Through The Faerie Glass: A Look at the Realm of Unseen and Enchanted Beings

by Kenny Klein

Contrary to today's sanitized depictions, the hobgoblins, imps, sprites, elves, and other magical creatures embodied in folklore can be quite nasty. Kenny Klein draws on folkloric recordancient songs, stories of forest and feild, legends, myths, and sagas to reveal faeries' true where they live; what they do; their desires, fears, powers, proclivities, and enchantments.

Entertaining and enlightening, this unique guide explores human interactions with MAb the Faerie Queen, Puck the prankster, Reynardine the fox man, Jenny Greeb Teeth, and an array of other legendary fey. IT includes rituals and spells for faerie protection, tells the reader how to enlist faerie help in finding lost objects or gaining inspiration, and offers practical tips for those who dare to venture into the world of the Faerie.

Genres: Fantasy, Fairies, Mythology, Reference

312 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 8, 2010

About the author

Kenny Klein is an author and musician currently living in New Orleans.

Reviews

[FlibBityFLooB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up out of curiousity since I had read a large number of novels in 2010 that deal with the world of fae. The premise of the book certainly sounded interesting, with chapters ranging from Changelings to Faerie Sexuality.

I have to say that the author failed to impress me due to his lack of literary finesse. He was all over the place! One page was focused on Scottish or IRish folklore, then he jumped to Genesis from the bible, followed by Zeus in Greek Mythology. He jumped between so many different mythologies/religions that it was dizzying at times, and usually didn't make sense for the focus of the book.

My other big gripe with the book was that the beginning sounded like a really bad role-playing or D&D game master story. As an example:

"You felt brave. Sheathing your iron knife, pushing your quiver of bronze-tipped arrows aside, you approached. The meeting was tense at first. Language was a barrier. But in a short time you showed this talented hunter that you were friendly."

Between the silly role-play dialogue and his preachy antics at the beginning telling the reader that he/she had all sorts of misconceptions about fairies (did I really say that I thought Disney Fairies were the ideal), I almost gave up on the book :P

Only reason I gave it a chance in the end is because I find the mythology surrounding fae very interesting and I hoped that the quotes from all the Shakespeare, songs, and poems would be enough to make the book interesting enough to read despite the stupidity of the author. I should have known better.

[Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yesterday I read Through the Faerie Glass by Kenny Klein, a book I had high hopes for and very much wanted to like. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. I decided to review it here to share my thoughts on it with everyone.
This book is a truly mixed bag, with good material and points side by side with bad. One of the most frustrating things when reading it is that the author often states information without any references of sources, leaving the reader unable to track down how factual something is, or what an idea is based on. His bibliography is extensive but random, with everything from the Rees's Celtic Heritage and Yeats to the Bible and modern fiction novels. It is also difficult at many points to follow what the author is saying as he will make one statement at one point and then a contradictory statement later; he goes around and around about the Fey being human folk memories of people meeting more primitive peoples, or being Gods, or being supernatural, for example, intermixing theories together and stating them each on their own. He is particularly set on the Faeries being the ancient Picts who were driven into the hills, he says, by the Celts and their iron technology, although he also says the Picts themselves may be Otherworldly, magical, shamanic, etc.,. This theory was a pet one of Gerald Gardner and featured in the novel The Mists of Avalon but there is absolutely no evidence, archaeological or folkloric, to support the idea.
Looking at the good points first the book starts with a warning against the Victorian view of faeries, and advises that the Fey are more complex and potentially dangerous than little garden sprites. The book also includes excerpts of many traditional pieces including the Ballad of True Thomas, Tam Lin, and other traditional folk songs or poems about faeries. The book also includes some good genuine folklore and belief that can often be ignored in other modern books, like the Selkies marrying human husbands or the Fey stealing children and brides.
Now intermixed within the good we see the bad. I've already mentioned his belief that the Picts were the Faeries and this becomes the crux of several problematic points. He says the words fairies and pixies are directly from the term Picts, which is just not etymologically sound. Pict is from the Latin for painted; pixie is of unknown origin, and fairy is from the Latin for fate.He states that the Irish word Sidhe means mound dweller (it means fairy hill) and is derived from the name for the Picts who lived, he claims, in underground homes. He states that iron is a good protection against faeiries (true) but he says its because the Picts would have feared the strange new metal or else associated it with death and warfare. He also claims that the reported time difference between our world and Fairyland comes from Celts who visited with the Picts and ingested psychogenic plants that distorted their sense of time, creating a false sense of being in another world; because, he says, the Picts were shamans who used psychotropic plants and apparently gave them out to untrained visitors.
Getting away from the Pictish nonsense, he also is very fond of the idea that Gods are actually fairies, a reverse of what many fairy faith and Celtic pagans believe. So instead of the gods being reduced into fairies, or put into the category of the aos sidhe, he says that the gods are fairies themselves along the lines of traditional pixies, selkies, etc., He says that Rhiannon is an underworld horse fairy. Cerridwen is a bird fairy because in her myth she turns into a bird twice, and the Sumerian/Hebrew goddess Lilith is an owl fairy. Surprisingly Llew is not a bird fairy, but a Sun God, so maybe its especially goddesses? Although he does say Odin is a fairy (and that Tyr is Odin), so, I don't know. Which sums up a lot of this book.
His section on Samhain is comic, with a very interesting discussion about how the Celts believed that Death (capital D) was wandering around on Samhain and could freely take anyone It felt like. So, he says, the Celts dressed up as ghosts to trick Death into thinking they'd already kicked it, and they placed lit turnips in front of their homes to signal that Death had already been there. Because apparently he thinks that Death leaves a glowing turnip as a "Death was here" marker; I assume so that It isn't wasting It's time going back to the same houses It's already been to. I found this extremely funny.
The author also mixes in a lot of Middle Eastern and Hebrew material with the Celtic and talks a lot about Greek Nymphs and Dryads in a Celtic context which I thought was a bit odd, but neither good nor bad. Alright the bit about Druids sleeping by streams to receive inspiration from naiads was bad, and that bit about "Cailleach bheara" being the title of the banshee when she takes the form of a deer...um, yeah, that was kind of painful.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it. There are good points but not nearly enough to outweigh the awful. I'm not going to bother with the second book about Fairy Tale rituals. I'm kind of surprised there is a second book, but I guess people who don't know better can't discern the quality of the material. Or they just don't care.

