Table of Contents
Introduction
The
connection between humans, fairies, and deities
Fairy
Classifications
Humans who
become fairies
Fairies are
nature spirits
Wells,
Springs and Pools
Trees,
Forests, Glens and Plants
Fairies are
animals
Mountains,
Rocks, and Lands
Forces of
nature
House,
Hearth, and Field
Fairies are
the gods of the past
Fairies as
their own class of spirits
Common
fairy traits
Analysisi
of the fairies in fairy tales
Rumpelstiltskin
and Analysis
Briar Rose
Analysis of
Briar Rose
Puss in
Boots
Analysis of
Puss in Boots
The
Spindle, the Shuttle and the Needle
Analysis of The Spindle, the shuttle and the Needle
|
Common fairy traits
Note: this is a preview which
has been edited and condenced.
Lovers of the Arts and Beauty
It’s the fairies that make the flowers blossom, the sun
shine,
the mountains rise and fall. In essence, it is fairies that make the
world beautiful, but this is beauty as they define it. While people
believed that it was fairies who allowed life to exist, people
didn’t believe that fairies were creaters simply for the sake
of
creation. Fairies are artists, and they love what they consider
beautiful which is shown by their obsession with song, poetry, and
dance.
“Dancing and song are their delight, and by their songs they
draw
mortals into the water with them... The fossegrim entices men by his
music and instructs them in the fiddle and other stringed
instruments.”
(Jacob Grimm)
This is not to say that they are whimsical artists. Indeed, looking at
the nature of artists throughout history, we see that they are rarely
whimsical. Fairies are strict with their art as shown by the example of
the fossegrim (a male waterfall fairy). In order to learn to play music
from the fossegrim, a person would sacrifice a he-goat to him by
throwing it into the waterfall. If the fairy accepted the gift, the
fossegrim would grab the person’s hands and guide them so
violently and for so long that blood would spurt out of the
human’s fingertips. With their hands bursting apart and
spurting
blood, the humans in the tales would beg the fossegrim to stop to allow
them to take a break, but the fossegrim would ignore their
student’s cries of pain as they continued to force the human
to
play this way for as long as it took for them to perfect in his art and
play so that the trees will dance. (Jacob Grimm)
It should be clear from the amount of brutality in the way the
fossegrim teaches music that fairies are demanding artists, that they
do not accept weakness or pain when it comes to their art. They are
beauty and art lovers to an extreme degree.
However, beauty in and of itself is a complex issue. It is more than
simply in the eye of the beholder. The same artist who admired
sculptures of neoclassicism can become Picaso who himself created more
then just frilly art. He created works of both love and sorrow. Picaso
painted scenes of war and pain, of sadness and depression alongside his
works of happiness and joy. The same writers who carefully craft jokes
and allow the boy to get the girl in their stories, will also kill
major characters in horrible ways in another tale just as Shakespeare
did.
It should be telling, for example, that the god of poetry in Germanic
and Norse mythology (Wotan) is also the god who determines who will be
victorious and who will lose a battle....
Fairies, like human artists, are quirky and odd. Artists are prone to
violent bouts of rage. When Michelangelo didn’t like his work
on
the Sistine Chapel, he tore down a painting he’d been
creating
for years. Mozart was often reported to be half mad and would grow
angry at his band for not hearing music that wasn’t actually
playing. Van Gogh cut off his own ear in a fit of rage. Genius and an
extreme, intense interest in one subject create bizarre quirks among
humans so we should anticipate that the people who gave human traits to
fairies would believe that this situation would be the same among
fairies.
Thus, while human art has and is defined by endings; songs with
finales, paintings with exhibition, and plays with curtains closings,
many fairies do not like such destinations, and as immortal beings they
never have to actually seek an ending. Their art can be a journey which
never ends but continues on forever.
