The Sidhe, the Celtic fairies, have been an integral part of the lives of the Celtic people up until this century. If there is little to believe of their existence today, it is due to society’s neglect of nature and the fact that they have been concealed by the growing urbanization. Today we use the term fairy inaccurately to include most fantastical beings. To the Celtic countries, the Sidhe are a separate race of inhuman creatures that live in contact with mankind. The images of small creatures with wings is a romanticized idea of the fairies that are, to the Gaelic people, the essential forces of the natural world. Fairies epitomize the universal belief in a realm of the fantastic, a place where youth and beauty abound. This place, according to the Celtic tradition, is often referred to as ‘The Middle Kingdom’ and is of the earthly sphere, but implies a higher realm. The poem that introduces this section captures the spirit of this fairy world. Perhaps it is invisible, in the way the land of the fairies has become, or perhaps it is there for anyone who wishes to find it, or maybe it is even part of everyday life, as it was believed in the past. It was believed in the Celtic countries that the ‘Good People’, as fairies are known in Ireland and Scotland, that the reality of fairies was comparable to our own reality, until the artificial nature of modernization has obscured our vision and respect for the natural world. The harmony that can exist between man and nature has been upset, and therefore only be living in a completely natural setting can people know again, like their ancestors did, the spirit of the fairy folk.
The origins of fairies, according to the true believers of the Celtic tradition, are much different from those that are explained in the section comparing Celtic fairies to those of French tales. For the powers that fairies have, of changing their shape and moving magically through the air, they are undoubtedly superhuman. There are differing opinions as to how to categorize them. Many people believe that the people and the Gods that inhabited Ireland before the Gaels arrived are the true ancestors of the Sidhe. When the Gaels did make their first appearance in Ireland, they were faced with an Ireland already occupied and controlled by the Tuatha De Danaan, or the people of the goddess Dana. The Gaels, or the sons of Mil, fought them for the land and defeated them, only to drive these people underground to the places where the Sidhe now inhabit, such as the Sidhe mounds or the hills where they lead a parallel existence. This implies a history that is quite close to something that could be of the human race, yet the Tuatha de Danaan have been described as being something in between the godly and the mortal. The Sidhe have also been described as the descendants of the ancient agricultural gods of the Earth who controlled crops and milk yield, and received offerings from the people who worshipped them. Legend says that the Tuatha De Danaan took revenge upon the Gaels by destroying their wheat and the sweetness of their milk, so a treaty was made and ever since the people of Ireland leave milk and butter to the Good People to honor this agreement.
The contact that fairies have with the human race manifests itself in different ways. It is believed that each human carries with her a birthlink from the ‘Otherworld’ that is our Sidhe half. This link, it is thought, can be channeled through meditation and trance, but they need to be kept under control to so as to avoid luring unsuspecting mortals into a world that is deceivingly perfect. Children are believed to have a more open channel of communication with this other world, and so their risk is greater. This is where the universal fear of changelings comes into play. The idea of a changeling does imply a very real continuity in the link between the fairy realm and our own world, but it is also a very real fear in the Celtic tradition.
Most information that exists about the Sidhe comes from testimony and oral tradition. Sightings of these beings have been made in Ireland, Brittany, Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, all of the Celtic Countries. Apparently the similarities in the descriptions support the existence of the Sidhe. Different types of Sidhe inhabit different areas of the Celtic zone, distributed between warriors and royalty, gentle and fierce. According to legend, there are two different orders of the Sidhe, the Shining Ones and the Opalescent Ones. Suggested by their names, they are both beautiful and elegant creatures, but it is the Opalescent Ones who are particularly incredible, though rarely seen, and it is the Shining ones who have the most contact with human beings. These fairies are likened to the image of human beings, but have flowing, airy bodies. They are often called the gentry because of their tall and noble stature. The Sidhe divide themselves between different tribes that are ruled by fairy kings and queens.
The leprechaun finds its way into fairy lore as a small creature who knows where the pot of gold is hidden at the end of a rainbow. It is possibly a remnant of the belief of a small race of dwarves that lived with the Tuatha de Danaan before the coming of the Gaels. There is also a distinction made between the Sidhe who walk the earth after sunset, and what is called the ‘Sluagh Sidhe’, the beings who are fairy hosts and travel through the air at night, taking along mortals on their journeys. The Sidhe are also further divided between wood spirits, water spirits, air spirits and all other elements.
