extraordinary%20encounters

100 Fairies encountered
A man is pulled back before he enters a fairy circle. (Fortean Picture Library)
In the year 1660, when I and my wife had
gone to my farm, which is three quarters of a
mile from Ragunda parsonage, and we were
sitting there and talking awhile, late in the
evening, there came a little man in at the door,
who begged of my wife to go and aid his wife,
who was just in the pains of labor. The fellow
was of small size, of a dark complexion, and
dressed in old gray clothes. My wife and I sat
awhile, and wondered at the man; for we were
aware that he was a Troll, and we had heard tell
that such like, called by the peasantry Vettar
[spirits], always used to keep in the farmhouses,
when people left them in harvest-time.
But when he had urged his request four or five
times, and we thought on what evil the country
folk say that they have at times suffered
from the Vettar, when they have chance to
swear at them, or with uncivil words bid them
to go to hell, I took the resolution to read some
prayers over my wife, and to bless her, and bid
her in God’s name go with him. She took in
haste some old linen with her, and went along
in the wind, and so she came to a room, on
one side of which was a little dark chamber, in
which his wife lay in bed in great agony. My
wife went up to her, and, after a little while,
aided her till she brought forth the child after
the same manner as other human beings. The
man then offered her food, and when she refused
it, he thanked her, and accompanied her
out, and then she was carried along, in the
same way in the wind, and after a while came
again to the gate, just at 10 o’clock. Meanwhile,
a quantity of old pieces and clippings of
silver were laid on a shelf, in the sitting-room,
and my wife found them next day, when she
was putting the room in order. It is supposed
that they were laid there by the Vettar. That it
in truth so happened, I witness, by inscribing
my name. Ragunda, the 12th of April, 1671
(Keightley, 1878).
Another cleric, Edward Williams, a British
man from the next century, recalled a strange
experience from his youth. In 1757, he and
his fellow schoolchildren, playing in a field in
Wales, happened to notice seven or eight tiny
couples. Each was dressed in red, and each
held a white kerchief. They were about a hundred
yards away. One of the figures suddenly