From Transylvania to Tunbridge Wells

 Queen of Elphame or "Elf-hame" (-hame stem only occurs in conjectural reconstructed orthography, in the folklore belief of Lowland Scotland and Northern England, designates the elfin queen of Faerie, mentioned in Scottish witch trials. She is equivalent to the Queen of Fairy who rules Faërie or Fairyland. The Queen, according to testimony, has a husband named "Christsonday".

Such a queen also appears in the legend of Thomas the Rhymer, but she is the queen of a nameless world in the medieval verse romance. The name "Queen of Elfland" is mentioned for her only in a later ballad (version A). Thomas the Rhymer's abduction by the queen was not just familiar folklore, but described as a kindred experience by at least one witch (Andro Man). The "Queen of Fairies" in Tam Lin may be the queen of the same world, at least, she too is compelled to deliver humans as "tithe to hell" every seven years.

In Scottish popular tradition the Fairy Queen was known as the Gyre-Carling or Nicnevin,

In one metrical legend, "The Faeries of Fawdon Hill" is where the Fairy Court is held, presided over by Queen Mab.

The actual text spelling is "Quene of Elfame" and other variants in the witch trial transcripts, and the supposition of a -hame stem, leading to the etymological meaning "Elf-home" in the Scots language), is speculative on the part of Robert Pitcairn, 

The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue lists only the Elfame and elphyne spellings, both defined as "Fairyland".Other spellings include: "Quene of Elphane" and "Court of Elfane" (accused witch Alison Pearson, "Court of Elfame" (Bessie Dunlop),"Queen of Elphen" (Andro Man)

The "Queen of Elphame" designation was only used in isolated instances in the 19th century.

Serious scholarship on Thomas the Rhymer, for instance, generally do not employ this spelling. But it was embraced by Robert Graves who used "Queen of Elphame" in his works. Usage has since spread in various popular publications.

It is not easy to find resources describing the Queen of Elphame. She did, however, appear in the legend of Thomas the Rhymer (c. 1220 – 1298.) He was said to be a laird and sort of a local prophet, who lived in the Borders region of Scotland. The tale described a man who was helped by the Queen of Elphame and returned from his time with her with the gift of prophecy. In one version of this text the mystical being is the queen of a nameless kingdom. In the translation of Thomas the Rymer by Robert Grave the queen says:

''I'm not the Queen of Heaven, Thomas,
That name does not belong to me;
I am but the Queen of fair Elphame
Come out to hunt in my follie.''

The Queen of Elphame appeared in many witchcraft trials. For example, she was linked to one in 1597 when Andro Man was accused of practicing magic. During his confession he claimed to have had an intimate relationship with the Queen of Elphame. According to his testimony, for more than thirty years he had been making love to and learning from the leader of the fairies. Andro Man said that he had several children with the Queen and she had granted him with gifts of knowledge and healing. Moreover, according to a legend based on the previously described ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, he claimed that he was also kidnapped by the Queen to have a sexual affair with her.

The Queen of Elphame meets Thomas. 

This figure reportedly used to meet with women as well. It is said for example that she appeared in front of two women who were believed to be witches – Bessie Dunlap and Isobel Gowdie. Bessie claimed that the Queen of Elphame came to her for the first time when she was in labor. According to both women, the queen visited them many times. She reportedly taught them how to heal people and animals.

The legend of the fairy queen became an inspiration for many famous artists and writers. This character appeared in plays by Shakespeare and his followers. All of the fairies they presented in their texts may be associated with the Queen of Elphame.

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The Scottish Queen of Elphame reminds one of the Norse Freyja and her attributes. She is associated with magic, childbirth, and healing.  This goddess has been described as a young and beautiful woman who could steal the heart of any man

"The Arrival of the King & Queen of Fairies" - E Stuart Hardy. ( CC BY NC 2.0 )

Nonetheless, the Queen of Elphame is probably based on the goddess Nicnevin, also known as Nicneven and Nicnevan. Her name means ''the daughter of the divine''. Nicneven is a protective deity whose feast was connected with autumn celebrations, especially Samhain. In Celtic legends she was able to communicate with the spirits of the dead and was related to witchcraft and magic. The goddess was one of the inspirational deities in Druid traditions as well. She was believed to provide wisdom and magical ability.

Sir Walter Scott described her in Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft :

''(…) a gigantic and malignant female, the Hecate of this mythology, who rode on the storm and marshalled the rambling host of wanderers under Her grim banner. This hag (in all respects the reverse of the Mab or Titania of the Celtic creed) was called Nicneven in that later system which blended the faith of the Celts and of the Goths on this subject. The great Scottish poet Dunbar has made a spirited description of this Hecate riding at the head of witches and good neighbors (fairies, namely), sorceresses and elves, indifferently, upon the ghostly eve of All-Hallow Mass. In Italy we hear of the hags arraying themselves under the orders of Diana (in Her triple character of Hecate, doubtless) and Herodias, who were the joint leaders of their choir, But we return to the more simple fairy belief, as entertained by the Celts before they were conquered by the Saxons.''

