Fairies

A fairy is also known as a fay, fey, faery, faerie; collectively, "fae" wee folk, little people, good folk, fair folk.

The word fairy derives from the term fae of medieval Western European (Old French) folklore and romance, one famous example being Morgan le Fay ('Morgan of the Fae').

The word "Fae-ery" therefore meant everything that appertains to the "fae", and so the land of "fae", all the "fae".

Finally the word replaced its original and one could speak of "a faery or fairy", though the word fey is still used as an adjective. 'Fae' is the plural, 'Faery' is the singular.

Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term fairy offers many definitions. Sometimes the term describes any magical creature, including goblins or gnomes: at other times, the term only describes a specific type of more ethereal creature.

Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and having magical powers. Their origins are less clear in the folklore, being variously dead, or some form of angel, or a species completely independent of humans or angels.

Folklorists have suggested that their actual origin lies in a conquered race living in hiding, or in religious beliefs that lost currency with the advent of new religious beliefs and, perhaps, even Christianity.

These explanations are not always mutually incompatible. They may be traceable to multiple sources.

Much of the folklore about fairies revolves about protection from their malice, by such means as cold iron (fairies do not like iron and will not go near it) or charms of rowan and herbs, or avoiding offense by shunning locations known to be theirs.

In particular, folklore describes how to prevent the fairies from stealing babies and substituting changelings, and abducting older people as well. Many folktales are told of fairies, and they appear as characters in stories from medieval tales of chivalry, to Victorian fairy tales, and up to the present day in modern literature.

Although in modern culture they are often depicted as young, sometimes winged, females of small stature, they originally were depicted much differently: tall, radiant, angelic beings or short, wizened trolls being some of the commonly mentioned. Diminutive fairies of one kind or another have been recorded for centuries, but occur alongside the human-sized beings; these have been depicted as ranging in size from very tiny up to the size of a human child. Even with these small fairies, however, their small size may be magically assumed rather than constant.

Wings, while common in Victorian and later artwork of fairies, are very rare in the folklore; even very small fairies flew with magic, sometimes flying on ragwort stems or the backs of birds. Nowadays, fairies are often depicted with ordinary insect wings or butterfly wings.

Various animals have also been described as fairies. Sometimes this is the result of shapeshifting on part of the fairy, as in the case of the selkie (seal people); others, like the kelpie and various black dogs, appear to stay more constant in form.

The Origin of Fairies
One popular belief was that they were the dead, or some subclass of the dead. The Irish banshee (Irish Gaelic bean sí or Scottish Gaelic bean shìth, which both mean "fairy woman") is sometimes described as a ghost. The northern English Cauld Lad of Hylton, though described as a murdered boy, is also described as a household sprite like a brownie, much of the time a Barghest or Elf. One tale recounted a man caught by the fairies, who found that whenever he looked steadily at one, the fairy was a dead neighbor of his.

Another view held that the fairies were an intelligent species, distinct from humans and angels. In alchemy in particular they were regarded as elementals, such as gnomes and sylphs, as described by Paracelsus.

This is uncommon in folklore, but accounts describing the fairies as "spirits of the air" have been found popularly.

A less-common belief was that the fairies were actually humans, or a special race of human beings.

One folktale recounts how a woman had hidden some of her children from God, and then looked for them in vain, because they had become the hidden people, the fairies. This is parallel to a more developed tale, of the origin of the Scandinavian huldra.

Many of the Irish tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann refer to these beings as fairies, though in more ancient times they were regarded as Goddesses and Gods.

The Tuatha Dé were spoken of as having come from Islands in the north of the world, or, in other sources, from the sky. After being defeated in a series of battles with other Otherworldly beings, and then by the ancestors of the current Irish people, they were said to have withdrawn to the sídhe (fairy mounds), where they lived on in popular imagination as "fairies."

One common theme found among the Celtic nations describes a race of diminutive people who had been driven into hiding by invading humans. They came to be seen as another race, or possibly spirits, and were believed to live in an Otherworld that was variously described as existing underground, in hidden hills (many of which were ancient burial mounds), or across the Western Sea.

