Story and Analysis of Rumpelstiltskin

Article by Ty Hulse    Read the Original Story

According to Sara Graça da Silva and Jamshid J. Tehrani's research the Rumpelstiltskin stories are likely over 2500 years old, and possibly as old as the Indo-European's life on the Steppes 6000 years ago. Most of the stories related to Rumpelstiltskin involve a fairy being trying to take the woman to be his wife. In fact the version taken down by the Brother's Grimm, the story of "Rumpelstiltskin" is the only story I know of where the fairy wants a baby. This begs the question "Why is this story different?"

It may of course be that Rumpelstiltskin is different because the woman who told it to the Brothers Grimm, being educated, changed it. It may be that they changed it. However, this article presumes that the story is different because of regional differences.

Like many fairy tales, “Rumpelstiltskin” is a story that is without a character which we can define as pure or innocent. Rather, it’s a story of two obviously wicked characters in the form of the father who lies to and thus ends up getting his daughter in a lot of trouble with the king who is a greedy man who cares about nothing but the gold he can get out of the miller’s daughter. Not all the characters are wicked, of course. The miller’s daughter clearly isn’t evil when she agrees to give a baby to a strange man, just desperate. She has been forced into an inescapable predicament by the two men in her life that she should be able to trust above anyone else, her father and her future husband. Clearly this situation puts her in a space between. She is not yet a fiancé, yet she is no longer free in that regard. She is trapped in a prison, but an honored guest. She is between being a member of her father’s house, the executioner, and the king’s household. It is at this moment when she is trapped; pulled by so many worlds that the fairy appears.

One of the premier experts on the history of European witch mythology and lore, Emma Wilby, believes that fairytales such as Rumpelstiltskin represent the idea of the familiar spirit, or shamanistic helping spirit, which comes to people in times of desperation and liminal moments. In such stories the familiar or helping spirit will either offer to aid the person or will demand that they work for them. We see this in a number of stories similar to ‘Rumpelstiltskin’.

In England’s Tom Tit Tot’, a small creature with a tale, the conversation between the girl who must spin for the king or die and the fairy goes;

"tell me what you're a-crying for."

"That won't do me no good if I do," says she.

"You don't know that," that said, and twirled that's tail round.

"well," says she, "that won't do no harm, if that don't do no good," and she upped and told about the pies, and the skeins, and everything.

"This is what I'll do," says the little black thing, "I'll come to your window every morning and take the flax and bring it spun at night."

"What's your pay?" says she.

That looked out the corner of that's eyes, and that said: "I'll give you three guesses every night to guess my name, and if you haven't guessed it before the month's up, you shall be mine.

Notice that there is no mention of a baby in this story. Nor is there any mention in most of the dozen other similar fairy tales except for the fairytale ‘Zirkzirk’. In most such fairy tales the fairy creature asks for the woman themselves. Again, this makes sense if we think of this story in terms of a helping or familiar spirit seeking to obtain a potential shamanistic figure’s service. Of course, many people didn’t want to be shamans or witches and would resist the fairy’s call.

It is telling that the woman in these stories is often unable to perform what were considered ‘normal’ tasks, that they are in some ways outsiders in their community – who are expected to act in a way that is magical. Those who worked with the spirits/fairies often acted in ways that failed to conform to the larger society, being dirty, wild, and or lazy.

It isn’t atypical, however, for the people who are called by the fairies and spirits to resist their call. After all, to work for the spirits, to be a shaman or witch, is to live on the margins of society, especially in Christian Europe. Even in Asia and Siberia, however, many would try to get out of becoming a shaman, and the spirits would torment them until they gave in, unless they could find some way to gain power over the spirits and drive them off.

In any case the initiation of a new shaman/witch and the love of a fairy could cause madness. In Georgia, for example, the forest goddess Dali’s love and attention caused a man to go mad, he would tear his clothes and scratch himself, wandering around in the forest alone (Meskhia). Pocs, 2009 states of new witch shamans that

“Such a person becomes weak or ill, either physically or mentally. If they survive, they have the power of healing, soothsaying, and the ability to contact the afterworld. This motif may be found in a number of tales of South Slavic and the Balkan peoples as well as those from Central Europe.

South Slavic folktale “Stanko and the Fairy” narrates about a shepherd named Stanko, who played beautifully on his shepherd’s flute. When the Angelus bell tolled he did not start to pray but instead played the melody on his flute, and was punished. A Fairy appeared before him, and from that moment on he could not find peace any more. The fairy was following him like a shadow, even when he ate or slept. Neither the priest nor the witch doctor could help him. Totally deranged…

People who had been lured to remote places by the fairies returned to their homes only with great difficulty and were physically or mentally afflicted.”

Given this we can think of the stories of guessing at a supernatural being’s name as a sort of moral on how to escape a forced relationship with the supernatural beings.

Why a Baby?

It is rare in the ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ like stories for the fairy to want a baby, as already stated they are more likely to want the woman themselves. Obviously, fairies often did want human children. Briggs in “The Vanishing People” states that “One of the earliest of the traditions about fairies is that they coveted and stole children (and adults)… Women were stolen to be wet nurses to fairy children or to human babies taken into fairyland, young men with special talents, musicians and singers or those beloved by fairy women…. The fairies seem to have been shy breeders… and they were always anxious to revive their powers with a human strain.”

Obviously, Briggs was talking about British and not German fairies, but Germany too has numerous stories about fairy like beings coveting human labor and lusting after humans.

Yet typically when a fairy wanted someone for nefarious purposes, they simply kidnapped them. Fairy tales are full of people being kidnapped by fairies to work for them, to be their mates, etc. Yet this particular “männlein,” as the German text designates, Rumpelstiltskin, despite outward appearances doesn’t just take the baby.

Again, most fairies in stories don’t ask for the child they want, instead they simply take it. Rumpelstiltskin, however, despite being clearly able to sneak into a prison, being able to weave magic doesn’t just take the child as he obviously could. He tries to get the girl to accept giving the baby to him. What’s more, even after he comes to collect the child, he decides to give her another chance to escape her agreement with him.

Considering that during the time this story takes place children were left in the forests in droves or orphaned on the streets, Rumpelstiltskin could have taken hundreds of children easily, and taking them would have been an act of kindness as Rumpelstiltskin would have been rescuing them from starvation. He doesn’t just want any baby then. What he wants is this particular baby. Indeed, by his own words, this baby is more precious to him than all the treasures in the world.

W know then that this particular baby is precious to Rumpelstiltskin for some reason. This leaves us with the question; Why does Rumpelstiltskin want the baby in the first place? To answer these questions, we must examine what fairies are as well as a few other fairy tales. Let us begin by placing Rumpelstiltskin into the possible categories of fairy to see where he might fit, or if he even has a place as all fairies don’t necessarily seem to.

Possibility 1 - Rumpelstiltskin is an ancestor spirit or a forgotten god.

Jack Zipes echoes Eliade’s belief that “fairy tales are mythic morals after the religious ideas became taboo to talk about.” Fairy tales, according to Zipes, include the concept that; “Since myth narrates the deeds of supernatural beings, it sets examples for human beings that enable them to codify and order their lives. By enacting and incorporating myths in their daily lives, humans are able to have a genuine religious experience.”

 

Spinning itself was a magical act, there are stories of women using spun thread to block the passage of vampires, or to protect themselves from dangerous fairies that were seeking to harm them. Spinning was associated with the figures who controlled the fates of people, and with many of the most powerful goddesses. After all, spinning and weaving predate farming, meaning the idea of deities that worked thread and clothes predates the idea of a deity associated with the earth and the fertility of crops. Zipes states that “A common wish was a good marriage obtained through skill at spinning, through productivity and the ability to make excess well. In equal measure these tales reflect the fear of being bad at spinning, at being clumsy and the social shame that came with this. Indeed, many are the deific figures that would punish women who were slow at their spinning. As with many fairy tale figures these women had to use cleverness and help to overcome their lack of skill.”

It was common for the most important goddess figures of the Alps to encourage spinning and punish those who were lazy or bad with their work. 

In my book “I Writer’s Guide to Spirit Journeys and Fairies” I note that;

“there were in fact two separate types of spirit journeys which have both come to be called wild hunts, and often confused for each other. The first of these is the trooping journey, in which witches would join chthonic goddess figures in trooping around the countryside. These goddesses were not usually connected with fertility, but were instead connected with the spirits of the dead, and household chores such as spinning. In Scotland this figure was Nicnevin, the queen of the fairies, on the borders between England and Scotland she was Gyre Carling, in Tyrol she was Perchta, and in Northern Germany Holda. She was also known by numerous other names in numerous other regions. In essence she was the queen of the witches, leading them along with troops of the dead and unborn children on hunts through the sky on holidays. She was in the habit of punishing lazy women who did not complete their spinning fast enough, while rewarding hardworking ones. This goddess, and by extension the wild hunt she led was ambivalent.”

Wilby states of the goddesses who lead the wild hunt that; “she possessed the same ambivalence seen so clearly in the tribal dark shaman and the spirits he emulates, with a witch from Val di Fiemme claiming, for example, that when her mistress ‘‘journeys through the air she has two patches around her eyes, one on each side, so that she cannot see anything: and if she were able to see everything she would do great harm to the world.’’ 

