The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-Protest Culture

Andy Letcher

Abstract

Environmental protest in Britain in the 1990s flourished with the growth of the direct action movement. A distinctive culture of protest emerged, particularly in response to the construction of new roads, with its own radicalised spirituality known as "eco-paganism." One feature of the movement was the adoption of a fairy mythology as a significant belief narrative. This article gives examples of this mythology, showing how it was expressed, and demonstrates that it produced three responses: outright rejection; a symbolic identification with fairies; and/or literal belief. This last position was given credence by occasional phenomenological encounters with otherworldly beings, examples of which are given. The article concludes that, whether literal or symbolic, the belief in fairies helped protesters make sense of their struggles, hardships and occasional successes.

Introduction

From Arthurian legend to Anglo-Saxon texts, from Shakespeare to Disney, from garden gnomes to washing up liquid, fairies and fairy legends are an integral part of Western culture. Fairies, and the other inhabitants of their enchanted world, [1] have been a potent source of inspiration for the human imagination for over a thousand years, and continue to be so to the present day. A best-selling illustrated book about fairies, from the 1970s, describes the allure of fairyland:

   [it is] a world of dark enchantments, of captivating beauty, of enormous
   ugliness, of callous superficiality, of humour, mischief, joy and
   inspiration, of terror, laughter, love and tragedy ... its position is
   elusive. It is sometimes just over the horizon and sometimes beneath our
   feet (Froud and Lee 1978, 3).

More recently, on this side of the horizon, fairies have inspired a countercultural movement. The 1990s in Britain were marked by large and dramatic public protests against a government-sponsored programme of road building, and a private sector-led expansion of opencast quarrying. A distinctive protest culture flourished in response to this, combining the politics of direct action and an anarcho-travelling lifestyle, with a definite neo-pagan sensibility. This culture adopted an important fairy mythology which placed protesters within an almost fairytale-like struggle between the benevolent forces of nature and a tyrannical and destructive humanity. Protesters came to regard themselves as, or aided by, fairies or nature spirits in a just cause that pitted nature against artifice, the little people against the much larger, but corrupt, forces of law and order.

The aim of this article is to document examples of the way in which protesters have done and continue to do this, and to analyse how this "fairy mythology" has become a significant narrative for the movement. I will demonstrate that there are three responses to this narrative within protest culture: (i) hostility or outright rejection; (ii) symbolic identification with fairies; (iii) literal belief in fairies as spirits of nature. I conclude that both the symbolic identification with, and the literal belief in, fairies is fuelled by occasional phenomenological encounters with otherworldly beings. These encounters are related as stories which shape the belief systems of the movement. This work is based upon my time spent actively involved as a road protester, and more lately as a researcher carrying out fieldwork for my Ph.D. thesis on bardism within modern paganism. I begin with a brief overview of the road protest movement.

Road Building and Eco-Paganism

In the 1990s, the then Conservative Government launched a massive 23 billion [pounds sterling] road building scheme as a response to Britain's worsening traffic congestion problems. In the process, they unwittingly instigated the "most successful revolutionary movement in Western Europe in the second half of the twentieth century" (Monbiot 1998). Starting with just two people at Twyford Down in 1992, the movement grew, with protests the length of the country from Glasgow to Kent. It culminated at Fairmile in Devon in 1997, after which the Government announced a U-turn and cut the roads budget to just 6 billion [pounds sterling]. In all cases the protesters used the same tactics: positioning themselves bodily in the way of construction, either by sitting on machinery (called "digger diving") or by placing camps, tree houses, tunnels and locking-on points en route. Their ideal aim was to stop the road from being built at all; their more achievable aim was to add so much extra to the cost of construction that future projects would be rendered unviable.

A distinctive protest culture emerged which was derived from the relatively harsh lifestyle of the protest camps, and whilst not all protesters had spiritual inclinations, the movement was infused with a pagan sensibility. Eco-paganism, as it is called, [2] combines ideas from Wicca and Druidry, the New Age, Buddhism and theosophy, with anarchist politics, feminism, and 1960s psychedelia, all with an itinerant lifestyle incorporating green radicalism and direct action. It is a syncretic religion which gives primacy to lived experience, and is therefore hard to define or describe. Lacking any formal structures or hierarchies, it is, though, a perfect example of a vernacular religion, that is "the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly liturgical forms of the official religion" (Yoder, cited in Sutcliffe and Bowman 2000, 6), where, in this case, the more established pagan traditions of Wicca and Druidry can be seen as the "official versions." It is very much a religion of the people, which has emerged from the community of protesters and their collective stories.

