The Fairy (Fae, Faerie) is the supernatural folk of European legend: a race of magical, often beautiful and capricious beings — sometimes tiny and winged, sometimes human-sized and lordly — who dwell in an enchanted otherworld alongside the mortal world, who possess wondrous powers and treasures, who may bless or curse, help or harm, and who are bound by their own strange laws and tabus. They are the fair folk, the magical race of the European otherworld.
The Fair Folk
The Fairy (from Old French faerie, the realm of the fae, from Latin fata, the Fates) is a vast and varied tradition spanning the folklore of Europe — the Celtic Sidhe and Tylwyth Teg, the Germanic and Norse elves, the household and nature spirits, and the courtly fairies of medieval romance. Fairies are conceived in many ways: as a hidden race of the wild and the otherworld; as diminished gods or nature-spirits; as the spirits of the dead; or as fallen angels too good for Hell but not good enough for Heaven. They range from tiny, delicate, winged sprites to beings of human size and surpassing beauty, lords and ladies of a glittering fairy court.
The Powers and the Perils
Fairies possess great magical powers: they can fly, become invisible, shapeshift, enchant, see the future, and work wonders; they have fairy gold (which turns to leaves), fairy music (irresistibly beautiful), and fairy treasures. But they are capricious and dangerous, and dealing with them is perilous. They may reward the kind and punish the rude; they steal away mortals (especially babies, leaving a changeling, and beautiful youths and brides) into their world; they lead travellers astray; they blight or bless the crops and the cattle; and time runs strangely in their realm, so that one who spends a night dancing with the fairies may return to find a hundred years have passed. To eat fairy food, to accept fairy gifts, or to offend the fairies is to be ensnared.
The Tabus and the Otherworld
The fairy folk are bound by, and impose, strict rules and tabus: they cannot abide iron (cold iron repels and harms them), and they may be warded by iron, by salt, by running water, by holy things, by turning one’s coat inside out, and by rowan and other protective plants. They keep their bargains to the letter and demand the same. They dwell in the hollow hills, the fairy mounds (the raths and barrows), under the lakes, in the deep woods, and in their own otherworld of eternal youth and beauty, entered through fairy rings, on certain nights (May Eve, Midsummer, Samhain). From this immense tradition the fairy has become one of the most beloved and enduring figures of Western imagination, from the dread fair folk of old belief to the gossamer-winged fairy of the nursery. In the Fairy, Europe gave form to the supernatural folk — the magical, beautiful, capricious race of the otherworld who bless and curse, steal and reward, and dwell by their own strange laws beside the world of mortals, the fair folk of legend.