Fairy: Encyclopedia - Fairy

Fairy

A fairy is a spirit (supernatural being) found in the legends, folklore, and mythology of many cultures. They are generally humanoid in form, though of a higher, spiritual nature and so possessed of preternatural abilities, along with such mystical qualities as otherworldly beauty and grace, an ethereal glow, wings, or the like. They are also regarded as aloof, ephemeral, mercurial, and whimsical, among other qualities that place them outside of a human scope and have a tendency to make them associated or confused with other mythological creatures.

Fairy - Etymology

The words fae and faerie came to English from French and, ultimately, Latin. An interesting correlation is the word "fey," which may be derived ultimately from the same Latin root and is now returning to mean the same as "fae."

The Latin root fata, meaning fate in the sense of one of the Parcae, is an indication that fays have abilities associated with knowledge (foresight) and manipulation (luck, blessing, cursing) of fate, both of which are qualities of faeries in myth.

Fata influenced modern Italian's fada and Spanish's hada, both of which mean fairy, and the Old French fée, which gained the meaning "enchanter." By adding the ending -rie, we get féerie, meaning a "state of fée" or "enchantment." This also befits the fae, who are known for casting illusions and altering emotions, particularly so as to make themselves alluring, frightening, or unseen.

Modern English inherited the two terms "fae" and "fairy," along with all the associations attached to them. Since the subjects of the words are somewhat alien and ethereal, the terms are often used interchangeably and are more prone to spelling alterations than other words.

Another word, "fey," has historically meant "doomed to die," mostly in Scotland. However, it gained the meaning "touched by otherworldly or magical quality; clairvoyant, supernatural." In modern English, the word seems to be conjoining into "fae" as variant spelling. If "fey" derives from "fata," which seems as like as "fairy" deriving from "fata," then the word history of the two words is itself fae.1

There is, however, a slight distinction between the two words "fae" and "faerie." Properly, "fae" is a noun referring to a specific race of otherworldly beings exercising mystical abilities (either the elves [or equivalent thereof] in mythology or their insect-winged, floral descendents in English folklore), while "faerie" is an adjective meaning "of, like, or associated with fays, their otherworldly home, their activities, and their produced goods and effects." Thus, a leprechaun and a ring of mushrooms are both faerie things (a fairy leprechaun and a fairy ring.)

Fairy - Nature

The question of a faerie "nature" has been the topic of many a myth or scholarly paper for a very long time. This is partially due to the fact that, by being supernatural and chaotic entities, they are difficult to pin down as being anything in particular and partially due to the fact that humans have yet to answer completely what constitutes the racial ethos of humanity. Consequently, faerie runs amok with creatures that are completely unrelated save that they are mythologic in origin. There is a central archetypal figure behind most of the stories described as a tall, delicate, radiant being of humanoid aspect. Such beings are most often called "the shining ones."

However, the mercurial and inherently magical nature of fairies has led to their association and confusion with most other mythical creatures. Dwarves, giants, dragons, unicorns, and the like have at some point been made out to be faeries, if not faye themselves.

Fairy - Fairies in literature

William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream deals extensively with the subject of fairy-folk and their interaction with a group of amateur theatrical players. This work details the spell cast by the mischievous fairy Puck (at the behest of the fairy-king Oberon) on Oberon's wife Titania, who falls in love with the first mortal she casts eyes upon, the unfortunate Bottom, whom Puck has transmogrified into having a donkey's head.

William S. Gilbert liked fairies and wrote several plays about them. The best is the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe which deals with a conflict between fairies and the House of Lords and, among other issues, touches on some of the practical consequences of fairy/human marriages and cross-breeding in a humorous manner.

In his Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland (1892), W. B. Yeats coined the expression "trooping fairies" to refer to those fairies who liked to travel together in groups. This is in contrast to the solitary fairies, such as the banshee, leprechaun, or pooka. Typically Yeats's trooping fairies are compared to the elves of English lore.

Fairies figure prominently in most of Neil Gaiman's works, primarily The Books of Magic and Sandman.