Stories are extremely important in the formation and maintenance of vernacular spiritualities. [3] Eco-paganism is shaped, not by books or charismatic leaders, but by the language spoken and by the myths and narratives shared around the campfires, the hearths of the protest camps. Here I use the word "myth" in Marion Bowman's sense of a "significant story," making no judgement as to veracity (Bowman 2000).

The narratives which protesters tell themselves about fairies are perfect examples of eco-pagan belief stories:

   That class of informal stories which: illustrate current community beliefs;
   tell not only of personal experiences but also those that have happened to
   other people; are used to explore and validate the belief traditions of a
   given community by showing how experience matches expectations (Bennett,
   cited in Bowman 2000, 85).

They comprise, of course, only a fraction of the belief stories that constitute eco-paganism and protest culture. Others, for example, may be much more political, but these narratives come to have particular significance for protesters by helping them to make sense of the struggle in which they are involved, and by forging a unique neo-tribal identity. The following examples describe ways in which fairy mythology is adopted by protesters.

Examples

Identification with fairies is an extremely common motif in the creative expressions of protesters, particularly in poetry and song. Music and song is a particularly good place to start when trying to understand how a culture perceives and portrays itself: through their art, the musicians or "bards" distil and reflect back the belief stories which help forge identity (Letcher 2001). Protesters released a taped collection of their songs and poetry called "Tribal Voices," recorded in the field at protest camps across the country. This not only gave protesters a voice, but also allowed them to generate an income, selling the tapes while busking. The following is an excerpt from the opening song on the tape called "The Dance of Dreams" by Tegwyn:

   I've got something to tell you
   Now how do I explain
   Without you thinking I'm insanely sane?
   And maybe things ain't quite what they seem,
   Let me tell you 'bout the people in my dreams.
   Cos they play like the pixies and they fly like the fairies
   They make the wishes of the wizards
   And then they make love like the mermaids of the morning. [4]

Here she blurs the distinction between fairies as beings in their own right, and fairies as symbolising protesters. In trying to explain that "things ain't quite what they seem," she first implies the former, but then implies the latter by saying that the "people in her dreams," namely her fellow protesters, are just like the fairies and pixies, playful and free of spirit.

In another song from the tape, by Matt Tweed, the English countryside in summer is romanticised:

   I bring you sweet songs and love of the sacred earth
   Of quicksilver's gold and "I'll make a crown for you"
   Of tinker bells glistening and laughing the pixie folk
   Of green growth and new growth and Eden's reborn again.
   And nature she's calling, nature she says to me,
   "Come and join hands, you're one with the family now." [5]

The song suggests lazy summer days lying in hay meadows, in a countryside where the fairies or pixie folk and the protesters are part of the natural order of things, part of the natural force of green growth which will make "Eden reborn again." Matt played in a band called the Space Goats, who were extremely prominent at road protests, often providing a live musical accompaniment to digger diving with their heady brew of psychedelic folk music. The members of the band saw their music, in part, as trying to recreate the enchanting music that fairies, in legend, are supposed to make; and, to some extent, with their use of exotic instruments such as the hammered dulcimer, the bouzouki and the didgeridoo, they succeeded. The lead singer changed his name to Poc, deliberately echoing that of the fairy, Puck, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Fairies make regular appearances in Space Goat songs. "Eyanabella" (Space Goats 1999) is a love song to a fairy queen who conforms to the Victorian stereotype: delicate beauty and gossamer winged. The "Pixies Jinx" (Space Goats 1999) warns a security guard to be wary of an unnoticed leprechaun sitting on his boot, whilst in "Pixie People," Poc asks:

   Who are the Pixie people, are you one of the fairy folk? Do you like your
   planet, or do you want to see it go up in smoke? (Space Goats 1999).

It is a direct challenge to non-protesters to run away and join the "pixie people," namely, the protesters.

Caution must always be exercised when analysing song lyrics. As it is a medium where metaphor and hyperbole are frequently used, lyrics should not necessarily be taken literally or as indicative. An example is the song "Whisper on the Breeze" by Paul "Busker" Gill from the "Tribal Voices" tape. The song speaks of the anger felt by the Horned God when a tree is felled, but he uses this imagery figuratively, and does not actually believe in a Horned God. [6] However, the adoption of fairy mythology is not just limited to protesters' songs but infuses the whole movement. The protest site at Stanworth Valley in Lancashire was called the "Cosmic Pixie Tree Village," and similarly, the first camp to be set up at Newbury was called the "Pixie Village." One of the most popular books at Skyward camp at Newbury was Enid Blyton's The Enchanted Forest, in which children climb the "magic faraway tree" and meet the various elves and pixies who live in the tree and in the worlds to be found in its canopy. At Fairmile in Devon, protesters referred to themselves as "Fairies." At the centre of the camp stood one large oak tree, complete with four tree houses, which, for protesters, came to resemble the magic faraway tree. The second camp, about one mile away across the valley, was literally a fortress made from earth and the debris of previously felled trees. It was named "Fort Trollheim," and protesters here, reacting to what they regarded as the childlike naivety of the "fairies" across the way, developed a different identity, but one still drawn from the same mythology: they called themselves the "Trolls." A playful rivalry existed between the two camps, the Fairies at Fairmile and the Trolls at Trollheim, during the whole campaign--the trolls, for example, banning the use of penny whistles at their camp. [7]

