I renamed my short introductory post titled ‘Elves and Fairies,’ adding ‘Introduction.’

Here, I will quote from my (unfinished) book.  Some of this appears in my post about Alfred the Great (he was, as we remember his race, an “elf.”)

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PART TWO – ELVES AND FAIRIES

7. WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Scotland was once called ‘Alba’, or ‘Albany’.  Where did this name come from?   I can tell you that ‘alpus’ in Latin meant white, that the Alps are so named for their white peaks, and that both names, ‘Alba’ and the ‘Alpine’ range of mountains share the same Latin root.  Alba was not named for any white-peaked mountains however, it was named for the Picts that lived there.  (What was so “white” about these Scots of “Pict” ancestry will be discussed directly.)< Here again, we are rescued by the etymology of words and names which, fortuitously, are immune to the rewriting and editing of history by medieval bishops and monks. Any good linguist will confirm that a number of letters in the writing systems of the world tend to fall somewhat universally together into several groupings.  The letters C, S and K for example seem to be closely related, i.e. one migrates and replaces another repeatedly in words that mean the same thing in related languages.  The Great Mother Goddess of Anatolia, Cybele, when spelled with a C, takes a soft ‘C’ or “S” sound.   The name of the goddess can be found in literature spelled with a ‘K’ also however, in which case Kybele is pronounced with a “hard” C sound.  Finally, when the cult of Cybele merged with that of the Greek Zeus, the result was the cult of Saba-zios, “Saba”, spelled beginning in an ‘S’ being representative of Cybele/Kybele…. … Japanese utilizes no “letters” per se, but is built with syllables represented by characters and pictograms.  Yet a written ‘Ta’ becomes a ‘Da’ when two little slashes are added to the right and slightly above the character.  (The same goes for ‘Te’ and ‘To’.)  A grouping which is most relevant to our topic is that which includes consonant sounds represented by letters F, B and P.  In Japanese a written ‘Fu’, when two little slashes are added becomes a ‘Bu’, and when the slash-marks are exchanged for a small circle the ‘Bu’ becomes a ‘Pu’. In exactly the same manner, the ‘Alb’ core of Alba (Scotland) has a sister and a brother, ‘Alp’ and ‘Alf’.  We can see this ‘Alb’ word-portion in action in various words and names; an Albino is a person or animal almost completely lacking in pigment, i.e. exceedingly fair skinned with snow-white hair.  The name Albert, not uncommon among medieval royalty, would be another example, one conspicuous Germanic king called Albert “the Bear” was the patriarch of several famous Houses that provided a number of Holy Roman Emperors during the middle ages.  Another obvious “Alp/Alb/Alf” name would be Alfred, and in fact it was one Alfred “the Great”, a direct ancestor of Margaret and an “Aetheling” who successfully unified his people, fought off the Vikings and became the first “King of all the Anglo-Saxons”. Now it gets good.   Alfred could be, and I am certain should be, read as Alf-red, and I am prepared to take this exercise one step further.  I have used the term ‘Aetheling’ numerous times thus far, without commenting on its meaning.  The simple straight-forward definition would be “royal family” – but it was more than that.   It was an extended family, making up what was known as the “Aetheling pool”, and in ancient and forgotten times each English monarch was chosen from this royal pool by the Witan (council of the realm).  It wasn’t necessarily the eldest male son of the outgoing king who was chosen to rule, but the most exemplary candidate, devoid of flaws, who warranted confidence that he would rule justly, wisely, and effectively.  (Sounds like a pretty smart set-up to me; this system was abandoned and subsequently forgotten in England concurrent with William’s usurpation.) Unfortunately my laptop doesn’t seem to be able to jam the beginning ‘A’ and ‘E’ of the term Aetheling into a single ‘AE’ letter, which is the correct way to spell it.  But the ‘AE’ linking prods me to suspect that we should, just out of curiousity, exchange the A in ‘Alf’ for an E and see what it yields … ‘Elf’!!!  So, maybe Alfred the Great would be, upon the lifting of centuries of fog, “Elf-red, the Great”, i.e. the Great Red Elf??? Exactly.  And the former name of Scotland, Alba/Albany, would have been, quite literally, “Land of the Elves”. This leap of etymological faith is not as spurious as it might seem.  An ‘elf’ in Norway or Sweden is in fact an “alv”, and in Denmark the word is “alf”.  An elf dance in Scandinavia is an “alvdanser”.  In Swedish myth the “alvor” were beautiful faery-girls who lived in the forest with their “alven” king, and Germanic mythology tells of a nightmare-conjuring elfish creature called an “alp”. A “mythical” literary cousin of the elves who appear regularly in fairy tales are the “pixies”.  Let’s see if we can’t wring some insight from this term as well.