[Steve Cran]

Magickal people like to work with magickal beings. One example of a magickal being would be a fairy. Modern literature often time s portrays these magickal being as childlike, innocent, helpful and playful. The reality, however, is much different. Faeries can be hazardous to your health.



Where do faeries live? Some say they live in an alternate realm or maybe in a natural setting like forests, hills, oceans, ponds and caves. Faeries are not always small sometimes they can be giants or human size. Some faeries will even take on the form of certain animal life and plant life.



The Land of the Fey could be the underworld or maybe a realm between heaven and hell. Some say that the land of the fey is a parallel world to our own. To get their one must cross a body of water or a river of blood. In the land of the fey times runs rather differently. Some of the legends discussed in the book show mortals living in the land of the fey for a about 7 years and when they return home they find out that hundreds of years have passed and all of their family is dead. A most prominent example of this is the story of Rip Van Winkle.



If a mere mortal should visit the land of the fey they should never they should never eat faerie food or drink faerie beverages. To do so would bar you from returning to your world. In some stories it is even forbidden to talk to other faeries in the land off the fey.



Faerie music is very enticing. It is so enticing that when humans hear it they become enchanted. Once enchanted they often forget their everything about their former life. People who have returned from the land of the Fey often are absent minded from still thinking about Faerie Music.



A trip to to Faerie land can produce one of three effects. The first effect is that it kills you. The second is that it can leave you insane. Third you come back normal but you are unable to tell others of your experience.



Related to the three outcomes is the questions why do faeries seek to interact with humans? If humans die in Faerie land there is often a legend that the Faeries have to sacrifice someone to the devil every seven years. So instead of choosing someone from their family they choose a human. Some faeries like Glastigs, vampire faeries, try to kill humans and eat humans. In the songs "Reynardine and Mr Fox a faerie man tries to seduce a mortal woman so he can eat her later on. The merfolk like to seduce sailors and drown them.



Humans and faeries have been coupling for ages. A woman maybe kidnapped by a faerie king and and become enchanted by the music. Niahm took Thomas to the land of the fey for seven years and mated with him. After seven years he was released. He had faerie sight after this and could only speak the truth. Selkies are water faeries who look like seals. Many stories have them taking human form and marrying a mortal. After a certain amount of time they long for their marine environment and so they return leaving their forlorn mortal lover behind.



Christian legend has it that faeries used to bee angels and that when the war broke out between Satan and the God they remained neutral. As a result hell would not take them and they were also rejected by heaven. So they live in limbo and have to give the devil a sacrifice every seven years. Tam Lin was one such human, but fortunately for him he was able to flee.



Faeries are afraid of Iron it makes them weak. If a person wears Iran it will keep the harmful faeries away. Tying a red string around a door knob also keeps faeries away. To keep the faeries happy you can leave them little gifts like shiny marble, rum laced milk and tin foil balls. Faeries like sweets. Kobulds are helpful house faeries.



There is some magick involving the faerie folk.



If you are missing an object. Hold up something small and shiny and offer it to the faery if they return the missing object. Put it in a jar for them to see. Say "If you return my lost object you have this marble"



Dryads are tree spirits and they can be very helpful.