Tad Williams's book War of the Flowers deals extensively with passing over into a modern realm of fairies.

Isaac Asimov includes a short story about fairies in his collection of fantasy tales, Magic. Fairies are imagined to be sentient insectoids, and the lepidoptera forms the ones most often associated with the term, though the protagonist fairy is of the beetle line!

George MacDonald's book Phantastes.

Raymond E. Feist's book, Faerie Tale, is about a small family in modern age meeting up with some of the darker aspects of fairies, as well as the Fairie Realm itself.

The Susanna Clarke novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is about a pair of rival magicians who make use of and are subsequently used by "the gentleman with the thistle-down hair" also known as the fairy king of "Lost-Hope".

In the Artemis Fowl series, by Eoin Colfer, Fairies are highly technologically advanced, peaceful beings who live underground, unbeknownst to humans.

Fairy - Fairies in visual arts

Artists such as Brian Froud, Alan Lee, Myrea Pettit, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Cicely Mary Barker, Amy Brown and Peg Maltby have all created beautiful illustrations of fairies.

Conversely, the Victorian painter Richard Dadd was responsible for some paintings of fairy-folk with an altogether more sinister and malign nature. Another notable Victorian painter of fairies was the artist and illustrator Arthur Rackham. Interest in fairy themed art in Britain enjoyed a brief renaissance following the Cottingley fairies photographs, and a number of artists turned to painting fairy themes.

• Fairy painting

Fairy - Fairies in modern popular culture

• American Dragon: Jake Long

• Holly Black Faeries are the main charcters in her 2 books Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale and Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, her series Spiderwick Chronicles, and her next book Ironside scheduled for release in 2007.

• Blue Fairy In Carlo Collodi's tale Pinocchio the wooden boy receives the gift of real life from the Blue Fairy. In Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), where an android longs to become a real boy, the Blue Fairy is voiced by Meryl Streep.

• Green Fairy Also called La Fée Verte, a nickname for the alcoholic drink absinthe, so named for its green colour and intoxicating and seductive properties. Originally represented as a green woman, later she has been represented as a more traditional green coloured fairy. Kylie Minogue played the green fairy in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!.

• Holly Short Main figure in Irish writer Eoin Colfer's stories about Artemis Fowl. In the first book, Artemis Fowl discovers the existence of an underground world of fairies. He kidnaps Captain Holly Short and ransoms her for gold . In the second book they form an alliance to fight the Mafia, and though she won't admit it at first, she slowly becomes friends with Artemis.

• The Fairly OddParents

• The Legend of Zelda Fairies have been Link's helpers from the very first game. In the beginning they simply replenished his health or revived him and now in the newer games they are life-long companions.

• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch (Pure) One of the three winged servant-villains is a fairy. Her name is Alala and she sings in order to kill the Mermaid Princesses.

• Shobijin In most Mothra films the kaiju is accompanied by two tiny (often twin) priestesses, called the shobijin ("small beauties") by other characters. They have been portrayed by The Peanuts, Pair Bambi, and several non-twin pairs.

• Tinkerbell Originally from the Peter Pan stories by J.M. Barrie, but more famous for the Disney version, or the portrayal by Julia Roberts in the 1991 movie Hook. She is also often referred to as a pixie, and leaves a trail of fairy dust (or pixie dust) behind wherever she goes.

• Winx Club An animated television show featuring teenage fairies.

• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal The multi-platform action-adventure game features an array of various elemental fairies which the player can capture and train in the course of the game and use them to fight in fairy duels to advance the plot.

Fairy - In Debates

A fairly common practice in debate (especially concerning the supernatural) is to state that the opponent's views are akin to believing in fairies etc.

See also

• Adhene
• Alux
• Angel
• Cicely Mary Barker (Flower fairies)
• Cottingley Fairies
• Demon
• Elf
• Fairy painting
• Fairy tale
• List of fairy and sprite characters
• Pari
• Pixie
• Sidhe
• Sprite (creature)
• Slavic fairies
• Titania's Palace
• Tooth fairy
• Trooping fairies
• Wichtlein

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Fairy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki