Celtic fairy traditions
Carnac in the Fairy-Faith
Carnac’s monuments provide a setting for Evans-Wentz’s inquiry into fairy belief and religious memory. He reports local visions and stories rather than treating the stones as mute ruins. Madame Marie Ezanno describes small dancers gathering by moonlight and singing a weekday refrain. The author’s theory of Carnac as a psychic center goes beyond such testimony.
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In the sources
Principal account
ReportedCarnac’s monuments provide a setting for Evans-Wentz’s inquiry into fairy belief and religious memory. He reports local visions and stories rather than treating the stones as mute ruins.
Further detail
ReportedMadame Marie Ezanno describes small dancers gathering by moonlight and singing a weekday refrain. The author’s theory of Carnac as a psychic center goes beyond such testimony.
Context & interpretation
Evans-Wentz combines named informants, manuscript narratives, and his own psychical theory in a 1911 survey. This entry preserves those distinctions: collected belief and literary tradition do not establish the physical existence of an Otherworld.
Original passages
Source 1
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
two of its psychic centres, with Tara and Carnac as two respective points of focus from which the Celtic influence of each countryOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Celtic fairy traditions; active reader leaf 44
Exact passage checked against active scan text and original-leaf mapping; scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0045-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0045-E001-P0044
- Original scan leaf
- 45
- Recorded leaf number
- 45
- Current Reader position
- 40
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed
Source 2
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
been given during January 1909 by Madame Marie Ezanno, of Carnac, then sixty-six years old : — ' The corrigans are little dwarfs who formerly,Open this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Celtic fairy traditions; active reader leaf 239
Exact passage checked against active scan text and original-leaf mapping; scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0045-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0045-E001-P0239
- Original scan leaf
- 240
- Recorded leaf number
- 240
- Current Reader position
- 235
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed
Continue exploring
Korrigans
Breton fairy beings associated with dances, fountains, and ancient stones.
Same subject and traditionHill of Tara in Fairy Tradition
Irish royal landscape surrounded by stories of Sidhe processions.
Same subject and traditionLough Derg and Patrick’s Purgatory
Pilgrimage lake interpreted through monster legends and earlier sacred associations.
Same subject and traditionNewgrange and the Palace of the Boyne
A real monument discussed through funerary evidence and fairy-palace traditions.