Mutable, Anamorphose, Astral, Creators of Illusions
Nothing is what it seems in the world of fairies. Castles turn out to
be dark caverns, and caverns turn out to be bright palaces. Fairies are
in and of themselves mutable beings, always changing form and type.
When a fairy pays a human for services rendered, the enigmatic
creatures are never satisfied with simply paying them in money. Fairies
instead pay humans with dead horses, dried leaves, twigs, or other
seemingly useless items. Items which turn to gold should the person be
smart enough to bring it home with them.
What are we to take from these strange actions?
The fairy world is confusing, whether as a means to test human fidelity
or because of the fairies’ strange nature, fairy actions can
never be straightforward.
Fairies, by some peoples’ calculations, are astral beings
(“astral” being the insubstantial world of the
soul). This
makes sense given that fairies appear at least in some respects to be
essentially souls. The astral world itself is both less solid and more
stable then water for it always changes, always flows, but the beings
within it can choose to be solid or can choose their form.
“The fairy world is always described as an immaterial
place.” (Wentz, 1911)
Further testimonies gathered from Celtic peasents go on to attest that:
“Spirits and fairies exist all round us, invisible. Fairies
have
no solid bodily substance. Their forms are of matter like ghostly
bodies, and on this account they cannot be caught. In the twilight they
are often seen, and on moonlit nights in summer.” (Ibid)
Many fairies are always changing form appearing as a cup, an animal, or
a tree. It’s impossible because of such changes to know for
certain if fairies even naturally appear as humans, or if they simply
take human form to put us at ease.
Jacob Grimm believed that:
“The freest personality is proper to gods and spirits who can
suddenly reveal or conceal their shape, appear and disappear. To man
this faculty is wanting. He can but slowly come and go, and in his body
he must abide.” (Grimm, 1935)
What would it be like to not have to have any form? To be able to
change and adjust at will; to be anywhere one wanted to be? There are
two possibilities we must consider. The first is that fairies truely
are free; that they are the artists that alter everything, even their
forms, to get that which they seek. Or perhaps fairies are themselves a
reflection of the world around them. A reflection that shows us what we
want to see. In “Religion of the Ancient Celts”
(MacCulloch, 1911) attests that:
“With the growth of religion, the vaguer spirits tended to
become
gods and goddesses, and worshipful animals to become anthropomorphic
divinities with the animals as their symbols, attendants, or victims.
And as the cult of vegetation spirits centered in the ritual of
planting and sowing, so the cult of the divinities of growth centered
in great, seasonal and agricultural festivals which were the key to the
growth of the Celtic religion to be found. Yet the migrating Celts,
conquering new lands, evolved divinities of war. Here the old, female
influence was still at work since many of these were female.
“Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character; each
tribe possessing its own group, each god having functions similar to
those of other groups. Some, however, had or gained a more universal
character absorbing divinities with similar functions. Still, this
local character must be borne in mind. The numerous divinities of Gaul,
with differing names—but judging by their assimilation to the
same Roman divinity, with similar functions are best understood as gods
of local groups. Thus the primitive nature spirits gave place to
greater or lesser gods, each with his separate department and
functions. Though growing civilization tended to separate them from the
soil, they never quite lost touch with it. In return for man's worship
and sacrifices, they gave life and increased victory, strength, and
skill. However, these sacrifices had been and still often were rites in
which the representative of a god was slain.”
What we see then is that these fairies may not have been so free. They
may have been, at least in part, defined by the thoughts of the people
who surrounded them. So in this sense when humans wished for fairies to
be beautiful, powerful beings that would make their crops grow, it was
so. Later, as humans wanted them to be devils or faded souls, it again
became so. Finally, when humans stopped caring about fairies, they
ultimately vanished altogether.
Extreme Emotions
Fairies feel emotions much more intensely than humans do. When a human
gives them the tiniest amount of help, they reward that human with
lifelong happiness, gold, or some other incredibly precious gift.