Rumpelstiltskin fits the idea of this wild and ambivalent deity figure. For he is at once threatening and helping. Rumpelstiltskin is a teacher and guide. According to Zipes “he is more a prophet or miracle-maker, who makes a straightforward bargain, and when he returns to receive the firstborn child, he offers another deal in the form of a riddle to see if she has perhaps become smarter than she was before.” (Jack Zipes)

So, while at first glance the idea that Rumpelstiltskin might be a god seems preposterous, it’s important to keep in mind that many fairy tales are about previous pagan gods and moral values that are now taboo to speak of. Now consider that Merlin was raised by a fairy as was Malagigi the wizard who aided Charlemagne in myth. King Arthur was taken by Merlin who saw his future before he was even born, and Lancelot was taken and raised by fairies as well. This might mean then that Rumpelstiltskin is after the child because he sees the child’s future or at least its potential future. This particular baby is not just that of the woman’s after all but also that of a king, and so is the future king just as King Arthur was. Thus, Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t just want any baby he wants to raise, or have someone else raise a king, while removing the child and future king from what is quite possibly a long line of tyrants or, at the very least, from his currently greedy father. We see something similar happen in a French fairy tale in which a fairy tells the king and queen:

“If I left him (your son) to you to bring up... you would be certain to make him as foolish as yourselves. I do not even intend to let him know that he is your son.”

So at least in one incidence a fairy claims to be removing a child from their parents to help ensure that they are raised properly. While one can’t always trust fairies, of course, we must again recall that the fairies don’t have to give any explanation. They can just take the child if they want it and leave. Further, we must also consider that because Rumpelstiltskin may potentially be able to see the future, that he is actually after the child he knows he loves more than “all the treasures in the world.” As an ancestor or deity, he could be either the child’s grandfather or seeking a way to help his descendants by putting a better king on the throne.

Possibility 2 - Rumpelstiltskin is the spirit of a conquered people or one of their gods. In this possibility, Rumpelstiltskin might be after a mixture of revenge or is attempting to help his people rise up to their former glory by raising the future king of the land. In this he could be a Merlin-like figure of a conquered people who, just as Malagigi the wizard of Charlemagne’s court, was later derided as a devil by later people. Rumpelstiltskin might be a hero to a conquered people still hiding in the woods thus making him an enemy to the kingdom.

Possibility 3 - Rumpelstiltskin is a nature spirit or a simply a unique fairy. It is more challenging to understand the reason a nature spirit or unique fairy would be interested in a specific human child except that perhaps they are aware that they do love the child because of divination. Another possibility comes to us from the story of Powell in Wales in which a human king aids the fairies by slaying an enemy they couldn’t. Thus, it’s conceivable that a nature fairy could desire to take a specific child because it knows that it loves or could help that child.

Possibility 4 - Rumpelstiltskin is a devil/fallen angel or witch. Although I’ve chosen to leave this theory of fairy nature out of this book because it is a much later addition to the fairy theory and so ultimately doesn’t fit within a book explaining the motivations of fairies in more original traditions, it is still conceivable that Rumpelstiltskin is meant by the storytellers to be a devil trying to tempt the girl into the sin of giving away her child. Ultimately, however, while this idea could be workable, after thousands of years of Christianizing the people, telling this story would likely jump on the opportunity to accuse a creature of being a devil if they thought it was so.

Through this simple review we can now see that Rumpelstiltskin is after the baby for four possible reasons:

1 - Rumpelstiltskin wants the baby because he knows that he loves him.

2 - He sees the baby’s future and realizes that it can be a good king finally bringing peace to the land of his ancestors.

3 - He seeks revenge or a way to protect his fallen people.

4 - He knows he’ll need the baby’s help at some future date.

To understand which of these answers makes sense, we must again find an answer to the question: Why doesn’t Rumpelstiltskin just take the baby? Again, there are a number of possible answers which present themselves:

1- Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t simply take the baby in order to mock the miller’s daughter. It’s possible, of course, given the capricious nature of fairies that Rumpelstiltskin is simply teasing the girl, mocking her as mischievous fairies often do. However, if this is the case, why not simply take the child even if she is successful in guessing his name? Or better yet, why even give her that possibility in the first place? Perhaps as a way to mock her further, for he assumes she’ll fail.

2- Rumpelstiltskin seeks to lead the miller’s daughter into sin. The girl is the only good character in the story. If Rumpelstiltskin can get her to give her child to a devil, then he has caused her to sin. The problem with this theory, however, is that if his goal is to cause her to sin, why give her any chance to redeem herself? Why not simply take the child as per their first agreement? Further, why would he suspect the devil of telling the girl his name as he accused when she discovered it if doing so would cause him to lose her soul? In general, this answer makes no sense, so it further eliminates the possibility that he is a devil or fallen angel.

3- Rumpelstiltskin has a conflict. Rumpelstiltskin knows what he needs to do; he knows that he can make the kingdom better, gain help from the child, have a child of his own, etc., but he has a conflict about his method of doing it. So he doesn’t simply want to take the child from its mother. He wants her to accept the loss. In the end, however, he realizes that this is impossible and so he symbolically tears himself in two, ripping his dual nature in half.

4- Rumpelstiltskin is after something more than the child. In a similar story, that of Tim Tom Tat, a little, hairy creature offers to weave for a girl in return for her. In a similar vein, it’s possible that Rumpelstiltskin is hoping by giving the girl a second chance to save the baby he’ll be able to make her feel so defeated that she agrees to come with him. In this case, he is after both the future king and the queen.

5-In another similar story, the Scottish Rumpelstiltskin Whuppity Stoorie tells the girl that fairy law requires that they give the girl three days to guess her name. This is a confusing requirement as, again, fairies take babies without asking all the time. So why do they have to give a person the chance to get out of it unless there is something else at play because of the girl or the child’s relationship to the fairy world?

It seems most likely, given all the possibilities, that Rumpelstiltskin gives the girl a chance to get out of giving him the child because he is in a conflict about what he’s doing. Recalling also that fairies can be multi-natured, we must also consider the possibility that part of him is perhaps trying to force the other part of him to allow the girl to keep the child because he feels sorry for her. This makes even more sense considering what Rumpelstiltskin is. The German version of the Rumpelstiltskin’s fairy tale uses the word “männlein” to represent him.

Männleins in fairy tales have a history of helping girls marry the prince. In the story of “The Three Männlein of the Woods” a young girl is sent by her evil stepmother into the snowy forest to pick strawberries. As she searches for a way to complete her impossible task, she stumbles upon a cottage of three männlein who, in return for her kindness, make gold coins fall from her mouth whenever she speaks, cause her to grow ever more beautiful, and bless her that she’ll marry the king. In other tales, männlein offer advice to princes, or to young men, in order to help them rescue a kingdom and save the princesses.

Männleins appear as knowledgeable. They are the creators of fate. Rumpelstiltskin himself is so good at spinning he can spin straw into gold, spinning ultimately being the activity used to help control fate. Rumpelstiltskin was also showed just when the girl needed him and is also capable of doing the impossible to help her. So, he clearly is able to manipulate the future. What we must presume then is that, at least to an extent, Rumpelstiltskin is attempting to create fate. However, neither his ability to tell when someone needs his help nor his ability to do the impossible prevents him from giving the girl the chance to get out of having her baby taken from her. So obviously he’s in a conflict about what he’s doing. So, it’s likely that like the other Männlein he is kind and is essentially attempting to make the world a better place. However, in doing so he has stepped outside of his usual role of helping damsels in distress and princes on quests and is now trying to steal a prince from a damsel in distress.

Rumpelstiltskin then is most likely some form of deity or ancestor spirit seeking to help his people by raising a king who will actually be good and a child which he loves. Unfortunately, in order to do this properly he must play the role of a villain, a role at least half of his dual nature is not comfortable with. This is why he tries at first to give the miller’s daughter a chance to keep her baby.

A Writers Guide to 

Fairies, Witches, and Vampires

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Fairies are some of the most compelling characters in fairy tales, yet few people understand them. From fairy refugees to blood thirsty vampires this book takes you on a journey to discover what drove these characters, where they came from, and what they wanted.

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Common Fairy Traits

By Ty Hulse

Although each fairy is unique their are a number of common traits which many of them hold in common. This is a short list of some of the most common traits which fairies have. You can see my pervious article at the bottom of this page if you wish.

Because people believed that the fairies controlled their fate and lived as their neighbors people often thought of them as complex beings. People once frequently thought about how they might ingratiate themselves to the fairies and their kin, while worrying about how they might offend them. Early Anglo Saxon doctors would not only try to cure diseases, they would try to figure out how the sick person might have offended the fairies and what they might do to make up for it. (Alaric Hall) (Elves in Anglo-Saxon England Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity)

It would be nearly impossible to come up with a complete list of every trait the fairies could potentially have, that said, the ones which appear in stories, and don’t simply act as a force of nature, will tend to have one or more of a number of common traits.

I have visualized these traits in a wheel because there isn’t always a clear dividing line between these traits. Rather, there is a sort of continuity between the common trait’s fairies exhibit.

Joyous/Artistic

Music and dancing are the fairies delight, as Jacob Grimm notes in his book on the folklore of the German people. The fairies were most often seen when they were dancing atop hills or feasting within them. They were great lovers of beauty, art, and joy, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to encounter them when they were seeking to hire a musician. People often longed to dwell among the fairies with their feasts and joy. They would turn summersaults as they ran, laugh raucously, and act whimsically. What’s more, given their control of nature, they could be said to create the ultimate art – the pools of water, lakes, rivers, forests, moors, and seasons of the world.

 

Vanishing/Sorrowful

Yet there is also a sorrow that marks the fairies who are, as has been noted reputedly, always in the process of vanishing. Since the Medieval era people have written that the fairies are vanishing, are leaving their homeland, becoming refugees. There are many stories of the fairies asking people to take them on boats away from their homeland, of them sadly leaving the lands they once loved.

Fairies are dreamlike beings, and while dreams can be joyful, they are also effervescent and can vanish like a bubble in the wind at any moment. The Pixies of Southwest England and Cornwall are said to be shrinking, vanishing every time they use magic, until they will disappear entirely. Perhaps this constant vanishing is why the fairies sometimes seem sorrowful in their joy. In medieval literature fairies could appear to celebrate without a cause, going through the motions of joy without ever actually experiencing the happiness.

