Cobbled Together

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It may be just another week in February for you, but for those of us who hang our hats in the University of Limerick it's "Week 2″ – a time of pronounced hecticness, franticness, and (for me) extreme tiredness.

While the ol' grey matter would normally be fizzing (modestly) away generating thoughts of life, the universe, and potential blog content – this week already sees me reduced to sub-zombie levels of cognition. I've tried guzzling Lucozade, but it just makes me gassy ("Brain & Body Energy" my arse).

Anyway, to distract, amuse, bedazzle and awe you (while I regain my mental equilibrium) I present the following wonder from the world of faery (courtesy of Patrick Harpur's marvellous Daimonc Reality – which I'm still reading):

Yes folks, it's a "fairy shoe". As Miley Byrne might ask (and he back in the public consciousness after his recent "appearance" on Gift Grub): "Did you ever see the like of that…at all, at all, at all?"

Its provenance is hard to establish definitively, as Harpur's only footnoted source is that 'respected' authority on matters otherworldly…Country Life (Irish edition, 24 May, 1973). It might seem remiss of me, but said publication is not to be found on my bookshelves. Not being alive at the time rather limited my ability to pick a copy up.

Anyway, here's the story as related in Harpur's book:

It was found by a farm labourer on the Beara Peninsula, south-west Ireland, in 1835. It is black, worn at the heel and styled like that of an eighteenth-century gentleman. But it is also only two and seven-eights inches long and seven-eights of an inch at its widest – too long and narrow even for a doll's shoe. If it were an apprentice piece, say, how did it come to be found on a remote sheep track? Why was it made in the style of the previous century? Why is it such an odd shape? How did it come to be worn? (Harpur, 134)

An obvious connection to Leprechauns and their noted aptitude for cobbling suggests itself. Are we (perhaps) looking at a shoddy piece of Leprechaun craftsmanship, cast aside by a disgruntled fairy customer? The story continues:

The man who found the shoe assumed it belonged to the "little people" and gave it to the local doctor, from whom it passed to the Sommerville family of Castletownshend, County Cork. On a lecture tour of America, the author Dr. Edith Sommerville [she of "Sommerville & Ross" fame - ed.] gave the shoe to Harvard University scientists, who examined it minutely. The shoe had tiny hand-stitches and well-crafted eyelets (but no laces), and "was thought to be" of mouse skin (Harpur, 135).

I can't imagine that the scientists of Harvard would devote themselves quite so whole-heartedly to the study of such an artefact today. Sure isn't there a fella down in Mobile, Alabama who has a several thousand year old Leprechaun flute (used for warding off spells…or possibly smells) in his possession? Do you think the boffins from the Ivy League colleges have been beating a path to his door to study this priceless curiosity? Not at all, at all.

Actually, when you've got limited time and energy, writing about fairy accoutrements is quite helpful, for (as Patrick Harpur tells us) "There is nothing that can be usefully said about these artifacts". He goes on:

They are like red herrings, deliberately planted to puzzle, provoke, amuse, baffle us. They polarize opinion, inviting ridicule and cries of "hoax!" from one party and, from the other, implicit belief in an actual race of little people who dress like us but always in a slightly older fashion. Further, more concrete, evidence of such a race is never forthcoming. Daimons not only leave red herrings – they are red herrings, leading us up blind alleys where we come face to face with mystery (Harpur, 135).

An eloquent description of the joys of such things. They discombobulate, albeit briefly, and take us out of our quotidian head-space. They simply are what they are…but also (perhaps) what they aren't. The other message seems to be: Don't take fashion advice from fairies. They are terminally behind the times.

I wonder where the shoe is now… E-bay?

P.S. Edith Sommerville was, it seems, no stranger to the otherworld. After the death of Violet Martin (a.k.a. "Martin Ross") in 1915, Edith "continued to write as Somerville and Ross, claiming that they were still in contact through spiritualist séances". Be the hokey.

[tags]Edith Sommerville, Fairies, Leprechauns, Fairy Shoe, Cork, Harvard, Lucozade[/tags]

February 20, 2007

Posted in All posts, Art, Folklore, Weirdness.