weren't the only ones!

Former wrestler Ronnie Bennett was working as a forester, when in the 1980s he admitted to having seen fairies in the woods. He claimed he saw the elf-like figures while working in the Cottingley Estate Woods. "When they showed themselves about nine years ago there was a slight drizzle around. I saw three fairies in the woods and I have never seen them since. They were just about ten inches tall and just stared at me. There is no way the Cottingley Fairies is a hoax."

Do you believe in fairies? Perhaps a trip to Cottingley Woods would convince you...

Copyright 2006 Rob Daniels

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Speak With E's Part 2

"Educate, Energize, Entertain, and provide an experience for your audience"

1. Use the "Rule of 3." The most successful speakers limit their remarks to three major points. Here is where you use your signature stories (your own personal stories) to support your points and help people visualize what you are saying.

2. Every five to seven minutes, back up your facts with signature stories (about you or others). Stories are out there everywhere. Find them in stores, at restaurants, on the airplane, at home. People retain information better when they hear a story.

3. How quickly do you get to the core of your audience's problems and challenges? Skip what is between their ears and go straight to their hearts.

4. Practice pausing before and after important points. Don't be afraid to leave open space. The use of silence is a key requirement to becoming an effective speaker.

5. People delineate their thoughts visually. Speakers are to words as an artist is to a painting.

6. A good storyteller memorizes his experience, not his words. Tell your story and then involve the audience by reliving your experience with them. Then they are only a step away from their own experience. That's connection!

7. For those of you who are more theatrical, open with some role-playing that relates to a specific message. Get your ideas from your own life or TV sitcoms.

8. Use analogies. They help your audience understand new ideas and situations by showing how these things are similar to something in their own lives. For instance, our lives will never be the same again because of September 11. The message: Life is impermanent and change is constant.

9. Be there fully for your audience. Although you have prepared your script, be in the moment. When you do this, you can adjust your presentation to meet the mood and energy of the group.

10. Risk being fully who you are. Be genuine. Display your enthusiasm for your audience. Have the courage to talk about uncomfortable things.

11. Demonstrate candor. Tell your truth. Be vulnerable. Be ethical. Share your mishaps.

12. Involve your audience. Speakers often get their best lines from the audience. Research shows that people retain more when they are involved. Have them work in pairs or small groups and share their stories and experiences.

13. Refer to people by their first names, if possible.