7ds Fairies

[Ezekiel Tulagan]

Myths and stories about fairies do not have a single origin, but are rather a collection of folk beliefs from disparate sources. Various folk theories about the origins of fairies include casting them as either demoted angels or demons in a Christian tradition, as deities in Pagan belief systems, as spirits of the dead, as prehistoric precursors to humans, or as spirits of nature.

The label of fairy has at times applied only to specific magical creatures with human appearance, magical powers, and a penchant for trickery. At other times it has been used to describe any magical creature, such as goblins and gnomes. Fairy has at times been used as an adjective, with a meaning equivalent to "enchanted" or "magical". It is also used as a name for the place these beings come from, the land of Fairy.[citation needed]

A recurring motif of legends about fairies is the need to ward off fairies using protective charms. Common examples of such charms include church bells, wearing clothing inside out, four-leaf clover, and food. Fairies were also sometimes thought to haunt specific locations, and to lead travelers astray using will-o'-the-wisps. Before the advent of modern medicine, fairies were often blamed for sickness, particularly tuberculosis and birth deformities.

In addition to their folkloric origins, fairies were a common feature of Renaissance literature and Romantic art, and were especially popular in the United Kingdom during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The Celtic Revival also saw fairies established as a canonical part of Celtic cultural heritage.

Latinate fae, from which fairy derives, is distinct from English fey (from Old English fǣġe), which means 'fated to die'.[4] However, this unrelated Germanic word fey may have been influenced by Old French fae (fay or fairy) as the meaning had shifted slightly to 'fated' from the earlier 'doomed' or 'accursed'.[5]

The term fairy is sometimes used to describe any magical creature, including goblins and gnomes, while at other times, the term describes only a specific type of ethereal creature or sprite.[7]

Explanations for the origins of fairies range from Persian mythology[8] to the folklore of the Brythonic (Bretons, Welsh, Cornish), Gaelic (Irish, Scots, Manx), and Germanic peoples, and from the pages of Middle French medieval romances.

According to some historians, such as Barthlemy d'Herbelot, fairies were adopted from and influenced by the peris of Persian mythology.[9] Peris were angelic beings that were mentioned in antiquity in pre-Islamic Persia as early as the Achaemenid Empire. Peris were later described in various Persian works in great detail such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi. A peri was illustrated to be fair, beautiful, and extravagant nature spirits that were supported by wings. This may have influenced migratory Germanic and Eurasian settlers into Europe, or been transmitted during early exchanges.[10] The similarities could also be attributed to a shared Proto-Indo-European mythology.[8]

In the Middle Ages, fairie was used adjectivally, meaning "enchanted" (as in fairie knight, fairie queene), but also became a generic term for various "enchanted" creatures during the Late Middle English period. Literature of the Elizabethan era conflated elves with the fairies of Romance culture, rendering these terms somewhat interchangeable. The modern concept of "fairy" in the narrower sense is unique to English folklore, later made diminutive in accordance with prevailing tastes of the Victorian era, as in "fairy tales" for children.

The Victorian era and Edwardian era saw a heightened increase of interest in fairies. The Celtic Revival cast fairies as part of Ireland's cultural heritage. Carole Silver and others suggested this fascination of English antiquarians arose from a reaction to greater industrialization and loss of older folk ways.[11]

Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and having magical powers. Diminutive fairies of various kinds have been reported through centuries, ranging from quite tiny to the size of a human.[12] These small sizes could be magically assumed, rather than constant.[13] Some smaller fairies could expand their figures to imitate humans.[14] On Orkney, fairies were described as short in stature, dressed in dark grey, and sometimes seen in armour.[15] In some folklore, fairies have green eyes. Some depictions of fairies show them with footwear, others as barefoot. Wings, while common in Victorian and later artworks, are rare in folklore; fairies flew by means of magic, sometimes perched on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.[16] Modern illustrations often include dragonfly or butterfly wings.[17]

Early modern fairies does not derive from a single origin; the term is a conflation of disparate elements from folk belief sources, influenced by literature and speculation. In folklore of Ireland, the mythic aes sdhe, or 'people of the fairy hills', have come to a modern meaning somewhat inclusive of fairies. The Scandinavian elves also served as an influence. Folklorists and mythologists have variously depicted fairies as: the unworthy dead, the children of Eve, a kind of demon, a species independent of humans, an older race of humans, and fallen angels.[18] The folkloristic or mythological elements combine Celtic, Germanic and Greco-Roman elements. Folklorists have suggested that 'fairies' arose from various earlier beliefs, which lost currency with the advent of Christianity.[19] These disparate explanations are not necessarily incompatible, as 'fairies' may be traced to multiple sources.