Scotland in pre-Medieval times was occupied by a people the Romans called “Picts”, for their fondness of covering their bodies with tattoos.  (Our word ‘picture’ derives from the same Latin root.)  Meanwhile, the Gaelic term for “fairy folk” was ‘Sidhe’; the ‘dhe’ ending is typically silent and the word is pronounced “see” or “shee”.  A Leanan Sidhe (pronounced “liannan-shee”) was a beautiful fairy girl who took a human for a lover.  A ‘Bean Sidhe’ (pronounced “ban-shee”), literally female-fairy, was one who “keened” (wailed) to announce or foretell a death – a “screaming banshee”.

In like manner, a “fairy Pict” would have been a ‘Pict Sidhe’, pronounced “Pict-see” … a pixie!

The Picts were fearsome warriors and the Romans were never able to subjugate them.  In the early 2nd century the entire Roman 9th Legion famously marched from York into “Pictland”, or “Calydonia” (as Alba/Scotland was alternately called at the time) to do battle with the Picts – and were never heard from again.  The 9th Legion was completely annihilated.  Almost certainly it was this military disaster that convinced the Romans to abandon any further attempts to conquer the rest of the island, for soon after the destruction of the 9th Legion the Romans built Hadrian’s wall from coast to coast across northern England, marking the northernmost boundary of the empire.  How ironic that the invincible Picts are remembered as tiny woodland creatures, most famously a girl the size of a hummingbird who flies around Cinderella’s Castle at the beginning of every Disney feature.

>The myths and legends of supernatural beings like the elves, fairies and pixies are indigenous not only to Britain and Scandinavia.  Similar myths abound throughout Europe and other parts of the world, in locals as disparate as the Baltics, Romania, France and Siberia, and the correlations between attributes of “elves” and their counterparts in myths emanating from these far flung places are striking.  Nearly always the “fairy folk” are described as fair skinned, usually with red or golden hair. Uniformly, magical or supernatural powers are attributed to the beings.  Invariably they live in the forests or wooded areas, and are often associated with burial mounds, semi-underground structures topped by a mound of earth. Though known by different names in different lands, the ruins of tens of thousands of such mounds dot the landscape from Ireland to Asia.  Superstitions warned locals to stay clear of these mounds, and even to keep away from where the fairies walked … you were asking for trouble if you crossed a “fairy path”.

Fairies, elves and their counterparts in the countless legends are generally described as stand-offish, but are often benevolent.  In Ireland an “Aos sidhe” (pronounced “ees shee”) might leave a coin as reward to a townswoman for keeping a tidy house, or a “huldra” (a fairy of Scandinavian mythology said to be strikingly beautiful with long flowing hair) might tend the charcoal kiln of a sleeping villager, receiving provisions in return.  Other times the fairy folk are mischievous, and sometimes downright nasty.  But without exception, they exist on the fringes of society, interacting with humans only on a limited basis.  In the rare case where a mortal manages to seduce, or allows himself to be seduced by, a “fairy” in any of these myths, the mortal nearly always meets a tragic end.

These legends, found in the mythologies of peoples living as far as half a world apart read like minor variations on a single myth.  Does logic not suggest that they might constitute evidence of a people, human like ourselves but in some ways different, who actually lived among us (or, more accurately, alongside us) at some time in the distant past?

8. NICHOLAS DE VERE

Nicholas De Vere, R.I.P., died in 2013, but he left us a wealth of written material which is quite “fantastic”, I can’t think of a better word.  De Vere insisted in his writings that the elves of our fairy-tales are in fact the faint echo of a people who were quite real, and that he was a scion of one of the few family lines descended from the “elven” nobility of Britain and the continent still in existence.  

