Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Airy Mermaids of Elliott County: Fairy Lore in Eastern Kentucky
Most Appalachian folklore gives the mountains ghosts, witches, omens, haints, lights, and hidden beings in the woods. Elliott County, Kentucky, adds something stranger to that old mountain company. In one late nineteenth century newspaper trail, a cave in Elliott County was connected with “airy mermaids,” floating apparitions, and dreams of “fairies and sylphs.”
That language sounds almost too literary for the Kentucky hills, but that is part of what makes the story worth saving. It is not the familiar mermaid of river and sea. It is not a Cherokee water being, a coal camp ghost, or a local witch tale passed down in a family Bible. It is a newspaper wonder story, preserved in a modern scholarly handlist, pointing back to an article called “A Wonderful Cave” in The Brooklyn Citizen. The lead is thin, but it is direct enough to matter.
Chris Woodyard and Simon Young include the Elliott County entry in their 2019 article “Three Notes and a Handlist of North American Fairies.” In the Kentucky section, they summarize the account as an old settler seeing “airy mermaids” near a cave, while hunters saw “curious floating apparitions” and dreamed of “fairies and sylphs.” The same entry labels the item 1899, but the Works Cited at the end of the article identifies the source as “A Wonderful Cave,” The Brooklyn Citizen, February 17, 1889, page 13. That date conflict is important. Until the original newspaper page is checked, the safest date for the article is “reported in 1889, later handlisted as 1899.”
A Note on the Source
The source trail for this story should be handled with care. The best direct secondary source is Woodyard and Young’s handlist, because it gives the Elliott County summary and names the newspaper source. The likely primary source is the February 17, 1889 issue of The Brooklyn Citizen, page 13, but the article itself still needs page-level verification from Brooklyn Newsstand, Newspapers.com, or a library scan.
That caution does not make the story useless. It makes it more interesting. The Brooklyn Public Library describes The Brooklyn Citizen as a Brooklyn-wide newspaper published from 1887 to 1947, with local Brooklyn coverage as well as some national and international material. It is easy to understand how a strange Kentucky cave item could appear in a New York paper as a curiosity piece rather than as a local Elliott County tradition.
The New York State Library newspaper holdings also identify The Brooklyn Citizen as a daily Brooklyn paper published from 1886 to 1947, with microfilm holdings listed through the New York State Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and New York Public Library. A Brooklyn Historical Society collection guide through NYU also lists Brooklyn Citizen microfilm for 1887 to 1889. Those repositories are the best next step for anyone trying to turn this lead from a handlist summary into a fully verified primary-source article.
The County Behind the Wonder
Elliott County sits in northeastern Kentucky, in the Eastern Coal Field region. The Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer records that it was formed in 1869 from Carter, Lawrence, and Morgan counties, with Sandy Hook as the county seat. The same entry places Elliott County in the Appalachian region according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.
The county’s own government page describes Elliott County as established in 1869 from parts of Morgan, Lawrence, and Carter counties and names Sandy Hook as the heart of the county’s small communities. It also emphasizes the creeks, hills, and Grayson Lake landscape that still shape the county’s identity.
That landscape matters because the story begins with a cave. Elliott County is a steep, broken upland county. The Kentucky Geological Survey describes it as part of the coal field area of northeastern Kentucky, with local relief commonly reaching 250 to 300 feet and sandstone bluffs along valley walls. In a place of bluffs, hollows, creek bottoms, and shadowed openings in rock, a cave could easily become more than geology. It could become a door in the mountain.
A Cave in a Nineteenth Century Mountain Landscape
The late nineteenth century was also a time when Elliott County’s geology was being studied seriously. A. R. Crandall’s Report on the Geology of Elliott County was published by the Kentucky Geological Survey in 1886, only a few years before the Brooklyn Citizen item if the 1889 citation is correct. HathiTrust identifies the work as Crandall’s report, with notes on the trap dikes of Elliott County by Crandall and J. S. Diller.
In 1887, Diller published Peridotite of Elliott County, Kentucky as United States Geological Survey Bulletin 38. The UNT Digital Library describes it as a report on peridotite found in dikes of eruptive rock between Isom’s and Critche’s Creeks in Kentucky. That source does not explain the “airy mermaids,” but it shows how unusual Elliott County’s stone was to scientists of the same era. The county was already a place where geologists came looking closely at the ground.
