Irish fairy tales can be surprisingly dark and macabre. These stories hint at a complex and parallel world populated by beings who are more often hostile than sympathetic to human aims. But what are the creatures euphemistically denominated as the "Good People"?

After sifting through layers of lore, Dane proposes that Irish fairy myths constitute a unified account of various empirical and social phenomena. Recalling philosopher Thomas Kuhn's notion of a scientific paradigm, Dane argues that the Good People need not exist to be real; as a central postulate in a unified worldview, the reality of Good People is a function of the explanatory power that belief in them confers.