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Fairy, in folklore, supernormal being who, skilled in magic, could become invisible, change shape and size, and bewitch human beings. Robert Kirk, a Scottish minister and Gaelic scholar, described fairies in his Secret Commonwealth (1691) as “of a middle Nature betwixt Man and Angel.” Fairies lived far longer than men but had no souls and perished utterly at death. While some were of human size and appearance, the flower fairies of Devon were minute beings, and the “portunes” mentioned by Gervase of Tilbury in his early 13th-century book of marvels were only three inches (eight centimetres) high.
The tendency to prettify fairies in children’s stories represents a degeneration of a serious and somewhat sinister tradition. Once feared as dangerous and powerful, they were euphemistically called “the gentle people” or “the good neighbours”; to refer to them by name gave them power over the speaker, One who visited fairyland might return with scattered wits or find that long years had elapsed in his apparently short absence,
Yet fairies were often resorted to for their healing powers, and they in turn frequently sought human midwives. Fairy men sometimes took human wives, or a fairy woman might consent to marry a man. Unions with fairy women were usually subject to a compact, and to break it ended the marriage.
One of the fairies’ most dreaded habits was stealing human babies and substituting a changeling, or fairy child, so that it might have the benefit of human milk.
Deformed or cretinous babies were often thought to be changelings.
Some fairies were homely agriculturists, cattle keepers, weavers, and workers in wood and metal. Others, such as the orownie tq.v.) and the house boggart, attached themselves to human families as helpers. There were also nature fairies, who haunted woods, moor- lands, and rivers. Such were the Scandinavian trolls (q.v.) and the German wood women, as well as the Scottish kelpies and glaistigs and the English water spirits Peg Powler and Jenny Greenteeth. Various theories purport to account for the widespread and persistent belief in fairies, One is that it derives from an actual memory of Neolithic peoples who precariously survived in isolated communities after conquest by other peoples. With their superior knowledge of the countryside and of native gods, they might be credited with magic, and they might also help, harm, or intermarry. Another suggestion is that the belief springs from legends of pagan gods and nature spirits, whose worship was suppressed under Christianity. The Daoine Sidhe in Ireland and the Twylwyth Teg in Wales have strong affinities with the displaced gods.
In “The Fairy Dwellings of Selena Moor,” an old Cormsh folktale, it is explicitly stated that the fairies are the dead.
