FAIRY, the common term for a supposed race of super natural beings who magically intermeddle in human affairs. (Fr. fee, faerie; Prov. fada; Sp. hada; Ital. fata; med. Lat. fatare, to enchant, from Lat. f atum, fate, destiny.) They are not the im mediate product of one country or of one time; they have a pedi gree. But mixture and connection of races have so changed the original folk-product that it is difficult to separate the different strains that have gone to the moulding of the result.
It is not in literature that the early forms of the fairy belief must be sought. Many of Homer's heroes have fairy lemans, called nymphs, but the fairy leman is familiar to the unpoetical Eskimo, and to the Red Indians, with their bird-bride and beaver bride (see A. Lang's Custom and Myth, "The Story of Cupid and Psyche"). The Gandharvas of Sanskrit poetry are also fairies.
One of the most interesting facts about fairies is the wide dis tribution and long persistence of the belief in them. They are the chief factor in surviving Irish superstition. Here they dwell in the "raths," old earth-forts. They are an organized people, and their life corresponds to human life in all particulars. They carry off children and are generally the causes of all mysterious phenom ena. Whirls of dust are caused by the fairy marching army, as by the beings called Kutchi in the Dieri tribe of Australia. The fairy changeling belief also exists in some districts of Argyll. In Ireland and the west Highlands neolithic arrow-heads and flint chips are still fairy weapons. They are dipped in water, which is given to ailing cattle and human beings as a sovereign remedy for diseases. In the Highlands there is much more interest in sec ond sight than in fairies, while in Ireland the reverse is the case. The best book on Celtic fairy lore is still that of the minister of Aberfoyle, the Rev. Mr. Kirk (ob. 1692). His work on The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, left in ms. and incomplete (the remainder is in the Laing mss., Edinburgh Univer sity library), was published (10o copies) in 1815 by Sir Walter Scott, and in the Bibliotheque de Carabas (Lang) there is a French translation.
It is clear that in many respects fairyland corresponds to the pre-Christian abode of the dead. Like Persephone when car ried to Hades, or Wainamoinen in the Hades of the Finns (Man ala), a living human being must not eat in fairyland; if he does, he dwells there for ever.
There is a theory that the fairies survive in legend from pre historic memories of a pigmy people dwelling in the subterranean earth-houses, but the contents of these do not indicate an age prior to the close of the Roman occupation of Britain; nor are pigmy bones common in neolithic sepulchres. The "people of peace" (Daoine Shie) of Ireland and Scotland are usually of or dinary stature, only varying from mankind by their proceedings. (See J. Curtin, Irish Folk-tales.) The belief in a species of lady fairies, deathly to their human lovers, was found by R. L. Stevenson to be as common in Samoa (see Island Nights' Entertainments) as on the banks of Loch Awe. The Greek sirens of Homer are a form of these fairies, as the Nereids, Oreads and Naiads are fairies of wells, mountains and the sea. The fairy women who come to the births of children and foretell their fortunes (Fata, Moerae, ancient Egyptian Hathors, Fees, Dominae Fatales), with their spindles, are refrac tions of the human "spae-women" (in the Scots term) who derive omens of the child's future from various signs. These women, represented in the spiritual world by Fata, bequeath to us the French fee, in the sense of fairy. Perrault uses fee for anything that has magical quality.
The nearest analogy to the shape which fairy belief takes in Scotland and Ireland—the "pixies" of south-western England—is in Jan or Jinnis of the Arabs, Moors and people of Palestine. In stories which have passed through a literary medium, like The Arabian Nights, the geni or Jan do not so much resemble our fairies as they do in the popular superstitions of the East, orally collected. They chiefly differ from our fairies in their greater tendency to wear animal forms ; though when they choose to appear in human shape they are not to be distinguished from mortals. Like the fairies everywhere they have amours with mortals. The herb rue is potent against them, as in British folk lore. They, like the British brownies (a kind of domesticated fairy), are the causes of strange disappearances of things. To preserve houses from their influences rue is kept, and the name of Allah is constantly invoked.
They often bear animal names. Euphemistically they are ad dressed as mubarakin, "blessed ones." • As our fairies give gold which changes into withered leaves, the Jan give onion peels which turn into gold. Like our fairies the Jan can apply an ointment, kohl, to human eyes, after which the person so favoured can see Jan, which are invisible to other mortals, and can see treasure wherever it may be concealed. (See Folk-lore of the Holy Land, by J. E. Hanauer, 1907.) The enjoyment of love between a fairy and a mortal is gener ally qualified by some restriction or compact, the breaking of which is the cause of calamity to the lover and all his race, as in the notable tale of Melusine (q.v., and see the chapter De lamiis et nocturnis larvis in Otia Imperialia, written early in the 13th century, by Gervaise of Tilbury). At the birth of Ogier le Danois six fairies attend, five of whom give good gifts, which the sixth overrides with a restriction. There is little in these fairies of romance to distinguish them from human beings, except their supernatural knowledge and power. To this class belong the fairies of Boiardo, Ariosto and Spenser.
There is no good modern book on the fairy belief in general. Keightley's Fairy Mythology is interesting ; Rhys's Celtic Mythology is copious about Welsh fairies, practically identical with those of Ireland and Scotland. The works of Mr. Jeremiah Curtin and Dr. Douglas Hyde are useful for Ireland ; for Scotland, Kirk's Secret Commonwealth has already been quoted. Scott's dissertation on fairies in The Border Minstrelsy is rich in lore, though Scott had not the benefit of recent researches. There is a full description of French fairies of the 15th century in the evidence of Jeanne d'Arc at her trial (1431) in Quicherat's Proces de Jeanne d'Arc, vol. i. pp. 67, 68, 187, 209, 212 ; vol. ii. pp. 390, 404, 45o. In another vein is Sir A. Conan Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies (1922) .