Fairies are described as "fantastic and subtle creatures" with a woman's body and butterfly wings, who live in the forests and are protective of nature.They are part of mythology and legends of many peoples.Today, after childhood, it is difficult to find anyone who believes in fairies.However, for centuries, their existence was a belief rooted in many cultures.As spiritual beings, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the twentieth century, caught the attention of the members of the British spiritualist groups . Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , was a convinced spiritualist, as we saw in the entry of Mysterious Who was Arthur Conan Doyle.Sherlock Holmes's "father" was involved in the case at hand today: The Cottingley Fairies .For the famous literary and medical doctor, there was no doubt, the fairies existed .Join us to discover what happened and if it was all a dwarf or reality.
Arthur Conan Doyle believed in the possibility of communicating with him after the death of one of his children during World War I.For this reason, he was also a strong advocate of the existence of spirits and spiritual beings and, therefore, it is not surprising that he thought that the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies were real.
The Cottingley Fairies.Engano or reality?
He receives the name of Cottingley Fairies a group of five photographs taken between 1917 and 1920 in which fairies and other fantastic beings appear on the banks of the Cottingley stream in Bradford (England).They were taken by two cousins who lived near the course of water and raised a great controversy at the time.
1.The protagonists
The protagonists of the Cottingley Fairy story were two cousins who lived together in a country house near the city of Bradford, in England. Elsie Wright , the oldest, was 16 years old when the first photos were taken in 1917 and despite her youth she was highly regarded locally as an artist. Since he was 13 years old, he worked in a photographic laboratory in which he did, among other things, photographic compositions of fallen soldiers in the front with his relatives.The youngest of the cousins, Frances Griffith, had She was 9 years old and had left South Africa with her mother to settle in her relatives' house the Wright.
Elsie's father was an engineer and very fond of photography.I present the equipment to his daughter and her niece.I reveal the photos they had taken, found two in which the girls were seen with the Cottingley Fairies . The father thought it was a montage and did not give them importance, but the mother believed that they were real and commented on the fact at the meeting of the Bradford Theosophical Society to which she belonged and the photographs acquired notoriety.The Theosophist leader, Edward Gardner, saw and gave as real the Photographs in the early 1920s.That same year, Arthur Conan Doyle was commissioned to write for the «The Strand Magazine» an article about fairies as a Christmas theme and I use the first two photographs .In 1921, he illustrated a second article on the subject with the 3 photographs that the girls took post above.Conan Doyle and Gardner considered the photos authentic, but not everyone was convinced.Were they real or a trick?
2.Photographs
As you might have imagined, the photographs were a trick , but the girls did not recognize him until the 80s, being old, and kept saying that, although 4 of the photos were fake, the fifth one not , and that they had really seen the Cottingley Fairies .The images were taken in two groups.The first ones in 1917 and the first last in 1920.
Elsie acknowledged having drawn the fairies following the illustrations of a children's book to which she added some wings.I cut them out in cardboard and subject them to the vegetation with pins.The girls, from 1921, lost all interest in the theme of Fairies and even began to find them very heavy.children and lived away from the Bradford area where the photos were taken.The photos were forgotten until, resurrected in an interview granted in the 60s, the girls, already adults, began to recognize that perhaps they were not real.It was until an interview in 1981 that they recognized that the first 4 were forgeries, but claimed that the fifth did not .They confessed that the matter was out of their hands and Elsie Wright declared that at that time they could not march back since they felt too ashamed after having cheated the "author of Sherlock Holmes".
3.The Cottingley Fairies and Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle had no doubt that the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies were authentic.His belief in the spirits had led him to separate from his great friend the magician Houdini.In addition to reproducing the photos in articles, he wrote a book talking about the theme of fairies in 1922 "The coming of the fairies" and another in 1923 "The case for spirit photography".Arthur Conan Doylee even took the place to a famous medium of the time with several photographic plates.Although they failed to capture any image of Cottingley's Fairies, the medium did not hesitate to claim that the story was real.
Although the father of the girls and also the Kodak house believed that the photos were false , they could not prove it with the methods of the time and due to the poor quality of the originals.Many people thought that it was possible that the photos were real and that thanks to photography there would be a new world of incredible possibilities to explore.
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And if you want to delve deeper into the legends and rituals related to it As fairies, don't miss: 8 types of Fairies to discover.And now, tell us, did you know the history of the Cottingley Fairies? Do you think they were very illusive believing the story of the girls? Did they really think they saw fairies in the forest? Share your opinion with us! We will be happy to read it.
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