The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

fairies 85
tiful. They are shape shifters who can assume whatever
form they wish, especially to deceive or manipulate people.
In Ireland, fairies assume the forms of black birds,
especially crows; in French fairy lore, they are sometimes
magpies. Black birds, as well as black animals, are associated
with demons and the DEVIL.
Some fairies are solitary, like leprechauns, while others
live in races and nations. Their homes are often in the
earth and are accessed through mounds, caves, burrows,
and holes in the ground and under piles of stones and
rocks. It is bad luck to disturb these places, and the fairies
will take revenge on people who do, causing misfortune,
illness, and even death.
The Land of Fairy, also called Elfland, has characteristics
of the land of the dead. Time is altered, so that a day
in human life might stretch into years in fairyland. There
is no day or night but a perpetual twilight. In legend and
lore, there is an intermingling of ghosts of the dead and
the afterlife with fairies and the Land of Fairy.
Descriptions of European fairies have been collected
from oral lore. Robert Kirk, a Scottish Episcopalian minister
who was clairvoyant, visited Fairyland and wrote an
account, The Secret Commonwealth, in 1691–92, still one
of the major first-person accounts in existence. A major
compendium of fairy lore was written by W. Y. Evans-
Wentz in the early 20th century, The Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries (1911).
Fairies live much as humans do, working and maintaining
families and amusing themselves with food,
drink, music, and dancing. They travel in the physical
world along paths, tracks, and raths, which, as with their
homes, must never be disturbed or destroyed by humans.
Some of them like to march in processions at night and
especially at the “cross quarter” days of the seasons. If
someone builds a house atop a fairy track, the fairies will
pass right through it, and the occupants will sicken, their
crops will fail, and their animals will die. The fairies act
as poltergeists, opening closed windows and doors and
creating disturbances similarly to haunting ghosts.
Fairies are similar to demons in that many of them
do not care for humans, and sometimes they will deliberately
fool and attack people. A strong trickster element
runs through fairy lore. They are fond of leading travelers
astray. They attend human wakes and funerals and eat the
banquet food, spoiling it for people.
Fairies kidnap people to their abodes, especially beautiful
women they take for wives. In Fairyland, a person
who eats their food remains trapped in a netherworld.
To be “taken” by fairies means to go to the otherworld,
also the land of the dead. If an abduction is temporary, a
person sickens and then recovers; if it is permanent, the
person dies and stays in the otherworld. Eating fairy food
is taboo, for it will alter the body and prevent a person
from returning to the world of the living.
Not all fairies are hostile or are tricksters. Some are
kind and helpful to people, though on conditions. For example,
the household brownies will help with chores, as
long as occupants are respectful; leave out milk, cream,
and food for them; and are not messy. Once food is left
for fairies, it must not be eaten by man or beast, for the
fairies take the essence of the food, and it is no longer fit
for others to consume. If food falls on the floor, the fairies
claim it, and it must be given to them.
Fairies have a major weakness: IRON, which repels
them and dilutes their supernatural powers. AMULETs
made of iron keep fairies away.
Bewitchment and Witchcraft
As do witches, fairies have the magical ability to bewitch
people and animals and to blight crops and health. In
Irish lore, the Tuatha de Danaan took revenge upon the
Mil by blighting wheat crops and spoiling milk. When
Christian elements entered fairy lore, it became customary
to dip a thumb in fresh milk and make the sign of the
cross to ward off fairies.
If a person insults or displeases fairies, they have the
power to transform him into a beast, a stone, or something
else in nature.
Bewitched and fairy-possessed people and animals,
who act strangely, sicken, or fall into trances or even
seizures, are called “fairy struck” and “elf shot.” The latter
term refers to invisible arrows shot into people and
animals.
Fairies teach witches their magical lore and casting
of spells.
Changelings
Fairies are well known for stealing human babies and
substituting their own ugly babies in their place. The taking
happens at night when a child is asleep or when it is
napping unattended.
Evans-Wentz gives the following quoted oral account
from France, about a woman and her three children, as
an example:
When she had her first child, a very strong and very
pretty boy, she noticed one morning that he had been
changed during the night; there was no longer the fine
baby that she had put to bed in the evening; there was,
instead, an infant hideous to look at, greatly deformed,
hunchbacked, and crooked, and of a black color. The
poor woman knew that a fee [fairy] had changed her
child.
This changed infant still lives, and today he is about
seventy years old. He has all the possible vices; and he
has tried many times to kill his mother. He is a veritable
demon; he predicts the future, and has a habit of running
abroad at night. They call him the “Little Corrigan”
[a type of fairy], and everybody flees from him. Being
poor and infirm now, he is obliged to beg, and people
give him alms because they have a great fear of him. His
nickname is Olier.
The woman had two other children, who also were
said to be normal at birth but were stolen by the fairies