Fairies

FAIRIES

A host of supernatural beings who occupy a middle realm between Earth and heaven.

Fairies are magically empowered beings who occupy a middle realm between Earth and the heavenly planes. They exist between the human realm and the realm of spirits, and in folklore they are neither fully divine nor merely ghosts. Both good and evil, fairies possess magical powers and are sometimes associated with demons, fallen angels, witches, and possession lore.

The word fairy originates from the Latin word fata (“fate”), which refers to the Fates of mythology: supernatural women who spin, twist, and cut the threads of life. Fairy originally meant faerie, a state of enchantment. In medieval times, fairy sometimes described women who had magical powers.

According to lore, fairies themselves do not like the word fairy. They prefer more respectful names such as: the Good Neighbors, the Gentry, the People of Peace, the Strangers, Themselves, the Seely (Blessed) Court, and other similar titles. Fairies are often referred to as “the Little People.”

FAIRY ORIGINS

Fairy beliefs are universal and ancient, and there are many explanations of their origins. Celtic fairy lore is particularly strong and later absorbed Christian elements. In Irish lore, the fairies are descended from the Tuatha de Danaan, the early inhabitants of Ireland. When the Mil invaded, the Tuatha de Danaan used supernatural powers to become invisible and withdraw into the hills. From them arose the gods, demigods, heroes, and the fairies.

Other explanations for the origins of fairies include:

• Souls of the unbaptized and pagan dead, trapped between heaven and Earth
• Guardians of the dead, living in an otherworld that exists between the living and the dead. They have the power to take people, and when they do, those people die
• Ancestral ghosts
• Fallen angels cast out of heaven with Lucifer, sentenced by God to the elements of the earth, where they act as Demons
• Nature spirits who are attached to particular places or to the four elements, such as sylphs of the air, gnomes of the earth, undines of water, and salamanders of fire
• Supernatural creatures who are shape-shifting monsters or half-human, half-monster
• Small human beings, primitive races (such as the Tuatha de Danaan) that went into hiding in order to survive

In more recent times, fairies have also been compared to extraterrestrials.

DESCRIPTIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS

Fairies usually are invisible except to those with clairvoyant sight. They are best seen at dusk. In lore, they do not like to be seen and often punish people who see them accidentally, including striking them blind. If they choose to be visible, fairies can bestow the gift of clairvoyance (and healing) upon mortals.

Descriptions of fairies range from tiny lights to winged creatures and, most often, small people. They can appear ugly—even monstrous—or extraordinarily beautiful. They are shape-shifters who may assume any form they wish, especially to deceive or manipulate.

In Ireland, fairies may appear as black birds, especially crows; in French fairy lore, they are sometimes magpies. Black birds and black animals are also associated in Christian lore with demons and the Devil.

Some fairies are solitary (for example, leprechauns), while others live in races and nations. Their homes are often in the earth and are accessed through mounds, caves, burrows, holes in the ground, or under piles of stones and rocks. It is considered bad luck to disturb these places. Fairies may take revenge through misfortune, illness, and even death.

FAIRYLAND (ELFLAND)

The Land of Fairy, also called Elfland, has characteristics of the land of the dead. Time is altered: a day in the human world may stretch into years in Fairyland. There is no day or night, only perpetual twilight. In legend and lore, there is an intermingling of ghosts, the afterlife, and the fairy realm.

Descriptions of European fairies have been collected from oral tradition. Robert Kirk, a Scottish Episcopalian minister who was clairvoyant, visited Fairyland and wrote an account, The Secret Commonwealth (1691–92), one of the most significant first-person accounts of fairy knowledge. A major compendium of fairy lore was written by W. Y. Evans-Wentz in the early twentieth century: The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911).

FAIRIES AMONG HUMANS

Fairies live much as humans do: working, maintaining families, and amusing themselves with food, drink, music, and dancing. They travel in the physical world along paths, tracks, and raths—which must never be disturbed. Some march in processions at night, especially on seasonal cross-quarter days.

If a house is built atop a fairy track, the fairies will pass right through it. The occupants will sicken, crops will fail, and animals may die. Fairies can act like poltergeists, opening closed windows and doors and creating disturbances similar to hauntings.

Fairies are similar to demons in that many do not care for humans, and sometimes they deliberately fool or attack them. A strong trickster element runs through fairy lore. They lead travellers astray. They attend human wakes and funerals and eat banquet food, spoiling it.