Upon reading certain claims made by Nicholas de Vere one might think he must have been a fruitcake, were it not that he was in all other aspects obviously highly intelligent and lucid.  De Vere possessed, in addition to a sharp wit, a grasp of history, mythology and etymology seemingly spanning the whole of human existence that borders on encyclopedic.  And that’s to say nothing of his pedigree.

The de Veres are maybe one of the most, if not the most, illustrious families in western history.  They served as trusted chamberlains to the throne of England through Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor and Stewart Houses alike, while holding the office of the Earls of Oxford almost continuously over a span of six centuries.  The actor William Shakespeare may well have been nothing more than a near-illiterate front man for one Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford and ghost author of all of Shakespear’s plays.

I stumbled on to the writings of Nicholas de Vere while searching for information pertaining to the ‘Tartaria tablets’.  Having long been interested in ancient history, I was surprised one day to learn that stone tablets bearing cuneiform inscriptions had been unearthed in Tartaria, a town in Romania, which pre-dated those found in southern Iraq. 

A giant hole was blown in my understanding, the tenet long held by historians, that civilization began at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what was then, 5 and a half thousand years ago, ancient Sumer.  (This location where the two rivers flow out into the Persian Gulf, that of the ancient Sumerian “birth of civilization”, is regarded by some as a likely candidate for the biblical Eden.)

Nicholas de Vere cleared this all up for me.  To summarize briefly, some 7 thousand years ago, the Black Sea was disconnected from the Mediterranean and smaller than it is today, and the basin surrounding it was populated by a people whose descendants, those who stayed in the area, are regarded by historians as Scythians.  The land they occupied extending to the lands surrounding the northern shores of the nearby Caspian was, for much of Eurasian history, called Scythia.  These Scythians were ruled by a special caste of people, de Vere goes so far as to call them a distinct race, Royal Scythians. De Vere refers to them also as the ‘Ubaid’.

In the western Siberian republic of Altai an important archeological find was discovered in 1993, that of the ‘Siberian Ice Princess’.  A young woman with caucasoid features, clearly of high status given the nature of her burial, had been preserved in ice for thousands of years (she dates to about 500 BCE).  She was found wearing exquisite clothing, a 3 foot tall headdress and surrounded in her coffin by figurines gilded in gold.  Buried alongside her were six horses bedecked in beautiful ornaments, also preserved in ice.

While the Ice Princess burial site is one of the best preserved, it is not the most impressive.  There are dozens of ancient sites in Central Asia that have been excavated, and in many of them piles of gold ornaments and jewels, luxurious finery, horses and even chariots have been found buried along with the remains, attesting to the royal status of the deceased.  (De Vere claims that the Scythians invented the chariot, a claim which is born out by the archeological evidence – the oldest known burial sites where chariots are found are in what was ancient Scythia.  In addition, the 4′ 8″ axle width the Scythians settled on remained the standard for horse-drawn vehicles throughout history – even standard gauge trains today still retain this same axle width!)

All of these Central Asian burial sites, including that of the Ice Princess, are ‘kurgans’.  A kurgan is an earthen mound, often very large (some over 20 meters in height and reaching half a kilometer in diameter) covering any number of underground rooms, passageways and invariably a burial chamber.  While these kurgans and similar structures known by other names can be found in many parts of the world (including the raths or barrows of Britain), in Eurasia they are most numerous between the Altai mountains and the Carpathian basin. The greatest number and oldest of these kurgans are found clustered around the Black Sea in what was once Scythia.  (The Novovelichkovskaya kurgan on the north-east side of the Black Sea is at least 4000 years old.)

I suspect that the reader, like me, upon first learning of an ancient people who lived in kurgans, raths or barrows (different names for the same sort of abode), underground alongside the remains of their dead ancestors would think it a dark and gloomy existence. Was it ?