The final example is the use of the word "pixieing." It is in extremely common usage among protesters. It can mean any act of cheeky defiance of authority, such as the snatching and wearing of a security guard's hard hat, but it more properly refers to acts of eco-sabotage. Here the heavy machinery used in, say, the construction of a road, is damaged so as to prevent it being used again and to escalate the costs. For example, at the M11 campaign in London:

   Equipment, materials, structures, offices, vehicles, fences and machinery
   at link road sites were damaged all the time, sometimes by a large crowd
   who would outnumber security and disappear when the police arrived, but
   more often by small groups who operated out of view of security (Aufheben
   1998, 108).

"Pixieing" is a word specific to Britain, reflecting the underlying fairy mythology in British protest culture. In contrast, eco-sabotage is called "monkey-wrenching" in America (Taylor 1995). The implications of these different names will be dealt with later in this article.

Responses to Fairy Mythology

I have identified three responses to the adoption of this fairy mythology by protesters, namely: (i) hostility or outright rejection; (ii) the symbolic identification with fairies; (iii) a literal belief in fairies. These will now be dealt with in turn, but first it must be noted that these are not discrete categories and that protesters may adopt different responses at different times. In common with other alternative spiritualities, particularly other varieties of paganism, protesters maintain a degree of uncertainty about their beliefs. [8] The way in which practitioners adhere to nonconformist or seemingly irrational beliefs in an increasingly rationalistic and secular society is a complex issue. For example, Tanya Luhrmann found that people practising magic in London occult groups used many different justifications for their beliefs, often altering the justification according to whom it was they were addressing (Luhrmann 1989). Protesters are well aware that mainstream society views belief in fairies as childish, foolish--insane even--so they are chameleon-like in their beliefs, partly in order to alleviate or deflect ridicule and criticism. However, it is also because they retain some inner uncertainty about the exact nature of their beliefs.

Hostility or Outright Rejection

Scholars have identified several reasons why people are motivated to "drop out" and become full-time protesters (Kamieniechi, Coleman and Vos 1995; Taylor 1995; Letcher in preparation). Whilst protesters' motivations remain multilayered, two factors are relevant here: the "aesthetic" and the "political." The word "aesthetics" derives from the Latin aesthesis, meaning to notice the world. Protesters motivated primarily by aesthetics have literally "noticed the world" and have a keen sense of it being something of beauty. They seek to protect it from destruction, rather as one might seek to protect a work of art. Eco-paganism and the adoption of fairy mythology are part of this aesthetic tendency. [9]

In contrast, protesters acting with primarily political motivations are more concerned with overthrowing capitalism than with aesthetics, and moreover, are likely to be hostile towards protesters of aesthetic persuasion, and those adopting a fairy mythology. Within the protest movement there is a split between the so-called "fluffies" and the "spikies," a categorisation which is reflective of the aesthetic/political divide:

   "Keep it fluffy" meant non-violent, being responsible, setting a positive
   example by behaviour; "keep it spiky" meant confrontational, violent, "by
   all means necessary" (McKay 1998, 15).

The revolutionary Marxist collective, Aufheben, have published an analysis of the road protest movement, with particular reference to the M11 campaign in London, [10] where they are particularly critical of "fluffyism," accusing it of being "the worst kind of liberalism" and of being "virtual politics" (Aufheben 1998, 121). In their ideology, everything is reducible to the class struggle against capitalism where actions are understood as either supporting or confronting the system (they regard the aesthetically motivated as supporting the system). Their hostility towards fairy mythology, and towards those protesters for whom it is a significant narrative, is therefore not surprising: it is seen as an indulgence of the middle classes. Rather more surprising is that at the Fairmile road protest, the contingent of protesters who portrayed themselves as being the spikey element still named themselves from fairy mythology (the Trolls). This demonstrates how universal the language of fairy mythology had become by the latter stages of 1990s road protest--Aufhaben, for example, in spite of their hostility towards fluffy idealism, still refer to eco-sabotage as "pixieing."