1. Find an oak tree and walk around it three times clockwise. For each revolution you say "weave the enchantment well"



2. stopping say the phrase "Lovely Spirit of the tree grant the wish I ask of thee" think of what you want. hold a coin in your hand if you want money.



3. Leave the faerie a gift like a lock of hair, wet kiss or cloth. Then back away from the tree and leave the circle in tact. Do not look back. Let the Dryad work their magick. Remember that when your wish is granted leave them a gift such as sweets, marbles, hair or cloth.



Contacting the Vila



For this one you will need a horse shoe, hair from a horse's main or tail and some horse dung.



1. Go into the woods

2. Put objects down and dance in a clockwise circle three times.

3. Stand barefoot on the object three times call out Wila

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book. Those hopes were hanged, dashed, drawn, quartered, and immolated, all by the time the first chapter was finished.

Klein spends his pages in the first chapter berating his readers, suggesting that they are incredibly stupid if they should believe that any faerie, ever, could ever be inclined to be nice (despite the stories to the contrary and some of the examples he provides himself later). Besides being a waste of paper and ridiculously long-winded, it is also highly offensive. He treats his reader like a child, and judging from the way he does it, he must be incredibly nasty to children.

Beyond the personal insult I felt, this man cannot be called a writer. Anyone who has ever written anything worth reading knows that you cannot exclude your readership by being rude, and especially not in the first chapter. But it's worse than that: nearly everything Klein asserts as fact in this book is false. Sometimes it is a misconception, other times a poor interpretation, and still others an outright lie.

This book is entirely false from cover to cover (with the exception of some of the songs and collection references he inserted awkwardly). Klein purports to collect lore, legend, myth, culture, etymology, and history and assemble them to reveal patterns. The truth of the matter is that most, if not all, of his facts are completely false and tailored to suit whatever his strange agenda is (and his etymological skills are that of a snail). It is clear to anyone who has studied the above listed disciplines that he is wrong on every page that contains his own thoughts.

He turns stories of rescue and sudden love into stories of rape. He takes stories of disappearances and turns them into human sacrifices. Stories of heartbreak and jealousy become stories of cruelty and heartlessness. Some he misrepresents directly in the telling rather than the interpretation, twisting the tale into something that neither I nor my peers have ever heard in folk tradition--all the while claiming to present the true, traditional story.

I could rant about the horrors of this man's literary ethics for hours, but now I will move on to that strange agenda I wrote about. For some strange reason, Klein wants most of all to vilify anything remotely otherworldly, and openly suggests that they are all nothing but sex-addicted murderers. All otherworldly beings, in his mind, have the same underlying nature: that of considering humans their sexual toys and their objects of sacrifice, neither of which has a basis in folklore. Despite the broad spectrum of Faeries in his examination (and the even broader kinds he conveniently left out), and despite their very different types of behavior, he chooses to say that they are all exactly the same in nature. If this book were about any people that everyone believed existed, Klein would be labeled a racist for how sweepingly and unjustly he maligns the Fey. The book would be considered hate material.

The truth of the matter is that Faeries, like Man, can be good or evil, or simply be people with flaws, eccentricities, problems, and jealousies. The way they go about dealing with them varies as much as it does with Man. Man has important cultural distinctions that determine his behavior. So does Faerie, but the variety is even more dramatic when one considers that the "Faerie Race" is not a single race at all, but a plethora of beings (species, we might say?) that could never be reconciled into homogeneity. Man and Faerie are not that different, and the similarity between our world and Faerie is what connects us and allows us to relate; it is why Man longs for magic and why Faerie wonders at human will; it is why maids slip off with Faerie men; it is why the Selkie maid leaves immortal seas to live as a fisherman's wife until she must mourn his death. Faerie is a mirror of our world: different in its form and direction, but ultimately the same. We are each other's foil.

No one's perfect, Kenny Klein. Not the Fey, not us, and most definitely not you. Look down and try to move your legs: your high horse might turn out to be a kelpie (we should be so lucky!). At last, I have this to say: may you meet, sir, as many faeries as can be, and may all of them know what you think of them.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Field Guide to the Little People before this particular book on faeries so when I picked this one up, I thought it was going to be kind of along the same lines: pretty straight forward of the whys and hows of faeries. Actually they're more like a collection of essays. Not in and of itself bad but if it's not really your learning style, or you're looking for something a little simpler to get into, this might not be your bag.

In all honesty, I had some trouble getting into this book. I wouldn't say it's overwrought but I just found my mind wandering at far too many parts of the book. Yes, the lore is fascinating and some of the tales are pretty cool but overall, I would have liked something a little more concise than such a thorough analysis of Faerie. I wasn't expecting it.

