Fairy
A fairy (also fay, fae;
from faery, faerie, "realm of the
fays") is a type of mythical being
or legendary creature in European
folklore, a form of spirit, often
described as metaphysical,
supernatural or preternatural.
Description
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
describes only a specific type of
more ethereal creature or sprite.
Various folkloristic traditions
refer to them euphemistically, by
names such as wee folk, good folk,
people of peace, fair folk (Welsh
tylwyth teg), etc.
Much of the folklore about fairies
revolves around protection from
their malice. Although in modern
culture they are often depicted as
young, sometimes winged, humanoids
of small stature, they
originally[clarification needed]
were depicted quite differently:
tall, radiant, angelic beings or
short, wizened trolls being two of
the commonly mentioned forms.
One common theme found among the
Celtic nations describes a race of
diminutive people who had been
driven into hiding by invading
humans. When considered as beings
that a person might actually
encounter, fairies were noted for
their mischief and malice.
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
demon, or a species completely
independent of humans or angels.
The concept of "fairy" in the narrow
sense is unique to English folklore,
conflating Germanic elves with
influences from Celtic and Romance
(French) folklores, and later made
"diminutive" according to the tastes
of Victorian era "fairy tales" for
children. The English term "fairy"
can be applied to comparable beings
in any of these cultures, more
generally to similar beliefs in
other European folklores ("Slavic
fairies"), or in comparative studies
even worldwide.
Fairies have their historical origin
in the conflation of Celtic (Breton,
Welsh) traditions in the Middle
French medieval romances, e.g. as
one of the beings that a knight
errant might encounter. Fairie was
in origin used adjectivally, meaning
"enchanted" (as in fairie knight,
fairie queene), but was used as a
name for "enchanted" creatures from
as early as the Late Middle English
period.
Fairies as the term is now
understood were shaped in the
literature of Romanticism during the
Victorian era. Writers such as
Walter Scott and James Hogg were
inspired by folklore which featured
fairies, such as the Border ballads.
Folklorists have suggested that
their origin may lie partially in a
conquered race living in hiding, or
in religious beliefs that lost
currency with the advent of
Christianity.
Names
The word fairy derives from Middle
English faierie (also fayerye,
feirie, fairie), a direct borrowing
from Old French faerie (Modern
French féerie) meaning the land,
realm, or characteristic activity
(i.e. enchantment) of the legendary
people of folklore and romance
called (in Old French) faie or fee
(Modern French fée). This derived
ultimately from Late Latin fata (one
of the personified Fates, hence a
guardian or tutelary spirit, hence a
spirit in general); cf. Italian
fata, Portuguese fada, Spanish hada
of the same origin.
Fata, although it became a feminine
noun in the Romance languages, was
originally the neuter plural ("the
Fates") of fatum, past participle of
the verb fari to speak, hence "thing
spoken, decision, decree" or
"prophetic declaration, prediction",
hence "destiny, fate". It was used
as the equivalent of the Greek
Μοῖραι Moirai, the personified Fates
who determined the course and ending
of human life.[original research?]
To the word faie was added the
suffix -erie (Modern English
-(e)ry), used to express either a
place where something is found
(fishery, heronry, nunnery) or a
trade or typical activity engaged in
by a person (cookery, midwifery,
thievery). In later usage it
generally applied to any kind of
quality or activity associated with
a particular sort of person, as in
English knavery, roguery, witchery,
wizardry.
Faie became Modern English fay "a
fairy"; the word is, however, rarely
used, although it is well known as
part of the name of the legendary
sorceress Morgan le Fay of Arthurian
legend. Faierie became fairy, but
with that spelling now almost
exclusively referring to one of the
legendary people, with the same
meaning as fay. In the sense "land
where fairies dwell", the
distinctive and archaic spellings
Faery and Faerie are often used.
Faery is also used in the sense of
"a fairy", and the back-formation
fae, as an equivalent or substitute
for fay is now sometimes seen.
The latinate fay is not to be
confused with the unrelated
(Germanic) fey, meaning "fated to
die".
Characteristics
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 demon, 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
Christianity. These explanations are
not necessarily incompatible, and
they may be traceable to multiple
sources.
Much of the folklore about fairies
revolves around protection from
their malice, by such means as cold
iron (iron is like poison to
fairies, and they 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.[8] 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.
In his manuscript, The
Secret Commonwealth of Elves,
Fauns and Fairies, Reverend Robert
Kirk, minister of the Parish
of Aberfoyle, Stirling, Scotland,
wrote in 1691:
These Siths or Fairies they call
Sleagh Maith or the Good
People...are said to be of middle
nature between Man and Angel, as
were Daemons thought to be of old;
of intelligent fluidous Spirits, and
light changeable bodies (lyke those
called Astral) somewhat of the
nature of a condensed cloud, and
best seen in twilight. These bodies
be so pliable through the sublety of
Spirits that agitate them, that they
can make them appear or disappear at
pleasure
Although in modern culture they are
often depicted as young, sometimes
winged, humanoids of small stature,
they originally were depicted quite
differently: tall, radiant, angelic
beings or short, wizened trolls
being two of the commonly mentioned
forms. 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. Some fairies though
normally quite small were able to
dilate their figures to imitate
humans.