This hostility towards, or rejection of, fairy mythology is not necessarily political in nature; it also reflects the attitudes of wider society within which protesters are situated. Protesters have all grown up in a climate where rationalism is reified and, for some, belief in any kind of supernatural phenomenon is rejected.

Symbolic Identification with Fairies

The second category of relationship which protesters have with fairy mythology is a symbolic one, as distinct from literal belief. Here protesters derive their identity, their neo-tribal signifiers, from fairy mythology. In this way, the Fairies and Trolls at Fairmile each created a strong and unique identity which was reflected in, and perhaps derived from, their neo-tribal name: the Fairies were mostly vegetarian, non-violent, played mandolins and sang songs about their aesthetic eco-paganism; the Trolls ate meat, drank more alcohol, and banned any music they deemed to be too "Fairy-ish." For example, one informant, whom I shall call Ann, felt that by naming themselves the "Trolls," that is, something "archetypal" (in a Jungian sense), the name not only summarised their lifestyle perfectly, but came to shape their identity and actions:

   [We] actually physically stepped into archetypes, it wasn't something we
   got out of a book or something, it was people who built a hill fort, lived
   in mud upon a hill and called themselves Trolls. [11]

In this section, I identify three key features resulting from this choice of identity: that protesters see themselves as the "little people" standing up to the power of the state; that protesters position themselves as outside of and opposed to mainstream society; and that the adoption of fairy mythology helps to justify their counter-cultural morality. I begin by introducing neo-tribal theory.

Neo-tribal theory is a body of theory which aims to determine the processes of sociality and group formation as we move from a modern society to a postmodern one. The term "neo-tribe" was introduced by Michel Maffesoli and developed by Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman 1993; Maffesoli 1996). Bauman predicts that the neo-tribe will be the most important expression of sociality in a society in which traditional community and family groups have been fragmented. Neo-tribes are predicted to coalesce over single issues, and to be short-lived, not outliving the lifespan of its members, this latter point being the opposite of that which occurs in anthropological tribes:

   Typical examples of tribus are not only fashion victims, or youth
   subcultures. The term can be extended to interest-collectivities:
   hobbyists; sports enthusiasts; and more important--environmental movements
   (Shields 1996, xii).

Neo-tribal theory is instructive in helping us to understand how groups come to form their identity. Shields notes that:

   Unlike anthropological tribes, our contemporary social life is marked by
   membership in a multiplicity of overlapping groups in which the roles one
   plays become sources of identity which, like masks, provide temporary
   "identifications" (Shields 1996, xii).

In many ways, road protesters formed a very good example of a neo-tribe. They coalesced over a single issue (the movement was in practice short-lived, lasting only as long as there were road building schemes to oppose [12]), and adopted a temporary identification, in this case as fairies. Three key features emerge from this identification.

Firstly, in romanticising themselves as "the little people," protesters were invoking the age-old myth of a downtrodden minority able to defeat their oppressors. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien, the parochial and placid hobbits return from their travels to find their rural idyll in their native land, "The Shire," desecrated by industrialisation instigated by the evil magician, Saruman. Emboldened by their adventures, they are able to incite an uprising and "scour the Shire" of oppression. In many ways, this is how protesters viewed themselves and subsequently came to be portrayed by sympathetic journalists:

   The roads protests have already taken their place in the folklore of these
   islands; the 1990s will be remembered as the time when the gargantuan
   monsters of corruption and repression were slain by the little folk
   (Monbiot 1998, 9).

It is not uncommon for minority groups engaged in some struggle against hegemonic power to develop a strong sense of identity as a David to the state's Goliath. In road protesting, people are faced with the inevitability of defeat. In spite of all the defences, the camp will eventually be evicted, the trees will be cut down, and the road will be built. Protesters never know when the eviction will occur, so they live with a constant feeling of apprehension. In response, they develop an identity based upon a narrative or belief story in which they, the little people, will be, if not literally, at least morally victorious.

Secondly, the identification of protesters as fairies is symbolic of the way they position themselves outside, or opposed to, mainstream society. Road protesting is just one strand of a wider movement that has been called DIY culture:

   A youth-centred, and -directed cluster of interests and practices around
   green radicalism, direct action politics, [and] new musical sounds and
   experiences (McKay 1998, 2).

Other strands include the anti-car campaign, Reclaim the Streets, and the campaign against the Criminal Justice Act for, amongst other things, the right to hold free parties. Heavily infused with anarchist politics, this movement defines itself as radically opposed to the mainstream.