In Scottish folklore, Nicneven was considered to be the Queen of the Fairies, but she was also well known in the other parts of the Celtic world. Sometimes, she was described with some similarities to the Greek goddess Hecate, but normally she was believed to be a Scottish fairy. Her story is full of contrasts and some even saw her as a diabolical goddess.

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The Queen of Elphame is also commonly seen as one of the symbols of Fairyland, which is still important to the people who follow some pagan belief systems. Although Christianity doesn't allow its followers to believe in fairies, many priests claim that the creatures could be representations of angels.

Fairies became a popular art motif during the 19th century. They appeared in many novels, operas, poems, and paintings. With the growing popularity of fantasy novels and movies, descriptions of the Queen of Elphame and her court started to appear even more often.

People in many regions of the world believe that they have seen real fairies. They sometimes build fairy houses for the Queen of Elphame and her court. No matter how different and advanced from ancient people one feels, it seems that there is still a need for similar supportive spirits in today’s world.

‘Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending, With Butterflies, Flowers, and Jewels Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things.’ By Sophie Gengembre Anderson. ( Public Domain )

Top Image: The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania. (1849) By Joseph Noel Paton. Source: Public Domain

By Natalia Klimczak

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From Transylvania   to Tunbridge Wells
 

’The Fair Folk’
 Members of the Scythian Royal House were said to be of great beauty and wondrous to behold. We remember that they practised selective breeding and that only the fairest and most pure could be selected as queens and kings.
 

Tall in stature and with the palest of complexions and the reddest of red-gold hair, framing faces in which were set eyes of emerald green, these  beings ere magnificent to look upon admittedly, but beauty isn’t just skin   deep, only to the fool.
 

 Beauty is a condition of the psyche and where those who have suffered a life of   stress and tension, of bitterness and regret are concerned, we should not be   surprised that they age quicker or look uglier, more mean of spirit that   those whose lives have been led in truth and grace.
 

 Added to their stunning symmetry, the Elves were naturally   transcendent of spirit and their queens and kings were insulated from the   common round of nuisances and petty concerns by minds which were bred for   deeper matters.
 

 Add then an inner state of being whose grace and equilibrium is reminiscent   of the grace of the gliding swan, to a physical form of beauty attained by   centuries of selective breeding, and you obtain a being whose elegance and   poise is nothing less than otherworldly.
 

 Indeed the swan in fairy culture, though representing an anatomical and   physiological condition within the fairy brain, also represents that very   serenity of being that that neuro-physiology effects within the fairy   mind and is consequently seen manifestly in the visage and deportment   of that race’s queens and princesses and kings and princes, the swan maidens   and swan knights of legend.
 

From Transylvania to Tunbridge Wells
 In folklore such intimations of beauty come down to us in stories of elf   maidens who, in reflecting such poise and charm as could only be manifest in   enlightened beings, are portrayed as swans on the evening waters of   moonbathed lakes who enthrall the onlooker and captivate his soul forever.
 

 A perfect example of such eulogized beauty is the story of the Leanaan   Sidhe, an Irish female fairy who has developed in literature as being   partly muse and partly vampire. She represents the state of   grace and perfection of the Elven Princess.
 

 Memory however prompts those who tell of her to relate that her embrace is   death. In Transylvania she is Stregoica, In Greece  she is the Lamia; in Persia, Arabia and Israel  she is Lilith and An, and just outside Tunbridge Wells  she is ’La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, immortalized in Keats’ poem   of the same name.
 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
 

Oh what can ail   thee, Knight at arms,
 Alone and palely loitering?
 The sedge has withered from the Lake
 And no birds sing!
 

 Oh what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
 So haggard and so woe begone?
 The Squirrel’s granary is full
 and the harvest’s done.
 

 I see a Lily on thy brow
 With anguish moist and fever dew,
 And on thy cheeks a fading Rose
 Fast withereth too -
 

 I met a Lady in the Meads,
 Full beautiful, a faery’s child
 Her hair was long, her foot as light
 And her eyes were wild -
 

 I made a garland for her head,
 And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone
 She look’d at me as she did love
 And made sweet moan -
 

 I set her on my pacing steed
 And nothing else sa all day long
 For sidelong would she bend and sing
 A faery’s song -
 

 She found me roots of relish sweet
 And honey wild and manna dew
 And sure in language strange she said
 I love thee true -
 

 She took me to her elfin grot
 And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
 And there I shut her wild wild eyes
 With kisses four.
 

 And there she lulled me asleep
 And there I dreamed, Ah Woe betide!
 The latest dream I ever dreamt
 On the cold hill side.
 

 I saw pale Kings and Princes too
 Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
 They cried, La belle dame sans merci
 Thee hath in thrall.
 

 I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
 With horrid warning gaping wide,
 And I awoke, and found me here
 On the cold hill’s side.
 

