You’re in a room with dark, wood-paneled walls carved with vines and, when you look closer, faces. The ceiling is impossibly high, light spilling through tall, narrow windows, sparkling slightly where it touches the books.
And books are everywhere. Stacked neatly on shelves, piled into towers on the floor, perching precariously on desks.
You touch one soft blue cover, wiping away the dust with your thumb. “Fairylore” is stamped across the fabric in silver and gold. You pick it up, and begin to read…
Ready to add a new library card to your collection?
Introducing the Carterhaugh Fairylore Library, a curated and expansive collection of all our best fairylore resources - all in ONE place!
Stocked with hours of content and piles of resources like talks on our favorite Irish fairies (the scary ones, obviously), the perils of goblin fruit, and why Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is actually about fairies.
Plus, fairy ballads, a fairylore grimoire page, your very own library card, and MORE.
The best part? This is only the beginning. Over time, we’ll add more videos and resources, and the library will continue to grow.
If you’re wondering what on earth we’re doing and why this isn’t structured like a regular Carterhaugh course, here’s the deal:
We’ve been getting requests for courses on fairylore pretty much since Carterhaugh was founded, but we’ve never offered one.
Why?
Because fairylore is MASSIVE. Overwhelmingly massive. There are fae creatures from traditions all over the world. There are so many different ways to define and approach the study of these legendary creatures, and every time we thought about creating a course purely on fairylore, our brains would melt a little.
How can we teach fairylore, we asked ourselves, without teaching ALL THE FAIRYLORE all at once?
But last week, lightning struck our brains. A standard course isn’t the right container for this information. It’s too sprawling, and we want to meander through the stories and lore without getting hung up on order and linear structure. (We feel like the fae would approve.)
What we need is a LIBRARY. A space to wander, to discover, to pick up and put down what strikes your fancy.
So we’ve been gathering together some of our favorite pieces of fairylore - pulling from previous courses and talks, and even our dissertations (did you know Sara studied changelings and disability? And that Brittany wrote a whole chapter on Dorian Gray and fairy music?) We’ve compiled some of our favorite fairylore resources to share with you. And this work has created the foundation of the fairylore library.
We plan to open the doors to the library a few times a year going forward, offering new resources every time. The price will go up as we add things, but - if you join now - you get lifetime access to the library (as long as it exists, you get everything in it), including all updates and expansions.
Hi!
We're Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman!
We're award-winning folklorists, teachers, writers, and BFFs with a combined 26 years in higher education and over 150 publications (yes, really!) Together, we founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, where we teach creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales.
We've delivered sold-out lectures at venues like the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Profs & Pints series, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, and FaerieCon and - in 2019 - Carterhaugh won the Dorothy Howard Award from the American Folklore Society!
We love teaching. Our classes reflect the joy we get out of the strange and delightful world of folklore, so expect lots of gifs and terrible puns in our lectures. We'll occasionally make horrible faces at each other and laugh like drunken pixies… and we want you to join us!
Okay, So Exactly What's in the Library Right Now?
The library currently includes things like -
- A customizable Carterhaugh Fairylore Library Card
- Fairylore 101 [video] - a lecture about the beginning of folklore and fairylore as areas of organized study in the UK, the Cottingley fairies, and changelings
- "Fairy Legend in Oscar Wilde's Gothic Novel The Picture of Dorian Gray" [video] - research from Brittany’s dissertation
- "'Spooky Action at a Distance': Fairylore's Intrusion on Vampiric Tradition in Only Lovers Left Alive" [video] - our pet theory on what fairylore is doing in our favorite vampire film, presented for the first time at the American Folklore Society annual meeting
Want the full list? Check out all the contents below!
Full Library Contents
- Fairylore 101 Lecture [1:07:06] (67:06)
- The Terrors of Irish Fairylore Lecture [53:17] (53:16)
- The British Ballad of Tam Lin Lecture [14:43] (14:43)
- Rossetti's Poem "Goblin Market" Lecture [13:19] (13:18)
- Fairies in Shakespeare Lecture [2:11:21] (131:21)
- Fairy Legend in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray Lecture [11:37] (11:36)
- Fairylore's Intrusion on Vampiric Tradition in OLLA Lecture [7:17] (7:17)
You'll Love This If...
- You wish you could have studied fairylore in college
- You love learning about legends and folklore from all over the world
- You’ve read Holly Black’s fairy books, Peter Pan, or The Last Unicorn until they fell apart and seek out new books and movies on fae creatures all the time
This Isn't For You If...
- You’re looking specifically for a discussion of contemporary religious practices
- You want us to talk about whether fairies are real or not
- You don’t want to mix your academic studies or cultural criticism with a sense of humor
Check out some of our social media praise... from a few names you might recognize!
If you’ve read this far, something about the library is calling you. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]
As, as W.B. Yeats once wrote, with hope you “come away” with us…