The Banshee is at the heart of the Celtic tradition and spirituality. She sits on a dead branch, like the two vultures that follow Malificent in Disney’s Snow White, wearing white, combing her hair and wailing. Her name comes for the Irish for fairy woman, and she appears sometimes as a beautiful woman and sometimes as a hag, but she always brings death. Her ability to change form is from that of the Cailleach that is essentially the Spirit of Ireland.
Stories of fairies have been passed down for many generations, and are so important that they even take on a religions significance. There are a few different means of viewing fairies, but no matter how they are seen, the fact remains that the Celtic belief in fairies is truly powerful.
Much like the aristocratic women of France turned to their salons and literary circles to vent frustration over their exclusion from mainstream male society, so did the peasants of Ireland use fairy tales for a similar purpose. Just as in the case of French, the Irish fairy tales originated with the oral folklore of the peasantry. If you are not a believer of fairies, it is easy to analyze the Celtic folklore in such a way that the concept of the fairy was created to explain unknown occurrences in much the same way that the literary fairies were metaphors for greater concepts troubling France at the time. If you do believe in fairies, then the rich culture of the fairy realm is a a very vivid and complex world for your imagination.
Whereas the fairies created for the French tales of Perrault and d’Aulnoy were based upon the folklore tradition, they lose much meaning in the translation from the reality of belief, to the world of fiction. Perrault saw the importance of teaching lessons to children, and so were many of the Celtic fairy tales aimed at explaining meaning, but the difference was in the presentation. Folklore, despite the fact that its truth is based on the teller’s imagination, still carries with it an air of mystery and intrigue beyond that which a published fairy tale could ever achieve. In addition, the folklore was the primary source from which the literature took its ideas. Does this make it more true? Perhaps it does...
The most common and probably the oldest explanation for fairies relates them to nature and to the elements. If fairies were the spirits of the forests, the mountains and the rivers, perhaps they caused the wind and the tides and volcanoes. Just as Taoism believes in the power of the natural world, and just as the Greeks and the Romans worshipped gods for the inexplicable events of the natural world such as Apollo the sun god and Poseidon with his Triton who guards the sea, the Irish peasants created fairies for what resembles the same purpose. Another explanation speaks of fairies as the spirits of the dead, as they are said to live under the Celtic burial mounds. If the Irish fairies do, in fact, use the same social order as that of the anciet Irish aristocracy, do they serve as a symbol for the class system and are they meant to reflect the time when the oral tradition created the idea of fairies? Women of the Celtic tradition feared that their children would be abducted and exchanged with weak and sickly fairy counterparts or changlings. If uncurable illness struck children and made them blind or retarded, and the parents refused to believe that these impaired children were their own, it seems all too easy for them to have believed that their child was replaced by an evil, enchanted substitute.
Christianity posed another challenge to the belief of the folk traditions that fairies had become. Some believe that fairies were created by priests to give an explanation for the existence of pagans and non-believers. As Christianity took the monopoly on the beliefs systems of the peasants, fairies became the victims of the blame for the sin of not being Christian. Christianity used fairies as threats concerning the consequences of not adopting its faith; fairies were considered to be the spirits of children who were not baptized and therefore could not be admitted to heaven but were condemned to remain in the middle world. Because the belief of fairies in peasant tradition preceded Christianity, the new religion had to watch its step when dealing with this touchy subject; the soul of the Irish peasantry was so connected to the fairies that Christianity had to weave them into the story of the Old testament. For this reason, fairies were considered to be fallen angels, lost souls who should be pitied because they can never enter Heaven. Another theory concerning the origin of the fairy states that Eve hid some of her children from God and so they were cursed to be obscured from sight. It is most likely that these myths were created to champion the plight of Christianity, and this fact negates the idea of fairies as a race of otherworldly beings.
If your sanity makes it more comfortable to believe these rational explanations for why fairies are such a large part of the history of the Celtic world, by all means that’s why I’ve supplied them on this web page. Perhaps you can see how fairies as an explanation for the natural world left no room for an all powerful being that Christianity wished to supply. Christianity was then obviously a threat to the future of fairy culture. I encourage you to take a step away from the rational, from our Judeo-Christian based society, from the idea of the literary fairy as simply a metaphor, if even for a second, to consider the tales upon which the Celtic tradition is based and that have carried over into the modern world.