 

Dreamlike

For fairies are often very dreamlike. Indeed, many people encountered them in their dreams. When a witch would visit fairyland, they didn’t simply fly off to dance with the fairies and present themselves to the fairy king and queen. Rather, they would lay down and enter a catatonic like state so that their soul could leave their body. People would visit the fairies and their kin during near death experiences or at other similar times.

“The fairy world is always described as an immaterial place.” (Wentz, 1911) Further testimonies gathered from Celtic peasants go on to attest that: “Spirits and fairies exist all round us, invisible. Fairies have no solid bodily substance. Their forms are of matter like ghostly bodies, and on this account they cannot be caught. In the twilight they are often seen, and on moonlit nights in summer.” (Ibid) Many fairies shift form freely appearing as a cup, an animal, or a tree. It’s impossible because of such changes to know for certain if some fairies even naturally appear as humans, or if they simply take human form to put us at ease.

Jacob Grimm believed that: “The freest personality is proper to gods and spirits who can suddenly reveal or conceal their shape, appear and disappear. To man this faculty is wanting. He can but slowly come and go, and in his body he must abide.” (Grimm, 1935) What would it be like to not have to have any form? To be able to change and adjust at will; to be anywhere one wanted to be? There are two possibilities we must consider. The first is that fairies truly are free; that they are the artists that alter everything, even their forms, to get that which they seek. Or perhaps fairies are themselves a reflection of the world around them. A reflection that shows us what we want to see and so are controlled by the state of the world.

 

Illusionary

It is nearly impossible to know what is real in the fairy’s world. Nothing is what it seems in the world of fairies. Castles turn out to be dark caverns, and caverns turn out to be bright palaces. Fairies are in and of themselves mutable beings, always changing form and type. When a fairy pays a human for services rendered, the enigmatic creatures are never satisfied with simply paying them in money. Fairies instead pay humans with dead horses, dried leaves, twigs, or other seemingly useless items. Items which turn to gold should the person be smart enough to bring it home with them. What are we to take from these strange actions?

 

We can’t be certain if the fairy’s finery is real or an illusion, any more than we can be certain about whether their poverty is real or illusionary. The fairy world is confusing, whether as a means to test human fidelity or because of the fairies’ strange nature, fairy actions can never be straightforward. Fairies, by some peoples’ calculations, are astral beings (“astral” being the insubstantial world of the soul). This makes sense given that fairies appear at least in some respects to be essentially souls. The astral world itself is both less solid and more stable than water for it always changes, always flows, but the beings within it can choose to be solid or can choose their form.

 

Liminal

Perhaps the most enigmatic fairy trait. Fairies are the lords of liminal states, the transitional periods when one thing becomes another, such as twilight, when day becomes night or the cusp of adulthood, when a child becomes an adult. Piotr Spryra points out that every society has liminal periods, times where things are changing from one to another. Peace to war or war to peace, harvest time, spring and planting. But “Danger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next, it is undefinable. The person who must pass from one to another is himself in danger and emanates danger to others. The danger is controlled by ritual which precisely separates from his old status, segregates him for a time and then publicly declares his entry to his new status.” (Piotr Spyra)

There is a reason, after all, that fairies are most active in Celtic lands during the times the Celts believed the seasons changed (modern day Halloween and May Day).

 

Fairies then, might be thought of as the earthly divinities which helped maintain and control transitional states. This meant that they could be cruel or kind, for any transition could turn out to be good or bad.

 

Human Reflection

The fairies dreamlike and liminal nature, mixed with the fact that they were folk religious figures meant that they had a tendency to reflect human society. Or perhaps it’s better to say that humans reflected fairy society? It was fairies like the nymphs who taught humans how to be moral, how to live, farm, and more. In Italian lore there was a fairy tale in which a fairy which kidnapped a woman was the one who taught her cheesemaking, and she in turn taught everyone else.

It shouldn’t be surprising then that when a human enters fairyland they often live much as humans, with laborers, nobility, kings and queens. Indeed, it is often difficult to tell that the protagonist of a fairytale has even entered fairyland and many memorates begin with people not realizing the people they just encountered are in fact fairies.

 

Folk Religious Figures

The English woman clutches her feverish child close as she runs up the side of a hill. Just a few hundred feet from her village is a rock with a hole in it. This rock is home to a hob she hopes will cure her child’s illness.

Fairies were a major part of many people’s folk religions, that is, the beliefs people held that were outside of those held by the elite leaders and scholars of a society. Women in Joan of Arc’s village would go drink water from a fairy pool when they were sick in hopes of getting better. People would ask the fairies for help with their harvest and other concerns. There are many charms, specifically designed to draw on the power of fairies and their kin. Of course, depending on the era, fairies and their kin could be central to people’s folk religion. Among the Uralic people the local divinities and spirits were the ones people prayed to first and most often, for they had been regulated to look over the world by the high gods. In Ancient Greece people frequently prayed to the nymphs first, stamped their local nymphs on their city’s money, and sang of their love for the nymphs. There is even a statement from the time that if it weren’t for the nymphs there would be no worship of Demeter or the other gods, for it was the nymphs who showed people the way to live, which is why they are frequently given offerings first.

 

On the other hand, in Dartmoor, among other places, fairies like pixies weren’t so much worshipped as treated like invisible neighbors. People would trade magical help for material objects from them not out of a sense of reverence but because the pixies were their neighbors.

 

Wise

In fairy tales one of the most common roles for fairies was that of ‘wise advisor’. They and their kin were the ones who taught witches their magic in most European countries and were asked to help divine people’s futures. This makes sense, given their semi-divine role.

 

Moral

The fairies didn’t avoid lying because they couldn’t lie, but because lying was morally reprehensible to them. You can read an article about fairies and not lying here…

Fairies were obsessed with morality, to the point that when one woman in Russia when outside without her kerchief covering her head, the domovoi dragged her back inside by her hair, slamming her head into the floor. Nymphs had people stung by bees for using bad words, fairies beat men who hit their wives, and villages were buried under avalanches for being cruel to a beggar in the Alps.

This last point is perhaps the most important, because the three things’ fairies hated the most was greed, laziness, and poor hosting etiquette. There are stories of them slicing up and cooking old misers, then bringing them back to life so they could do it again and again for eternity. Indeed, it’s probable that many of the beings considered fairies were rulers of the pre-Christian hells. Regardless, it makes sense that ancient, conservative, and religious beings would be so obsessed with morality.

 

Conservative

Fairies didn’t like change, or dirtiness. Cut down certain trees and they were libel to curse you with death, give them new foods and you might chase them off, and so something they had never seen before, and they would have to comment on it no matter what. For fairies were stuck in the past and often wore old fashioned clothing, and their ruling court was more reflective of human governments from hundreds of years before.

 

Ancient

Fairies are ancient of course. Some might live forever, or at least thousands of years. This not only makes them more conservative and grounded in the past, it can also make them seem to act like the grandparents of humanity, or at the very least the older couple that hangs people’s pictures on their fridge and sends money to the graduation of children who they don’t really know. For the fairies are connected to everyone in a region, they watch them and often feel for them. Thus, many fairies will become the godparents of the people in a region (which might explain why Cinderella’s godmother was a fairy).

Childish

As ancient beings who love joy and artistry, the fairies can often act childish, in both good and bad ways. They might spring into a summersault or play with children and like children. On the other hand, when offended, they can throw a tantrum like a child with magical powers would.

Extreme Emotions

Everything about fairies is centered on the fact that they appear to feel emotions much more intensely than humans do. When a human gives them the tiniest amount of help, they reward that human with lifelong happiness, gold, or some other incredibly precious gift. However, should a human do even the slightest amount of harm to a fairy, death is often the punishment. We see this repeatedly in fairy tales. In the story of “The Three Mannlien in the Wood,” (Grimm and Grimm, 1812) a young girl shares her stale crust of bread with three Mannlien and, in return, they make her more beautiful every day. They caused gold to fall from her mouth every time she spoke and were setting it up so that she’ll marry a prince. The girl’s stepsister refuses to share her food, so they cause her to grow more ugly, frogs to jump out of her mouth, and ultimately cause her to die horribly.

In “The Edda,” a Norn (a wise woman/fairy which weaves the fate of humans) trips and hurts herself as she is getting up to give a child its fate, and in her rage she curses the child to die. This is similar to “Sleeping Beauty” in which a fairy who was overlooked by a child’s parents curses the child with death. When Rumpelstiltskin found that he’d lost the child sought, he got so angry that he tore himself in two. The guardian of the bath house in the Russian folk tales will risk its life to protect people and then later will flay the skins from their bodies if it feels it’s been disrespected. Fairies have wild mood swings between happiness, sorrow, love, and rage.

Duality – A consequence of the fact that fairies can transform themselves and the fact that extreme emotions are a common fairy trait is that there is evidence that many fairies actually change form to fit their mood. A domovoi, normally a kindly being, can become murderous when angered, haunting homes and regions and strangling people in their sleep. The bwca, a kindly house fairy from Wales actually seems to change form into a bogle, a monster when it gets upset and it can take years for it to calm back down again. Even Yeats claimed that the shoe making leprechaun could turn into a flesh-eating monster under the right circumstances. This makes sense, given that fairies are forces of nature, and nature itself was a fickle thing. The same river that might help you one moment could drown you the next.

Dependent on Humans

In one Irish story a fairy queen is dying for need of human milk, in many, many more fairy children are sickly until they get some human food. Fairies it seems depended on human food, there was something in the ‘magic’ of human hands preparing or gathering something that gave them something they couldn’t get any other way. Further, many fairies couldn’t repair or make mundane objects without human help.

