Mythical Creatures: The Fairy

Fairies are described as otherworldy creatures, frequently winged or having to do with magic. The word fairy comes from the old French word fae, which itself is derived from the Latin fata, or fate. Depictions of fairies are highly varied, from Arthurian legend, Morgan Le Fay is often though of as being part fairy, though she was obviously a human character in that saga. Other depictions have them as small and troll-like or hugely tall and angelic. The most popular notion of a fairy is the small butterfly sized creature that we are familiar with from childhood stories like Peter Pan. They are human in appearance and possess magical powers, some of them are credited with the ability to shape shift.

Unlike our modern day interpretation of fairies as kind or benevolent toward humans, more antiquated folklore describe fairies as mischievous to malevolent. One had to protect oneself from their pranks by using herbs, such as rowan or other types of charms. Another means of avoiding the evil intentions of fairies was to avoid geographical locations thought to belong to them. Some myths talk about fairy rings, often a circular growth of mushrooms. It was said that if one inadvertently stepped inside a fairy ring, you would disappear forever or be transported into the land of fairy, never to return.

One of the most common stories about fairies behaving in a cruel manner has to do with the theft of babies, or the abduction of the elderly, wherein the fairy would subsititute another mythical creature called a changeling – same in appearance to the abducted child, but who was not the child or elderly person in question and who frequently proved to be unpleasant, wreaking havoc in the household. This may be a story meant to explain sudden changes in behavior that were brought on by certain types of illness that were unknown to people at the time the stories first came into being. Learning disabilites and dementia were not medically diagnosed in antiquity and could have led to many assumptions that the afflicted was cursed or changed by some magical event.

Beliefs about fairies range from the idea that they were a certain type of ghost, to demoted angels or outright demonic spirits. Today, we tend to distinguish fairies as their own class of mystical being, separate from ghosts or the judeo-christian ideas of angels and demons.