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Fairies

Fairies were believed to be a race of beings, not quite human, but looking much like people in miniature. They appear in the folk-tales of many countries, and were said to inhabit magical regions on or under the Earth.

Fairies could bring good luck or bad. They had magic powers, and country people feared them. It was said that they sometimes stole human babies, leaving their own ugly children in the cradle; and that any person who wandered accidentally into fairyland either returned witless, or was never seen again. It was considered dangerous to speak of fairies by name, and so they were called 'the little people' or 'the gentle people'.

Those that were not bad-natured were certainly mischievous. Although it was believed that a human might even marry a fairy. People generally considered it safest to beware of them.

The first great collection of folk-tales about fairies was made up by the brothers Grimm in the early 1800's. They wrote down traditional German stories, making few alterations. Other authors did not stay so close to the original material. The French author Charles Perrault, writing more than a century before the brothers Grimm, had adapted well-known tales to suit the customs and manners of France in his day. Perrault's version of 'Cinderella' is more popular than the strictly traditional one. Some of the best-loved fairy tales were written by Hans Christian Andersen, whose stories were entirely his own creation.

The fairies in modern stories have changed considerably from those our ancestors believed in. Today the 'Bad Fairy' is an exception, and children are led to think more of 'fairy godmothers' and other 'Good Fairies'.