Add to this the fact that they often needed humans to help them in battle. Yeat’s stated that in a war between fairy clans the side with the human would win, and fairies were forever getting humans to play games with them. Even the god Odin and the Greek Olympians needed humans to help them fight some battles, for the Giants couldn’t be defeated in Greek lore unless a mortal struck them.

Afraid of Humans

Yet fairies must often fear humans – just as humans feared them. Wilde tells of a time when one of the Irish Queens was kidnapped by a the fairies, who fought a war with them, digging up their home and eventually forcing the fairies to concede. Many fairies, from leprechauns to powerful fey women such as the Italian Anguana are captured and kidnapped by a mere peasant. For humans often possess ‘magic’ that can overcome that of the fairies. Iron, salt, certain herbs, and charms can all weaken the fairies greatly. The folklorist Briggs asserts that: There seems no doubt that the children of the Goddess Don were the Dana O'sidh and there, conquered by the invading Milesians, took to the hollow hills and became the Daoine Sidh or the “Deeny Shee.” The Fianna Fin and their contemporaries fought, love and mated with these Daoine Sidh. Originally of human or more than human size, they dwindled through successive generations from the small size of humans to the size of three-year-old children.

Shy-This fear of humans could easily explain one of the reasons that fairies are often so shy. It is obvious that fairies do not like to be seen by humans; for although they live in every rock and tree, they almost never appear to humans. Instead, it is within their nature to hide from mortals. Humans presented a danger to the fairies, but there is also more going on here. Fairies often exhibit a childish sort of embarrassment, fueled by their extreme emotions.

Yet the fairies’ fear of humans stems from more than simply our ability to harm them. Fairies which fly at a distance should know they are safe from humans yet they too are rarely seen.There is a tale in which the dwarfs who helped humans all ran off never to be seen again because one person saw that they had the feet of geese. In ancient mythology, people believed that humans came from fairies; that we essentially chose to be grounded, to mature, to grow, and to change. Fairies, however, never grew and so are like shy children, like spirits that can never pass on. Fairies are forever caught in a realm between being humans and gods, between eternity and momentary bliss, between life and death. Perhaps it is the solidness, the stability of humans that disturbs fairies. Perhaps fairies feel the discomfort of our solid gaze just as a child would. The times then when fairies seek out humans are those times when humans join them in the realm of in-between; at puberty, parts of childhood, birth, and death.

 

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Mutable, Anamorphose, Astral, Creators of Illusions
Nothing is what it seems in the world of fairies. Castles turn out to be dark caverns, and caverns turn out to be bright palaces. Fairies are in and of themselves mutable beings, always changing form and type. When a fairy pays a human for services rendered, the enigmatic creatures are never satisfied with simply paying them in money. Fairies instead pay humans with dead horses, dried leaves, twigs, or other seemingly useless items. Items which turn to gold should the person be smart enough to bring it home with them. What are we to take from these strange actions?

The fairy world is confusing, whether as a means to test human fidelity or because of the fairies’ strange nature, fairy actions can never be straightforward. Fairies, by some peoples’ calculations, are astral beings (“astral” being the insubstantial world of the soul). This makes sense given that fairies appear at least in some respects to be essentially souls. The astral world itself is both less solid and more stable then water for it always changes, always flows, but the beings within it can choose to be solid or can choose their form.

“The fairy world is always described as an immaterial place.” (Wentz, 1911) Further testimonies gathered from Celtic peasents go on to attest that: “Spirits and fairies exist all round us, invisible. Fairies have no solid bodily substance. Their forms are of matter like ghostly bodies, and on this account they cannot be caught. In the twilight they are often seen, and on moonlit nights in summer.” (Ibid) Many fairies are always changing form appearing as a cup, an animal, or a tree. It’s impossible because of such changes to know for certain if fairies even naturally appear as humans, or if they simply take human form to put us at ease.

Jacob Grimm believed that: “The freest personality is proper to gods and spirits who can suddenly reveal or conceal their shape, appear and disappear. To man this faculty is wanting. He can but slowly come and go, and in his body he must abide.” (Grimm, 1935) What would it be like to not have to have any form? To be able to change and adjust at will; to be anywhere one wanted to be? There are two possibilities we must consider. The first is that fairies truely are free; that they are the artists that alter everything, even their forms, to get that which they seek. Or perhaps fairies are themselves a reflection of the world around them. A reflection that shows us what we want to see. In “Religion of the Ancient Celts” (MacCulloch, 1911) attests that: “With the growth of religion, the vaguer spirits tended to become gods and goddesses, and worshipful animals to become anthropomorphic divinities with the animals as their symbols, attendants, or victims. And as the cult of vegetation spirits centered in the ritual of planting and sowing, so the cult of the divinities of growth centered in great, seasonal and agricultural festivals which were the key to the growth of the Celtic religion to be found. Yet the migrating Celts, conquering new lands, evolved divinities of war. Here the old, female influence was still at work since many of these were female. “Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character; each tribe possessing its own group, each god having functions similar to those of other groups. Some, however, had or gained a more universal character absorbing divinities with similar functions. Still, this local character must be borne in mind. The numerous divinities of Gaul, with differing names—but judging by their assimilation to the same Roman divinity, with similar functions are best understood as gods of local groups. Thus the primitive nature spirits gave place to greater or lesser gods, each with his separate department and functions. Though growing civilization tended to separate them from the soil, they never quite lost touch with it. In return for man's worship and sacrifices, they gave life and increased victory, strength, and skill. However, these sacrifices had been and still often were rites in which the representative of a god was slain.” What we see then is that these fairies may not have been so free. They may have been, at least in part, defined by the thoughts of the people who surrounded them. So in this sense when humans wished for fairies to be beautiful, powerful beings that would make their crops grow, it was so. Later, as humans wanted them to be devils or faded souls, it again became so. Finally, when humans stopped caring about fairies, they ultimately vanished altogether.


Extreme Emotions
Fairies feel emotions much more intensely than humans do. When a human gives them the tiniest amount of help, they reward that human with lifelong happiness, gold, or some other incredibly precious gift. However, should a human do even the slightest amount of harm to a fairy, death is often the punishment. We see this repeatedly in fairy tales. In the story of “The Three Mannlien in the Wood,” (Grimm and Grimm, 1812) a young girl shares her stale crust of bread with three Mannlien and, in return, they make her more beautiful every day. They caused gold to fall from her mouth every time she spoke and were setting it up so that she’ll marry a prince. The girl’s stepsister refuses to share her food so they cause her to grow more ugly, frogs to jump out of her mouth, and ultimately cause her to die horribly. Fairies are the strict enforcers of morality for fairies will ask humans to share with them crusts of bread, the warmth of a fire, etc. Yet these same fairies can create gold, give unlimited amounts of food, and grant wishes. The only real explanations for this is that fairies are testing the morality of humans.

In “The Edda,” a Norn (a wise woman/fairy which weaves the fate of humans) trips and hurts herself as she is getting up to give a child its fate, and in her rage she curses the child to die. This is similar to “Sleeping Beauty” in which a fairy who was overlooked by a child’s parents curses the child with death. When Rumpelstiltskin found that he’d lost the child sought, he got so angry that he tore himself in two. The guardian of the bath house in the Russian folk tales will risk its life to protect people and then later will flay the skins from their bodies if it feels it’s been disrespected. Fairies have wild mood swings between happiness, sorrow, love, and rage.

Lovers of the Arts and Beauty
It’s the fairies that make the flowers blossom, the sun shine, the mountains rise and fall. In essence, it is fairies that make the world beautiful, but this is beauty as they define it. While people believed that it was fairies who allowed life to exist, people didn’t believe that fairies were creators simply for the sake of creation. Fairies are artists, and they love what they consider beautiful which is shown by their obsession with song, poetry, and dance.

“Dancing and song are their delight, and by their songs they draw mortals into the water with them... The fossegrim entices men by his music and instructs them in the fiddle and other stringed instruments.” (Jacob Grimm)

This is not to say that they are whimsical artists. Indeed, looking at the nature of artists throughout history, we see that they are rarely whimsical. Fairies are strict with their art as shown by the example of the fossegrim (a male waterfall fairy). In order to learn to play music from the fossegrim, a person would sacrifice a he-goat to him by throwing it into the waterfall. If the fairy accepted the gift, the fossegrim would grab the person’s hands and guide them so violently and for so long that blood would spurt out of the human’s fingertips. With their hands bursting apart and spurting blood, the humans in the tales would beg the fossegrim to stop to allow them to take a break, but the fossegrim would ignore their student’s cries of pain as they continued to force the human to play this way for as long as it took for them to perfect in his art and play so that the trees will dance. (Jacob Grimm) It should be clear from the amount of brutality in the way the fossegrim teaches music that fairies are demanding artists, that they do not accept weakness or pain when it comes to their art. They are beauty and art lovers to an extreme degree.

However, beauty in and of itself is a complex issue. It is more than simply in the eye of the beholder. The same artist who admired sculptures of neoclassicism can become Picaso who himself created more then just frilly art. He created works of both love and sorrow. Picaso painted scenes of war and pain, of sadness and depression alongside his works of happiness and joy. The same writers who carefully craft jokes and allow the boy to get the girl in their stories, will also kill major characters in horrible ways in another tale just as Shakespeare did.

It should be telling, for example, that the god of poetry in Germanic and Norse mythology (Wotan) is also the god who determines who will be victorious and who will lose a battle....

Fairies, like human artists, are quirky and odd. Artists are prone to violent bouts of rage. When Michelangelo didn’t like his work on the Sistine Chapel, he tore down a painting he’d been creating for years. Mozart was often reported to be half mad and would grow angry at his band for not hearing music that wasn’t actually playing. Van Gogh cut off his own ear in a fit of rage. Genius and an extreme, intense interest in one subject create bizarre quirks among humans so we should anticipate that the people who gave human traits to fairies would believe that this situation would be the same among fairies.

