How do fairies fly? + Do fairies have wings?

Perhaps some of the most common questions on the internet involve fairy flight, such as do fairies have wings? can fairies fly? how do fairies fly? etc.

We’ve all seen the images of fairies with wings, so it might surprise you to hear until the 20th century those who described their encounters with fairies never included wings in their descriptions of them. 

Fairies, could fly without wings, however, for as Kirk writes in a “Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies” (1691) fairies would “swim in the air near the earth.” And Scottish fairies would kidnap or attack people by flying. 

Katherine Briggs states that “It is very rare in traditional fairy tales for Fairies to travel by means of wings. They generally fly through the air on transformed ragwort stems, twigs or bundles of grasses, using them as witches use broomsticks, and most commonly levitated by a magic password.” Such as horse and hattock. 

Yet, as with all fairy magic, fairy flight seems to be limited by function. For while they fairies would fly as a form of play, to steal from humans, to move about quickly, to shoot curses at people, etc. But not as a means of escaping people intent on capturing them. I can’t think of a single story where a fairy flew to escape someone who trying to catch them.

This might be because humans have the ability to thwart fairy spells with their gaze. Stare unblinking at a fairy in folklore and they can’t vanish, for example. 

That said there is a story where the fairies helped a human to escape a death sentence by flying him away. 

In this story a young boy is in the wilderness when he comes across a cottage with a friendly lady who allows him to stay the night. During the night, however, the ladies of the house show their fairy nature by donning white caps and saying “Here’s off” at which point the fly away. Afraid to stay in the hut alone the boy grabs another cap and says “Here’s after” at which point he flies to where the women are dancing around a fairy ring. Then they all fly off again, this time down a chimney and into a wealthy mans cellar, where the boy drinks so much wine he passes out and is caught. Just before he is hung for the theft the fairy lady comes to him, puts a hat on his head and they fly away 

Here the fairy explained that she had been displeased by his taking her magic cap, and that if befriended by fairies, he must never in future take liberties with their property. This he promised, and after a good meal, was allowed to depart to his home.

It is fairly typical of fairies living in cottages to be kindly disposed towards people, although there are no guarantees in fairyland. Not that that’s relevant to the current discussion, I just thought it was an interesting aside. 

Kathrine Briggs believes that this story has more in common with witches’ tales, and I would tend to agree, primarily because the boy and women manage to fly away from danger, something, as I’ve said the fairies seemingly didn’t do. Except for a Danish tale in which some fairies are carrying a woman off and someone forces them to drop her and then drives them away. Although in this story the fairies were already flying when the man approached them. 

Fairies, after all, were often responsible for witch flight in stories. 

As Emma Wilby Says “several contemporary anecdotes relate how ordinary people could find themselves transported in 'fairy whirlwinds' 

Where they would dance with the fairies. 

Regardless of the means of flight, however, what we see is that in most cases then fairy flight is clearly a spell, often associated with a magical object and magical words, 

Okay, so where does the idea of fairies’ as being winged come from?

It's likely it started with a German Alchemist named Paracelsus (1493-1541) who determined that there were four classes of elementals, with air being represented by sylphs and they were depicted as having wings. 

It is worth noting at this point that fairies were rarely ever associated with the air. Rather they were the spirits of rocks, of lakes, earth mounds, and the like. 

In any case sylphs began to appear in English plays in the 16th century, for example Ariel in Shakespeare’s play, although she wasn’t a fairy she acted much like one of the fairies from Midsummer Night’s Dream would have, thus the association was easy to make. Something that seems to have happened by the 17th century when fairies began to wear winged costumes in Masque plays for the wealthy. 

Outside of these plays, even in drawings, fairies were still depicted as wingless. Still, theatrical fairies grew in popularity and so they influenced pop depictions of fairies, but it does seem that most people at the time could still tell the difference, as again fairies weren’t mentioned as having wings for another three hundred years in encounters with people.