The Cottingley Fairies: The Hoax that Shocked the World

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Tonight's story is almost too Fantastical to be believed, just like its subject matter. It's the tale of Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in the Yorkshire village of Cottingley. One summer afternoon in 1917, they took a series of photographs that gripped the imagination of Edwardian England. The pictures appeared to show a group of tiny, ethereal fairies dancing over the grassy banks of a stream. But what was the true story of this mysterious encounter? How did it inspire an international debate about the spirit world? And what has been the legacy of these controversial photographs? We will discover why they created such a sensation and more tonight. So just relax and let your mind drift as we explore the sleepy history of the Cottingley fairies.

Before we begin our story in earnest, let's take a moment to understand the special place fairies held in British culture at the time the photographs were taken, at the turn of the 20th century. Folk and fairy tales reaching back centuries had always told of fairies, gnomes, brownies, imps, and little folk, but interest and belief in fairies had waned over time. Until over the 19th century the trend reversed. All of a sudden, there was a renewed interest in fairies. Where did this fascination spring from? Some scholars have suggested that it was a reaction to industrialization, to the loss of nature and folk beliefs connected with nature. As Britain transformed into a modern nation, filled with crowded smoky cities, many people found themselves drawn to stories of magic and wonder that stemmed from simpler times. Novels, paintings and poems about fairies were incredibly popular. Writers such as Walter Scott and James Hogg drew on folklore to create updated fairy stories. Books of fairy tales, some collected from Germany and France, became enormously popular in British households. Postcards and greeting cards featuring fairy imagery were cheap and widely distributed. They showed ethereal creatures in idyllic pastoral settings, flitting over meadows and dancing through glades. In well-to-do Victorian households, fairies were whimsical, gentle creatures. But in the countryside, the old beliefs still lingered. People still told stories of the good folk, and some claimed to have seen them, or at least to know someone who had. These traditional fairies retained a more ambiguous character. They could be helpful or harmful, beautiful or frightening. Folklorists like Scotland's Andrew Lang traveled to these farms and villages where people still believed in fairies. Their stories were recorded and printed in anthologies of folk and fairy tales. In Lang's case, the popular colorful fairy collections like The Red Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book and more.

The era's most famous fairy was undoubtedly Tinkerbell. In 1904, JM. Barrie's play Peter Pan premiered at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. Audiences were introduced to the magical world of Neverland, a place inhabited by fairies, mermaids and pirates. Tinkerbell was represented on stage as a darting point of light, accompanied by a tinkle of bells. That theatrical choice became a blueprint for the way Edwardians conceived of the fairy, magical without being threatening. An elusive, glowing spark at the edge of consciousness. Whether they were thought of as belonging to folklore or fantasy, as the objects of serious study, or the stuff of children's entertainment, fairies held a central place in the Edwardian imagination. And in the summer of 1917, with World War I raging in the background, Francis and Elsie's photographs would seemingly prove something so many people were desperate to believe. That fairies and all the magic, wonder, and enchantment they connoted were real.

So now, our story can really begin. And perhaps we should begin it as if it were a fairy tale. Because in some senses, that is exactly what it is.

Once upon a time. A nine-year-old English girl named Frances took a long voyage with her mother.

Francis and her mother went to stay with family. In the Peaceful Countryside. It is the story of the story of Cottingley, of Yorkshire in the north of England. They stayed with Frances's Aunt Polly and her family in the village of Cottingley. Cottingley was a world away from South Africa. A neat little village set among the rolling green hills of Yorkshire, it must have seemed to Frances like something out of a storybook. Its most enchanting feature was the beck, which cut a deep, narrow, rocky channel through the village, flowing northward to join the river air. This was no gentle stream. It cascaded over rocky outcrops, creating small waterfalls and tumbling through a wooded glen. The glen seemed to belong to another time, a pocket of enchanted wildness. It was the kind of place where, if fairies were to exist anywhere, they might choose to dwell. Frances's Aunt Polly had a daughter of her own, sixteen-year-old Elsie. Elsie and Frances became firm friends, and Cottingley Beck quickly became their favorite place to play. They could easily spend whole afternoons there. Much to their mother's annoyance, the two girls would often lose track of time when they were playing there. They would return late, after dusk had already fallen. Their feet would often be wet, and their clothes muddy, but the girls had an explanation for their lateness, and their damp clothes and shoes. They said that they lingered so long by the Beck, because they saw fairies there.