Thus, while human art has and is defined by endings; songs with finales, paintings with exhibition, and plays with curtains closings, many fairies do not like such destinations, and as immortal beings they never have to actually seek an ending. Their art can be a journey which never ends but continues on forever.

Immortality and Immunity
Diplomatic immunity which allows people to park anywhere they wish, drive how they wish, etc., encourages people to act differently from how one might normally behave. Diplomatic immunity itself, however, is not true immunity as the diplomat’s job is to make the citizens of the country they are in like them or their employer. Fairies have no such needs, however, so they are often times truly immune from the punishments that haunt the mortal world, even from death itself. Such immunity alters their perception of things.

Nixes, nymphs, and satyrs need not fear reprisals for their actions, and so their desires are rarely ever tempered by anything. In such cases then, a fairy becomes pure desire, mating and dancing, living for the moment because there is no need to worry about anything else. Not even the freest of humans can do this for long because eventually mortality will crash down on them, or eventually other humans will tire of their actions and they’ll be restrained. Immortality itself will greatly alter a fairy’s perceptions of the world. Mountains rise and fall, trees grow and die, even the stars shift their courses over time. Even for humans, growing older means that little things seem to matter less and less.

Imagine what it would be like to live for thousands of years and you will come to a closer understanding of the emotions of fairies. After thousands of years of life, very little would seem to matter. Any kingdom might simply be just another kingdom, any mortal is just another life in an infinite string of meaningless and temporary lives. Immortality can also cause fairies to hate the new just as elderly people are stereotyped. In German mythology, wood wives demanded that humans not bake cumin in their bread. Water wives didn’t like the touch of new clay pots in Welsh mythology. Dwarfs called humans fickle creatures (Grimm 1835).


Fairies Never Mature but are Always Ancient
Many fairies never truly mature. At the same time, however, they grow up within a few years or are born ancient from the very beginning (Grimm, 1835). Further, because of their immortal nature, they would eventually only have the slightest inkling that they were ever young at all. This situation can lead them to desire that which they cannot have, a childhood. Consider that when fairies kidnap adults, the fairies most often replace them with objects which are made of dirt or wood but are enchanted to appear to be corpses. Yet when a fairy takes a human baby, they replace the child with old fairies in disguise. So when a fairy takes an adult, it is clear that what they are after is the adult because they leave the humans very little recourse to discover the deception or to force the fairies to return the person who was taken. When fairies take human children, however, they are after something else, something more. By leaving an elderly fairy, the fairies risk being found out because of the actions of the elderly fairy. Further, they risk having the fairy abused by the humans as often happened. If all the fairies wanted was the child, then they would simply replace them with clay or wood magically disguised to appear as a dead child as they do adults.

By replacing children with older fairies, the fairies are actively seeking to take the place of the child. In history and our own society, we can see many child actors who grew up to seek after their childhood later. They sought to create a “Neverland” for themselves. Even beyond this, however, there are many people who seek to go back to or to find a childhood again. Movies are ripe with stories of people who wish to regain their youth, or to find the happiness they never had as a child. For such people, however, the rules of society, age, mortality, as well as the fact that no matter what they do they cannot look like children prevents them from achieving childhood later in life. Fairies, however, can change their form at will, and they don’t have the same social rules as humans.

Perkiss points out that when the nymphs would kidnap heroes, it seemed that they did so in order to essentually play house with the hero the way a girl might seek to pull a father, brother, or neighbor boy into a game of tea. Thus, while even human children must follow certain rules, (they can’t force the neighbor boy to play tea without adult intervention or a lot of badgering), fairies with their supernatural powers do not have very many rules at all. Further, because of their immortal nature, they have forever to gain a greater longing for a childhood and can act childlike forever. There is never a moment when they start to whither and get injured more easily or must worry about finding a job. So they can dance on the hillsides every night for eternity and so they often do.


Dangerous, Quirky, Playful, and Unpredictable
Beautiful and seductive, she moves through the trees, lithely jumping branch to branch like a squirrel. Intrigued, the boy approaches her eliciting a welcoming smile. She whispers gently in his ear before tickling him. At first he laughs, enjoying the attention, but she doesn’t stop. She keeps tickling and tickling; harder and harder he laughs. He wants to stop laughing, but he can’t. It’s hard to breathe, his lungs hurt. He starts to cough from laughing for so long and so hard, and eventually she tickles him to death. What are we to take from the strange behavior of the rusalka, a fairy of the water and forest which performs the bizarre act of seducing men so that it may tickle them to death? No matter how seemingly dangerous the fairy, they always seem to have some element of playfulness though their play can often turn deadly. Fairies are always a contradiction. Fairies are the moment when the coin is in the air, the time it hovers twirling, caught between two choices, between two opposites. The rusalka, for example, is a young girl, one who can never grow, never mature, never find true love. She is caught forever between lust and childishness, between youthful play and death. She is ancient yet has never grown up. It is a maddening moment in time that fairies live, between dark and light.


Shy
It is obvious that fairies do not like to be seen by humans; for although they live in every rock and tree, they almost never appear to humans. Instead, it is within their nature to hide from mortals. Why should this be? Why is it that fairies always appear to be nervous around humans? It is, of course, possible that the reason is the danger humans present to fairies. After all, there are a number of stories in which people take fairies hostage to force them to marry them, provide gold, or to grant other forms of wishes.

Yet the fairies’ fear of humans stems from more than simply our ability to harm them. Fairies which fly at a distance should know they are safe from humans yet they too are rarely seen.

What exactly is it about human sight that scares them? Is it perhaps the natural power which humans have, the ability to essentially give the evil eye? Or is it perhaps a form of embarrassment? There is a tale in which the dwarfs who helped humans all ran off never to be seen again because one person saw that they had the feet of geese. In ancient mythology, people believed that humans came from fairies; that we essentially chose to be grounded, to mature, to grow, and to change. Fairies, however, never grew and so are like shy children, like spirits that can never pass on. Fairies are forever caught in a realm between being humans and gods, between eternity and momentary bliss, between life and death. Perhaps it is the solidness, the stability of humans that disturbs fairies. Perhaps fairies feel the discomfort of our solid gaze just as a child would. The times then when fairies seek out humans are those times when humans join them in the realm of in-between; at puberty, parts of childhood, birth, and death.


Multiple Souls
Many fairies and similar beings had multiple souls, that is they were their own opposites. Many of the peoples of ancient Eurasia believed that people had multiple spirits, multiple souls each of which went to a different place when a person died. For spiritual beings, however, this multiple souls often manifested as multiple personalities, multiple characters. In Japan the same Kami will have different names and shrines and methods of worship for each of these souls. In Celtic lands house fairies could turn from good to bad with a change in mood (as was depicted very well in "The Spiderwick Chronicles."

Nature tends to act in a contradictory way, rivers water fields and flood them, fire warms the house and burns it down. Given that people believed nothing happened by chance they believed that the same fairy was doing both these things, and so many had multiple personalities.


Kind and Caring
Fairies are often extremely kind and caring. Santa Claus and the many fairy like beings which he comes from for example, are fairies. One of these Santa figures in the Kalasha lands would bring blessings to villages, among the Japanese the Lucky Kami would do the same. The Tylwyth Teg of Wales would leave coins in the shoes of poor servants and fairies in France would help the poor become wealthy.

As with Santa's love of children much of this kindness often manifests in a grandfatherly or grandmotherly like affection, which is why it's often important to call a fairy Grandfather or Grandmother when one first encounters them in order insure that one gets on their good side. Given that many fairies are thousands of years old they can view a human of any age as being young.

Other times the fairy might view a person the way we might see a stray animal, perhaps leaving a little food out or doing performing other similarly kind, but momentary acts.

Finally given that some fairies are the spirits humans who have passed on they can be caring ancestor spirits.


Enforcers of Morality 
Fairies have a very specific vision of how the world should work, like a grouchy old man who yells at naughty children or a kindly person who tries to direct people down a better path fairies are the enforcers of morality in fairy tales. Even the famous Santa Claus gives toys to good children, more often, however, fairies punish those who break societies morals.


Vindictive
Fairies can be extremely vindictive, killing those who offend them. In Russia those who work on and don't keep the Rusulka's day sacred risks being murdered. Those who whistle in the forest risk being tortured to death by the King of the Forest who's peace they are disturbing. When one family built on the fairies land the fairies kill them off one by one.


Murderous
Some fairies are vicious and murderous for a number of reasons. Jenny Greenteeth would drown people to replace the human sacrifices which were no longer being offered to her. Black Annis would devour children out of revenge for the fact that humans had turned their backs on her. There are elves who were in essence serial killers, killing simply for fun and pleasure. Others killed for food, and as a way of gaining power the way vampires did. In fact the smell of blood could make some vampires hungry.

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Fairies are nature spirits

Few things can inspire so much awe and fear as nature itself. The volcano which rises majestically into the sky inspires poets, painters, songwriters, and deep sighs of pleasure at its sight. Yet this same volcano destroys and kills; inspiring terror with each loud rumble or plume of smoke. So it is that nature is that which inspires people to pray in both reverence and fear; so it is in nature that fairies are at their greatest. It may be impossible to ever truly understand the mind of a natural phenomenon, for nature inspires awe in humans because it is so vastly different. Even for those natural phenomena that were once human, it will surely have changed greatly, perhaps beyond all recognition after hundreds or even thousands of years as an object of beauty and, at times, raw power. Yet despite such differences, it is nature’s spirits, it is the fairies of wells, trees, and rocks that people turned to for help most often, and it is these beings that often seem to have the greatest impact on the human world.