 And this is why I sojourn here
 Alone and palely loitering;
 Though the sedge is withered from the Lake
 And no birds sing - 

                                                    John   Keats                                                          

  In England, during the 1300s, this vampire maiden was to be found in the Home Counties and her name, the ’Maid of Kent’  pins her down as being, according to John Ferguson, the Countess of   Salisbury who, at a summer ball in Calais was said to have let slip her   Garter, which King Edward III retrieved with haste and, lifting the accouterment into the air, pronounced "Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense".   As to her wandering around near Tunbridge Wells when the unfortunate knight-in armor (from her point of view an early attempt at perfecting the art of tinning fresh meat) met her, she like him was returning   from the Calais festivities when he must have caught up with her on the leafy track that has now become the famous A21. We will catch up with them in a   minute.   Scholars once dismissed Professor Margaret Murray for several things,   one being that the Garter incident elicited an over-reaction from Edward  if the Garter was of no ritual significance. But however scholars may dismiss the incident, the question will not go away.   In a period not noted for its moral rectitude why would the King bother   threatening anyone in connection with their possible attitude towards an item of women’s underwear? 

Murray has already pointed out exactly how significant the Garter actually is and has given numerous   instances to support a concept that goes beyond mere theory. There was no point in making a song and dance about the Countess’ Garter unless the   item had a dangerous connotation attached to it; which indeed it had.   The Garter or Gautier, was a small, buckled belt   worn by women around the top of the left thigh or just below the left knee on   men. Apart from being a menstrual badge and a semantic symbol of the womb and   the Grail, it was also a representation of the serpent eating its own tail. The Garter therefore was the alchemical   symbol of the Orobourus, the serpent who, in consuming itself, has become a Dragon, a vampire. Here we will   remember the opening prose at the beginning of this collection of essays.   The Garter was the ’witches belt’, the Devil’s badge and   a dynastic emblem of the fairy race that descended from Lilith and Cain,  who were the enemies of the Church and Mankind, according to the   church, if not according to the fairies themselves. 

  The subsequent founding of the Order of the Garter by Edward III,   to be followed in 1397 by the re-emergence of a Dragon Court in   another related Angevin line under King Sigismund of   Luxembourg, made both orders Garter and Dragon institutions   using the orobourus as their emblems.   The Garter as the alchemical orobourus is still an   emblematic component of the old Angevin Imperial and Royal Dragon Court  today, under the Grand Mastership of its Vere head, a senior   heir of the senior Houses of Anjou and Lorraine who is himself   a gartered knight of the Orcadian Clan Donnachaid, which   demonstrates the ubiquity of the Garter symbol amongst the ancient   families. The Garter denoted rank in later witchcraft  which, as we have seen, originated as Druidism.   The Orobourus, the reptilian symbol of completeness is the Sumaire,   the serpent that encircles and spirals to create an inhaling vortex, a black hole that draws all energy and life into it.  Sumaire is pronounced shimmarie as we have seen, and in   being reminiscent of the word shimmer it suggests a relationship with   that word which means to glow radiantly as with a light that had the power to   fascinate perhaps.   It is a pertinent meditation when one remembers that from the dawn of time   the Elven Gods were called the Shining Ones. Here   there is also a relationship with the words Shaman and Shamanism,   a practice rooted in Northern Asia, the homeland of the speakers of ’Ar   Sidhe Cantu’, being the Sundered Elven Tribe who went east.   Like the legend of the fascinating allure of Fairy Gold, the Leanaan   Sidhe and the Countess of Salisbury appeared so beautiful as to disarm their prey with an enthralling inward glamour of glowing radiance.   Having disarmed their victims thus they drew either the blood or the life   force or both from them, leaving them to wander forever, as Keats  suggests, like living corpses in vain pursuit of a love and beauty so   splendid, so transcendent and so complete.  Fairy fascination is a universal theme which in this respect   suggests an innate ability to hypnotize people, though this isn’t the whole   story. In the tales concerning people’s encounters with Elphame,   there is a quality of transcendence about their narratives which will be   dealt with later.  

