| Tuatha De Danann (thanann)~ The people of the Goddess Dana, or the people of the god whose mother was Dana. The Celts call them the Sidhe, Spirit-race, or the Feadh-Ree, a modifacation of the word Peri. |
| Fenian Heroes~ The noble warriors of the Tuatha De Danann, who joined allegiance with the fiana (feen-a), the great fighting force of Ireland, and whowere at their greatest when Finn mac Cumaill was their last and greatest leader. |
| Heroic Faery~ The knights and ladies of the medieval romances, and those that occur in Celtic legendss were of human or more than human size and of "shining beauty". They spent their time in aristocratic pursuits of hunting, fighting, riding in procession, as well as dancing and music which were beloved by all the Sidhe. A glimpse of the Fenian Hero is seen in the Heroic Faery, although of a more relaxed and gluttonous stance than of battle-worn. |
| Medieval Fairy~ Out of Arthurian times the Medieval Fairy was born, moving away from Ireland and into England, andd with them taleswoven with magick and sorcery, wizards and witches, Morgan Le fay and Avalon. The size of the fairy became variable, and there were both tiny a rustic fairy as well as hideous and monsterous ones.Often, they were depicted as beautiful fair maidens with long, flowing red hair and white skin, such as those portrayed in paintings by J. Waterhouse. |
| Diminutive Fairy~ The Diminutive Fairies took part in life and became the traditional, and very first, little fairy. With it's birth, a list of euphemistic names became inevitable( Goblins, Brownies, Bogies, Trolls). These invisible and alert little things were always mentioned with a honeyed tounge. The wily, not knowing where they may be lurking, were careful to call them the Good Neighbours, the honest folk, the little folk, the Gentry, the hill folk, the forgetful people, teh people of peace, ect., to pervent the "dint of their ill attempts and bless all they fear harm of". |
| Elizabethan Fairy~ The romance and feirce warrior attitude of the Daoine Sidhe was gone. The fairy became mischievous and at times bothersome. And so, the poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan Age brought a different strand of fairy tradition into prominence. The yeoman class of the sixteenth centery brought a spread of literacy and new class writers. From the country, drawn up to town, such as Shakespear, these new writers came forth bringing with them their own country traditions. Nymphs became the new source of focus and two main types of fairy were introduced: hobgoblins, with which we may call Brownie; and the small flower-loving fairies such as in A Mid Summers Night's Dream. |
| Jacobean Fairy~ The Jacobean fairy continued to extend the fashions in the fairy lore set in Elizabethan literature, with an added emphasis on the minuteness of the small fairies, so that at one time people found it difficult to think of fairies without thinking of smallness. The hobgoblin type was exactly the same in both periods, except now the extreme Puritans regarded all fairies as devils. |
| Flower Fairy~ These are gental spirits of the earth. Earth, lake, and hill are peopled by these fantastic, beautiful, willful, capricious child-spirits. These fairies passionatetly love beauty and luxury and hold in contempt all mean virtues of thrift and aconomy. Above all things they hate the tight fisthand that gathers the last grain, drains the last drop in the milk-pail, and plucks the trees bare of fruit, leaveing nothing for the spirits who wander by the moonlight. |
| Folk-Tale Fairy~ The Golden Age of Faery has ended, and all that is left are folk fairys turned into airy, tenuous, pretty creatures without meat, or muscle, made up of froth and whims. The eighteenth centery is the first period in which books are written expressly for the edification of children. The trend persists into the nineteenth century, and it is not until a quarter of it has passed that the reasearch og the folklorists begin to have some effect on children's literature. |
| Elemental Fairy~ In positive doctrines of mediaveal alchemists and mystics, the ancient metaphysical ideas of Egypt, greece, and Rome found a new expression; the folk lore of the peasantry and the subject of the fairies is turned into study of beings of nature. They are quite scientific in their methods of study, and divide all invisible beings in four distinct classes: |
| Angels: who in character and function are paralled to the gods of the ancients, and equal to the Tuatha De Danann of the Irish, are teh highest. |
| Devils or Demons: who correspond to the fallen angels of Christianity. |
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Elementals, sub-human Nature-Spirits: who are generally regarded as having pygmy staure, like Greek daemons.
Souls: who are the shades or ghosts of the dead. |
| Earth Fairy~ has two subgroups:surface and underground.Each of these again is divided into two classes. On the surface, there are fairies with physical bodies, of which tree spirits are the finest example, and fairies without physical bodies, of which common garden or woods fairy is the best illistration. Underground (and of course to some extend upon it also) there are beings with physical bodies: those belonging to the great individual rocks, corresponding to the tree spirits. Associated with the rocks are fairies without physicall bodies, generally called gnomes. these four vast categories are quite definite: trees, garden, or wood fairies of all kind, rocks, and gnomes. |
| Air Fairy~ Air, Water, & Fire shall be entered soon as they are very long and take great time |
| Water Fairy~ |
| Fire Fairy~ |
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Devas~ Now we come to the final evoluted form of the fairy, that of the "shining ones," who are known to be the soul of the plant kingdom. The spirit of the plnat as it comes alive and takes new form allies itself with human beings and gives to them the secrets of the plant (i.e. medical properties, spiritual properties, nutritional properties, magickal properties, toxic properties, ect.) These are fairies without shape. They are simply a golden glowing, effervescent cloud of energy rising from the plant; a tingeling energy that pin-pricks our skin when we enter thier feild. The Deva does not move from the plant, but remains closely attached. Theya re the life-side of Nature, an expression of the Divine energy ~ the Will ~ channeled in manifested Nature.
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