Wells, Springs, Pools, and Fountains
Few things held greater reverence for the Celtic people than pools of water. Indeed, water spirits were perhaps the most common of all nature’s spirits. (Briggs, 1967) The nature of fairies of the many wells and springs were so important to the people in ancient times that long after they stopped worshipping the other fairies, and deities had faded in importance to little more than murderous fairies, the Catholic Church was unable to stop the worship of water and so was forced to dedicate the sacred fountains to Saints in order to make the worship of water legitimate. (Maccullock, 1911) Christians were not the first ones to rededicate wells and water to a new religion, however. Many of the river gods and goddesses within the Celtic lands “seemed to possess pre-Celtic names.”

In other words, the importance of these gods was so great that the Celts continued to worship them even after they had overcome the original worshipers, a worship which continued even after they were Christianized. (Maccullock, 1911)

It was the spirits of the wells that were the people’s guardians and comfort. In one story, a group of horned witches kept invading a woman's home tormenting her and eventually forcing her to flee. After fleeing from her home, the woman collapses in tears beside a well, and it is here that a voice speaks to her telling her what she must do to be free of the witches. (Joseph Jacobs, 1892) Well spirits and water spirits are often unpersonified beings represented only as a simple voice which provides advice to humans in need.

Water is a powerful, human ally against the other beings that might do them harm. There are many stories in which a person only has to cross water to be safe from a magical being pursuing it. (Wentz, 1911) In one of the most famous American folktales, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” a headless huntsman can be thwarted in his attempts to take a human’s head if the human simply crosses over a bridge which crosses over water. The simple act of crossing water is significant because the water, as we have seen, is alive and is at least at times a protector of humanity....

The advice of water fairies is given even to those who not only don’t necessarily deserve it but who would do evil with it. In the “Story of Gold Tree and Silver Tree,” a Scottish variation of the “Snow White” stories, a trout in a stream takes the place of the mirror in advising the evil stepmother, telling her not only that Gold Tree is more beautiful but also letting the stepmother know that her stepdaughter survived the Queen’s attempted murder as well as where she is located. This information allows the evil stepmother to try to kill her innocent stepdaughter again. (Joseph Jacobs, 1896) In this story, the trout is the personification of the pool of water as fish are often representative of the fairies within wells and other bodies of water. “Even now in Brittany the fairy dweller in a spring has the form of an eel, while in the 17th century Highland wells contained fish so sacred that no one dared to catch them.” (Maccullock, 1911) ...

In one Russian tale, two rivers, the Volga and Vazuza, get into a dispute over which of them is wiser and stronger in order to gain the respect of the other. Eventually, they agree to race to prove which is better. This race takes the form of a race to the sea in the springtime so at least in this case their bodies are the rivers themselves. Russian rivers are well-known in myths to demand respect of humans; drowning anyone who doesn’t provide this respect while providing easy crossing for those who do. So it is apparent that these rivers greatly desire to be respected. The desire for respect, for sacrifices to it can make water a cruel being at times. “The malevolent aspect of the spirit of the well is seen in the "cursing wells" of which it was thought that when some article inscribed with an enemy's name was thrown into them with the accompaniment of a curse, the spirit of the well would cause his death. In some cases the curse was inscribed on a leaden tablet thrown into the waters just as, in other cases, a prayer for the offerer's benefit was engraved on it. Or, again, objects over which a charm had been said were placed in a well that the victim who drew water might be injured. An excellent instance of a cursing well is that of Fynnon Elian in Denbigh, which must once have had a guardian priestess, for in 1815 an old woman who had charge of it presided at the ceremony. She wrote the name of the victim in a book receiving a gift at the same time. A pin was dropped into the well in the name of the victim, and through it and through knowledge of his name, the spirit of the well acted upon him to his hurt. Obviously, rites like these in which magic and religion mingle are not purely Celtic, but it is of interest to note their existence in Celtic lands and among Celtic folk.” –(Maccullock, 1911)

Great care must be given to insure that the water fairy is respected because, as with all fairies, they become helpful or dangerous based on how they are approached. In the story of Mother Holle (Lang, 1890) a girl’s wicked stepmother forces her stepdaughter to do all the work as per the usual tale. As she is spinning outside the cottage, she drops her spindle into the well. Fearing her stepmother more than the depths of the well, the girl dives into it. Instead of splashing into deep water, she finds herself in another world with a woman who keeps her as a maid for weeks. Because she is so respectful, Holle comes to be very impressed with the girl and gives her gold as a reward. At this point, the stepmother is jealous of the girl’s sudden wealth and sends her own daughter out. Because the daughter is idle and disrespectful, Holle punishes her. This is more than just a statement that one should be hard-working, such stories are religious tales warning one to be respectful of the fairies. One could argue that the girl in this tale was lucky because while she was respectful of the fairy once she met it, she was not careful in her approach. Humans who interrupt fairies during private moments will often pay with their lives....

For protection and blessing from the wells, humans of the past would offer gold and models of limbs and other parts of the body that had been healed or which they desired the well to heal for them. “Leaden tablets with inscriptions were placed in springs by those who desired healing or when the waters were low, and on some the actual waters are hardly discriminated from the divinities. The latter are asked to heal or flow or swell—words which apply more to the waters than to them, while the tablets with their frank animism also show that, in some cases, there were many elemental spirits of a well only some of whom were rising to the rank of a goddess. They are called collectively Niskas—the Nixies of later tradition, but some have personal names—Lerano, Dibona, Dea—showing that they were tending to become separate, divine personalities. The Peisgi are also appealed to perhaps the later Piskies.” (Religion of the Ancient Celts) Clothes and cloth are another common offering provided to water fairies.

Trees, Forests, Glens, and Plants
As previously mentioned, the word “temple” originally meant “wood” because within Europe the first churches were groves of trees, and the first idols were ancient or unique trees. Knowing simply that trees are of great importance, however, gives us little to understand the nature of the fairies which inhabit them. Luckily, being the center of the Universe is not the only reason why trees are important to humans. As previously mentioned, it was believed by many peoples that humans were born from trees. Among the Huns who invaded Europe, it is likely that humans and trees were considered to share the same souls such that humans were reincarnated trees, and trees were reincarnated humans. Further, trees could be bound to a person’s existing life such that people would plant a tree when their child was born because as it grew strong their child would as well. (Maccullock, 1911) In a Russian version of the Cinderella story (Lang, 1890), a birch tree grows from a mother’s grave, and it is this birch tree which provides her daughter with the magical gifts needed to win the prince. In the German fairy tale “The Juniper Tree” a boy is murdered and buried underneath a juniper tree. He is able to get his revenge because he is born from the tree in the form of a bird. (Grimm and Grimm, 1912)...

The connection between the human soul and trees stretches as far west as Ireland where people believed the souls would manifest as trees and other plants. So trees, or at least their souls, are similar to human souls such that people believed we shared a connection to each other even if we’re not always aware of it. Recalling further that for over half the population of Europe, humans were directly descended from trees. Tree fairies had a major advantage over most humans, however, for they could live for hundreds or even thousands of years longer than any human could. Further, giant trees inspire awe, reverence, and a sense of wonder that must have defined the most important of fairies and deities. Because of this, trees were also more closely connected to the other deities, fairies, and nature than humans typically were. Mistletoe, it was said, came down as a gift from the gods of the sky to crown the oak trees (Frazer, 1922)...


This is why May Day, winter festivals, and harvest festivals all involved the idea of trees which themselves symbolize fertility and life. So great was the trees’ power in making things grow and providing fertility that in some parts of Bavaria May Day bushes are set up in the houses of newly married people so that they would conceive. Women would also hug trees in hopes of becoming pregnant or hang chemises on fruitful trees. The Wends would cause their cattle to run around the tree as a means of making them thrive. (Frazer, 1922)

Indeed, long after people started attending a Christian church, they were still hanging the heads of dead animals in an old pear tree. Just as they had done with the wells, the Christian priests had to settle at a compromise initially hanging pictures of Saints in trees so that it would appear that people were worshiping the saints not the trees. In one example of this: “S. Martin of Tours was allowed to destroy a temple, but the people would not permit him to attack a much-venerated pine tree which stood beside it—an excellent example of the way in which the more official paganism fell before Christianity, while the older religion of the soil from which it sprang could not be entirely eradicated.” (Maccullock, 1911)

Even to this day we decorate pine trees and bring greenery into our homes in the wintertime to celebrate a major, Christian holiday. In so doing we continue acting out an ancient ritual of respect for the fairies even if most people are unaware of what they are doing. Brutal, Blood-Loving Trees Humans are descended from trees so we have inherited many things from them. One of the things we appear to share in common is an occasional desire for violence or a certain level of brutality. This is reflected in part by the fact that, for the Celts, honoring trees included hanging heads of animals killed during a hunt or impaled sacrifices among their branches. In Finland, people would worship in their sacred groves where they would hang the skins of sacrificial victims from the trees within a sacred grove. (Frazer, 1922)...

Tacitus pointed out: “No person enters it (the sacred grove) without being bound with a chain as an acknowledgment of his inferior nature and the power of the deity residing there. If he accidentally fall(s), it is not lawful for him to be lifted or to rise up; they roll themselves out along the ground. The whole of their superstition has this import: that from this spot the nation derives its origin; that here is the residence of the Deity, the Governor of all, and that everything else is subject and subordinate to him. These opinions receive additional authority from the power of the Semnones who inhabit a hundred cantons and, from the great body they compose, consider themselves as the head of the Suevi.” (Tacitus, 98) People were then afraid of trees and forests even as they were awed by them.