Love on a Four Lane Blacktop  The element of translucence and light that is attributed to fairies can also   be found in the stories relating to the shamans and kings of Eldorado  in South America where these individuals are also referred to   as the ’Shining Ones’ which is a common epithet, as we know,   for the Elves of Eurasia.  Jesus is said to have manifested this capability in the presence of   the patriarchs and such an ability is closely connected with the Qabalah  in its numerous manifestations and variations.   Both Jesus’ mother Mary and his wife Mary Magdalene were   called the ’crystal wombs from whence shined forth the light of god’,   a description which suggests strongly the Tantric and Qabalistic  concept of Starfire.   We return to the eulogized dual carriageway on the outskirts of Tunbridge   Wells - the A21 - and our tired but patiently waiting traveller,   the ’Maid of Kent’, the Countess of Salisbury and   the packed lunch she nestles so lovingly to her pale and perfect breasts. In   her role as the vampire, we also find her, like the Leanaan Sidhe,   described as a fairy lover and, as the Garter Queen, a witch   into the bargain.   The Garter intimates that she is of the Dragon Clan  and hence we have the Fairy, the Witch, the Vampire  and the Dragon in one unitary identity manifest in a   vision of fatal and deadly beauty who, in this instance is shagged out and   nursing a serious hangover, after a week long knees up in Calais and a   murderous crossing back to England on the overnight ferry.   We will leave this Shamanka to ’Steal The Edge’ and leg   it, consigning her portion of Corned Beef to wander the Earth looking   for her and the return of his mortal soul. "You should have read the   instruction manual first sonny, contrary to the guff in the Gothic Novels and   Moving Pictures, true love is how vampires are really made. Next time round -   breathe in The Breath of Ravens and run for it, dummy". We will   move on.   Such characters as the English Countess of Salisbury and the Irish   Leanaan Sidhe in historical accounts are sometimes remorseful and cursing   of the nature that condemns them to utter loneliness, sometimes they are   unrepentant, predatory and without remorse.   It depends upon the motivation of the chronicler as to who does and feels   what. It has been pointed out that the Knight in the poem, which Keats  obtained from a far earlier source, might have transcended himself but looked   the way he did purely to outsiders, whilst living in an entirely different   dimension himself.   Having said that, the pain is all too real and the act of ’stealing the edge’   by Dragon Princesses is actually what does awaken the Vampire  in the Fairy. It is doubtful in the very rare instances where   this still can sometimes happen, that these females know what they are doing,   but instead they act archetypically, like their ancestors, as an unconscious   but necessary catalyst in a process of spiritual development which, for   anybody’s money, could lose nothing of its impact by being a bit more gentle.   One might imagine that seven years of living hell and a hunger unquenched by   Raw Steak, Pastrami or Carlsberg Special Brew is much too much to have to pay   for enlightenment.   However, the author amongst others has always insisted upon a biochemical basis for magic and transcendant states and the psychobiological basis   for such phenomena, including vampirism and the   enlightenment that is its concomitant can be explained scientifically,   without relying on such old favourites as Iron Decifiency Porphyria or   on any of the other nonsenses that outsiders have suggested.  ’The Shining Ones’ If you are a cheery Elf and you have managed to avoid the   excesses of behavior and perception brought about by contact with your female   counterparts in Elphame, you might qualify for the epithet of ’Shining   One’, you most fortunate of all jammy bastards. If you have realized to   any extent that you are of the Clan, you will know that from the very   beginning the fairies were called the ’Shining Ones’.   This stems from the Sumerian era when ’The Controllers of   the Fate of Men’ were known as both the Anunnaki and the Anunnagi,   the former meaning "those who are manifest when Heaven meets Earth"   and the latter meaning simply ’Shining Ones’ or Star   Children. The two mean the same thing and refer to the nocturnal   habits of our ancestors as much as anything else. These habits are directly   related to the production and maintenance of certain hormones,   which then relate to the core meaning itself.   In particular the epithet ’Shining One’ was appended to Prince   Shamash, brother of Erishkigal, Queen of the otherworld. Shamash was the Uncle of Lilith and was also called the ’Prince   of Justice’. The fairies from very early on were hotly   in favor of law and order, a trait which manifested itself in an attention to   detail in social and legal matters that has earned them, as vampires,   a reputation in later centuries for being pathologically meticulous. 

  In Transylvania it is said that if you dropped grain in front of a vampire, it would stop to count the individual seeds, thus facilitating your speedy escape from danger. We may put this down to the pithy waggishness of peasant sarcasm, but we note the point all the same.  Shamash was therefore of the family of Sumerian Ubaid Gods who sired Cain and Kali Azura, and the race of Dragon   Kings who were the keepers of the ’Tablets of Destiny’ or Fate.   In their turn, Cain and Lilith Luluwa were the father and  mother of the fairies, the Elven Grail Queens and Kings of the   Dragon race so hated by the Church.   The ability to ’shine’, a phenomenon which can still be subjectively   experienced, is the result of a transcendent, balanced state of mind related   to certain processes connected with cellular rejuvenation. The ability is   rare enough and is an innate genetic capacity manifested in the outworking of   certain ’shamanic’ exercises related to ’climbing the Tree of Life’.  Gentry is a word which specifically means ’of the blood’  and is derived from the Latin gens. In this case, as in all   cases gentry strictly used to mean ’of the fairy blood’ or of the Dragon family. By misuse the word gentry has become related  to a class or station, particularly in British society, and is erroneously   associated, by attribution to the characters within that class, with a style   of behavior and a code of conduct that bears no resemblance to historical   actuality. 