There were parts that I ravaged through. For instance, I found it absolutely amazing how closely faerie lore and the Old Testament mirror each other and how, according to the Old Testament, there were multiple gods that created the world, not just one. But it was that one that decided to make his own world, Eden, that can likely mirror what we know of Faerie. Just those parallels Klein drew I thought were immensely fascinating.

But the rest of it, I think you really need to be in a particular mindset to read through this book. Mainly, you need to be ready to sit through lectures about theories and deep analysis of old writings. At times I felt like I was reading one of my English texts (not actually your standard text but a lot of them were filled with essays that read like this book) so I thought it was a little off-putting.

I can't really use this book as reference for any of my work simply because it's not too easy to reference anything. I much prefer something along the lines of an encyclopedia where information is easily obtained. Here I'd have to wade through too much information to find what I was looking for. What information I gathered from it has proven pretty useful and believe me, it offers a lot of worthwhile information, but I wasn't thrilled with the execution.

If you're looking for what is rightly a collection of essays on the theories and analyses of the faerie world, you'll want to read this book just to develop your knowledge of the Fair Kind. But if you're looking for something for, say, writing your own work and need something to reference, I'd recommend Field Guide to the Little People. I won't say don't read this book. In fact, I think anyone that's looking to write about faeries, or just learn more about then in general, should read this book and take notes because it offers some insightful information. But I don't think a second reading is all that rendered.

[Andrew Sapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kenny Klein is a musician, and it is through his knowledge of traditional folk ballads and folklore that Through the Faerie Glass is written. In doing so, he draws from a rich well, and does a good job of weaving the threads from varies songs and stories into a fairly comprehensive view (as far as I can tell) of faeries and The Otherworld they inhabit. Of course, the faeries from these traditional sources aren't your flower fairies or Disney-sanitized sprites. They are more often than not indifferent to the human suffering they cause, perfectly capable of torture and murder without qualm. However, they are, on occasion helpful and even romantic, taking mortals as their lovers and/or bestowing gifts upon them. The best advice, which Klein frequently gives, is to just leave them alone. Oh, and best to refer to them as "The Good Folk," "The Gentle Folk," or "The Kindly Ones," just in case they're listening.

Klein is a good story-teller in his own right, and his skills make this a fun book to read. His scholarship is, I think, generally sound. He's clearly done his research, though Celtic and British sources are the backbone of this work. He includes lyrics to songs alongside retelling classic stories like those of Arthur & Merlin, Tam Lin, the selkies & banshees, The Wild Hunt, Mab, and so on. His writing style is casual and conversational, and this is both a strength and a weakness to the book. While the stories are as accessible as sitting around a fire on a winter's night on the moors, they also leave one with a wish for clearer source references and on occasion less narrative and more analysis. Still, given the wealth of information (and an included glossary and bibliography), it's hardly a fatal flaw. All-in-all, Through the Faerie Glass is an enjoyable and informative book.

[Chaeya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Kenny's approach with this book, and I do like the casualness of it. Especially right now when I don't want anything too literary. It's like a conversation with Kenny. He did do his research, and I understand his dilemma of having to include so much in so small a book. I have other books on fairies, and they are exactly what he explained in the beginning - the cute little tinkerbells. However, I don't think he was being overly negative, I think he presented them in a very straight-forward, unbiased light.

In fact, I love playing a faerie at the fair, but I've known many of the stories he talks about in the book, and many of them don't have a happy ending. However, it will not stop me from prancing and faerie dust. It's just my nature.

[Tabitha · Rating 1 out of 5]

very slow, unable to read the entire book. i love faerie books and can't remember the last time I was unable to read a full book.

[Musidom Duma · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has multiple stories of the same story. Variations and more variations of the faerie story... The great thing is.. It discusses mounds... And best of all.... You will find a story that resonates, the best with you. Maybe you are pagan and work with faeries? Love the book. Great read.

[Marilag · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a quick review, 'cause it actually deserves some words of "I approve." Mostly because I actually liked this book as opposed to the one about rituals and the "dark and erotic side to fairy tales." While most of the writing is familiar and repeats some of the ideas from the other book (I did get a little tired of the whole "all sexually active faeries are nymphs" theories), Klein has a much more comprehensive explanation of the faery realm and the Welsh-Irish-Scottish folklore behind them.

It was good stuff, enough for me to be writing pages of notes about it. But nevermind that part. I'm a little fairy-tale-obsessed, yes I know.

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nowhere near as good as I'd hoped.

There were some interesting bits and I liked the layout of the stories.

However, Klein's writing style did not sit well. There was something I really didn't like about the way he addressed the reader!

[Eman McAllister · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found it very interesting I really liked a lot of the Fax found out a few other things that I didn't understand and movies like white berries were afraid of iron which in maleficent she was and now that makes complete sense anyway great read

[Shona Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting take on old faerie lore and the current fairy tales that we grew up with as a child.

I wish I had this book when I was taking folklore studies in college.