The concept of the Otherworld is also associated with the Isle of Apples, known as Avalon in the Arthurian mythos (often equated with Ablach Emain). Here we find the Silver Bough that allowed a living mortal to enter and withdraw from the Otherworld. According to legend, the Faery Queen sometimes offered the branch to worthy mortals, granting them safe passage and food during their stay.

Spirits of the Dead
The fairies were also folkloric belief that they are spirits of the dead. This noted many common points of belief, such as the same legends being told of ghosts and fairies, the sídhe living burial mounds, it being dangerous to eat food in both Fairyland and Hades, and both the dead and fairies living underground.
 

Changelings
A considerable amount of lore about fairies revolves around changelings, fairy children left in the place of stolen human babies.

Older people could also be abducted; a woman who had just given birth and had yet to be churched was regarded as being in particular danger.

Legends
In many legends, the fairies are prone to kidnapping humans, either as babies, leaving changelings in their place, or as young men and women.

A common feature of the fairies is the use of magic to disguise appearance. Fairy gold is notoriously unreliable, appearing as gold when paid, but soon thereafter revealing itself to be leaves, gorse blossoms, gingerbread cakes, or a variety of other useless things.

The Faerie Queen
Fairies appeared in medieval romances as one of the beings that a knight errant might encounter. A fairy lady appeared to Sir Launfal and demanded his love; like the fairy bride of ordinary folklore, she imposed a prohibition on him that in time he violated. Sir Orfeo's wife was carried off by the King of Faerie. Huon of Bordeaux is aided by King Oberon. These fairy characters dwindled in number as the medieval era progressed; the figures became wizards and enchantresses.

Morgan Le Fey, whose connection to the realm of faerie is implied in her name, in Le Morte d'Arthur is a woman whose magic powers stem from study. While somewhat diminished with time, fairies never completely vanished from the tradition.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late tale, but the Green Knight himself is an otherworldly being.

The Faerie Queen. In many works of fiction, fairies are freely mixed with the nymphs and satyrs of classical tradition; while in others (e.g. Lamia), they were seen as displacing the Classical beings.

Fifteenth century poet and monk John Lydgate wrote that King Arthur was crowned in "the land of the fairy", and taken in his death by four fairy queens, to Avalon where he lies under a "fairy hill", until he is needed again.

Fairies in literature took on new life with Romanticism. Writers such as Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg were inspired by folklore which featured fairies, such as the Border ballads.

This era saw an increase in the popularity of collecting of fairy folklore, and an increase in the creation of original works with fairy characters.

In Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, Puck holds to scorn the moralizing fairies of other Victorian works.

The period also saw a revival of older themes in fantasy literature, such as C.S. Lewis's Narnia books which, while featuring many such classical beings as fauns and dryads, mingles them freely with hags, giants, and other creatures of the folkloric fairy tradition. Victorian flower fairies were popularized in part by Queen Mary’s keen interest in fairy art, and by British illustrator and poet Cicely Mary Barker's series of eight books published in 1923 through 1948.

Imagery of fairies in literature became prettier and smaller as time progressed. Andrew Lang, complaining of "the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms" in the introduction to The Lilac Fairy Book, observed that "These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed."

Fairies are seen in Neverland, in the novel Peter and Wendy, the version of James Barrie's famous Peter Pan stories that was published in 1911. In the part of the story where Peter Pan and the lost boys had built a house for Wendy on Neverland.

Fairies in Art
Images of fairies have appeared as illustrations, often in books of fairy tales, as well as in photographic-based media and sculpture.

Some artists known for their depictions of fairies include:
Cicely Mary Barker
Arthur Rackham
Brian Froud
Alan Lee
Amy Brown
David Delamare
Meredith Dillman
Jasmine Becket-Griffith
Warwick Goble
Kylie InGold
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Myrea Pettit
Florence Harrison
Nene Thomas
Gustave Doré
Rebecca Guay
Greta James
 

The Victorian era was particularly noted for fairy paintings. The Victorian painter Richard Dadd created paintings of fairy-folk with a sinister and malign tone.

Other Victorian artists who depicted fairies include John Atkinson Grimshaw, Joseph Noel Paton, John Anster Fitzgerald and Daniel Maclise. Interest in fairy-themed art enjoyed a brief renaissance following the publication of the Cottingley Fairies photographs in 1917 and a number of artists turned to painting fairy themes.