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This may sound incredibly ignorant in that North American sort of way, but I had no idea there was a bunch of faerie lore out there. So that whole thing started similar to vampires, local myth and legend that turned literary?
 
Michael Colton said:
This may sound incredibly ignorant in that North American sort of way, but I had no idea there was a bunch of faerie lore out there. So that whole thing started similar to vampires, local myth and legend that turned literary?
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Chaucer mentions fairy mythology in the wife of Bath if you want a starting point in (literary) time, but he was clearly drawing on earlier lore. For example, I believe that the Anglo-Saxons had a belief in diminutive 'demons' - fey creatures that inhabited the wild woods that were not to be trusted. Proto-fairies in other words. Again this is from memory so I stand to be corrected but I believe that the terms Elf and Dwarf comes from Saxon words used to describe such creatures. So there's a good 1000+ year history of lore and stories to be starting with.

It's hard to imagine but it is only recently that the wilds have taken on a romantic, beautiful and wholesome image - before they were places of danger and places to avoid totally (as they were the home of cut-throats, outlaws, wild animals and no help from your fellow man) therefore the idea of a malignant urchin or goblin in the deep forest - I think in the European imagination one of the worst wild places - could be readily imagined by all.

EDIT- already making a correction! Dwarf is probably from older Germanic roots, hence brought over or 'borrowed' by the Saxons/Angles/Jutes as they crossed over into Britain.
 
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One Anglo-Saxon legend had it that the fairies were the diminished angels who had refused to fight in the War in Heaven -- too bad for Heaven, not bad enough for Hell.
 
HareBrain said:
One Anglo-Saxon legend had it that the fairies were the diminished angels who had refused to fight in the War in Heaven -- too bad for Heaven, not bad enough for Hell.
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Interesting, quite Djinn-like in their ambiguous position and powers.
 
From memory, the idea was that they weren't very powerful -- they'd dwindled to creatures of spite and pettiness. I guess the story was a way of tying pre-Christian lore into the Bible, and at the same time to downplay the potency of entities from earlier traditions.

(OTOH, my first ever novel made them the rulers of Atlantis -- as you would.)
 
Michael Colton said:
This may sound incredibly ignorant in that North American sort of way, but I had no idea there was a bunch of faerie lore out there. So that whole thing started similar to vampires, local myth and legend that turned literary?
Click to expand...

In Ireland, the fairy legends are very much a living thing, not just literary. Sometimes you'll pass farmers' fields with a single tree standing in the middle of it to be worked around - that will be a fairy thorn and no one would cut it down for fear of bringing the wrath on them. I'm not particularly superstitious but I wouldn't be in a hurry to cut it down, nor to disturb a fairy ring of mushrooms.

We also have a series of legends - The Tain - which deals with our various mythical stories and you will find throughout them the human and fae worlds meet - Oisin went to Tir-na-nog to be with Queen Maebh, but returned to Earth and died a mortal man once more (I use one of the sites for his reported graves in the novel I'm working on at the moment) - or the Children of Lir were turned into swans.

Whilst Ireland isn't quite the North American view of it as very quaint with leprechauns at the end of the rainbow (although many of the touristy places are cringe-worthy in their exploitation of the wee folk) there are places where it's easy to believe in something fae.

And, as Harebrain notes, the legends here, and the type of fairies, are often different from those elsewhere in the Uk. So, no, not like vampires, more a meeting of the land and myth, and a living sense of there perhaps being something else out there.
 
HareBrain said:
From memory, the idea was that they weren't very powerful -- they'd dwindled to creatures of spite and pettiness. I guess the story was a way of tying pre-Christian lore into the Bible, and at the same time to downplay the potency of entities from earlier traditions.

(OTOH, my first ever novel made them the rulers of Atlantis -- as you would.)
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I was always tickled by the theory that Julian Cope had suggested - given the lore that Fairies can't touch or are repelled by the metal iron - that perhaps the mythology of the Fey was some sort of dim and distant folk memory of tribes of iron-wielding axe and sword men who drove the older cultures that didn't know about this metal away to extinction. Well not extinction, but became fairies in folk-tales...