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 shape shifting 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.
In some folklore fairies have green
eyes and often bite. Though they can
confuse one with their words,
fairies cannot lie. They hate being
told 'thank you', as they see it as
a sign of one forgetting the good
deed done, and, instead, want
something that will guarantee
remembrance.
Origin
The early modern fairies
do not have any single origin,
representing a conflation of
disparate elements of folk belief,
influenced by literature and by
learned speculation (e.g. alchemy).
In folklore, they are variously
regarded as a "natural" but hidden
species, as spirits of the dead, or
as descendants of either fallen
angels or demons. 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 demon, or a
species completely independent of
humans or angels. The folkloristic
or mythological elements combine
Celtic, Germanic and Greco-Roman
elements.
Demoted pagan
deities
Another theory is that the
fairies were originally worshiped as
minor goddesses, such as nymphs or
tree spirits, but with the coming of
Christianity, they lived on, in a
dwindled state of power, in folk
belief. In this particular time,
fairies were reputed by the church
as being 'evil' beings. Many beings
who are described as deities in
older tales are described as
"fairies" in more recent writings.
Victorian explanations of mythology,
which accounted for all gods as
metaphors for natural events that
had come to be taken literally,
explained them as metaphors for the
night sky and stars. According to
this theory, fairies are personified
aspects of nature and deified
abstract concepts such as ‘love’ and
‘victory’ in the pantheon of the
particular form of animistic nature
worship reconstructed as the
religion of Ancient Western Europe.
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
Danann 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."
Spirits of
the dead
A third theory was that
the fairies were a folkloric belief
concerning the dead. This noted many
common points of belief, such as the
same legends being told of ghosts
and fairies, the sídhe in actuality
being burial mounds, it being
dangerous to eat food in both
Fairyland and Hades, and both the
dead and fairies living underground.
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 "woman
of the fairy mound") 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. This was among
the most common beliefs expressed by
those who believed in fairies,
although many of the informants
would express the belief with some
doubts.
Christian mythology
One Christian belief held
that fairies were a class of
"demoted" angels. One popular story
described how, when the angels
revolted, God ordered the gates of
heaven shut: those still in heaven
remained angels, those in hell
became demons, and those caught in
between became fairies. Others
suggested that the fairies, not
being good enough, had been thrown
out of heaven, but they were not
evil enough for hell. This may
explain the tradition that they had
to pay a "teind" or tithe to hell:
as fallen angels, though not quite
devils, they could be seen as
subjects of the devil. For a similar
concept in Persian mythology, see
Peri.
A third, related belief was the
fairies were demons entirely. This
belief became much more popular with
the growth of Puritanism. The
hobgoblin, once a friendly household
spirit, became a wicked goblin.
Dealing with fairies was in some
cases considered a form of
witchcraft and punished as such in
this era. Disassociating himself
from such evils may be why Oberon,
in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
carefully observed that neither he
nor his court feared the church
bells.
The belief in their angelic nature
was less common than that they were
the dead, but still found
popularity, especially in
Theosophist circles. Informants who
described their nature sometimes
held aspects of both the third and
the fourth belief, or observed that
the matter was disputed.
Elementals
Another belief is 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.
1896
illustration of a fairy from
Ernest Vincent Wright's The
Wonderful Fairies of the Sun
AMAZON
LINK
A Hidden People
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. A less-common
belief was that the fairies were
actually humans; 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.
In old Celtic fairy lore the Aos Sí
(fairy folk) are immortals living in
the ancient barrows and cairns. The
Tuatha Dé Danann are associated with
several Otherworld realms including
Mag Mell (the Pleasant Plain), Emain
Ablach (the Fortress of Apples or
the Land of Promise or the Isle of
Women), and Tir na nÓg (the Land of
Youth).
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 or Land of the Gods.
According to legend, the Fairy Queen
sometimes offered the branch to
worthy mortals, granting them safe
passage and food during their stay.
Some 19th-century archaeologists
thought they had found underground
rooms in the Orkney islands
resembling the Elfland in Childe
Rowland. In popular folklore, flint
arrowheads from the Stone Age were
attributed to the fairies as
"elf-shot". The fairies' fear of
iron was attributed to the invaders
having iron weapons, whereas the
inhabitants had only flint and were
therefore easily defeated in
physical battle. Their green
clothing and underground homes were
credited to their need to hide and
camouflage themselves from hostile
humans, and their use of magic a
necessary skill for combating those
with superior weaponry.
In Victorian beliefs of evolution,
cannibalism among "ogres" was
attributed to memories of more
savage races, still practicing it
alongside "superior" races that had
abandoned it. Selkies, described in
fairy tales as shapeshifting seal
people, were attributed to memories
of skin-clad "primitive" people
traveling in kayaks. African pygmies
were put forth as an example of a
race that had previously existed
over larger stretches of territory,
but come to be scarce and
semi-mythical with the passage of
time and prominence of other tribes
and races.
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