In British folklore, fairies also exist outside of humanity. They are not necessarily nice people, but have their own morality and their own laws:

   "they" ... are not us. Their difference manifests itself in a carelessness
   about what is good for us. Just as we treat hedgehogs badly--running them
   over on our roads in appalling numbers without malice or intention--they,
   "the Lords and Ladies," treat us badly (Harvey 1997, 173).

Protesters do not necessarily treat others badly, but they too have their own morality---on entering a protest camp, one crosses a boundary where different rules come into play. McKay suggests that protest camps are examples of what Hakim Bey calls a "temporary autonomous zone" (Bey 1991; McKay 1996). Bey suggests that autonomous anarchist "Utopias" are not possible in the modern age--globalisation has meant that there is nowhere to hide from state authority. Consequently, autonomous zones are temporary, flourishing and moving on before the state can close them down. Clearly, protest camps are slightly different in that they are closed down by eviction, but the point remains that protesters position themselves as being outside, and hence independent of, mainstream society. This positioning is also seen in the dress codes, musical styles and expressions, and in the adoption of nicknames ("Swampy" being the most famous British example [13]).

The third feature is that this identification with fairies helps to justify the counter-cultural ethic of protesting. Protesters are breaking the law. Placing oneself bodily in the way of construction is a relatively minor infraction of the law (although still an arrestable offence); eco-sabotage is more serious. By naming such acts "pixieing," protesters are downplaying the legal implications of their actions. In folklore, pixies play cheeky tricks on humans; they are annoying perhaps, but ultimately harmless. In calling eco-sabotage "pixieing," protesters are portraying their actions in a similar light. In the USA, this activity is called "monkey-wrenching" after the 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey (Benton and Short 1999), which gives equivalent actions a very different feel. The use of the more romantic "pixieing" helps make these actions appear more acceptable. It is a form of protester "spin," incompatible with the state's view that these are acts of vandalism and criminal damage.

At Newbury, however, it was my experience that pixieing (as eco-sabotage) was more often talked about than actually practised, and that when it did occur it was performed by a minority of protesters. Although the majority of protesters are committed to non-violent direct action, there is still much debate within the movement about whether damaging machinery or property constitutes violence. Though only a minority of protesters are actually happy to commit eco-sabotage, a much larger number support it in principle. An example of this occurred at a reunion rally at Newbury where a site office and some cranes were set on fire. Tens of protesters caused the damage, but they were cheered on by many hundreds of protesters who stood watching.

In justifying these actions, protesters are attributing a higher morality to the forces of nature (as symbolised by fairies) with which they see themselves allied. A common slogan among protesters is "Gaia told me to do it," Gaia being the Earth Goddess, or Mother Earth. Nature is seen as benevolent and representative of a higher morality. In contrast, mere human morality is seen as tarnished or corrupt. As protesters are adhering to a higher morality--the preservation of the natural world--breaking human laws is deemed to be justifiable.

This morality has been given a theoretical basis under the rubric of "deep ecology." This is a biocentric philosophy which sees humanity's needs as secondary to those of the natural world. It is the preservation of species diversity, rather than humanity, which is of prime importance. Deep ecology has been very influential in the American environmental protest movement, but less so in Britain (Gottlieb 1996; Benton and Short 1999; Taylor 2000; Letcher, in preparation). More recently, Adrian Harris, a practising eco-pagan, has argued that British protesters adhere to a morality which he calls "sacred ecology" (Harris 1996). Criticising most environmental philosophy as being a product of the post-enlightenment preoccupation with rationalism, and hence a part of the cause of our ecological problems, Harris argues that sacred ecology emerges from a gut feeling, or embodied response, to the natural world. It is a hardline expression of the aesthetic tendency outlined earlier:

   There are a lot of valuable insights in both Deep and Social Ecology, but
   they are fixed in the Western philosophical tradition which goes back
   beyond Aristotle and which, I would argue, is the root of the whole
   problem. For it is a way of making sense of the world which is profoundly
   cerebral and which assumes a Universe of concepts, language and logic which
   has no place for the mystical which lies beyond words ... What is required
   is another way of knowing, a Sacred Ecology which moves beyond the cerebral
   to bring us to a direct experience of wholeness rooted in the body ... It
   is a somatic, physical knowing which comes from experience (Harris 1996,
   151).

   We act to protect our Earth because we know, in every cell of our bodies,
   that our lives, our communities and our land are sacred (ibid., 153).