FAIRY ABDUCTIONS

Fairies may kidnap people to their abodes, especially beautiful women whom they take as wives. In Fairyland, if a person eats fairy food, they remain trapped. To be “taken” by fairies means to enter the otherworld, often linked to the land of the dead.

If the abduction is temporary, a person may sicken and later recover. If permanent, the person dies and remains in the otherworld. Eating fairy food is taboo because it alters the body and prevents return to the human world.

FAIRY OFFERINGS AND HOUSE FAIRIES

Not all fairies are hostile. Some are kind and helpful—on conditions. Household brownies will help with chores if the occupants are respectful, keep a clean home, and leave offerings of milk, cream, or food.

Once food is left for fairies, it must not be eaten by humans or animals, because fairies take the essence of the food and it is no longer fit to consume. If food falls on the floor, fairies claim it and it must be given to them.

A MAJOR WEAKNESS: IRON

Fairies are said to have a major weakness: IRON, which repels them and dilutes their supernatural powers. Amulets made of iron are traditional protections against fairy interference.

BEWITCHMENT AND WITCHCRAFT

As do witches, fairies can bewitch people and animals, blight crops, and damage health. In Irish lore, the Tuatha de Danaan took revenge upon the Mil by blighting wheat crops and spoiling milk.

When Christian elements entered fairy lore, it became common to dip a thumb in fresh milk and make the sign of the cross to ward off fairies.

If a person insults or displeases fairies, they may transform him into a beast, a stone, or something else in nature.

Bewitched and fairy-possessed people and animals—who act strangely, sicken, fall into trances, or have seizures—are called “fairy struck” and “elf shot.” The latter refers to invisible arrows shot into people and animals. Fairies also teach witches magical lore and spell-casting.

CHANGELINGS

Fairies are well known for stealing human babies and substituting their own ugly babies in their place. The taking happens at night when a child is asleep or napping unattended.

Evans-Wentz gives the following quoted oral account from France:

“When she had her first child, a very strong and very pretty boy, she noticed one morning that he had been changed during the night; there was no longer the fine baby that she had put to bed in the evening; there was, instead, an infant hideous to look at, greatly deformed, hunchbacked, and crooked, and of a black colour. The poor woman knew that a fee [fairy] had changed her child.
This changed infant still lives, and today he is about seventy years old. He has all the possible vices; and he has tried many times to kill his mother. He is a veritable Demon; he predicts the future, and has a habit of running abroad at night. They call him the “Little Corrigan” [a type of fairy], and everybody flees from him. Being poor and infirm now, he is obliged to beg, and people give him alms because they have a great fear of him. His nickname is Olier.
The woman had two other children, who also were said to be normal at birth but were stolen by the fairies and also became “Demonic” hunchbacks. Then she was advised by a wise woman to put a sprig of boxwood blessed by a priest in the cradle, and the fairies would be repelled. She did so for her fourth child, and it was not affected.”

The idea of changelings may have explained problems in infants that were not obvious at birth but developed later, and even “crib death” or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

POSSESSION AND EXORCISM

Changelings result from possession: an entity steals a soul during sleep, making the changeling “fairy-possessed.” Changelings are described with demonic characteristics: altered personality, evil tendencies, prophecy, and sometimes altered physical appearance.

Exorcism remedies exist in fairy lore. In French lore, one remedy was to leave a changeling outdoors so the fairies would hear it cry, take it back, and return the true child.

Fairies were also believed to bewitch milk. Exorcisms of milk were once common in folklore practice. The vessel was blessed first, and so was the milk poured into it.

The biography of St. Columba (written by Adamnan in Vita Columbae) includes a milk exorcism story:

“Thou has done carelessly in thy work today; for thou has not cast out the Demon that was lurking in the bottom of the empty pail, by tracing on it, before pouring in the milk, the sign of the Lord’s cross; and now not enduring, thou seest, the virtue of the sign, he has quickly fled away in terror, while at the same time the whole of the vessel has been violently shaken, and the milk spilled.”

Another folk custom in Brittany, France, called for burning green branches on the summer solstice. Farm animals were passed through the smoke, exorcising evil spirits and fairies and protecting them from bewitchment—especially ensuring abundant milk.

FAIRIES IN CONTEMPORARY LORE

Since Victorian times, fairies have increasingly been stripped of their formidable powers and trivialised as little beings with wings or ballerina-like figures with wands. The fictional Tinkerbell, created by J. M. Barrie around the turn of the twentieth century, further shaped the modern “cute fairy” image.

Popular media continues to portray fairies as harmless and charming, with no demonic associations. The tooth fairy remains a popular children’s tradition.

