History of Fairies

Fairies and Elves, Oh My

Diminutive fairies of one kind or another have been recorded for centuries, these have been depicted as ranging in size from very tiny up to the size of a human child. However, their small size may be of their own choosing. Wings, while common in Victorian artwork of fairies, are rare in the folklore. Even very small fairies flew with magic, sometimes flying on ragwort stems or the backs of birds

Most common fairies are born from from of flowers, but sometimes this is not the case. Some fairys are born inside tree trunks.

“The Land of Fae” the home is in the world of the living and which could be seen by those cultivated an ability known as the “second sight”.

Another view held that the fairies were an intelligent species and regarded as elementals, such as gnomes and sylphs. The fairies as “spirits of the air” have been found often.

A story of the origin of fairies appears in the 1906 James Barrie novella Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Barrie wrote:

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.”

Many of the Irish tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann refer to these beings as fairies, though in more ancient times they were regarded as Goddesses and Gods. The Tuatha Dé were spoken of as having come from Islands in the north of the world, or, in other sources, from the sky. Otherworldly beings they were said to have withdrawn to the sídhe (fairy mounds), where they live on as “fairies.”
One theory for the source of fairy beliefs was that a race of diminutive people had once lived in the Celtic nations and British Isles. They were believed to live in an Otherworld that was variously described as existing underground, in hidden hills Some archaeologists attributed Elfland to small dwellings or underground chambers where diminutive people might have once lived.

According to this theory, fairies are personified aspects of nature and deified abstract concepts such as ‘love’ and ‘victory’ and appreciation.

from wikipedia