[ANON POST] Folklore Fact-Check: Crossing Running Water Three Times

[orange_fell]

I remember reading something somewhere in some fantasy novel about how in some folklore, you get to the land of Faery(?) by crossing running water three times. Does anyone know if this is actual folklore and, if so, for which people

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

An association with crossing water to reach another world, whether Faery or death, dates back to at least the fourteenth century in English. It crops up in the Pearl poem, in which the narrator sees his dead daughter on the other side of a stream, but wakes when he tries to wade it to reach her. The narrator of Piers Plowman also sees a fairy beside a stream, falls asleep, and dreams that he's in another place.

[alivion]

It goes much farther back than that. The Greeks had rivers you had to be ferried across in order to get to the underworld.

[vivaine3]

...you get to the land of Faery(?) by crossing running water three times.

That's a new one for me, although I'm admittedly not an expert on folklore. As has been mentioned the Thomas the Rhymer connection seems valid enough.

On a side note, I have heard about vampires not being able to cross running water, but not in relation to fae beings. That would be difficult to credit for all fae since so many kinds of fae actually live in running water and are reputed to leave it at will.

If the story issue is 'how to get there from here', then you actually have a wide range of options from which to draw.

'Under the Hill' legends involve entering caves (with or without a guide), or sleeping on a fairy mound which opens during the night. Sleeping in a fairy ring, a ring of mushrooms, was also considered dangerous, as these could act as gateways for the fae. Sometimes just sleeping under the wrong tree is enough

[marycatelli]

Some of the fae can indeed be affected by running water even though others live in it: the Nuckelavee, for instance.