However, should a human do even the slightest amount of harm to a
fairy, death is often the punishment. We see this repeatedly in fairy
tales. In the story of “The Three Mannlien in the
Wood,”
(Grimm and Grimm, 1812) a young girl shares her stale crust of bread
with three Mannlien and, in return, they make her more beautiful every
day. They caused gold to fall from her mouth every time she spoke and
were setting it up so that she’ll marry a prince. The
girl’s stepsister refuses to share her food so they cause her
to
grow more ugly, frogs to jump out of her mouth, and ultimately cause
her to die horribly. Fairies are the strict enforcers of morality for
fairies will ask humans to share with them crusts of bread, the warmth
of a fire, etc. Yet these same fairies can create gold, give unlimited
amounts of food, and grant wishes. The only real explanations for this
is that fairies are testing the morality of humans.
In “The Edda,” a Norn (a wise woman/fairy which
weaves the
fate of humans) trips and hurts herself as she is getting up to give a
child its fate, and in her rage she curses the child to die in much the
same way that in the “Sleeping Beauty” tale, a
fairy which
was overlooked by a child’s parents curses the child with
death.
When Rumpelstiltskin found that he’d lost the child sought,
he
got so angry that he tore himself in two. The guardian of the bath
house in the Russian folk tales will risk its life to protect people
and then later will flay the skins from their bodies if it feels
it’s been disrespected. Fairies have wild mood swings between
happiness, sorrow, love, and rage.
Immortality and Immunity
Diplomatic immunity which allows people to park anywhere they wish,
drive how they wish, etc., encourages people to act differently from
how one might normally behave. Diplomatic immunity itself, however, is
not true immunity as the diplomat’s job is to make the
citizens
of the country they are in like them or their employer. Fairies have no
such needs, however, so they are often times truly immune from the
punishments that haunt the mortal world, even from death itself. Such
immunity alters their perception of things.
Nixes, nymphs, and satyrs need not fear reprisals for their actions,
and so their desires are rarely ever tempered by anything. In such
cases then, a fairy becomes pure desire, mating and dancing, living for
the moment because there is no need to worry about anything else. Not
even the freest of humans can do this for long because eventually
mortality will crash down on them, or eventually other humans will tire
of their actions and they’ll be restrained.
Immortality itself will greatly alter a fairy’s perceptions
of
the world. Mountains rise and fall, trees grow and die, even the stars
shift their courses over time. Even for humans, growing older means
that little things seem to matter less and less.
Imagine what it would be like to live for thousands of years and you
will come to a closer understanding of the emotions of fairies. After
thousands of years of life, very little would seem to matter. Any
kingdom might simply be just another kingdom, any mortal is just
another life in an infinite string of meaningless and temporary lives.
Immortality can also cause fairies to hate the new just as elderly
people are stereotyped. In German mythology, wood wives demanded that
humans not bake cumin in their bread. Water wives didn’t like
the
touch of new clay pots in Welsh mythology. Dwarfs called humans fickle
creatures (Grimm 1835).
Fairies Never Mature but are Always Ancient
Many fairies never truly mature. At the same time, however, they grow
up within a few years or are born ancient from the very beginning
(Grimm, 1835). Further, because of their immortal nature, they would
eventually only have the slightest inkling that they were ever young at
all. This situation can lead them to desire that which they cannot
have, a childhood. Consider that when fairies kidnap adults, the
fairies most often replace them with objects which are made of dirt or
wood but are enchanted to appear to be corpses. Yet when a fairy takes
a human baby, they replace the child with old fairies in disguise. So
when a fairy takes an adult, it is clear that what they are after is
the adult because they leave the humans very little recourse to
discover the deception or to force the fairies to return the person who
was taken. When fairies take human children, however, they are after
something else, something more. By leaving an elderly fairy, the
fairies risk being found out because of the actions of the elderly
fairy. Further, they risk having the fairy abused by the humans as
often happened. If all the fairies wanted was the child, then they
would simply replace them with clay or wood magically disguised to
appear as a dead child as they do adults.