...but I can't really believe it. Those armed with bronze and flint would be just as effective killing people as iron. Although over time the advantages iron had (it ultimately became a lot cheaper to get, produce and could be repaired much easier.) would probably make a difference, I sure most cultures would have leapt onto the new technology when they discovered it rather than being repelled!
 
i always liked Terry Pratchett's line about elves (although aimed in particular at our pointy-eared friends, it serves for all fey and fae):
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”​
 
springs said:
Sometimes you'll pass farmers' fields with a single tree standing in the middle of it to be worked around
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There's a dual carriage way (USA = freeway?) near me built recent. It splits around a Fairy Thorn.

springs said:
leprechauns at the end of the rainbow
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Despite reading old Irish stories for maybe 50 years, I don't remember a single story before 20th C with a Leprechaun in it. "Darby O'Gill and the Little people" certainly has Irish elements, but otherwise seems to be a Disney style conception?

Michael Colton said:
So that whole thing started similar to vampires
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No. Though Bram Stoker of Dracula fame was from Ireland

Plenty of Fairy Mounds here near me. (In reality they are mostly the remains of Iron age forts, perhaps sometimes for a single extended family). Very small or very large ones may be for burials (the older Celts thought the big ones related to gods, not Fairies. i.e. Dowth, Newgrange near Slane and Tara).

You can't travel Co. Clare without tripping over later Castles from Norman period and later, maybe over 900. The locals liked the Norman Keep design and copied it in miniature for family farmhouse (though a Bawn is different style fortified farm. Dalway's Bawn near Kilroot, Co. Antrim up the "Tongue Lonan" road just before you get to Knocknagullagh is well preserved example). So the Co. Clare castles are mostly really ruined farm houses.

The "Holy Wells" associated with saints are actually pre-Christian and priests at various times tried to surpress them. Old gods and "Fairy" of the various kinds seem to be quite separate.

Banshee: Ban = Woman, shee= Fairy, supposed to appear at end of battles. Seriously not like Valkyrie though. Yes well, they would look like rooks / crows wouldn't they? The hollywood conception thus doesn't match tradition.

The invisible character in film Harvey is supposed to be a Pooka (púca), but not like any I ever read about.
There are lakes in limestone areas that gradually vanish and suddenly reappear (via one ore more sink holes, I lived near one for a while), unsurprisingly called Pollaphuca, or fairy lakes / pools (they can fill from rain elsewhere). Puck in Irish names is a bad transliteration of púca, and likely no connection to "Puck".

Edit
Found this as an introduction. I actually know many of the places mentioned, and quite a few within 1hr drive.
 
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I wonder when the precise distinction of "little people" into the spindly elves and beardy dwarves we have now started. Was that purely Tolkien?

I know a chap who wrote several books about UFOs (he was rather sceptical about it all). He once pointed out how similar stories of alien abduction are to medieval fairy legends, albeit with a thin veneer of not-very-good science fiction on top. Perhaps mankind has a need to tell these sorts of story.

On a different point, work continues on the fantasy story and is going well. Last night's work ended on a sinister note, when I looked up "death-mask" on Wikipedia. It occurs to me that Ash's skull in Alien looks exactly like that. I wonder if it was deliberate.
 
Toby Frost said:
I wonder when the precise distinction of "little people" into the spindly elves and beardy dwarves we have now started. Was that purely Tolkien?
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No, they were different in Norse legend (from which JRRT heavily borrowed, of course). I think the interest in taxonomy and making every "species" distinct (when many of the names related to the same basic entity) probably started in the Victorian era, when such "science" was popular, but I'm relying on a shaky memory for that assertion. The modern strict definitions of everything probably owe more to D&D.
 
Toby Frost said:
spindly elves and beardy dwarves
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In Scandinavian lore, Elves and Dwarves are pretty much the same thing. Differentiation is certainly long before Tolkien, mostly the elves being more like tall faerie folk and more magical and the dwarves staying much as they were. Hence later elves in Tolkien, Raymond E. Fiest, Pratchett etc. are more similar to some Celtic conceptions than Scandinavian I think. Icelandic people still have older Scandinavian view, including I think small elves that live in / near rocks etc.
 
Identifying a problem is halfway to solving it. It can feel like wading through treacle sometimes, but as long as you keep going you'll, er, escape the Treacle Marsh of Doom sooner or later.
 
Ray McCarthy said:
In Scandinavian lore, Elves and Dwarves are pretty much the same thing
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The Prose Edda differentiates between the liosalfar, who were pale and lived in a heaven of light, and the dokkalfar who were black and lived underground. (There are also svartalfar who might be dwarfs by another name, though I don't think that was ever clearly established one way or the other). The light-elves are what we think of as elves now, I'd say. But I agree things were less clear-cut then (and there was probably a body of lore that made even less of a distinction -- I'd be interested if you have any sources, though.)
 
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