It is beyond the scope of this article to offer a critique of this position, or of the morality attributed to nature by protesters, and how well protesters actually live up to these ideals. [14] However, it must be noted that good intentions do not necessarily translate into right action. At the camp where I spent most of the Newbury bypass campaign we, the protesters, caused some not inconsiderable ecological damage to the woods where we were living, by virtue of trampling the ground flora and frightening fauna away. Whilst this damage was clearly insignificant relative to the construction of a motorway, it reveals inconsistencies within the movement between theory, or belief story, and practice.

Literal Belief in Fairies

For protesters who have a literal belief, fairies are believed to be either spirits or entities who inhabit the natural world, or the actual spirits of natural features such as trees, rocks, waterfalls, streams, hills and mountains. Often, protesters do not distinguish between the two. In this animistic view, the natural world is populated by an "ecology of souls" (McKenna 1993), an ecology which is threatened by human encroachment. Protesters see themselves as aided by, or aiding, these nature spirits. Here, the forces of nature, which include fairies, are regarded as benign, as opposed to humanity, which is seen as malign, corrupt and divorced from nature.

The first point that must be noted is that this view is, ironically, a product of the very civilisation which it eschews. Ronald Hutton notes that it was only during the nineteenth century, with the Romantic movement's response to urbanisation, that nature began to be perceived as a thing of beauty:

   For the first time in European history, mountains were seen as beautiful
   rather than frightening, and wild nature began to be valued over farms and
   cities, the night over the day, and the moon over the sun ... In 1800 the
   overwhelming majority of the British still lived in the countryside; by
   1900 the overwhelming majority lived in towns and cities. A mystical love
   of the natural world grew in almost direct relationship to the change
   (Hutton 1998, 90).

The English countryside is exactly that; a palimpsest of thousands of years of human management, of enclosed fields, diverted rivers, and coppiced woodlands. The structuring forces of human artifice have imposed a regularity upon a chaotic nature, such that we are now able to enjoy nature, rather than fear it.

DIY culture has been accused of ahistoricism with respect to the legacy it owes to previous political movements (McKay 1998), and it is clear that protesters, in common with other pagan and environmental movements, have an ahistoric view of the human relationship with nature. It must be remembered that eco-protest culture exists in a milieu of alternative spiritualities (Sutcliffe and Bowman 2000). The myth of the "golden age," of a time when humanity lived in a Rousseau-like state of innocence, in a harmonious relationship with a benevolent nature, is a narrative which imbues these spiritualities (Bowman 1995; 2000). We should not, therefore, be surprised to find it as a significant narrative amongst people engaged in environmental struggle. Our ancestors certainly had a closer relationship with the natural world, but were not necessarily more environmentally aware. [15] Paradoxically, for the first time in human history, science and technology have given us the ability to see exactly how much damage we are inflicting on the environment as we go about our daily lives in a technological age. What is clear, though, is that an increasing number of people feel an ache for the natural world with which, through living in urban environments, they have lost contact. Belief in a golden age, or even in fairies, is, on some level, an expression of this sense of loss.

However, protesters do not just believe in fairies because it is an appealing or romantic notion of how they would like nature to be. They believe in fairies because a number of protesters have had actual encounters with otherworldly entities. Aware of the potential for ridicule, or for having their sanity questioned, protesters are naturally reticent about discussing these experiences. However, during the course of my research, I have heard many stories of encounters with otherworldly beings. One protester, for example, saw a sprite dancing in an orchard, and there were frequent sightings at Stanworth Valley (the M65 road scheme) and at Fairmile.

Some of these sightings occur whilst practitioners are under the influence of hallucinogenic fungi. The cultural association of fairies and fungi is deeply ingrained in our culture; the pointed caps of the "magic mushroom," Psilocybe semilanceata, even resemble the pointed hats that fairies are usually portrayed as wearing. These fungi grow in great abundance during the autumn in upland areas of Britain and are picked and dried (the mushroom season was, in the 1980s and early 1990s, sometimes celebrated with a free festival [Heelas 1993]). The dried mushrooms are either eaten as they are, or powdered and mixed with chocolate to form truffles, or made into a tea (the active ingredients being water soluble). Users frequently describe the experience as reconnecting them in some deep, and occasionally overwhelming, manner with the natural world, especially with plants and trees. One informant described the mushroom experience as "a Babel fish to the plant kingdom," and another as "a walk in the fairy garden." [16]

In most expressions of contemporary paganism, alcohol is the drug of first choice. However, within the road protest movement and eco-paganism, at least in rural campaigns, psychoactive drugs are often preferred, especially cannabis, mushrooms and, to a lesser extent, LSD. Ecstasy (MDMA) is far less common, which is perhaps surprising given its now widespread usage. In part, this pattern of usage reflects the protest movement's origins in hippy culture and the free festivals of the 1970s through to the mid-1990s; but it also shows a preference for "natural" drugs, in keeping with an environmental movement. Mushrooms have the added advantage, for a movement with very little income, of being acquired freely.

