Duvenoy

"The only thing you find hard is belief."

Betcherass! I sure as hell don't believe that ridiculous pic. I have a 12 year old grand daughter who could do had has done better than that. Kid's a good hand with a camera.

"The birth of reason is the death of faith." Dunno who said that.

Faries indeed!

doov

Duvenoy

Now that I think about it, I believe (Yikes! The 'B' word!) I've seen that pic before.

Wasn't there great to-do in England over a couple of little girls who were somehow involved with fairies? This happened sometime in the late 19th century and it somehow involved Conan-Doyle. I don't remember the article I read all that well.

Anybody?

doov

Queen of Swords

Poor Arthur Conan Doyle was completely taken in by that fake (the girls cut out pictures of fairies, I think).

Writer@Large

Okay, that's it. CT, you're obviously a sock puppet, or a troll. Or, if you really do believe that Cottingley fairies are genuine, you're by far the dumbest creationist/Xian I've ever come across (and I'm speaking as someone who was here during Eternal's reign). The girls who took the photos fessed up to the whole thing in the 1980s.

But, just because I find this hoax interesting, I thought I'd direct you to some sites that explain the truth of the matter.

<a href="http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm" target="_blank">http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm</a>

<a href="http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/cottfair.htm" target="_blank">http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/cottfair.htm</a>

<a href="http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cooper.htm" target="_blank">http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cooper.htm</a>

--W@L

Writer@Large

'kay, all: Creationist's Terrier is definetly a troll. Please read the page he took the picture from:

<a href="http://www.parascope.com/articles/0397/ghost08.htm" target="_blank">http://www.parascope.com/articles/0397/ghost08.htm</a>

"The Cottingley Fairies are proof of only one thing: that a faked photograph can carry profound ramifications, even beyond what its fabricator intended."

--W@L

Duvenoy

Many thanks, guys. Makes an old fart like me feel good, knowing that his memory isn't completly shot after all.



doov

Stephen T-B

Two cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths carried out the Cottingley fairy hoax in Yorkshire over 80 years ago.
Elsie often stayed with her younger cousin, and their favourite haunt was Cottingley Beck. They'd come back late, and often wet, for their tea, and when Mrs Griffiths complained, they said they'd been detained playing with the fairies. Which, of course, Mrs Griffiths, treated as a joke.
One day Elsie said she'd prove there were fairies in the dell, and she borrowed her uncle's camera to take pictures of them, she said.
Mr and Mrs Griffiths continued to treat the whole affair as a joke, and the camera sat on a shelf with its undeveloped film still inside it. Eventually it was developed and printed - and there on the film were pictures of fairies and gnomes, some of them with the girls and some on their own.
They still weren't taken seriously, and were left on a shelf as a talking point.
And no doubt that would have been the end of the story had the Theosophists not been holding a conference in near-by Harrogate. They believed in Nature Spirits, and when they got to hear of the Cottingley Fairies, one of their senior members visited the Griffiths' household and was shown the pictures.
They caused enormous excitement; the negatives were sent to the Kodak laboratories which declared them not to have been interfered with, and they were subsequently endorsed by the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an article he wrote for The Strand Magazine. I'm not sure he was a Theosophist as such, but he was sympathetic, and believed in Nature Spirits.
In the 1980s James Randi identified the figures in Elsie's photographs as based on illustrations in the Queen Mary Gift Book (of which I happen to have a copy). I went to see Elsie Wright who by then was in her late 70s. I put it to her that she had painted the fairies on a sheet of glass using an air-brush - a theory based on the fact that she had worked in a Christmas card factory and would have known how to use one. The photos, it was surmised, had been taken with the sheet of glass (and the fairies on it) placed in front of the camera.
She denied it, but did say that the story she and Francis had told had been harmless, and given many people pleasure.
Frances died, and Elsie then admitted the hoax, explaining she had not been prepared to do so while her cousin was still alive.
In fact, the fairies and gnomes were simple cut-outs, stuck into the ground on wires.

Writer@Large

Hat pins, actually.

--W@L