The Back-Folk: Day XXIX
Engagement with Humans: avoidance, Reverend Clark, dùn
Back-Folk children are certainly warned to stay away from humans, and it seems the default is always to avoid any engagement directly, at any point. Though this has not curbed meetings altogether – either by chance or deliberate – it has meant that the majority of what is known and shared about the Back-Folk has been passed down the generations via an oral tradition, with encounters being perhaps embellished over the years as is common in such circumstances.
A rare example of reference to what has in recent years been presumed to be the Back-Folk was in an early nineteenth-century account by a Reverend during a visit to a fellow churchman based in the next village. Reverend Clark made reference in his notes, in relation to the dùn, to “those who are gone”. Though this was originally thought to refer to fellow humans who had passed on, a particular passage has caught the attention of researchers in more recent times.
“…until dawn, speaking of those who are gone, now and before. The sun was rising before we descended from the dùn, the last of the embers having been carefully and respectfully extinguished and the area left clean. Slipping down the hill and back to my quarters, I felt overcome by an acceptance – no, more than that – a peace – that caught me by surprise and left me in such a thoughtful mind for the remainder of the day that I feigned a headache and took my meals in my room until the evening, to think on what I had witnessed and what had been discussed.”
Unfortunately, there is no known complete surviving document.