FAIRIES AND WITCHES

In witch-trial history—especially in the British Isles—fairies and witches were often blended together. Accused witches sometimes claimed they were taught magic by fairies rather than by the Devil.

James I of England, in Daemonologie, called Diana (goddess of witches) the “Queen of Faerie.” Oberon, king of fairies, was also the name of a demon summoned in magical texts. Fairies were said to be familiars or teachers of witches.

Historical cases and confessions include: John Walsh (1566), Bessy Dunlop (1576), Alison Pearson (1588), and Isobel Gowdie (1662). As late as 1894, Irish fairy belief played a role in the Bridget Cleary case, where she was accused of being a changeling.

MAGICAL WORK WITH FAIRIES

In earlier times, people mostly avoided fairies, yet their powers of healing, prophecy, and protection tempted some to seek them out. A 15th-century English manuscript prescribed a way to summon fairies:

“First get a broad square christall or Venus glasse, in length and breadth three inches; then lay that glasse or chrystall in the blood of a white Heene, three Wednesdays or three Fridays, then take it out and wash it with Holy Water and fumigate it [with incense]. Then take three hazels sticks or wands of a years growth, peel them fayre and white and make them so long as you write the spirits or fayries which you call three times on every sticke, being made fl att on one side. Then bury them under som hill, wheras you suppose fayries haunt, the Wednesday before you call her, and the Friday following, take them up and call her at 8, 3, and 10 of the clocke which he good planets and hours, but when you call, be of cleane life and turn thy face towards the east, and when you have her, bind her to the stone or glasse.”

In modern times, magical practitioners often use the spelling faery to distinguish contemporary spiritual work from old folklore and Victorian romantic imagery. Magical work may involve meditation, dreams, telepathy, rituals, and shamanic journeying to the Underworld fairy realm.

ALSO KNOWN AS:

Faerie; Fee; Fay; Fae; Fada; Fata; Hada; Draga; Encantada; Damizelos

ANIMALS:

Frogs, toads, dragonflies, butterflies, horses, cattle, deer, and foxes are among the creatures most identified with Fairies.

PLANTS:

Wildflowers in general

Plants Traditionally Associated with Fairies

• Blackthorn (sloe)
• Bluebells
• Brambles
• Briar roses and dog roses
• Crocuses, especially saffron
• Ferns
• Foxglove
• Hawthorn
• Heartsease
• Hollyhocks
• Lavender
• Morning glories
• Mushrooms, especially amanita muscaria
• Pansies
• Poppies
• Primrose (Allegedly primroses serve as keys to Fairy Land.)
• Ragweed (a.k.a., Fairy’s Horse)
• Rosemary

TIME:

Fairies favour nocturnal hours and threshold times, for instance, twilight and dawn.

SACRED DATES:

Fairies are particularly active from May Eve (Beltane, Walpurgis) until a last annual fling at Halloween.

SEE ALSO:

Fairy, Birth • Fairy, Flower • Fairy, Green • Fairy Queens • Fates • Gwillion • Ho Hsien-Ko • Hulden • Huli Jing • Ielle • Keshalyi • Ma Gu • Ma Zu • Nymph • Rusalka • Sidhe • Tündér • Vila • Cottingley Fairies

Allegedly, if you stand beneath an elder tree on Midsummer’s Eve, you will be granted a vision of reveling Fairies.

FURTHER READING

• Briggs, Katherine. The Vanishing People. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
• Briggs, Katharine. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins – Brownies – Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
• Evans-Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. 1911. Reprint, New York: Carroll Publishing Group, 1990.
• Guiley, Rosemary. Fairy Magic. London: Element/Thorsons, 2004.
• Stewart, R. J. The Living World of Faery. Lake Toxaway, N.C.: Mercury Publishing, 1995.
• Vallee, Jacques. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1969.
• Scott, Sir Walter. Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. 1884. Reprint, New York: Citadel Press, 1968.
• Yeats, W. B. Irish Fairy and Folk Tales. 1892. Reprint, New York: Dorset Press, 1986.

SOURCE NOTES

• The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology – Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – Copyright © 2009 by Visionary Living, Inc.
• The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – Copyright © 1989, 1999, 2008 by Visionary Living, Inc.
• The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley Copyright © 2006 by Visionary Living, Inc.
• The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits — Rosemary Ellen Guiley (September 1, 2007)
• Encyclopedia of Spirits: The Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods & Goddesses– Written by Judika Illes Copyright © 2009 by Judika Illes.