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~Some Faerie Info~
Faerie Rings:
Dare you haunt our hallow'd green?
None but fairies here are seen.
Down and sleep
Wake and weep,
Pinch him black and pinch him blue,
That seeks to steal a lover true!
When you come to hear us sing,
Or to tread our fairy ring,
Pinch him black and pinch him blue,
O thus our nails shall handle you.
Faeries love music and dancing, and often dance on heaths and greens on moonlit nights. Faerie rings - circles of darker green grass, sometimes with toadstools or mushrooms - mark their dancing ground. It is told that sometimes the noise of laughter and feasting, glimpses of light or sounds of music can be heard by passers-by.
People who have stumbled upon faeries dancing have often lived to regret it. The faerie music is so enchanting and alluring...
~Common Types of Faeries~
Bean-Sidhe (Banshee)
The Beansidhe, is one of the most dreaded and best known of the Irish faeries. She can be heard wailing and crying by a family the night before the death of a family member. Although her keening fortells of death, it never causes the death itself. Usually, these faeries are attatched to a particular family, following them wherever they travel, and more often than not, they attatch themselves to noble families.
She is said to have long, flowing hair, a light complexion, and red eyes - due to continuous weeping).
The keening music of Irish wakes, called caoine, is said to have been derived from the wails of the Beansidhe.
Brownies:
Brownies usually belong to a house, where they help with domestic chores in return for a bowl of milk or food.
Leanan Sidhe:
The Leanan Sidhe (lan-awn shee) is a Celtic muse possessing a dark, unearthly beauty. She is also known as the Faery Mistress or Faery Sweetheart, and her name means 'the faery of inspiration'. Legend has it, that she lives under the Irish Sea, of the east coast of Ireland, and roams the Isle of Man at night, searching for a new lover.
Her lovers are mostly artists, and in them she inspires genius. The artist is inspired then to great writings, as the Leanan Sidhe has the power to make the creativity of an entire lifetime burn through the artist in a short time. She has been likened to a vampire, in that she feeds off this brilliant lifeforce to keep herself beautiful & to weave her seductive spell upon yet another mortal. In this respect, her gift of inspiration is a short lived one, and her lovers die young. This is because the artist knows great love & ecstacy from his faery lover, and when she leaves, a great heartbreak or sorrow is the result. While she is radiantly beautiful to the man she enchants, she is invisible to all other mortals. Once the poet has known the caress of the Leanan Sidhe, all mortal women, however comely, seem lifeless & dull to him.
One of the most famous poets to fall under the Leanan Sidhe's spell, is W.B. Yeats...
"The Leanan Sidhe (Ir. Leanhaun sidhe, ie. fairy mistress). This spirit seeks the love of men. If they refuse, she is their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding one to take their place. Her lovers waste away, for she lives on their life. Most of the Gaelic poets, soen to quite recent times, have had a Leanhaun Shee, for she gives inspiration to her slaves and is indeed the Gaelic muse - this malignant fairy. Her lovers, the Gaelic poets, died young. She grew restless and carried them away to ouher worlds, for death does not destroy her power."
Yeats, W.B.(ed), Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, New York; Touchstone, 1998, page 383
Yeats believed in faeries, and in his poems & plays, we see the faeries in all their representations.
Elves:
Leprechauns:
Will-O'-The-Wisp:
If you have any Q's or would like to submit something to the site, please email me!
xtremity_1@hotmail.com
For more links to faery sites, see the Favorites page!
~Favorite Links~
Many thanx to the following references I have used in the collection of information on the Fae:
Stormlight's Realm
The Realm of the Fae
Journey Into the Realm of the Fae
Tir na n-Og
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