A Christian tenet held that fairies were a class of "demoted" angels.[20] One story described a group of angels revolting, and God ordering the gates of heaven shut; those still in heaven remained angels, those in hell became demons, and those caught in between became fairies.[21] Others wrote that some angels, not being godly enough, yet not evil enough for hell, were thrown out of heaven.[22] This concept may explain the tradition of paying a "teind" or tithe to hell; as fallen angels, although not quite devils, they could be viewed as subjects of Satan.[23]

King James I, in his dissertation Daemonologie, stated the term "faries" referred to illusory spirits (demonic entities) that prophesied to, consorted with, and transported the individuals they served; in medieval times, a witch or sorcerer who had a pact with a familiar spirit might receive these services.[24]

In England's Theosophist circles of the 19th century, a belief in the "angelic" nature of fairies was reported.[25] Entities referred to as Devas were said to guide many processes of nature, such as evolution of organisms, growth of plants, etc., many of which resided inside the Sun (Solar Angels). The more Earthbound Devas included nature spirits, elementals, and fairies,[26] which were described as appearing in the form of colored flames, roughly the size of a human.[27]

Arthur Conan Doyle, in his 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies; The Theosophic View of Fairies, reported that eminent theosophist E. L. Gardner had likened fairies to butterflies, whose function was to provide an essential link between the energy of the sun and the plants of Earth, describing them as having no clean-cut shape ... small, hazy, and somewhat luminous clouds of colour with a brighter sparkish nucleus. "That growth of a plant which we regard as the customary and inevitable result of associating the three factors of sun, seed, and soil would never take place if the fairy builders were absent."[28]

At one time it was thought that fairies were originally worshiped as deities, such as nymphs and tree spirits,[29] and with the burgeoning predominance of the Christian Church, reverence for these deities carried on, but in a dwindling state of perceived power. Many deprecated deities of older folklore and myth were repurposed as fairies in Victorian fiction (See the works of W. B. Yeats for examples).

A recorded Christian belief of the 17th century cast all fairies as demons.[30] This perspective grew more popular with the rise of Puritanism among the Reformed Church of England (See: Anglicanism).[31] The hobgoblin, once a friendly household spirit, became classed as a wicked goblin.[32] Dealing with fairies was considered a form of witchcraft, and punished as such.[33] In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon, king of the faeries, states that neither he nor his court fear the church bells, which the author and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis cast as a politic disassociation from faeries[34] although Lewis makes it clear that he himself does not consider fairies to be demons in his chapter on the topic ("The Longaevi" or "long-livers") from The Discarded Image. In an era of intellectual and religious upheaval, some Victorian reappraisals of mythology cast deities in general as metaphors for natural events,[35] which was later refuted by other authors (See: The Triumph of the Moon, by Ronald Hutton). This contentious environment of thought contributed to the modern meaning of 'fairies'.

One belief held that fairies were spirits of the dead.[36] This derived from many factors common in various folklore and myths: same or similar tales of both ghosts and fairies; the Irish sdhe, origin of their term for fairies, were ancient burial mounds; deemed dangerous to eat food in Fairyland and Hades; the dead and fairies depicted as living underground.[37] Diane Purkiss observed an equating of fairies with the untimely dead who left "unfinished lives".[38] One tale recounted a man caught by the fairies, who found that whenever he looked steadily at a fairy, it appeared as a dead neighbor of his.[39] This theory was among the more common traditions related, although many informants also expressed doubts.[40]

There is an outdated theory that fairy folklore evolved from folk memories of a prehistoric race: newcomers superseded a body of earlier human or humanoid peoples, and the memories of this defeated race developed into modern conceptions of fairies. Proponents find support in the tradition of cold iron as a charm against fairies, viewed as a cultural memory of invaders with iron weapons displacing peoples who had just stone, bone, wood, etc., at their disposal, and were easily defeated. 19th-century archaeologists uncovered underground rooms in the Orkney islands that resembled the Elfland described in Childe Rowland,[41] which lent additional support. In folklore, flint arrowheads from the Stone Age were attributed to the fairies as "elfshot",[42] while their green clothing and underground homes spoke to a need for camouflage and covert shelter from hostile humans, their magic a necessary skill for combating those with superior weaponry. In a Victorian tenet of evolution, mythic cannibalism among ogres was attributed to memories of more savage races, practising alongside "superior" races of more refined sensibilities.[43] The most important modern proponent of the 'hidden people' theory was the Scottish folklorist and antiquarian David MacRitchie.[44]

c80f0f1006