Kentucky’s broader cave context also matters. The Kentucky Geological Survey explains that karst landscapes include sinkholes, sinking streams, caves, and springs, and notes that Kentucky is one of the world’s notable karst areas. Even when the specific Elliott County cave in the newspaper item remains unidentified, caves in Kentucky have long carried scientific, practical, and imaginative weight. They store water, hide passages, alter sound, change temperature, and turn ordinary hillsides into places of mystery.
What Were “Airy Mermaids”?
The phrase “airy mermaids” is the heart of the story. It sounds contradictory. Mermaids belong to water, while “airy” points upward, toward mist, light, wind, or floating motion. The handlist summary does not give us enough to know whether the original reporter meant winged beings, vapor-like figures, cave lights, dreams, or a poetic comparison. What survives is the impression of beings seen near a cave, followed by hunters who saw floating apparitions and dreamed of fairies and sylphs.
That combination places the Elliott County story in the borderland between folklore, newspaper wonder writing, and nineteenth century supernatural vocabulary. “Fairies” and “sylphs” were not the everyday labels most people now associate with Appalachian supernatural belief. They sound more literary, more Old World, and perhaps more like the language of a newspaper writer trying to make a strange cave story readable to a city audience.
Woodyard and Young’s larger argument helps explain why the story matters. Their article gathers scattered North American fairy references from newspapers, books, folklore collections, and local histories. They define “fairies” broadly, following Katharine Briggs, as supernatural beings not claimed by angels, devils, or ghosts. Under that wide definition, the Elliott County apparitions fit into American fairylore even if they do not fit neatly into the modern image of tiny winged fairies.
Fairies in an Appalachian Setting
The Elliott County story should not be treated as proof that eastern Kentucky had a widespread mermaid tradition. The source trail does not show that. It gives us one reported cave account, repeated through a modern scholarly handlist. That makes it a fragile lead, but not a worthless one.
Appalachian folklore often preserves older supernatural ideas in local forms. A cave might become a haunted opening. A spring might be tied to healing. A light over a ridge might be an omen. A dream might be taken seriously. Kentucky Superstitions, published by Daniel Lindsey Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas in 1920, collected Kentucky beliefs about omens, dreams, cures, witches, weather, death, and other parts of folk life. It is not the source for the Elliott County “airy mermaids,” but it shows that Kentucky supernatural belief was serious enough to be collected and studied in the early twentieth century.
Fairy belief in America has often been treated as thinner than ghost lore, witch lore, or monster lore. Yet Woodyard and Young argue that digitized newspapers and local sources reveal more scattered examples than scholars once assumed. Their handlist includes not only Elliott County, but also other American accounts of banshees, knockers, gnomes, little people, and fairy-like apparitions. In that sense, Elliott County’s “airy mermaids” are not alone. They are one strange entry in a wider, uneven record of North American fairy material.
A Story Between Cave, Newspaper, and Memory
What should we imagine when we read this account? Not a Disney mermaid in a Kentucky creek. Not a proven race of hidden cave beings. The better image is quieter and stranger. Somewhere in Elliott County, near a cave, an old settler remembered or claimed to have seen forms that a newspaper later called “airy mermaids.” Hunters entered the same atmosphere of wonder. They saw floating apparitions. They dreamed of fairies and sylphs.
Whether the figures were mist, light, fear, sleep, story, or something the witnesses could not name, the mountain setting gave the experience power. A cave mouth is already a threshold. It belongs to the hillside, but it opens into dark space. It breathes cold air in summer. It holds echoes. It invites both science and superstition. In the nineteenth century, before electric light and easy roads reached every hollow, such a place could gather stories quickly.
That is why the Elliott County account deserves preservation. It is not a large legend, but it is a rare one. It gives Kentucky a fairy-like cave story with a named county, a named newspaper trail, and enough unusual language to stand apart from the more common ghost and monster traditions of the mountains.
Why the Airy Mermaids Matter
The Airy Mermaids of Elliott County matter because they show how Appalachian folklore sometimes survives in fragments. A single newspaper item, a handlist note, a phrase like “curious floating apparitions,” and a cave that may still be waiting to be identified are all that remain. Yet those fragments open a door into the way people once described the unknown.