The good fairy exists to protect, to give of herself and to help those in need. Fairies are eager to test mortals; where as they are assumed to have knowledge above and beyond that of a simple human, they still find it necessary to be convinced of a person’s worthiness. In “The Princess Camion” by Mlle. de Lubert the fairy Lumineuse appears to Camion with another fairy as an old shepherdess seeking shelter. The compassion that the king and queen and princess show the fairies in disguise is enough to prove to them that the family is worth their attention. The fairies were aware of the troubles that the royal family had had with their kingdom and took pity upon them. This scenario can be likened to many biblical stories including when the angels visited Sarah and Abraham, promising Sarah that she would bear children. With this analogy, the fairies take on an even more important role as semi-divine protectors and bearers of good things. Belle-Belle and her sisters were tested when the fairy, disguised as a shepherdess, petitioned help for her sheep. Because Belle-Belle was the one who had compassion and helped a woman in need, she proved her worth to the fairy who was then happy to aid her on her journey. Fairies have their own agenda; they are truly the heros of the innocent, as their protagonists are the most helpless, the most pure and the most true of the characters in the story. Cinderella was oppressed by her evil sisters, and so her fairy godmother championed her cause. Donkey Skin was pursued lustfully by her father and it was her godmother who helped her through. In general the role of fairies in the lives of mortals are to protect the innocent, and they begin with newborns.
The good fairy who feels that she has been wronged becomes the antagonist of many of the traditional French fairy tales. It is not so much that there exist inherently evil fairies, but rather fairies who feel that they have not been shown the respect they deserve, or become jealous of another’s fate. The evilness of these fairies is magnified by their extreme power and by the possibility of emotions causing them to abuse this power. In “The Princess Camion” the fairy Marmotte explains that all she wanted was to care for the princess and marry her to her own nephew. Because her other fairy sisters prevented this fate, Marmotte desired revenge but knew that she could not contend with the equally strong powers of another fairy. The situation becomes a conflict between fairies that could not be resolved but was taken out upon a mere mortal with no way to fight the fairy powers. This is an example of where the fairy heirarchy is found. The fairies are commonly known to have fantastical and enchanted powers, and the idea of these powers reaching evil hands is very frightening, but the heirarchy is built to cheque the power of any fairy who might abuse her power. This contributes the harmony of the fairy world. Marmotte admits that her sister, the fairy Lumineuse, is her superior. Because of this, perhaps Marmotte’s motives could be reanalyzed to include this factor; could she have been acting out of resentfulness for her own inferiority as a means of exhibiting her own power? In any case, Marmotte was acting out of jealousy. This is not to say, however, that what she has done is justifiable or pardonable, for the author Mme. de Lubert uses adjectives such as wicked and odious to describe the fairy Marmotte, and her desire to see Camion pounded and skinned is a malicious act. It was her actual motives that needed to be examined to explain that she acted out of jealousy, a very understandable emotion, even though what she did was unacceptable. In the story of The Skimmer it is the fairy Cucumber takes vengance upon Tanzai and Neadarne, but proves her evilness comes out of jealousy when Tanzai's punishment is to sleep with her. The act of seduction gives away her existence as a fairy, sadly cursed with horrible disfigurement and ugliness, who wants to be loved. In the story of “The Ram” it was a lovesick fairy whose affections weren’t returned that gained the title of evil fairy. The fairy Ragotte confesses her love to the prince, and because it is not returned, she kills a beautiful slave girl and condemns the happy prince to five years in the body of a sheep. All of the talking sheep of the plain were other “unfortunate mortals who had in various ways offended the vindictive fairy” and the shadows were also “Ragotte’s rivals and enemies whom she had deprived of life for a century or so” In the story of “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” the old fairy was offended that she was not invited to the banquet held in the fairies’ honor, and so she professed the death of the newly born child. By observing that the old fairy’s “head shook more with malice than with age” it is almost implied that she possessed an evil character, yet the author went to the trouble of explaining why the fairy was upset in the first place and so it is more accurate to believe that she simply felt overlooked and disrespected.
Thank You For Visiting! I hope you have enjoyed, and I hope you have learned!
