The Coming of the Fairies

This book contains reproductions of the famous Cottingley photographs, and gives the whole of the evidence in connection with them. The diligent reader is in almost as good a position as I am to form a judgment upon the authenticity of the pictures. This narrative is not a special plea for that authenticity, but is simply a collection of facts the inferences from which may be accepted or rejected as the reader may think fit.

I would warn the critic, however, not to be led away by the sophistry that because some professional trickster, apt at the game of deception, can produce a somewhat similar effect, therefore the originals were produced in the same way. There are few realities which cannot be imitated, and the ancient argument that because conjurers on their own prepared plates or stages can produce certain results, therefore similar results obtained by untrained people under natural conditions are also false, is surely discounted by the intelligent public.

I would add that this whole subject of the objective existence of a subhuman form of life has nothing to do with the larger and far more vital question of spiritualism. I should be sorry if my arguments in favour of the latter should be in any way weakened by my exposition of this very strange episode, which has really no bearing upon the continued existence of the individual.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

CROWBOROUGH, _March 1922_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I HOW THE MATTER AROSE 13

II THE FIRST PUBLISHED ACCOUNT, _STRAND_ CHRISTMAS NUMBER 1920 39

III RECEPTION OF THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHS 59

IV THE SECOND SERIES 93

V OBSERVATIONS OF A CLAIRVOYANT IN THE COTTINGLEY GLEN, AUGUST 1921 108

VI INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE FOR FAIRIES 123

VII SOME SUBSEQUENT CASES 152

VIII THE THEOSOPHIC VIEW OF FAIRIES 171

ILLUSTRATIONS

MR. E. L. GARDNER _Frontispiece_

PAGE

ELSIE AND THE GNOME 32

ELSIE AND FRANCES 33

COTTINGLEY BECK AND GLEN 33

ELSIE IN 1920, STANDING NEAR WHERE THE GNOME WAS TAKEN IN 1917 48

FRANCES IN 1920 48

FRANCES AND THE FAIRIES 49

ELSIE SEATED ON THE BANK ON WHICH THE FAIRIES WERE DANCING IN 1917 (PHOTO 1920) 64

THE FALL OF WATER JUST ABOVE THE SITE OF LAST PHOTOGRAPH 64

FRANCES AND THE LEAPING FAIRY 65

FAIRY OFFERING POSY OF HARE-BELLS TO ELSIE 80

FAIRIES AND THEIR SUN-BATH 81

A VIEW OF THE BECK IN 1921 128

THE TWO GIRLS NEAR THE SPOT WHERE THE LEAPING FAIRY WAS TAKEN IN 1920 129

THE PHOTOGRAPH FROM CANADA 144

THE COMING OF THE FAIRIES