“Circassians regard the pear tree as the protector of cattle. They would cut down a young, pear tree in the forest, branch it, and carry it home where it was adored as a divinity. Almost every house had one such pear tree. In autumn, on the day of the festival, the tree was carried into the house with great ceremony to the sound of music amid the joyous cries of all the inmates who compliment it on its fortunate arrival. It is covered with candles, and a cheese is fastened to its top. Round about it they eat, drink, and sing. Then they bid the tree good-bye and take it back to the courtyard where it remains for the rest of the year, set up against the wall, without receiving any mark of respect.” (Frazer, 1922)

Perhaps the most interesting case of tree fairies living on in the wood comes from Scandinavia where it is said that the fairies of the elder tree will continue to attack people from the furniture. In one disturbing story, the fairy of the elder tree, which appeared as an old man, came out of the floor which was made of elder wood and sucked the breasts of three people causing them to swell painfully. (Keightley, 1870)

The Celts believed that the coppices which spring from the trunks of felled oaks are haunted by angry spirits of trees. In one story, a mooreland spirit with a white hand sprang from the coppices of birch trees. She would rise up at twilight and chase travelers her clothes rustling like dead leaves. When she touched a man’s head, they went mad. When she touched their heart, they died. This went on until at last one man finally banished her with salt. (Briggs, 1967)

Fairies are Animals
Animals are unique among the forces of nature. While we must always imagine the life of a sun or the desires of a tree, we can witness those of animals. In many cases the original deities of Europe, the Indo-Europeans, and other peoples were in fact animals and that they were later personified as humans. In most cases we certainly see the importance of animals to people’s lives when Boudica, one of the Celtic Queens of Briton, went to war against the Romans she used hares to help her divine the path she should take. Hares were important to the Celtic and Germanic peoples, in part, because they were the animals of witches and fairies, a tradition which perhaps lives on in the modern Easter Bunny. It’s important to remember that just as humans often turned into fairies and fairies often manifested as humans, fairies could also be personified as animals, and animals at times turn into fairies. In other words, animals can be “magical in themselves, with special powers and an independent way of life.” (Briggs, 1967)

Nature’s spirits in the forms of goats, boars, birds, hares, and other animals are important to humans as these are the spirits of the grain and farms, the spirits that make crops flourish and grow as we shall see further in the “Home, Heath, and Field” section of their books. Grain fairies are not the only nature fairy manifested as an animal, however. As mentioned previously, the eel and trout were often manifestations of the wells and sacred springs. This is one point most people miss when trying to determine where the myth of the Loch Ness monster originated. According to some accounts, the eel would almost fit the descriptions of the Loch Ness monster perfectly except for the fact that eels don’t get long enough, and they don’t stick their head out of the water the way Nessy does. (http://www.cryptozoology.com/cryptids/nessie.php). However, both of these challenges to the eel theory are made mute if the creature is in fact an ancient fairy/deity of the Celtic people. One of the first written sightings of Nessy would seem to support this idea as it was by a missionary which Nessy was trying to stop from crossing the loch. A missionary who then rebuked Nessy in a story that fits the common tale themes invented by missionaries and saints who would claim to have been able to rebuke the gods and fairies of the Celtic people in order to prove they were greater then the beings the people originally worshiped. Given that the first written account of the creature is in essence an attempt at making it appear to be a demon, we can presume that further attempts were made to do the same to convince people to forget about it which is why our understanding of it is so meager but for a few sighting stories scattered through history. Nessy isn’t the only large creature water fairies manifest as.

Among the Irish, the boars were so important that their swineherds were given otherworldly knowledge in many folk tales. In Saxon mythology, the symbol of the boar was believed to protect people from harm when it was worn on their helmets. (Davidson and Davidson, 1989) Tacitus makes note of this as well. In his observation, the boar and the protection it provided represented their worship of the Mother of the gods. “They worship the Mother of the gods and, as the symbol of their superstition, they carry about them the figures of wild boars. This serves them in place of armor and every other defence: it renders the votary of the goddess safe even in the midst of foes.” (Tacitus, 98)

In Ireland, cats are regarded as fairies in their own right. In one story, a man tells a fairy tale about how he encountered a procession of cats in much the same way one would encounter a procession of fairies. The cats in the procession seemed to be mourning the death of the king of the cats. When the storyteller had finished his tale, a cat which was resting in the room with him said “By Jove, old Peter’s dead. I’m the King of the cats.” The cat than fled up the chimney in a flash and was never seen again.” (Briggs, 1967) Jacob Grimm asserts that Puss in Boots is actually the tale of a house fairy who has taken the form of a cat. In Scotland the Cait Sidhe is a fairy that manifests itself as a black cat with a white spot on its chest. In addition to cats acting as fairies, otters are also considered to be a form of fairy with a master otter waited upon by many other otters. (Briggs, 1967) In addition to manifesting as animals, fairies and deities have used various animals as messengers as well as using the white stage acted upon as the messenger from their world. With Scandinavian and Germanic mythology, Odin used ravens as messengers and Thor used robins.

Mountains, Rocks, and Lands
When Cnoc Aine, a goddess of Celtic lore, showed a group of girls a hill through a hole in a stone, they were able to see that it was teaming with invisible beings. In some cases such beings are simply fairies which make their homes in hills and mountains; however, many of them are their own class of beings. Unlike most of the fairy relationships examined so far, the spirits of the mountains and rocks seem to have no solid connection with humans, for unlike tree or ancestral fairies, they are not related to humans. Yet despite this they often are some of the most caring and helpful of the fairies. The Bjergfolk, for example, actively involved themselves in human affairs, helping with farming and fortune telling. Because they are not related to humans the way trees or deceased humans are, the reasons why such fairies take an interest in humans are often hard to ascertain. While it is true that occasionally some earth spirits are related to the human dead, this is not always the case. When people first landed in Iceland, there had never been humans their before yet there were rock fairies that began to help the human settlers almost immediately. One man named Bjorn made an agreement with one such rock fairy called a bergbui which appeared to him in a dream. The rock fairy provided him with a goat which helped to grow his herd rapidly and who also sent the land spirits to assist his brothers in their fishing and hunting endeavors. (Davidson and Davidson, 1989)

Looking at our positive relationship with stone and earth fairies only seems to tell us that they are interested in a positive relationship with humans. In order to understand why they want to build a positive relationship, we perhaps are best served by examining human’s negative relationships with these fairies. There is ample evidence which shows that stone fairies are extremely sensitive. In the 19th century, an Icelandic clergymen wrote that certain rocks and stones were called the stones of Landdisir (land goddesses). It was said to be unwise to make loud noises near them, and children were forbidden to play around them as bad luck would come to those who did not treat them with respect. (Davidson and Davidson, 1989) We see these beliefs mirrored in the Celtic world of that time as well where it was thought to be bad luck to disturb certain stones as they were the homes to the fairies. (Wentz, 1911)

In other words, humans can impact rock spirits which are sensitive both to noise and being built upon. It may be that part of the rock spirits’ relationships with humans existed in order to avoid these things. Such sensitivity is problematic when humans are able to be so destructive. The vaetter of Iceland grew angry when they saw one human murder another, and for a long time ships with dragon’s heads were banned in the country for fear that they would disturb the stone spirits or give them the wrong impression of the human’s intentions. (Davidson and Davidson, 1911) Because of their sensitivity, rock fairies do more than offer rewards to humans who keep the peace with them; they punish those who fail to do so. When humans do damage rocks or otherwise disturb them, the spirits of the land would haunt the humans acting much as we’d expect a poltergeist to act sometimes for thousands of years at a time. (Wentz, 1911)

Forces of Nature
At one time when the fishermen of Brittany were faced with fog, they would threaten to cut it in two with a knife. The Irish would battle the waves with axes in order to kill the fairy spirits within them to prevent the tides from rising too high. (Maccullock, 1911) Fairies were found in every force of nature from the wind that blew to the heat and the cold. As shown by the previous examples, the relationship between people and the forces of nature was different from that of other fairies because people were more likely to feel the need to threaten or even do battle with the forces of nature. At the same time, however, people also sought to appease the forces of nature whenever possible. In England, children would offer Jack Frost a spoonful of kissel as they asked him not to destroy their winter crops. (Keightley, 1870) Such respect does appear to have had an impact on the fairies in many cases. Ded Moroz, the current Russian Santa Claus figure, was at one time a cruel fairy that would freeze people to death. Respect or a change in human opinion of him transformed him into the gentle being he is now.

In one Russian Cinderella story, a girl was sent into the woods to freeze to death by her wicked stepmother. As she sat in the cold, Frost leapt from fur tree to fur tree snapping his fingers as he went. Then as he came into sight, he started mocking the girl, but she always responded to his teasing respectfully even calling him “Frost Dearest!” So he ultimately felt sorry for her and wrapped her in warm blankets to keep her alive through the cold before leaving her with gifts that would make her wealthy. Later in the story, Frost freezes the girl’s disrespectful sister-in-law to death for telling him that she’s cold. (Ralston, 2004) So while people were willing to threaten the forces of nature when they thought they could get away with it, they also realized that careful respect was important in everything they did.

In the Spanish folktale (Lang, 1897) “A Sprig of Rosemary,” the main character asks Sun for help, but Sun sends her on to Moon, who sends her on to Wind. And it is ultimately Wind, not Sun or Moon, who takes the time to help her. In the “White Bear,” a girl searches for her husband and ends up being carried by the East Wind to help her on her journey then by the West and the South Winds. In the end, none of these can help her so she is forced to seek help from the cantankerous North Wind who at first doesn’t care about her. However, on hearing that she has lost her love, he transforms into a fatherly figure and provides her with the help necessary to regain her husband. (Fairy tales their orgin and meaning by John Thackray Bunce) This story shows that the wind and fairies in general can feel fatherly (or motherly) towards humans, perhaps in much the same way as we can feel fatherly towards those in need or will take in stray animals. Indeed, even the grouchiest and perhaps one of the cruelest fairies can still feel kind-hearted emotions under the right set of circumstances.