By replacing children with older fairies, the fairies are actively
seeking to take the place of the child. In history and our own society,
we can see many child actors who grew up to seek after their childhood
later. They sought to create a “Neverland” for
themselves.
Even beyond this, however, there are many people who seek to go back to
or to find a childhood again. Movies are ripe with stories of people
who wish to regain their youth, or to find the happiness they never had
as a child. For such people, however, the rules of society, age,
mortality, as well as the fact that no matter what they do they cannot
look like children prevents them from achieving childhood later in
life. Fairies, however, can change their form at will, and they
don’t have the same social rules as humans.
Perkiss points out that when the nymphs would kidnap heroes, it seemed
that they did so in order to essentually play house with the hero the
way a girl might seek to pull a father, brother, or neighbor boy into a
game of tea. Thus, while even human children must follow certain rules,
(they can’t force the neighbor boy to play tea without adult
intervention or a lot of badgering), fairies with their supernatural
powers do not have very many rules at all. Further, because of their
immortal nature, they have forever to gain a greater longing for a
childhood and can act childlike forever. There is never a moment when
they start to whither and get injured more easily or must worry about
finding a job. So they can dance on the hillsides every night for
eternity and so they often do.
Dangerous, Quirky, Playful, and Unpredictable
Beautiful and seductive, she moves through the trees, lithely jumping
branch to branch like a squirrel. Intrigued, the boy approaches her
eliciting a welcoming smile. She whispers gently in his ear before
tickling him. At first he laughs, enjoying the attention, but she
doesn’t stop. She keeps tickling and tickling; harder and
harder
he laughs. He wants to stop laughing, but he can’t.
It’s
hard to breathe, his lungs hurt. He starts to cough from laughing for
so long and so hard, and eventually she tickles him to death. What are
we to take from the strange behavior of the rusalka, a fairy of the
water and forest which performs the bizarre act of seducing men so that
it may tickle them to death? No matter how seemingly dangerous the
fairy, they always seem to have some element of playfulness though
their play can often turn deadly. Fairies are always a contradiction.
Fairies are the moment when the coin is in the air, the time it hovers
twirling, caught between two choices, between two opposites.
The rusalka, for example, is a young girl, one who can never grow,
never mature, never find true love. She is caught forever between lust
and childishness, between youthful play and death. She is ancient yet
has never grown up. It is a maddening moment in time that fairies live,
between dark and light.
Shy
It is obvious that fairies do not like to be seen by humans; for
although they live in every rock and tree, they almost never appear to
humans. Instead, it is within their nature to hide from mortals. Why
should this be? Why is it that fairies always appear to be nervous
around humans? It is, of course, possible that the reason is the danger
humans present to fairies. After all, there are a number of stories in
which people take fairies hostage to force them to marry them, provide
gold, or to grant other forms of wishes.
Yet the fairies’ fear of humans stems from more than simply
our
ability to harm them. Fairies which fly at a distance should know they
are safe from humans yet they too are rarely seen.
What exactly is it about human sight that scares them? Is it perhaps
the natural power which humans have, the ability to essentially give
the evil eye? Or is it perhaps a form of embarrassment? There is a tale
in which the dwarfs who helped humans all ran off never to be seen
again because one person saw that they had the feet of geese.
In ancient mythology, people believed that humans came from fairies;
that we essentially chose to be grounded, to mature, to grow, and to
change. Fairies, however, never grew and so are like shy children, like
spirits that can never pass on. Fairies are forever caught in a realm
between being humans and gods, between eternity and momentary bliss,
between life and death. Perhaps it is the solidness, the stability of
humans that disturbs fairies. Perhaps fairies feel the discomfort of
our solid gaze just as a child would. The times then when fairies seek
out humans are those times when humans join them in the realm of
in-between; at puberty, parts of childhood, birth, and death. |