 In its most basic sense the words gentleman or gentlewoman, in   British society, refers to individuals who are associated with, gain status   through and erroneous recognition from, their support of a hierarchical value   system which was established illegally by the Church through the Tudor  usurper Henry VIII, under the auspices of the earlier Roman doctrines  of temporal supremacy expounded within the fraudulent Donation of Constantine.   However, the British establishment, either through its Courts of Protocol,   College of Arms or its academic or judicial establishments, has no legal or legitimate customary right whatsoever to recognize or refute anybody or anything and their qualification, via such institutions, to determine who

   is or is not royal or of the blood is non-existent as they are not ’of the   blood’ themselves. However, their blanket refusal to recognize any European   title whatsoever has some redeeming element to it. The House of Vere  doesn’t recognize anyone else either! Including the Crown, its Court   of St. James and its College of Arms. Why should we.   Who are they anyway?   The British and European Hierarchies have their roots   originating in the class of roving tinkers and tallymen who, during the early medieval period, established fixed warehouses in towns and eventually became   settled merchant traders within these population centers.   Although to watch their antics in decades past it would seem as if they would   wish to give the impression that they were nobility, their blood lineage and   manners are not those of true nobility or royalty.   A prime example of the concept of nobility being affected by the   merchants can be seen in Renaissance Venice which, for all its   splendor and seeming nobility, was no more than a fancy but rather damp giant   warehouse, run by self elevated tradesmen who called themselves ’Patricians’.   Today Britain is run by these exact same sort of people. The   descendants of warehousemen and Norman thugs sit in the House of   Lords, another damp riverside warehouse, and call themselves Peers of   the Realm.   In 1998 the transient public servant Mr. Blair wished to scrap   hereditary privilege and replace the hereditary peers with new lords, doing exactly this in November 1999. Seventy-five percent of the old lords obtained   their hereditary titles from ancestors who were the settled merchants who had   bought their titles from impecuniary monarchs like Henry VIII or James   VI, whilst the remaining twenty-five percent are descended mostly from   the bully boys who accompanied the usurping bastard William of Normandy,   who was only recognized by his own nobles under the duress exacted upon them   by his father.   The remainder of the entourage present at the Hastings debacle   comprised of Flemish and Breton Nobles some of   whom had lived in England for many years. Assessing the risk of   backing their friend Harold Godwinson they resigned themselves to the  unpleasant but inevitable fact that he would lose and went along to ensure   that the ignorant Norman buffoon didn’t give away their English   lands to his marauding henchmen.   

Amongst these was Eustance de Vere, Jarl of Essex and  brother-in-law of Edward the Confessor. On Harold’s death, Vere  was pronounced King of England by the Witan. This   made Eustace’s right to the English Throne unquestionable under Saxon   Atheling Law, especially when compared to that of an illegitimate invader   who was so frightened of Eustace that he took hostages prior to the   invasion, in order to ensure Eustace’s complicity.   The de jure Kingship of England has, therefore, descended   through the Veres for over 800 years and in 1560 Edward de   Vere gave the Tudors a timely and friendly, though somewhat   esoteric reminder of this fact.   No one wanted William de Normande and all he did in seizing the throne   of England was commit an act of theft and treason accompanied by torture,   rape, murder and yet more theft and treason. And what will the ’new lords’   be if this Blair person gets his own way? More scrap dealers, bully   boys and warehousemen, elevated in payment for their political sycophancy and   installed as party Yes-Men. Why bother making the change, what’s the   difference?   The codes of conduct and styles of behavior developed down the centuries by   these misfits and usurpers have come to be thought of as the manners of the   ’gentry’. Such etiquette and standards of behavior are, however, rather of   the nature of a complex set of rules and protocols which have evolved from   the necessity for these individuals to reinforce to themselves and each other   their sense of identity. This need is born of the insecurity of the usurper   and the poseur, and the party games were initiated to ensure that those who   refuted such mores or refused to adopt them were ’excluded’.   In recent history one of the Mitfords was said to have assisted   in the development of a list of such styles of speech, patronage and behavior   which one of her nephews published in a book entitled ’Noblesse Oblige’,   which this author has perused.   Within its pages were lists of the ’U’ and non ’U’ words, affectations,   preferred schools, clubs and so one which, by their patronage or utilization   by others, would enable the fake aristocracy to determine whether any   individuals they encountered were ’our sort of people’, ie whether they were   ’U’ or non ’U’, meaning ’Upper-class’ or ’Non upper-class’.   What a cheek! Particularly when one knows full well that the Mitfords  were related to the Guinness family.   Situations similar to the foregoing represent yet another example of how the   chattering classes, the sons and daughters of arriviste tradesmen   masquerading as gentry, hide behind their sham rituals and their money,   hoping that, as the years drift languorously by, people will forget that they   were all descended from market traders whom the Scythians, the real   Nobility and Royalty, hated for being liars and cheats.   

