When most people think about fairies, they perhaps picture the sparkling Tinker Bell from Peter Pan or the other heartwarming and cute fai...
When most people think about fairies, they perhaps picture the sparkling Tinker Bell from Peter Pan or the other heartwarming and cute fairies and fairy godmothers that populate many Disney movies and children’s cartoons. But these creatures have much darker origins – and were once thought to be more like undead blood-sucking vampires.
In The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1682), folklorist Robert Kirk argued that fairies are “the dead”, or of “a middle nature betwixt man and angels”. This association is particularly prominent in Celtic lore.
Writing in 1887, Lady Jane Wilde popularised the Irish belief that:
Fairies are the fallen angels who were cast down by the Lord God out of heaven for their sinful pride…and the devil gives to these knowledge and power and sends them on earth where they work much evil.
At first sight, the current innocent idea of fairyland seems as far away from the shadowy realms of the dead, and yet there are many resemblances between them. Despite their wands and glitter, fairies have a dark history and surprisingly gothic credentials. So why did we lose our fear of fairies and how did they come to be associated with childhood?
Beginning of fairies
When JM Barrie’s Peter Pan debuted in the early 1900s, it was widely believed in society at that time that...