They also remind us that Appalachian folklore is not limited to the categories most familiar today. The mountains held ghost stories, yes, but also dreams, omens, charms, witchcraft beliefs, healing customs, cave wonders, lights, and beings that did not fit a single name. Sometimes outsiders wrote those stories down clumsily. Sometimes newspapers made them sound more polished or more fantastic than local speech would have done. Sometimes the original local version disappeared, leaving only the printed curiosity behind.
For Elliott County, the responsible conclusion is simple. The “airy mermaids” story is a rare and fragile piece of Kentucky fairylore. It should be kept, but with a source note. The article known as “A Wonderful Cave” in The Brooklyn Citizen should be retrieved and checked before anyone claims more than the evidence allows. Until then, the story remains what it has been for more than a century: a strange report from the edge of a Kentucky cave, where hunters saw something floating and dreamed afterward of fairies in the dark.
Sources & Further Reading
“A Wonderful Cave.” The Brooklyn Citizen (Brooklyn, NY), February 17, 1889, 13. URL to verify through Brooklyn Newsstand/Newspapers.com: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/online-resources/brooklyn-newsstand
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Briggs, Katharine M. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaoffa00brig
Brooklyn Public Library. “Brooklyn Newsstand.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.bklynlibrary.org/online-resources/brooklyn-newsstand
Brooklyn Public Library. “About Brooklyn Newsstand.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.bklynlibrary.org/brooklyncollection/about-brooklyn-newsstand
Center for Brooklyn History. “Brooklyn Citizen: Local Newspapers on Microfilm Collection.” NYU Special Collections Finding Aids. Accessed July 7, 2026. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/cbh/bcms_0028/contents/aspace_ref28/
Center for Brooklyn History. “Community Newspaper Collection.” NYU Special Collections Finding Aids. Accessed July 7, 2026. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/cbh/arc_258_community_newspaper_collection/all/
Crandall, A. R. Report on the Geology of Elliott County. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1886. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001114962
Diller, Joseph Silas. Peridotite of Elliott County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 38. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/peridotite-elliott-county-kentucky
Diller, Joseph Silas. Peridotite of Elliott County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 38. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0038/report.pdf
Elliott County Government. “Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://elliottcounty.ky.gov/Pages/Laurel%20Gorge%20Cultural%20Heritage%20Center.aspx
Elliott County Government. “Welcome to Elliott County.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://elliottcounty.ky.gov/
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. London and New York: H. Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1911. https://archive.org/details/fairyfaithincelt00evanrich
Fee, Christopher R., and Jeffrey B. Webb, eds. American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2016. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/american-myths-legends-and-tall-tales-9781610695671/
Hand, Wayland D. “European Fairy Lore in the New World.” Folklore 92, no. 2 (1981): 141–148. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259466
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Elliott County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/21063.html
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Groundwater Resources of Elliott County, Kentucky: Karst.” University of Kentucky. Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Elliott/Karst.htm
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Groundwater Resources of Elliott County, Kentucky: Topography.” University of Kentucky. Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Elliott/Topography.htm
Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center. “Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.lgchcenter.com/
Narváez, Peter, ed. The Good People: New Fairylore Essays. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813109398/the-good-people/
New York State Library. “Kings County Newspapers on Microfilm and Paper at All NYS Locations.” Accessed July 7, 2026. https://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/all/424
Thomas, Daniel Lindsey, and Lucy Blayney Thomas. Kentucky Superstitions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1920. https://archive.org/details/kentuckysupersti00thomuoft
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Elliott County: General History.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/183/
Woodyard, Chris, and Simon Young. “Three Notes and a Handlist of North American Fairies.” Supernatural Studies 6, no. 1 (2019): 56–85. https://www.supernaturalstudies.com/previous-journal-issues/vol-6-issue-1/woodyard-and-young
Author Note: This article treats the Elliott County “airy mermaids” as a rare newspaper-based folklore lead, not as a proven long-running local tradition. The date conflict between the 1889 newspaper citation and the later 1899 handlist label should be kept in mind until the original Brooklyn Citizen page is fully verified.