The fae

The Fae

Overview

• Names: Fairy/Faerie/Faery, Fae, Wee Folk, Fair Folk, Good Folk and People of Peace

• Most are described as human-like beings with magical powers

• Iron is poisonous to them• Wings are a modern adaptations

Elves: Light Elves• Germanic and Scandinavian• Said to be fair, more brilliant than the sun,

and normally clad in light or transparent clothing

• Are benevolent to mankind, and generally seen as fair and lovely children.

• They live in Alfheim, the domain of Freyr, the god of the sun

Elves: Night Elves• Nordic• They are ugly, long-nosed dwarfs, have dirty brown

skin• If a ray of sunlight hits them they change into stones

so they come out only at night• They live in subterranean caves

and clefts• Myth says that they were once

maggots that feasted on the corpse of

Ymir and were than endowed by the

Gods with human form and

knowledge.

Brownie/Urisk• Scottish and English, the German Kobold, Scandinavian

Tomte, and Slavic Domovoi are thought to be counterparts• Is a house spirit/elf/goblin that helps around the

house but is never seen and only works at night.

It works for offerings of food, usually porridge,

milk or honey, but will leave or cause

havoc in the home if these offerings are

called payments or if the owner of the

house missuses them• Every manor was believed to have a

brownie and a seat was kept next to the fire

specifically for it

Leprechauns• Old men, clad in a red or

green coat, and commonly

intoxicated• They are shoe-makers and

self-appointed guardians of

an ancient treasure, burying

it in crocks and pots.• If captured, they will grant

three wishes or vanish into thin air

Clurichaun• Alcoholic form of Leprechauns• Are constantly drunk• Favorite past times include riding dogs and

sheep at night• If you treat them well they

protect your wine cellars if not

they wreak havoc on the house

and cause your wine to go bad• Are known to plague the

drunkard or servant who steal wine

Selkie• Icelandic, Irish, and Scottish• Are shape shifters, they live as seals in

the sea but shed their skin to change

into beautiful humans on land• Selkies are supposed to be responsible

for storms and the sinking of ships in

revenge for the human hunting of seals.• If a man finds the skin of a

female selkie he may force her to be his

wife but only if he can keep the skin hidden.

Once she finds her skin she will leave him and

her children behind to rejoin the sea.• Male selkies commonly like to seduce dissatisfied women,

if a woman sought a males attention all she had to do was to

stand at the shoreline and shed 7 tears into the sea

Kelpie

• Celtic• Shape-shifter: comes in the forms of a beautiful

human, a horse with a fish tail, but commonly a horse with a dripping mane

• Lures people onto his back and than dives into the water to drown and eat them

Changelings• When a human child is taken and replaced with a

child of a faerie or stock/fetch, an enchanted doll made of sticks,

• There are many reasons why the child would be taken including: the faerie wanting the love of a human child, the parent’s of the child wronged the faerie in someway, an unbaptized child makes a good meal for trolls, or to prevent inbreeding

• A way to prevent your baby from being stolen was to place a pair of iron scissors within the crib at night

Fairy Circles

• Is a ring or arc of mushrooms in a field or forest• Said to be the area where fae come to dance and

party at night, the mushrooms are used

as stools for those who are taking a rest• Another myth says that they

are portals to the elven world• It is very bad luck to cross

a fairy circle and even worse

luck to build a house near a

fairy circle

Cottingley Fairies• In 1917 two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances

Griffiths, took a series of 5 pictures of them playing with fairies in their backyard

• The fairies were cardboard

cutouts from children fairy tales• Many people

thought they were

real including

famous author

Conan Doyle

The Green Fairy

• Another name for Absinthe, a potent alcoholic beverage, is La Fee Verte

meaning the green fairy• This a metaphorical concept of artistic

inspiration and exploration due to the hallucinogens in wormwood