2. 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
3. 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
4. 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.
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
