The Fair Folk

Today's post is about... Fairies!!!

Now, most people, when they think of fairies, think of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan or the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio.  In these stories, fairies are generally good beings who sometimes do bad things for selfish reasons. The Blue Fairy is more of an angelic being than any of the stories of fairies out there.  Meanwhile, Tinker Bell is more like the traditional fairy in actions, at least, who does do some good, but generally acts out of selfish whims.  She'll be your best friend one minute and running off to your worst enemy the next.  In fact, Peter Pan in the original stories acted much like the traditional fae, switching sides in the middle of battles "to even the odds" and then just as swiftly switching back.  Yeah, that's right, Peter Pan wasn't much of a hero in the movies, but he's not a hero at all in the books.

Fairies actually come in all shapes and sizes.  They don't all have wings or pointy ears or anything of the sort.  That part of the fun about reading about them.  When I first started looking up fairies, I was surprised by the amount of variety I found because in the books and movies (the popular ones anyhow) you generally only find two kinds of fairies: the fairies who can be good or bad and the elves which are generally good.  That's not the way it is at all.

There are a wide range of fairies (fae), and yes, elves are included in the list.  Goblins, gremlins, trolls, leprechauns, selkies, kelpies, phookas, bogies, brownies, pixies, salamanders, sprite, spriggans, trows, will-o'wisps, gnomes, sylphs, undines, satyrs, nymphs, dryads, beansidhe, leansidhe, unseelie, seelie, the wild hunt, and many, many, many, many, many more are all considered to be types of fairies.

Yeah... that's a lot of fairies.  How many have you heard of?  How many have you heard of in connection to the word "fairies"?

You probably haven't heard of enough and the really funny part is that for every creature listed, there's probably multiple differing descriptions of their looks and abilities, making a list far as the eye can see.  There are also probably many different ways to spell those names listed above.  Several of the descriptions of each creature definitely overlap.

 It's just the way these stories and ideas play out.  They've been part of folklore for centuries, the creatures that live in shadows and under the hills.  People used to get abducted by fairies the way they now get abducted by aliens.  One of the first explanation for SIDS was that the infant in question was simply a changeling and the real child was now living among fairies, adopted by them.

Oh, and just so you know sidhe is pronounced "she" not "sid-ee".  That's important.

One day, I'm going to write my own fairy story about my version of fairies and I'm going to try to keep it as close to the legends as possible while putting my own unique twist on it.  When that happens, I hope people enjoy the book.  I just have to get a really good idea for the kind of fairy story I'd want to write.  But, I hope this post was a good taste of my love of creatures that probably don't exist.