Here's an interesting bit of trivia for those who have read "Masquerade of Angels." Recall Ted Rice's mysterious friend Maya, who claimed that her people actually lived inside the mountains.
UFO researcher Jacques Vallee has published stories that were first told to writer Walter Yveling Evans Wentz nearly a century ago, and recorded in Wentz's work The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, its Psychological Origin and Nature (Oberthur, Rennes: 1909):
The Gentry are a fine large race who live out in the sea and in the mountains, and they are all very good neighbors. The bad ones are not the Gentry at all, are the fallen angels and they live in the woods and the sea [...]
The folk are the grandest I have ever seen. They are far superior to us and that is why they call themselves the Gentry. They are not a working-class, but a military-aristocratic class, tall and noble-appearing. They are a distinct race between our race and that of spirits, as they have told me. Their qualifications are tremendous: "We could cut off half the human race, but would not," they said, "for we are expecting salvation." And I knew a man three or four years ago whom they struck down with paralysis. Their sight is so penetrating that I think they could see through the earth. They have a silvery voice, quick and sweet.
The Gentry live inside the mountains in beautiful castles, and there are a good many branches of them in other countries, and especially in Ireland. Some live in the Wicklow Mountains near Dublin. Like armies they have their stations and move from one to another. My guide and informer said to me once, "I command a regiment, Mr. ----."
They travel greatly, and they can appear in Paris, Marseilles, Naples, Genoa, Turin or Dublin, like ordinary people, and even in crowds. They especially love Spain, Southern France, and the South of Europe.
The Gentry take a great interest in the affairs of men and they always stand for justice and right. Sometimes they fight among themselves. They take young and intelligent people who are interesting. They take the whole body and soul, transmuting the body to a body like their own.
I asked them once if they ever died and they said, No; "we are always kept young, Mr. ----." Once they take you and you taste food in their palace you cannot come back. They never taste anything salt, but eat fresh meat and drink pure water. They marry and have children. And one of them could marry a good and pure mortal.
They are able to appear in different forms. One once appeared to me and seemed only four feet high, and stoutly built. He said, "I am bigger than I appear to you now. We can make the old young, the big small, the small big."
Vallee commented:
There were few places where one could see fairies, even in Great Britain or France, after 1850. All the storytellers, all the popular almanacs, agree that, as civilization advanced, the little folks became increasingly shy. A few untouched places recommended by Wentz, however, are the Yosemite Valley in California and the Ben Bulben country and Ross Point in County Sligo, Ireland.
- webmaster Dec 20, 2005
The above quotations were taken from pp 26-27 of Vallee's Passport to Magonia (1993 Edition)
