What happened to the fairies?

In this episode of Angela’s Symposium, we uncover the history of fairy beings—from terrifying, liminal spirits associated with death, illness, and esoteric knowledge to the benign, whimsical figures of children’s books and garden ornaments. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship and folkloric sources, I trace how fairies were feared as soul-stealing entities, morally ambiguous tricksters, and powerful beings of the Otherworld in Celtic and Germanic traditions. These entities weren’t cute—they were cautionary, chthonic, and occasionally divine.

But during the Victorian era, spiritualism, Theosophy, and literary romanticism reshaped fairy imagery into something innocent and controllable. This domestication served ideological purposes: reinforcing ideals of childhood, whiteness, femininity, and empire.

With insights from Robert Kirk, W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Katharine Briggs, and contemporary scholars such as Sabina Magliocco, Morgan Daimler, and Richard Sugg, this video explores how fairies reflect changing cultural values—and why reclaiming their wilder past matters.

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RECOMMENDED READINGS 📖

REFERENCES 📚

Briggs, K. M. (1976). An encyclopedia of fairies: Hobgoblins, brownies, bogies, and other supernatural creatures. Pantheon Books.

Briggs, K. M. (2002). The fairies in tradition and literature. Routledge.

Daimler, M. (2014). The witch, the bean feasa, and the fairy doctor in Irish culture. Air n-Aithesc, 1(2), August 2014.

Daimler, M. (2015). The good neighbors: Fairies in an Irish animistic worldview. Air n-Aithesc.

Daimler, M. (2024). Two views of the leannán sí. Air n-Aithesc.

Daimler, M. (2024a). Fairy: The Otherworld by many names. Collective Ink.

Daimler, M. (2024b). Two views of the leannán sí. Air n-Aithesc.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (1911). The fairy-faith in Celtic countries. H. Frowde.

Gaffin, D. (2012). Running with the fairies: Towards a transpersonal anthropology of religion. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Hutton, R. (2024). Professor Ronald Hutton shares his fairy encounter with a leanan sídhe [Video]. YouTube. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast.

Kirk, R., & Lang, A. (2020). The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies: A study in folk-lore and psychical research. Library of Alexandria.

Lenihan, E., & Green, C. E. (2004). Meeting the other crowd. Penguin Publishing Group.

Magliocco, S. (2019). The taming of the fae: Literary and folkloric fairies in Magic and witchery in the modern West: Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of 'The triumph of the moon'. Springer International Publishing.

Pócs, É. (2005). Communicating with the spirits: Christian demonology and popular mythology (E. Pócs & G. Klaniczay, Eds.). Central European University Press.

Sugg, R. (2018). Fairies: A dangerous history. Reaktion Books.

Thompson, T. (2005). Hosting the dead: Thanotopic aspects of the Irish sídhe. In É. Pócs & G. Klaniczay (Eds.), Communicating with the spirits: Christian demonology and popular mythology. Central European University Press.

Young, S. (2024). Classifying supernatural beings. Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, 23.

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