Written by You wake in the morning to find your hair impossibly knotted – tight, twisted tangles that seem to have woven themselves in the night. No amount of tossing and turning could have produced something so intricate. You don’t remember dreaming. But something was here.
In the folklore of the British Isles and Ireland, there is a name for this: fairy knots. Or elf-locks. Or witch tangles. The name changes by region, but the belief is the same. The knots were made by unseen hands, and their presence means something.
What Are Fairy Knots?
Fairy knots, also called elf-locks, hag-knots, witch-knots, and in Scottish Gaelic, cìr mhòr, are the unexplained tangles and matted sections found in hair (human or animal) upon waking. In folk tradition, they are understood as the physical evidence of nocturnal fairy activity: the marks left behind when the Fair Folk pass through the sleeping world and braid, twist, or tangle the hair of those they visit.