When asked, Mitford said that the book was just a joke. Surprising   then that these ridiculous social rules were rife amongst her ’class’ before   she wrote them down and that they were indeed used to determine whether one   was fit company for their pseudo-aristocratic ’society’ or not.   Today sociologists are doing exactly the same thing by using classification   numbers to determine one’s social status. One could be anything from say - an   A1 category "social unit" - all the way down to a G3 and these   numbers are appended to one according to one’s job and income.   For instance, hilariously enough and for no good reason the author can think   of, a film star is an A1 "social unit",   whilst a dustman is something like a G2. In terms of   social value and input one would have thought that the dustman would have   been somewhere up in the high B’s at least, by quasi-Marxist sociologists’   standards.   If film stars went on strike for six months would you suffer more than if   dustmen went on strike for six months? Of course not. If dustmen took the   same amount of time out the country would be swimming in bacteria and   disease. If film stars went on strike, you would just watch repeats on the   telly or buy a talking parrot or a performing monkey. What difference is   there in terms of skill or in terms of social contribution, after all?   

Whether they are Marxist or Weberan sociologists or whatever,   they are the worst manifestation of middle-class attitudes, because it is   only the middle classes who would differentiate between themselves and other   classes and this is how you know that they aren’t Gentry.   The ancient gentry knew the value of a person’s contribution to   society and respected the person for making it. The true gentry  weren’t above grabbing a shovel when the need arose and mucking in and   mucking out with everyone else.   Only the elevated tinkery would expect someone else to do the work and only   the tinkery would think that, because they had risen so far in their own   estimation of themselves, the world owed them a living.   The Elven Queens and the Dragon Kings, the real   gentry of history, had no particularly complex hierarchy with which to   stratify or differentiate rank amongst themselves, they simply knew that they   were all of the fairy blood and were thus equal. This is   apparent in both the social structures of the d’Anu of Eire and   the Royal Danes of Scandinavia as late as 900 AD.   Under the present scheme of things where the medieval feudal system  has been built upon over the ensuing centuries by the succession of various   dynasties of tinker royalty in Britain and Europe,   we can see this insulating, snobbish mentality at work with its ’layers’ of   rank, determining ’layers’ or ’degrees’ of nobility or royalty. In the Merovingian  and Pictish Danaan cultures, one was a king or princess and   that was that. All shared the Sang Real and the San Graal.   Whether you reigned or not was immaterial.   Nowadays we have a system where the British throne is occupied by the   descendant of a foreign family almost arbitrarily selected for a task in   which, to all intents and purposes, they find themselves merely an impotent   figurehead. Under this individual there is stratified a complex series of   ranks, orders and accolades which, historically, were anyone’s for the   taking, as long as they had money; and which today you can still buy into at   the lowest rung by paying the College of Arms Eighteen hundred English   pounds.   If you can prove to them that you have "made a contribution to   society" either and at the least, by getting a university degree or by   having been trained to kill people, a nice coat of arms is yours for the   asking. You will then be an official Esquire and henceforth (though not   beforehand, one assumes) you will be considered to be "A Gentleman"   because you have a pretty piece of paper saying as much. In Ireland  the Chief Herald’s Office formerly issued applications for armorial bearing   upon which it was stipulated that the supplicant must be considered by the   Chief Herald to have reached "The Portal of Gentry".   How can anyone ’reach the portal of gentry’ ? How can there be a ’doorway   to blood’? This is yet another instance where language is eloquently   engineered to become completely ineloquent nonsense.   Every year the arguably unqualified monarch dishes out knighthoods and   orders, to worthies who are chosen at the fawning whim of some transient,   jumped-up public servant, mainly to self seeking individuals who have been   thought to have made a ’contribution’ to society.   Many of these knighthoods go to prancing luvveys, football managers and   industrialists - although both the former have already been paid a more than   adequate amount of cash for their dubious and ineffectual contribution -   whilst the latter who likewise have also been paid adequately for their self   seeking contribution have also assisted, by their greed, in turning the   planet into an orbiting swill bin.   Why are these people being rewarded for serving themselves and how can they   possibly be thought of as behaving like ’gentry’, when the most that they do   is produce useless consumer junk, infotainment and pollution? They have got   rich by creating jealousy, envy and enmity, and through the media their   dissemination of double standards has created a level of moral confusion   which has inevitably led to further social and economic division and   environmental damage. And for this they get a knighthood already?   

