Into the Woods

The English historian Ronald Hutton has persuasively argued that there is no continuous history of paganism in the British Isles. Rather, during the 19th Century there was a revival of, and a romanticization of, interest in Celtic paganism. This book, published in 1911, is almost certainly a product of that romanticization and revival. Yet, despite the apparent credulity of its author, W.Y. Evans Wentz, there is much in this book that is genuine, in that Wentz’s interviews were with old folks who were describing actual folk memories as opposed to any new material made up by 19th Century romanticizers.

My biggest surprise with this book is that it is superbly written. The first few chapters are lyrical, picturesque descriptions of the places where Wentz traveled to do his interviews — Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, Brittany, and the Isle of Man.

First editions of this book are rare and very expensive. At present, two first editions are listed on eBay, one at $750 and the other at $999.95. Because the book has been in the public domain for quite some time, there are many reprints for which the text, I assume, was taken from Gutenberg.org.

Wentz, though he obviously was very intelligent and wrote beautifully, must have been quite a poseur. One of the photos of Wentz on Wikipedia shows him dressed in an elaborate Tibetan costume. It seems there wasn’t any form of mysticism that he wasn’t into, including Theosophy. Yet I think Wentz’s book about fairies contains real scholarship with his snapshot of folk beliefs — folk beliefs that I suspect actually were continuous and accounts of which he captured from about 1907 to 1910. Wentz’s papers are at Stanford University and Oxford University.