What are fairies?
The fairies of folk tradition have little in common with the small winged creatures of children’s books. In the British Isles they are a people of their own who live in hills, lure humans into their world with music and dancing, and make years pass there like hours. People avoided saying their name and spoke instead of the “good people.” They left milk out for them and carried iron when traveling at night.
Changelings
One of the darkest beliefs is the changeling. Fairies were said to steal infants and replace them with one of their own children. Children who were ill or developed differently were explained this way, sometimes with cruel consequences.
The Cottingley Fairies
In 1917, two girls in Cottingley, Yorkshire, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, took photos that showed them with tiny fairies. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, believed the pictures were real and published them in 1920 and 1922. Only in 1983 did the two women admit that the fairies were paper figures cut out of a book. Frances, however, insisted to the end that one of the photos was genuine.
Fairies today
The belief has not disappeared entirely. In the 2010s, the historian Simon Young carried out a “Fairy Census” and collected hundreds of modern accounts of encounters with fairies.
Episodes on this topic
- What Are Fairies, Really? (in German)
- Sherlock Holmes and the Fairies (in German)
- Related: Leprechaun, Selkie
Further reading
- Arthur Conan Doyle: The Coming of the Fairies, 1922.
- Simon Young, Ceri Houlbrook (eds.): Magical Folk. British and Irish Fairies, 2018.