Two of the most atrocious investitures recently went to a grocer’s daughter   and the head of a country whose government refused, for forty years, to   recognize their nation’s responsibility for the treatment of civilians - whom   they used in chemical warfare tests - and prisoners of war whom they forced   to work to their deaths in military building operations.   Firstly, how can a grocer’s daughter be thought of as suitable material for   inclusion in an order that was so strictly intended for those of the royal   blood and secondly how can the most hated enemy of the British people in   recent history qualify either?   The Most Noble Order of the Garter, already trashed down the centuries   by its association with a motley assortment of pseudo-royal dynasts who had   no right to belong to it, let alone confer it on anyone else, had reached it   lowest ebb when those two individuals were granted membership.   The Order of the Garter was and still is an Angevin and   hence an Elven bloodline institution and on the death of Richard   III therefore, all rights to continue to own the Order of the   Garter died out in his line and by the laws of Sovereign inheritance   the Order then belonged to the senior heirs of the House of Anjou.   No subsequent House has the right to give the order to anyone, let   alone to a jumped-up bourgeois tradeswomen or a war criminal. The French  used to say that the British were a nation of shopkeepers. It   would appear that the British are a nation of shopkeepers reigned over by a   shopkeeper.   The Most Noble Order of the Garter is Britain’s premier Order of   Knighthood, in fact heraldically speaking it’s actually the second in   rank after the ancient Caledonian Dragon Court that spawned it   but who’s quibbling. The very word ’knight’ stemming from the Saxon cnecht  means ’to serve’ or a ’servant’.   When, in the name of God, Karaoke accepted, did Hirohito do   anything to serve the interests of the British people and when did he, or the   Grantham woman deserve to be invested with Britain’s most senior rank   of knighthood?   To direct Her Majesty to give out such degrees, either to pay   off a favor to a fellow member of the bourgeoisie, or suck up for diplomatic   reasons to a nation simply because it now has a bit of cash tucked away,   seems to me to be the worst manifestation of the bourgeois mentality yet to   be witnessed, especially when the present dynasty, it could be argued, appear   to have no historical right to give the Order out in the first   place.  Her Majesty’s son Prince Charles - who has a brain - has   publicly lamented the decline in standards in the English Language for years   and the author tends to share his concern. How can anyone ’become’ a   gentleman, a member of the gens - the Sangraal?  How can a piece of paper instantly make one into a member of a separate race.   

There is no indication in the small print that - in reality - one would have   to undergo a class-transplant at genetic level, so how can they have the   nerve to assume that they have the power to create or change a species,   simply by issuing a bit of calligraphised toilet paper and without having the   toadying supplicant to the altar of snobbery undergo a series of radical   medical procedures that don’t even exist anyway?   Have the British establishment perfected the art of Transubstantiation  I wonder? Are they too alchemists who can turn human lead into Fairy Gold?   This is yet another example of middle-class arrogance: the idea - typical of   Americans in particular who though, it must be said, inherited it from the   British - that if you have the money and the mouth you can buy the ’goods’.   However, race is not a saleable commodity, whatever any College of Arms  of questionable authority might say or imply, and whether one is of the   gentry or not, it never was and is still not a matter of social standing or   social badges, any more than real kingship is about ’rule’ or wearing tin   hats and dead weasels. Vermin in Ermine?   The real ’gentry’ or to give them another familiar epithet -   the Lords and Ladies - were just that. They   were by blood alone, the members of a genetic strain, the Dragon   and Grail families - the Fairy Blood.   One could not and cannot ’become’ a member of the gentry any more than one   can ’become’, by initiation or otherwise, a ’witch’, a ’vampire’, a ’magus’,   a ’dragon’, a ’fairy’ or an ’elf’.   All these are names which described the ’gentry’ and the latter   - elf - is a word which originates from albi meaning a white  or ’shining one’. From albi derives the French Cathar  name Albigensian (Albi + Gens) meaning - ’of the elven   blood’ - et quid erat demonstrandum.  The Pharisees  This curious and delightful name for the Elven race is a common   English rural folkword probably created by the addition of an extra syllable   to the word fairies, thereby making a double plural suffix. Pharisees  is simply Fairies-es, a bit like Tolkien’s double plural ’pocketses’   attributed to his character ’Gollum’ in Lord of the Rings.   A more obscure possible origin for the Pharisee epithet  however, may be found in the nature of the Elves themselves.   Some of their families were from mixed Pictish and Merovingian  bloodlines, and where the latter is concerned, it descended from Jesus  and had a Pharisaic origin. The word Pharisee itself stems from   the Hebrew parush meaning ’separated’ which by   blood the Elves indeed were.   In this particular context we should also remember the Celtic Church  which was Nestorian and Pharisaic in its doctrine and   structure. The Celtic Church supported the Fairy bloodline   of Jesus whilst also having strong Druidic associations, to the point in   fact where Jesus himself was considered to have been a Druid  and a Magus by his British kinsmen - the Elven Pendragons.  The Plantagenets  According to their own account of themselves and the accounts of subsequent chroniclers and historians, including Professor Vivian Green, the Plantagenets were descended from the fairy race. Certainly they shared a   common Scythian trait when riled, and that was a vile temper!   The Plantagenets, whose name was thought to derive from ’planta-genista’   - the ’plant of generation’ or ’Tree of Life’ - used a sprig   of the Broom, the ’plantagenista’, as one of their earlier   family badges. The seeds of the Broom plant are hallucinogenic  and were a well known part of the witches’ pharmacopoeia   throughout the Dark Ages and the Medieval Period.   It was said that the Plantagenets had two ancestral   grandmothers named Melusine, one the daughter of King Elinus   of Albany and the other the daughter of Baldwin du Bourg, King   of Jerusalem.   In the first instance the Plantagenets derived their name from   a princess named Plantina (possibly derived from Plantanu or Planta-Anu)   who was actually the younger sister of Maelasanu des Scythes or Melusine   McLean and this obviously means that the Plantagenets were not actually directly descended in the male line from Melusine  herself, who in a matriarchal Pictish system of inheritance,   was the senior daughter of King Gille Sidhean of Albany, and the heir   of her mother Queen Pressina or more formally The Queen Bruidhe-Anu   des Scythes.  Melusine certainly was the matriarch of the Angevin or Anjou   dynasty, but her senior heir and the first Count of Anjou was Maelo   de Vere, not Tortolf de Rennes, making the Plantagenet   dynasty descending from the younger sister Plantanu, a junior   branch of the Imperial and Royal House of Vere.   The Veres left Anjou in 800 AD and the Comite   of Anjou was divided and at length settled upon the heirs of Tortolf,   thereby giving the erroneous impression that they were the first and   therefore senior branch of the Angevin family which, according to the   records, is simply not the case.   

