Fairies (or Faeries) are a massive part of our popular culture. The first image that comes to the minds of most people is of Tinkerbelle, or perhaps the fairy godmother in Cinderella. Fairies are seen as cute, pink, little people who exist to help and serve humans. They’re magical creatures, who use that magic, again, to help people. Take a gander through the toy section of the warehouse and anything related to fairies are what we’d perceive as girly and princess-y. Look around a knick-knack store and you’ll find little girls in pink dresses sitting on flowers, or perhaps a topless woman with wings sprawled across a toadstool.
When people think of fairy tales, they think of something unrealistic, silly and fanciful. The ideals of fairyland aren’t applicable to us, because everything in fairyland turns out okay in the end, something which is hard to achieve in real life. It might appear that Snow White is dead, but a kiss from her true love brings her back again. This Disney-ified perception of fairies is prevalent to the point that people complain about the more dark and gritty modern fairy tale films marching their way through theatres currently. However, fairies and their associated lore have a much darker and scarier history than we give them credit for.
Pick up a Grimm Brothers book, for instance, and take a look at the fairy tales we know and love now, and how they were originally told, and loved back then. You’ll find that the Evil Queen in Snow White didn’t just want her heart as proof of her death, rather she wanted her liver and lungs to eat. Snow is seven-years-old when the prince falls in love with her supposedly dead body, and chooses to take her body back home with him. She returns to life when she’s accidentally dropped and the apple is dislodged from her throat. The Evil Queen is forced to dance to death for the entertainment of Snow. Cannibalism, possible necrophilia and torture – these are all staples of old-school fairy tales.
But the scariness does not begin nor end in the tales told to children. Historically, fairies were not viewed as helpful little creatures, but rather something to fear. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of magical creatures thought of as part of fairy which are described as specifically trapping and victimising humankind.
Kelpies are creepy, shape-shifting horse creatures which supposedly resided around Scottish bodies of water. They were said to lure humans onto their backs before carrying them to their deaths in their associated lake. Almost every lake, pond and body of water throughout Scotland has an accompanying Kelpie story. Leanan Sidhe is a beautiful female muse, which drained the life of those who loved her, causing the early deaths of the male artists she inspired. The Leshy is a creature which roams the forest, able to shapeshift to any appearance, size and shape. It mimics the voices of loved ones to draw humans astray, before devouring them. These fairies don’t typically meet the standard modern day view of the creatures.
“Fairy ring” is the common name for a naturally occurring ring of mushrooms. In folklore, these rings are dangerous things. Folk tales warn people not to enter or mess with fairy rings. In some parts of western Europe they’re said to appear as the result of fairies dancing. People could enter the ring, and find themselves trapped, dancing for a lifetime, and invisible to the outside world, unable to escape. Other lore suggests that anyone who enters a fairy ring will die young.
Even if the historical perception of fairies was a fair bit darker, why is it even relevant? Because people believed in fairies. Some still do.
There are those that believed in fairies as mischievous but potentially helpful creatures. The butterfly-sized garden fairy is something that came about in the Victorian era. One of the most striking examples showcasing the potential for belief in fairy kind is the Cottingtley Fairies photos. Photographers Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths set up some shots of themselves with paper cutouts of fairies in the early 1900s. While looking at the photos now it’s fairly obvious that these fairies are not real creatures, at the time the photos were taken, many believed them to be proof that the little folk truly did exist. One of the most enthusiastic believers in the photos was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes. He saw the images as undeniable proof that fairies existed, and had many different experts examine the images in order to prove their authenticity.
The Fairy Investigation Society started up in 1927, and the members were made up of people who believed in fairies. It was active up until just before the Second World War. After about 10 years of inactivity, The Fairy Investigation Society was started up again in 1950 – with over a hundred members, including none other than Walt Disney. In 1955 a census of fairy belief was conducted by the society – although the report has never been published in English. The society died down again in the 1990s, only to be brought back into existence in 2013 by the writers for the website Fairyist. However, the members of the current society are not limited to believers alone, and extend out to people who are merely interested in fairy folk and lore. The new society conducted their own fairy census of sightings in 2015, and the findings are available to read online.
The belief in fairies can be seen as an explanation for a great number of bad things unexplained by science at the time. Someone has suddenly taken a turn and are dying of an unknown disease? Perhaps you stepped into a fairy ring unwittingly. Natural and climatic disasters? The fairies are fucking with us. Mysterious epidemics among cattle? Gotta be another one of those dastardly fairy curses.
However, as there is with most beliefs, there is a much more sinister side to the story. Along the same vein as explanation for unknown phenomena, the sudden change in attitude, mood or health of a person could be seen as the result of a changeling. A changeling is when a fairy abducts a person, replacing them with a fairy, using magic to appear exactly the same as the person. Physical abnormalities and disabilities in children, such as the inability to walk and talk, were often seen as characteristics of changelings. Other qualities of changeling children were incessant crying, refusal to settle, unusual facial features or limbs, and constantly feeding without satisfaction. Quite often the changelings are referred to as appearing withered compared to how they were before.
There are a number of reasons given for fairies stealing a human child. It could be to steal a pleasant human child and get rid of an ugly fairy baby, to feed on the mother’s milk, to punish disrespectful humans. Perhaps it was because the child was so beautiful that the fairies wanted it for themselves. In Scottish Folklore in particular, the human baby was given as a tithe to the devil.
The methods to reveal changelings range from amusing to abusive. If a child was suspected to be a fairy, a mother could trick it by pretending to cook a family meal in an egg shell instead of a pot. Such an action would confuse the fairy into saying “Acorn before oak I knew, and an egg before a hen, but never before have I seen an eggshell brew dinner for harvest men.” The fairy would then flee, and the stolen child would be returned.
However, on the other end of the spectrum you have examples such as holding the baby over a hot stove on an iron spade or holding the child underwater. There are cases of parents killing children in attempts to rid them of fairies. One particular case was in Ireland in 1826, when Anne Roche drowned the four-year-old boy, Michael Leahy, who was unable to either stand nor speak. Roche had been doing a ritual of holding the boy under water for three days, and on the third she held him under too long, resulting in his death. In court she insisted that she was merely trying to drive out the fairy inside of him.
The case of Bridget Cleary in 1895 is particularly distressing. After her health mysteriously declined and after attempting many herbal and medical treatments for her illness, her husband, father, and five other people tortured and burned her to death. Later, her charred body was found buried in a shallow grave on the edge of the property. The people involved with her murder were charged with manslaughter, rather than murder, because they adamantly believed that they had killed a changeling, and not the human woman Bridget Cleary.
Folklore, fairies and fairy tales are a part of a large and rich oral tradition. They inform our stories and narratives even today. The stories told often teach parable-type lessons and warn children of dangers. They’re entertaining and magical, scary and exciting. It’s important to understand how these tales have shaped numerous cultures and lives over the centuries. Everywhere across the world you will find folklore and the hints of fairies. Even in Maori tradition there are fairy-type creatures by the name of Patupaiarehe. These fairies are described as pale eyed, skinned and haired creatures which would dwell in mist, playing flutes and would kidnap women.
But, there is always the horror of what people do in the name of their belief. Fairy tales have informed a massive amount of rich, interesting and complex parts of culture around the globe. The truly sinister and terrible comes from what humans have used that culture to justify.