It is usual in Western culture to dismiss experiences derived from hallucinogens as being in some way delusory or invalid. [17] Religious studies scholars, however, take a neutral stance as regards the validity of experience, and concentrate on how that experience becomes meaningful to practitioners (Braun 2000). Experiences derived from mushroom use, especially encounters with otherworldly beings, are taken extremely seriously by protesters. This is illustrated by the following example. One protester, whom I shall call Brian, was very involved in the Newbury bypass campaign, but after the route had been cleared and the treetop camps evicted, he and others were involved in a kind of guerrilla campaign, harrying security guards and attempting to pixie the heavy machinery. One evening, the protesters drank some mushroom tea, and Brian went for a walk in the woods. There he encountered what he described to me as an elf, who told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing as a protester was wrong, and that he should leave immediately. The next day he packed his bags and left. [18]

Of course, not all encounters occur whilst protesters are under the influence of entheogens. The following is an excerpt from an interview I conducted with a protester, one of the Trolls, whom I shall call Jason:

   I met a load of troll dudes, and a load of fairies the same as, as real as
   this [taps the table]. I went and met all these troll-fairy dudes straight
   after that, went into this other world. I guess you could say it was like a
   dream, I don't even know whether it, you know I dreamt it, or whether I
   just dreamed that I was actually awake or whatever. Who cares really? I
   know something was real and I don't need to validate it. But they met me,
   they took me, a few things that happened phoooah! This was Boxing Day
   morning, I'd broken my hand Christmas Eve cos I didn't have any money in my
   account and the banks were all shut for Christmas, and I punched the wall
   and broke a bone in my hand. Then I was taken down this tunnel by this
   fairy dude, a big sort of tunnel in a city, and he said, "Look behind you."
   So I looked behind me, he did a ninja move on me and knocked me to the
   floor, and I looked behind me and there was all this money! He went, "Oh
   don't worry about it, come on," and then he just took me. I don't even know
   how I got there, I was in this underground place, I assume it was
   underground, and there was humans there, half humans and definitely
   not-humans, sort of like fairy dudes and sort of troll dudes and this human
   woman came and sat next to me. She was like just saying, "Are you all
   right, are you OK?" and stuff. The other dudes came and sat all round me as
   if I was expected. They all came and sat round me. They were telepathic,
   they didn't move their lips or anything, and it was just really beautiful.
   It was really nice and I said, "Oh wow." I was like, "This is it!" You
   know, it was like my dream had come true, "You guys are real, and this is
   fucking real, this is solid as if I was banging the table," I was pinching
   myself, "This is fucking real!" It was real, and I was like, "Oh my life
   gets easy now," and they just laughed at me, and they gave me a book with
   "The Answers" written on it, and I opened it up and there was nothing in
   it! They just laughed at me, and the troll dude who was like King, or I
   dunno if he was King or if there was a hierarchy or whatever, he was all
   split open and loads of sparkles going on inside him, and he gave me some
   sparkly sort of healing which was all very cosmic and all very nice. But
   they were very ug[ly], they weren't twinkle twinkle. Some of them were
   pretty ug. Some of them were just really sparkly inside, you could see them
   split open, they were just infinite space inside them and sparkling, but
   they were definitely totally loving and totally dudes. There was one that
   was smoking, a really short one who had tattoos on his face, hard as nails
   ... yeah the compassion, there was loads of compassion though. It was as if
   they all knew me and they all came out and hung out with me and then they
   were really happy to be with, see me and I was really happy to see them.

Both during and after the experience, Jason maintained some sense of incredulity about what happened to him. During the experience, he pinches himself to determine that it is real, and afterwards he remains undecided about the exact nature of the reality of the experience. It was, though, clearly a moving, and at times overwhelming, experience; and even though he states that this was a wish come true, it did not signal a descent into escapism. Rather, it was an experience which renewed his commitment to protesting, validated what he was doing, and, moreover, gave him courage during a particularly harrowing tunnel eviction. Perhaps because the Trolls had created such a tough identity, the authorities responded with tough tactics. The evictions were screened from the media, and were alleged to have been carried out by the army. Both communication and ventilation to the tunnels were cut at an early stage. The shoring was removed, so that the tunnel started to collapse, and protesters were dragged out by ropes attached to handcuffs. One protester is alleged to have been suspended by handcuffs for four hours. Jason told me, however, that because of his experience, which occurred not long before the eviction, he lost his fear and was able to cope with the eviction much more effectively.