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Humans turn into fairies

This is the second article in this series the first is "Humans Become Fairies"

In fairy tales humans could often turn into fairies, and on one occasion at least a fairy turned into a human after living in among us and eating our food for a number of years. It is well established that fairies have a strong connection to ancestral spirits, and indeed many fairies are likely to be such. Indeed, people often saw among trooping fairies the faces of people they knew who had died. 

Some European peasants, says Jacob Grimm, believe that the dead "belong to the fairies, and they, therefore, celebrate the death of a person like a festival, with music and dancing. (Spencer, 1917) 

Witches who entered fairyland would often encounter the spirits of the dead. Campbell, however, points out that there were numerous stories "which show that according to popular belief, fairies commonly carried off men, women, and children who seemed to die, but really lived underground. In short, that mortals were separated from fairies by a very narrow line."

This line could blur and vanish altogether, especially when it came to the heroic dead. "Shamanistic ideology includes a feature according to which the souls of shamans or worthy persons become, after their death, guardian spirits for those still living, thus acquiring a status different to that of ordinary mortals in the ‘other life'" (Bäckman, 1975)

This notion, of great people becoming guardian spirits was common throughout Europe; certainly, the Ancient Greeks and Romans had it. Further, the Russians and Germanic people’s had ancestral spirits who lived within their homes and helped to care for the farm. Ancestral spirits such as the tomte who are commonly thought of as fairies today. 

Even the trooping fairies, and their kings were strongly associated with the spirits of the ordinary people who had seemingly died. 

A man named Hugh King went with the fairies to a fair on November eve and men Finvarra, a fairy king who told Hugh to look at the fairies dancing. Soon Hugh realized that these were people he knew had that had died. 

"Another woman out on November Eve saw a young man named Brien who had drowned the year before. He warned her that the fairies were coming “and amongst them were all the dead who had died as long as she could remember.”

Brien warned her to run for if they drew her into a dance she would never be able to leave…"

(Wilde)

It’s important to point out that while some of the fairies were clearly the spirits of the dead, not all of them were. Fairies had many origins, however it does often seem that there isn't much difference between humans and them. Indeed, eating fairy food or dwelling long enough in fairyland seems to give certain humans the powers to become fairies. 

In a Greek Fairy Tale the Queen of the Fairies asks the protagonist "Would you not like to be a fairy?...and live with me in this garden where the sun never ceases to shine and where it is summer all the year?” (Gianakoulis, 1930).

In another story from the same collection of tales all a girl would need to do to become a fairy is eat candy that the fairies offer her.

Fairytales and lore are filled with examples of people joining the fairies. Not all of these people become fairies, per say, but they all become a member of the fairy’s court. 

When a woman named Bessie was suffering greatly, her husband sick, her children sick, and poverty crushing down on her, a spirit named Tom Ried appeared. He had once been a man but after dying in battle he came to serve the fairy queen who had, after years of service, sent him to teach Bessie magic.

It is worth noting here that the earliest record we have of the Seelie Court of fairies says that their numbers include good men who fell in battle, as Tom had. The Seelie court also included those who were not good enough to go to heaven nor bad enough to go to hell, good people who died in battle, and children whose parents were cruel so the fairies took them to be raised properly in fairyland.

There is a Lithuanian fairy tale about a girl who is mistreated by her stepparents. Feeling sorry for her the fairies replace her with a changeling made of dirt, magically disguised to look and act like her, so that the girl can be raised in fairyland.

Given similar ideas throughout Northern Eurasia it does seem likely that living in the fairy courts was likely one of the pre-Christian afterlife options among the Celtic and Germanic.

Yet sometimes fairies simply needed human help. A newspaper article from Iowa in 1886 states that a girl named Kitty was taken by the fairies. While visiting her family after she said the fairies needed her, although she didn’t specify why, and she was traveling around them like magical, invisible hobos.

The Des Moines Register.

As this article shows it’s not always clear why a person was taken into fairyland but there are common threads that stories and folk tradition hint at.

First, fairies often needed human warriors to fight for the fairies. In Welsh mythology a king spent a year in fairyland fighting a war with the monsters for the fairies and many German Medieval texts speak of humans helping the fairies battle dragons, giants, or even other fairies.

The folklorist Wentz states that when two fairy armies met the side with humans would win.

Second, the fairies needed those who had a talent for magic, that is those born with a caul over their head or some other marker which indicated they had the potential to become fairy doctors, witches, and cunning folk.

Third, fairies sought beauty and talent. In fairy tales this was because they needed marry and have children with mortals, but sometimes as friends. For example, grave markers from ancient Greece will sometimes indicate that a person hadn’t actually died but that they were taken to live as playmates for the nymphs.

Fourth, the fairies often sought those who had relatives already in fairyland. Having a mother or uncle in fairyland increases someone’s chances of being taken to fairyland.

Fifth be sympathetic. The fairies often delight in those who work hard and are always kind no matter how terrible their circumstances.

Sixth is Liminality, or right place at the right time. Being in a liminal space or time increases the odds of being in fairyland. Liminal means a point in transition. That is at crossroads, while a child, during sunrise or sunset, etc. Fairies are more likely to appear to those who are at a liminal point and so are more likely to take them to fairyland.

Seventh is the future. One of the abilities often proscribed to the most powerful fairies is the ability to see the future, at least to a point. Thus, a fairy might appear to someone and say they were destined to be married.

Eighth is human food and tasks. Fairies often needed humans for a number of tasks. Some fairy tales indicate that a fairy couldn’t give birth without a human’s help. Numerous fairy tale also say that fairies needed food prepared or grown by human hands, which could explain why fairies would often have humans watch their sheep and cattle, cook for them, and have humans babysit their children in fairy tales.

 Humans are so close to fairies they can, in fact, be transformed into fairies while still living. This should not be so surprising because, as previously mentioned, humans are in essence just another form of fairy. It has been theorized that many of our fairy stories come from the existence of indigenous peoples in England. People ostracized and driven to the fringes of society or the underdogs who were mysterious to those who rejected them. In Cornwall one man testifies that: “Pixies were often supposed to be the souls of the prehistoric dwellers of this country. As such, pixies were supposed to be getting smaller and smaller until, finally, they are to vanish entirely.” (Wentz, 1911) This paints a much more terrifying picture of some of the fairies than we often imagined. According to this account, the pixies who people often think of as cute, little, playful fairies, are small because they are shrinking into oblivion. What’s more, they have had to live for thousands of years with the knowledge that they will eventually disappear and that those humans who would remain are the decedents of the people who forced them into their horrible fate. It is no wonder then that such beings are caught between human-like sympathy and incredible bitterness because, while they must retain some human emotion, much of this emotion must be anger at being driven into their current state.

If we accept the presence of many of our ancestors among the fairies, as we surely must given the large amount of evidence to support this, we must also accept that there are other humans, often far angrier humans, occupying the world of fairies. Further, there are very few people who can claim to be the first inhabitants of their lands and only two such people groups in Europe. So it would seem that only some fairies would be the ancestors of any given set of humans especially given that as with the pixies whole kingdoms of humans could become fairies. This might explain why people in Europe were so afraid of the wilderness. After they drove the original inhabitants of Europe into the dark forests and mountains, these peoples and the fairies they came to be had centuries to grow ever more bitter.

In Ireland, many people believe that the Tuatha De Danann were an indigenous people who turned invisible and entered a parallel realm when the Irish people invaded Ireland, as the Tuatha De Danann were unable to defeat the newcomers in a test of arms because of the Irish peoples’ powerful druids and deities. The Tuatha De Danann now reside in the hills and rocks of Ireland much as fairies do in other parts of the Europe (Wentz, 1911).The Tuatha De Danann are mysterious but also understandable because they still structure themselves much as humans would with kingdoms and fortresses, wars, and a little bit of both enmity and pity for the decedents of those that drove them into the underground realm who are still stuck as suffering mortals despite their apparent “victory.”

Lest we think that such myths are confined to Europe, we must consider a more recent case of this “fairyification” process which comes from Hawaii, that of the Menehune. The Menehune are the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands. As the Samoan peoples moved into Hawaii, they drove the Menehune deeper into the jungles from which they mythologically emerged at night to build magical temples before fleeing back to the jungles when the sun rose. Yet despite their mythological status, they were a real people whose ancestors were counted in the Hawaiian kingdoms first census and whose ancestors likely still survive today.

Fairies also take humans into their world to join them. In Greece, a fairy queen asked one girl: "Would you not like to be a fairy?...and live with me in this garden where the sun never ceases to shine and where it is summer all the year?” (Gianakoulis, 1930) Then, despite the girl’s apparent refusals, the fairies took her soul anyways to become one of them leaving behind her body. This is not, however, an isolated incident. Fairies often take humans away, offering them magical candy that will transform them into fairies or items of clothing which can transform them such as scarves and shawls. At times, this is done because the fairies want a servant. Other times fairies want a sexual partner. However, it would also seem that fairies are also after friends and allies, or that they have some other purpose humans cannot discern. Consider also that some fairies appear to be simply humans who have some garment of clothing that makes them different and unique. In Greek folklore, many fairies are made fairies by a handkerchief which when stolen forces them to become human. In Scottland, selkies have a seal skin which allows them to become ocean fairies or ghost-like creatures which inhabit castles. (Briggs, 1967) Jacob Grimm points out that in some cases, the immortality of fairies comes from the food they eat in fairy land. Further, as previously mentioned, simply entering fairy land and living there would turn some humans into fairies. Humans can simply be fairies who do not live within the fairies’ world.

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