dazzling rosy whiteness, with a beautiful face and long hair, which it
appeared to be passing through its fingers.
Two days later,August 14, at nine o'clock of a moonlit evening, the
girls led Hodson to a field densely populated with brownies, fairies,
elves, and gnomes. Hodson says Frances could see tiny fairies dancing
in a circle, expanding their bodies to a height of eighteen inches,
whereas Elsie could see fairies dancing in a vertical circle, floating
slowly up and down before coming to rest on the grass. Hodson could
see couples a foot high, females and males, clothed in etheric matter,
ghostlike, dancing in a slow, waltzlike motion.
At ten o'clock the following evening, in a field lit by a small pho-
tographic lamp, Elsie described a group of goblins the size of brownies,
differing from the wood elves, looking more like gnomes. Meanwhile,
Hodson became involved with a band of fairies under a female direc-
tor whose arrival in the field caused a bright radiance to shine around
her, visible to the girls sixty yards away. Of the leader he noted, "She is
very autocratic and definite in her orders, holding unquestioned com-
mand. They spread themselves out into a gradually widening circle
around her, and, as they do so, a sort of glow spreads out over the grass.
They are actually vivifying and stimulating the growth in the field."
Three days later, August 18, their last day of observation, Hodson
recorded that in the glen Frances saw a fairy as big as herself, clothed
in flesh-colored tights and a garment scalloped around her hips, with a
lovely face whose expression seemed to invite Frances into fairyland.
Another, with body clothed in iridescent shimmering golden light,
hovering among the leaves and branches of a willow, smiled and placed
a finger on her lips.
Hodson says that during his visit to Cottingley he became con-
vinced of the bona fides of the girls as well as of the authenticity of the
photographs they had taken. "I spent two weeks with them and their
family, and became assured of the genuineness of their clairvoyance, of
the presence of fairies, exactly like those photographed in the glen at
Cottingley, and of the complete honesty of all parties concerned."
But when it came to taking more photographs, the girls were not
so successful. Anxious to obtain more negatives, Gardner had provided
joyce
(Joyce)
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