The Southville Fairies
By Dr Arthur R. Goldsmith
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol
Theories and views on the origin of life, and especially the origin of humankind abound, but most people recognise two main genres. One is called Evolution by Natural Selection, famously elaborated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid 19th century and developed further by biologists, biochemists and other learned scientists over the decades since. It is, many biologists reason, the central tenet for developing understanding of just about everything about the origin and diversity of all life forms that have ever existed on planet Earth.
Another view that is never far from the public debate is called Special Creation or Creationism, or more recently ‘Intelligent Design’, referring to the creation of all species in more-or-less their present form by the act of God.
A less widely known alternative to the latter is called Fairies of Creation, by which the creation of the world and all life in it is the work of three Fairies that live nowadays in the bottom of a small suburban garden in Southville, Bristol, UK. This theory has exactly as much evidence in its support as the more widely known attribution of creation to God, and as such should therefore be allotted equal time in the teaching of biology in all schools and universities.
I am very fortunate (sometimes I wonder if I was chosen) in being able to bring you details of what the Fairies of Creation have done, since these wise and all-powerful beings have blessed me with an account of their early work during the many conversations I have had with them over the years since I first met them on a secluded beach in North Wales in the early 1970s. This was whilst I was an undergraduate studying zoology at the then University College of North Wales, Bangor. I met the Fairies on one of my outings to a local beach called Red Wharf Bay - an expansive and beautiful sandy shoreline where my friends and I used to go to enjoy a picnic and some mushroom sandwiches on our free afternoons. These were Wednesdays then just as they are for students in England and Wales today, but I wasn’t a sporty type in those days and preferred to relax in a more cerebral way. All this, however, is by the by and entirely incidental to the story.
One Wednesday afternoon, the three lovely nymphs, who I now know fondly as Anna, Maria and Daniela, appeared from behind a small rock on those lonely sands one afternoon, they chatted to me for a long time and when it was time for me to leave I asked if I could take them home with me. They kindly agreed and I have had them with me ever since. I moved with my family some years ago to Bristol, and the Fairies now live in the small Forsythia tree at the bottom of my garden.
The three fairies can be clearly seen in this photograph of the Southville Forsythia
tree in winter.
The Fairies explained to me how, around 6000 years ago, they assumed physical form and over the course of the next few days they created the Earth, and then added a good number of various types of microbes, plants and animals, which have been breeding on our planet ever since. They also created humans in the same way, after which they decided to rest and to conceal themselves from view. The Fairies have only recently chosen to re-emerge into the atmosphere and to approach receptive humans who they feel might recognise and appreciate the crucial role that they played in those early days of the Origin of Everything.
These days the Fairies have plenty of time on their hands as most of their work was completed long ago, though they are still bunging out more and more species of insects and nematode worms to keep their skills keen. The big things take a lot more effort apparently, but Maria did take a few days off last summer and on a holiday in Borneo she decided to create a new species of mammal3. She only made a few of them though I think she was quite successful. The previous year Daniela visited America and in the swampy woodlands of Arkansas she was dismayed to find that one of her own favourite creations, the ivory-billed woodpecker, had completely disappeared, so she made some more of them from her original design template4.
The Fairies are also running an ongoing programme of inserting fossilised forms of several of their creatures into the rocks. I asked them why they do this and, through the giggles, ascertained that it was something to do with a cunning trick they were playing on some foolish people who thought that they had a crazy alternative hypothesis to explain the origins of life. I nearly blew it then, I rashly said something like “well, you must have created their enquiring minds, their investigative skills and their intelligence” and they went off in a huff and I didn’t see them for weeks. Apart from that, the Fairies spend much of their day playing tennis, using leaves as rackets and berries for balls, and generally having a good time. Incidentally I have no idea what they eat, except that it can’t be slugs as there are so many of them in the garden at all times. I still see the Fairies quite often; whilst my wife and children are reading and watching science programmes on the TV, I am spending more and more of my free time alone in the garden, having wonderful conversations with my honoured guests whilst smoking some of their wondrous creations.
If anyone would like to meet my Fairies, come round one evening, they’ll be glad to come out and talk to you I am sure. Of course if they choose not to appear on the night you come, don’t worry. You don’t need to see them for yourself, you only need to accept my word, after all my first-hand testimony is irrefutable. However, I have now decided that I ought to write a full account of the Fairies’ work for everyone to share and admire.
If I go to a major publisher I am sure I could secure a print run that would enable me to offer a readable text for biology teachers to include alongside the other books they use. I think I might start with Kansas USA, and perhaps some of the other broad-minded states in the mid-west. But closer to home, there is, astonishingly, a Professor in the engineering faculty in my own University of Bristol who is a ‘Young Earth Creationist’ and apparently lectures his students on the God-driven version of Creation, so maybe the Fairies account would be well-received there in the interests of balance.
As I have already made clear, the amount of supportive evidence for the Fairies’ account is exactly the same as the amount of evidence supporting creation by God, no more and no less. So, all I am asking is for the Fairies of Creation account to be put forward, alongside the other hypotheses for the origin and diversity of life on earth, to the young and impressionable children who have so much to learn about the wonderful world in which they live.
“Whenever a child says they don’t believe in fairies, a fairy dies”. J. M. Barrie.
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Food or Fairies: You Decide
Mention must also be made of a recent theory propounded in the USA1whereby creation of all life is assigned to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. However, at risk of attracting accusations of libel, I suspect that this proposal may actually be a spoof. The notion that the Creator is an entity comprising pasta strands and meatballs perhaps owes more to the American admiration of high-carbohydrate foods than to a realistic hypothesis for the origin of life. Surely, it is not that pasta created man, rather that man created pasta. In marked contrast, there can be no serious doubt that fairies do most certainly exist, as reported frequently in the Old-World literature for centuries, and substantiated by much photographic evidence including that brought to the public attention in England in the 1920s by the well-known master exponent of logic and reason, and author of the Sherlock Holmes chronicles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle2. |
References:
1. Henderson, B. (2005). Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. www.venganza.org
2. Conan Doyle, A. (1920). Fairies photographed. An epoch-making event. The Strand Magazine, December 1920.
3. Wulffraat, S. (2005). See article in New Scientist, December 2005.
4. Gallagher, T. (2005). The grail bird: hot on the trail of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Houghton Mifflin Company.
2. Conan Doyle, A. (1920). Fairies photographed. An epoch-making event. The Strand Magazine, December 1920.
3. Wulffraat, S. (2005). See article in New Scientist, December 2005.
4. Gallagher, T. (2005). The grail bird: hot on the trail of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Houghton Mifflin Company.
Title image: © Photographer: Linda Bucklin | Agency: Dreamstime.com
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