The second Melusine was in fact called Melisend, so the Plantagenets had no direct male connection with any Melusine at all, despite   the attempts of subsequent royal genealogists and amateur historians to make   it so. Nevertheless the Plantagenets, our younger Vere cousins, were still of the Blood Royal and they were   still of Elven Stock, and the discrepancies in their story seem   to add to, rather than detract from, their claims or the claims made for   them.   The popular, chronicled descent claimed for the Plantagenets  from Melusine was in fact via a cadet female Vere line -   that of Ida de Vere - a member of another junior branch of the Vere   family, specifically the Imperial and Royal House of Vere of   Constantinople and Jerusalem. Ida de Vere was the aunt of the   inaugurator of the Knights Templars, the Swan Knight Godfroi   de Vere de Bouillon and the ancestral granddaughter of Prince Maelo de   Vere d’Anjou and his mother - the much coveted Princess Maelasanu   McLean de Vere des Scythes - via Adolph de Vere de Guisnes.   The Plantagenets could however claim a line of unbroken male   descent from the late 800’s until the sad death in 1485 of Richard III  - argued by some to be the last true King of England. This junior   branch of the family managed to survive for about 600 years, which isn’t a   bad innings. Since then the British have suffered a succession of nondescript   church puppets who, out of generosity, one might call eighth-breeds at best.   With the death of Richard III the Garter died out in the junior   Plantagenet line and became, as a dynastic family Order of   the House of Anjou, the legitimate property of the already Gartered   Imperial and Royal House of Vere of Oxford, (the legitimate kings of   England by the will of the English people themselves) later to descend to the   Scottish and Irish Branches, the   latter whose seniority, on the death of the Vere Clan Chief, Lord   Adrian Hope-Vere - Laird of Blackwood - became confirmed in 1973.  Melusine’s father Elinus or Gille Sidhean was a   descendant of the Ulster Royal House of the Uilidian, the Fir   Bolg druids. Her mother was a bruidhe or judge-poetess   of Pictish royal descent from the Bruidhainn or (by   Roman error) Cruthainn remnant of the Tuadha d’Anu or Tuatha   de Danaan, as they are sometimes mistakenly called.   These were the Aes Dan or Aesir Danaan, the Elven   Gods of Eire and the Lords of the Calle Daouine of Caledonia or Northern   Pictavia. Melusine was a Dragon Princess, a Lamia,   and we will tell her story later.   The Plantagenets or Angevins became, after their   demise, a much sought after bloodline to be descended from, as if it were   implicitly understood that real Dragon blood made real queens   and kings. Queen Elizabeth the First, the great granddaughter of a   Welsh farmer and Margaret, Countess of Anjou, had broom pod   motifs sewn onto one of her gowns in celebration and assertion of her Anjou   ancestry.   She is known to have had two coronations, the first and most important of   which was a pagan, ’fairy’ coronation held in public on the   Mayday prior to her Church investiture as queen of England. Following this   event Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, staged the Windsor Stag   Ride incident and killed the beast before the Queen as a gentle reminder   of who the real Kings of England and the Greenwood were.  

 Even today the biographers of the present constitutional Heads of State of   Britain proudly boast of that family’s Anjou descent and   the author supposes that we, the senior heirs of the senior branch of that   dynasty, should be flattered, despite the fact that such a descent is   tortuous in the extreme and traces a line therefore, that looks as crooked as   a donkey’s hind leg.   Boasting something like 2000 connections to Edward III, who was only a   member of a junior Anjou line, this originally German farming family   is outranked in terms of blood even by the Spensers whose   daughter, the late Princess Diana, could claim 4000 connections to the   same character. Furthermore, one geneticist recently working with the blood   samples of German royal and noble families couldn’t find one whose male line   reverted any farther than the early 16th century.