Encounters with fairies are therefore extremely significant for the protesters who have them, but reports of sightings then become incorporated into the belief stories of protest culture. Encounters are held to vindicate protesters' actions. Most people do not see fairies, and so when a protester does, it is accepted that this is because they have earned the right through the ecological credentials of their actions, or because protesters, living in a more harmonious way with nature, have privileged access to the hidden and secret realms. Whilst the example of Brian being asked to leave demonstrates that protesters' actions may not always be welcomed by the Otherworld, more often than not, fairy encounters are more positive, as in Jason's case, and end up being told as belief stories. These fuel both the wider belief in, and the symbolic identification with, fairies.

Conclusion

As I have shown, the relationship between road protesters and fairies is a complex one, but from a religious studies perspective, it is important to recognise that underneath the sociological and functional aspects of this relationship lie real phenomenological experiences which are worthy of serious academic attention.

Fairies have inspired the Western imagination for at least a thousand years, each generation perceiving them anew. To the Anglo-Saxons, elves were the progenitors of disease (Storms 1948). For the medieval Irish, they were the previous inhabitants of the land, forced to retreat from the unstoppable advance of humanity. The Victorians:

   Almost persuaded us that such beings are diminutive and cute [whilst]
   Tolkien permitted a grander, more noble vision of proud and powerful, if
   elusive inhabitants of the twilight and fringes of the world (Harvey 1997,
   172).

As those fringes and hidden places of the world become ever rarer through human encroachment, it seems fitting that a new interpretation of fairies should be emerging: proud, unpredictable, tricksy, and yet deeply moral, eco-friendly and far more powerful than their diminutive size would suggest. These are the qualities that protesters attribute to fairies, and therefore to themselves. In doing so, they have changed public opinion, overturned government policy, and, for the time being at least, succeeded in scouring the Shire. [19]

Notes

[1] In this article, "fairies" will be used as a shorthand for other mythical beings, including trolls, elves and pixies.

[2] For a discussion of the appropriateness of the label "eco-pagan," see Letcher (in preparation).

[3] See, for example, Guidon 1994.

[4] Transcribed from "Tribal Voices."

[5] Matt Tweed, "One with the Family," from "Tribal Voices."

[6] P. Gill, personal communication.

[7] The penny whistle is often thought to be particularly reminiscent of the kind of music that fairies are said to make.

[8] For example, Shallcrass (1998) writes about the difficulties he has making sense of his experiences as a Druid.

[9] It must be stressed that I am talking here about motivations and not actions. Protesters who are motivated primarily for aesthetic reasons still take actions which are political. The expression of eco-paganism therefore has important political implications.

[10] They argue that the M11 campaign, situated in London and touching on issues of social policy and housing, not just the environment, was far more political (and hence held a greater validity) than the other protests (Aufheben 1998).

[11] Taken from a transcription of an interview conducted on 21 January 2000.

[12] The Donga's tribe, formed at Twyford Down, have proved to have a greater longevity. Portraying themselves as a Nomadic tribe, they formed the "Freedom Trail," walking the land from Iron Age fort to Iron Age fort. As I write, some members are currently in France, walking to a bagpipe festival.

[13] "Swampy" was the nickname of one protester who achieved notoriety among the British media after spending seven consecutive days locked underground during the eviction at Fairmile.

[14] For a fuller critique, see Letcher (in preparation).

[15] Ronald Hutton, for example, points out that the Neolithic people were good architects, leaving us an array of henge monuments. However, they were poor ecologists, denuding upland areas of Britain of forests, and hence turning them into species-poor peat bogs (Hutton 1991).

[16] The Babel Fish comes from the science fiction trilogy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The fish is placed into one's ear, where it then translates all incoming languages.

[17] Robert Wallis suggests that the terms "psychedelic," "psycho-active," and "hallucinogen" are all too value-laden to be useful in academic analysis, implying either mental illness, or recreational drug use. To take the use of these substances seriously, he advocates the use of the term "entheogen," meaning "generating god or spirit within," instead (Wallis 1999).

[18] "Brian," personal communication.

[19] As I write, the UK Government has just announced a ten-year programme of road widening and bypass building. It seems likely that this will be met by a second wave of protests.

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Biographical Note

Andy Letcher is currently completing his Ph.D. at King Alfred's College, Winchester, for which he has been researching the role of the bard (a performer of poetry, story, music or song) in contemporary paganism. He was previously involved as a road protester, particularly during the Newbury bypass campaign.

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