For those who would like to meet fairies,
it is wise to learn as much as you can about
them. Here is a sprinkling of information,
some helpful hints, and a few cautions.
Many Kinds of Faeries
There are reports of fairy-like creatures
and others closely related from all over the
world... far too many to consider here. We are
chiefly concerned with the many different kinds
which have been known for centuries around the
British Isles.
Fairies are called by many names in many
different places: faerie, fay, fey, The Gentry,
The Good People, The Good Neighbors, The People
of Peace, The Fair Family, the Twylyth Teg,
pixies, piskies, pisgies, the Daoine O'Sidhe
(Deeny Shee), The Sith, The Seely Court. There
are also a variety of other creatures akin to
them, such as the elves, gnomes, trolls, brownies,
bwca, hobgoblins, pooka, phouka, pwca, kelpie,
silkie, and many more. (A special word
about "hobgoblin", which is not what it seems.
Hob is a name given to a helpful sort of spirit,
and so a hobgoblin is quite different from plain,
scary goblin.) These are all names people use to
describe fairies and their ilk, but each of them
has a name of his or her own, which is not so
easy to find out... But more on that later.
It should be pointed out that those we now
usually think of as fairies, they small, delicate
creatures, are of the type that usually live in
large groups, and are commonly called trooping
fairies. Not all the trooping fairies are quite
so small as the sort most popularly pictured, but
for many hundred years, even the larger sort were
thought to be smaller than ordinary humans. The
diminutive fairies were not often reported until
the past two or three centuries, and it may be
that as their numbers diminished, their individual
size shrank, too.
Some of those mentioned above are solitary
creatures, not strictly fairies, who vary
from the very helpful (such as the brownie,
who usually lives by a house or on a farm and
does chores in return for a bit of food and drink)
to the very dangerous (such as a Silkie, who lures
sailors into the sea.)
