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URECAT - UFO Related Entities Catalog

1915, DEVONSHIRE, U-K., A WOMAN:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

Albert Rosales indicates in his catalogue that, according to Arthur Conan Doyle, in Devonshire, England, in 1915, "A woman walking along a field one afternoon noticed some movement on a nearby brush. She expected a mouse to come out any minute, but suddenly a tiny green colored man-shaped figure wearing a red cap appeared. The tiny being remained visible for about a minute rocking back and forth on top of a leaf and then vanished."

It seems that this is actually a distorted and censored version of one of the stories by Frances Wright, a young girl at the origin of the famous "Cottingley Fairies" hoax.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:

Albert Rosales indicates that in Devonshire, England, in 1915, in the afternoon, "A woman walking along a field one afternoon noticed some movement on a nearby brush. She expected a mouse to come out any minute, but suddenly a tiny green colored man-shaped figure wearing a red cap appeared. The tiny being remained visible for about a minute rocking back and forth on top of a leaf and then vanished."

Albert Rosales indicates that the source is "Arthur Conan Doyle".

Points to consider:

In 1917, the affair of the alleged photographs of the "Cottingley Fairies" (Yorkshire) taken by two young girls, Frances and Elsie Wright, convinced author and "spiritualist" Arthur Conan Doyle that fairies exist. He this wrote his book "The Coming Of The Fairies", in 1922.

Of course the "Cottingley Fairies" on the photographs are totally ridiculous: the so-called "fairies" were just naive cartoons cut from the pages of a children's book and put in the landscape, and an accidental double-exposure - the photographer admitted the hoax many years later in 1983. But Conan Doyle, a very credulous man, like some others, was unable to see that.

Thinking the "case" here probably came from Conan Doyle's book "The Coming Of The Fairies", I searched the entire book and found nothing that happened in Devonshire in 1915. One of the two girls who performed the Cottingley hoax merely told she had seen fairy "since 1915".

Of course this has nothing to do with UFOs or aliens, it is just a poorly documented part of a known hoax.

Here is a story told by Frances Wright, probably the real version of the [ar1] case. It can be read in the 2012 book "The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World", by Mary Losure Candlewick Press, U-K.

This is, in Frances' own words, her first sighting, or rather, claimed first sighting:

"Elsie was working at that time because I was up the beck alone quite a lot after school. It was good to sit quietly on the willow branch and listen to the sound of the water, the odd bee buzzing and an occasional splash as a frog plunged into a deep pool. I suppose I must have been day dreaming one day when I looked across the beck and saw a willow leaf twirling around rapidly, moving as it were, on its own. I did think it odd, as there was no breeze. I had never seen a leaf do that before, but then everything here was new to me and I thought no more about it at the time. That was the beginning, although at the time I didn’t realise it. The leaf was being held by a little man. The first time I saw the little man - he was about eighteen inches high - he was walking purposefully down the bank on the willow side of the beck, holding a willow leaf in his hand, twiddling it very fast as he crossed the water to the other side. I wasn’t unduly surprised - the beck was a wonderful place and I wouldn’t have been surprised at anything that happened there. I am writing sixty-six years after the leaf incident and I cannot remember how long after this that I saw the real reason the leaf behaved in such a strange manner. It was early summer and the weather was still fine as I sat on the overhanging willow branch, feet dangling in the water, and saw a little man walking with high steps towards me. As he reached the first branch of the willow he lifted his hand and, although I saw him do it many times afterwards, a leaf just came into his hand. A stem or a leaf of a tree is usually tough and needs a good tug to pull it off, but he seemed to just reach up and pick a leaf as easily as you or I would pick a bluebell. He held the leaf in his hand and twirled it round just as before, walking down to the beck and crossing it. Now to me, this did seem odd! With all my experience of boats made of tree bark or rotten wood, I knew instinctively that if he had weight he would go down with the current, but he just strolled across the beck and then gave a little hop onto the bank at the other side. At the time I thought nothing about it, but later I did wonder about his feet seeming to walk on water, but didn’t know what to make of it."

"He had a rugged face, similar I would think to the faces of the railway carters who delivered goods on wagons driven by those lovely old Shire horses. He wasn’t ugly, but neither did he have a friendly face. He just looked as if he was going about a job of work. Once I saw him leading three or four little men who were dressed as he was, in a green jerkin and darker-coloured green loose-fitting tights - rather like our young people wear their Levis today! They all walked very purposefully and when they had crossed the beck they turned towards the right. I watched them until they went behind a clump of willow herb and were lost from sight."

"I didn’t tell Elsie for a long time. This was my secret – mine alone – and I didn’t want to share it. Elsie had never mentioned seeing the little men when they came whilst she was there. They must have known we were there, because the first time I saw the little man on his own, he gave me a good hard stare before going on his way. Never again did any of them indicate that they could see us – but I was aware that they could."

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Invention by little girl. Not UFO-related.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [---] ? Arthur Conan Doyle.
• [ar1] * "1910 - 1919 Humanoid Sighting Reports", compiled by Albert Rosales, circa 2004, at www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1910.shtml

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This page was last updated on March 10, 2013