The Fae in the Liminal World, Magical Plays and Getting Lost in a Pixie Trail
We're still not entirely sure what happened last Saturday night
I’m going to begin with a play. A famous play by a Mr. William Shakespeare, which takes place in a forest around the summer solstice and features royalty, actors and fairies, also known as the fae or Good Folk. Let us call the play by its proper name: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I love this play, it’s magical, funny, sometimes downright hilarious, frustrating and enticing all at the same time. It’s a simple enough story, which makes it perfect to adapt in many different versions.
My kids, 6 & 9, have previously seen the BBC CBeebies version. This is where the younger Children’s Channel on the BBC puts on Shakespeare plays for kids - abridged and with all their favourite presenters from the TV shows. My kids have watched several of Mr. S’s plays on TV and it’s a brilliant way to introduce them to some good cultural stuff. My first introduction to Shakespeare was studying Twelth Night in the 4th year and I wanted to jump out of the window, it was that boring (sorry, Mrs. Smith, but it was). It was only when we then got to see the actual play in Stratford Upon Avon that year, that I understood the story properly and realised the impact live acting can have. I loved it, it was an experience I will never forget.
I also helped backstage at a professional production the summer before I went to university. I had just turned 19, and my town, being close to London, was home to several actors. A small group decided to form the (now disbanded) Bedford Theatre Company, and their first play would be the aforementioned in Bedford Park, hoping for good weather (we lucked out, in the two weeks of putting on the play it rained one day, and that was the only day we did not have a show - did the fae help us with the weather?). With rehearsals ongoing, I learnt many of the lines from merely watching the actors, I had to ensure Bottom got his donkey head on quickly and correctly and a little bit fell in love with one of the fairies, played by the now pretty well-known Joseph Mawle from GoT and Rings of Power. He was only 20 at the time.
Fast forward to last week, I discovered that a local English-speaking theatre was going to be putting on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small amphitheatre in a park not so far away from us. I was so excited to be able to introduce my kids to something this awesome, the weather was going to be scorching, no rain, we could take a picnic and they could run off if they got bored. I got a friend to also come along so my kids had their best friend there as well.
Saturday morning we watched the CBeebies version again, so at least my eldest was au-fait with the storyline. We got public transport there, which was also quite fun for the kids. The play was fab, the weather perfect and the kids enthralled! They did not run off, they asked questions throughout, laughed at the hilarious donkey and the Play Within the Play and my eldest explained a lot to the smaller two as she really had understood the story. Seeing it live was also such a great experience for them, they were literally laughing out loud at some parts, and the actors were really brilliant - and it was free! Bonus!
Full of happy vibes we packed up to head home and the kids ran off to some big slides, discovered a small pool and asked if they could go in it. Yes, of course, I said, thinking they’d be knee-deep in water. No, they were literally swimming and were dripping wet when they got out. With no towel I hoped the weather would stay warm (it was still around 35 degrees C at 9pm, so we lucked out there) and they wouldn’t get cold.
So here are my two wild children, dripping wet, barefoot and it’s after 9pm and slowly getting darker. Off we trot to the bus stop. But we go the wrong way. I’m confused, as we’d walked this way on the way in, but somehow couldn’t find the correct path. Google Maps wasn’t helped one little bit, the point where I was located kept jumping around like a little pixie.
It started to feel eerie, and despite the park being full of people it felt quiet where we were and slightly isolated and suddenly quite dark. I’m marching around with my two barefoot, soggy kids and start to get concerned. Then we end up back by the giant slides again, which is even stranger.
Then I suddenly have a thought: what if we are caught in a pixie trail? For those of you who aren’t aware, this is a concept that the beings in the liminal world can play tricks on us humans and somehow ‘lock’ us in a never-ending loop so we cannot find our way out - this is mostly something that happens in forests or at least rural areas. I’d heard about this, it’s even mentioned in Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree, and the only way to get out was to turn our clothes inside out to cause confusion. So I turned my socks inside out, my youngest his T-Shirt and my eldest her underwear and rucksack on her back.
Then we looked around and saw a path that looked familiar and decided to go in that direction. Suddenly, and I mean really suddenly, the path opened up and it also got much lighter. We were still in the park and the trees were still there, but the eerie oppressive darkness had inexplicably gone. And off we went, knowing this was the correct route - and within 10 minutes we were on the bus heading home.
I wrapped the kids in the picnic blanket on the air-conditioned bus so they didn’t get cold, and we tried to figure out what had just happened.
My daughter then told me she saw a strange little figure run behind a sign just after our friends left and as it got darker, but didn’t know what it was. It could have been a hedgehog - we spotted one later one when we were on our way out - or something else. She said it moved too quickly for a hedgehog.
When we got home after 10 pm they re-told the story to their dad wide-eyed and full of wonder. Did the fae watch us watching the magical play and decide to play a trick on us? Did we interrupt something and did they think it was time to pay us back? I know it’s advisable to avoid coming across The Good Folk around midsummer, as this is when they are in full celebration and do not like to be interrupted.
Whatever happened, I am still not sure exactly what it was. But we had an adventure, my kids had one of the best evenings in a long time, if not ever, and we all got home safely. So I would say it was a pretty cool adventure!
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