Fetch (folklore)

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A fetch is a supernatural double or an apparition of a living person. The sighting of a fetch is regarded as an omen, usually for impending death.

Description

The fetch is described as an exact, spectral double of a living human, whose appearance is regarded as ominous. A sighting of a fetch is generally taken as a portent of its exemplar's looming death, though

wraith.[1][2] Francis Grose associated the term with Northern England
in his 1787 Provincial Glossary.

Origins and etymology

The etymology of fetch is obscure and the origin of the term is unknown. It may derive from the verb "fetch";[1] the compound "fetch-life", evidently referring to a psychopomp who "fetches" the souls of the dying, is attested in Richard Stanyhurst's 1583 translation of the Aeneid and the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary suggested this usage may indicate the origin of the term fetch.[3]

Accounts of the origin of fetch are complicated by a word faecce, found in two textually-related

lemma (a word to be glossed); given that most such words in these glossaries are in Latin, it ought to be a Latin word, but no such Latin word is known, leading some scholars to suggest it may be Old Irish. Since it is glossed with the Old English word mære, which denotes female supernatural being associated with causing illness and nightmares, it could be the origin of the Hiberno-English fetch.[4] Recent research has not arrived at a consensus on this question.[7][8]

Portents of death not dissimilar to later fetch traditions are found in early Irish literature and are associated with the Old Irish term

Vikings in Ireland. The fylgja, which in Norse mythology denoted an alter ego, usually in animal form, connected to a person's fate. Unlike the Irish concept, the fylgja is almost always female.[9][10][11] On these grounds, William Sayers has argued that the term fetch originated as a Hiberno-English form of Irish fáith.[12]

Appearances in literature

Corresponding to its contemporary prominence in "national superstitions", the fetch appeared in Irish literature starting in early 19th century. "The fetch superstition" is the topic of John and Michael Banim's Gothic story "The Fetches" from their 1825 work Tales by the O'Hara Family[13] and Walter Scott used the term in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, published in 1830, in a brief reference to "his ... fetch or wraith, or double-ganger".[14]

Patrick Kennedy's 1866 folklore collection Legendary Fiction of the Irish Celts includes a brief account of "The Doctor's Fetch", in which a fetch's appearance signals death for the titular doctor.[15][16] More recently, "The Fetch" is the malevolent narrator of Patrick McCabe's 2010 novel The Stray Sod Country, wherein it temporarily inhabits the bodies of the residents of a small Irish town, causing them to commit both psychological and physical harm to themselves and others.[17]

Robert Aickman's 1980 collection of "strange stories" Intrusions: Strange Tales contains his story "The Fetch". In it, the eponymous "fetch" (actually described as a Scottish Cailleach or "carlin" (hag)) is a portent of impending death for the Leith family, leaving a trail of loch water behind her. The story has most recently been anthologised in a reprint collection of Aickman's work titled The Wine-Dark Sea (London: Faber, 2014).

In Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs, Charles and Anna encounter a fetch pretending to be a preschooler named Amethyst. Charles recites a riddle and the fetch answers "A fetch! A fetch! A fetch!" and turns into a group of twigs in the shape of a girl tied with ribbon.

Appearances in popular culture

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "Fetch, n.2". Oxford English Dictionary. December 1989. Retrieved 15 January 2011.
  2. ^ "Wraith, n. b." Oxford English Dictionary. December 1989. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
  3. ^ "Fetch-life". Oxford English Dictionary. December 1989. Retrieved 15 January 2011.
  4. ^ a b Neville, pp. 106–107.
  5. ^ Taylor, p. 106.
  6. doi:10.1007/s11061-005-4256-8
    .
  7. doi:10.1007/s11061-005-4256-8
    .
  8. doi:10.1080/0895769X.2017.1336073
    .
  9. ^ Finlay, p. 59 and note 152.
  10. ^ Pulsiano, p. 624.
  11. doi:10.1080/0895769X.2017.1336073
    .
  12. doi:10.1080/0895769X.2017.1336073
    .
  13. ^ Connolly, pp. 178–179; note 98.
  14. doi:10.1080/0895769X.2017.1336073
    .
  15. ^ Briggs, p. 310.
  16. ^ Kennedy, "The Doctor's Fetch".
  17. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 12 May 2023.
  18. ISBN 0-88038-822-6
    .

References
Look up fetch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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