There is the story of the ‘Palace of the Rath’, which long ago someone in Ireland thought worth fixing to paper.  It begins:

“Everyone from Bunclody to Enniscorthy knows the rath between Tombrick and Munfin. Well, there was a poor, honest, quiet little creature…”

And, skipping on a bit, continues, 

“…He was coming from tile fair of Enniscorthy one fine summer evening, up along the beautiful shady road of Munfin; and when he came near the stream that bounds Tombrick, he turned into the fields to make his road short. He was singing merrily enough, but by degrees he got a little stupefied; and when he was passing the dry, grassy ditch that surrounds the rath, he felt an inclination to sit and rest himself.

“It is hard to sit awhile, and have your eyes a little glassy, and the things seeming to turn round you, without falling off asleep; and asleep my poor little man of straw was in a few minutes. Things like droves of cattle, or soldiers marching, or big flakes of foam on a flooded river, were pushing on through his brain, and he thought the drums were playing a march, when up he woke, and there in the face of the steep bank that was overgrown with bushes and blackthorn, a passage was open between nice pillars, and inside was a great vaulted room, with arches crossing each other, a hundred lamps hanging from the vault, and thousands of nice little gentlemen and ladies, with green coats and gowns, and red sugar-loaf caps, curled at the tops like old Irish birredhs, dancing and singing, and nice little pipers and fiddlers, perched up in a little gallery by themselves, and playing music to help out the singing…”

If this account, describing a rath interior glowing with the light of hundreds of lamps “hanging from the vault”, the inhabitants playing music, singing and dancing in fine apparel bears any likeness to the reality of the long-gone era, well, I suspect that even New York’s studio 54 in the 80’s had nothing on the gaiety of life in the underground raths of ancient Ireland.  So much for the “gloomy” existence of the elves in their raths, barrows or kurgans.

There is one other collection of archeological finds of importance we want to check out, those of the mummies of Taklamakan.

North of the Himalayan mountain range there is a desert so dry that human remains thousands of years old have been found there mummified by the arid heat.   This is the Taklamakan desert, where the flesh, hair and even clothing of over a hundred corpses have been remarkably preserved.  Stunningly, the attire of many of these mummies is a tartan weave.  Apart from an early Iron Age people of central Europe (the Hallstatt culture) who also wove tartan fabrics (and prior to the discovery of the Taklamakan mummies), this weave was thought to be unique to Scotland.

Like many Scots these mummies, one can clearly see, were a fair skinned people with red or golden hair.  Nicholas De Vere informs us in his writings that many of these people, like so many specimens found buried amongst jewels and treasure in other Central Asian kurgans, were Royal Scythians.  He goes further, claiming that they are representative of the true “Aryan” race.

Adolf Hitler, he also tells us, was sorely misinformed.  The blonde-haired blue-eyed Germans, the “uber-race” Hitler whipped up into a murderous frenzy, were in fact not Aryan at all, they were Caucasian, descended from an ancient warrior race originating in the Caucasus on the other side of the Black sea from where the Scythians lived in antiquity.  

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Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) certainly understood all of this, for immediately after the Mouse’s “dry” speech, he introduces the ‘Caucus Race,’ in which Alice and all of the little animals run around in a circle to try and get dry.  A ‘race’ can be, in addition to a foot race, a race of people; the Caucasus was named for the circular range of mountains which encircled it (and also the “Caucasian” people!), and so, this is another clue of what Carroll (Dodgson) was alluding to.

The ‘Caucasians,’ in ancient history, were a blonde-haired blue-eyed warrior people who emanated from the Caucasus – the ancestors of the Vikings (and, to some degree, the Franks).  They displaced the desposynic/elven clans of Britain and Gaul with the support of the Roman Church, changed history forever and introduced a Feudalist-brand of fake-monarchy in Europe and Britain. Dodgson understood this, and alluded to this takeover (which took place in and around the 11th century) in his two books about Alice and Wonderland.

The people William the Conqueror and his Church-backed feudalists overthrew, eventually were (virtually) exterminated.  Once a tall, proud, and sophisticated people (of which Jesus’ family was blood-related to, “race-wise”), we remember them now only as elves and fairies. (Actually, it was BECAUSE the desposyni, the extended family of Jesus and their descendants, intermarried with the elves following the crucifixion that they all became a target and were exterminated – if you want to know the truth.)