Any spirit of pagan provenance which had escaped wholesale assimilation into the Christian pantheon was officially defined as an a "evil spirit" by most contemporary theologians. In this context, any dealings with such spirits were theoretically a betrayal, or in other words, a "renunciation" of the true faith. Such a negative equation was intensified by the fact that fairies, on their part, were often considered hostile towards Christianity. An anecdote recorded in Scotland at the beginning of the eighteenth century describes how a brownie was displeased when his master read the Bible (Martin 1970, 392). Robert Kirk describes this fairy hostility in more detail, claiming that the fairies have:
no discernible Religion, Love, or Devotione towards God the Blessed Maker of all. They disappear whenever they hear his name invocked, or the name of Jesus... nor can they act ought at that time, after hearing of that Sacred Name (Sanderson 1976, 56).
Many early modern individuals must have been aware, to a greater or lesser degree, of these mutual hostilities, and if they wished to avail themselves of fairy powers they must have circumnavigated this problem in some way. Their solutions may not have differed greatly from those used in later centuries by people who believed in fairies. In the nineteenth century, for example, when at sea, fishermen on the Moray Firth:
would never mention such words as Church or manse or minister. Any utterance suggestive of the new faith would be displeasing to the ancient god of the ocean, and might bring disaster upon the boat (McPherson 1929, 70).
By their silence the fishermen were, for the duration of their journey, making a superficial show of putting aside their Christian allegiances in return for the protection and goodwill of the ancient god of the ocean. It is not difficult to imagine how, in a different century and different context, this and other types of diplomacy towards non Christian powers could have been interpreted as a direct renunciation of Christianity.
- The Witch's Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland, Emma Wilby (2014).