The English Fairies

Abstract

ALL fairy beliefs are extraordinarily complex, both in the variety of types of fairy, and, so far as one can learn, in the origin of the beliefs. This is particularly true of English fairylore, probably because we are racially so mixed. No single explanation seems to fit the whole subject. It is as if we were reading a detective story in which the crime turns out to have been committed not by one main criminal but by a number of fortuitous minor criminals, who has each unwittingly contributed to the main crime, and who have scattered clues about with bewildering profusion. This naturally outrages our sense of fitness and makes us feel as if the author was cheating. Let us for the moment leave the vexed question of origins and examine the various types of fairy which exist in English fairylore. In that excellent little handbook Irish Fairy and Folk Tales the poet Yeats made a useful classification of fairies which I adopted, with some modification, in a small popular book I wrote a little while ago, The Personnel of Fairyland. This classification does not claim to be scientific, but it is convenient for discussion because it is descriptive and begs no questions; it does not prematurely assume theories of origin, and though there is bound to be some overlapping between one class and another, I will, with your permission, use it for the present purpose. The English fairies can be divided into these classes: