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FAIRY (Fr. fee, faerie; Prov. facia; ...

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Originally appearing in Volume V10, Page 134 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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FAIRY (Fr.
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fee, faerie; Prov. facia; Sp. hada; Ital. fata; med.
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Lat. fatare, to enchant, from Lat. fatum,
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fate, destiny)
  , the
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common
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term for a supposed
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race of supernatural beings who magically intermeddle in human affairs . Of all the minor creatures of
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mythology the fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable in literature . Like all organic growths, whether of nature or of the fancy, they are not the immediate product of one country or of one time; they have a
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pedigree, and the question of their ancestry and affiliation is one of wide bearing . But mixture and connexion of races have in this as in many other cases so changed the
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original folk-product that it is difficult to disengage and
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separate the different strains that have gone to the making or moulding of the result as we have it . It is not in literature, however ancient, that we must look for the early forms of the fairy belief . Many of Homer's heroes have fairy lemans, called
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nymphs, fairies taken up into a higher region of
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poetry and religion; and the fairy leman is notable in the story of
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Athamas and his cloud bride Nephele, but this character is as familiar to the unpoetical Eskimo, and to the Red Indians, with their
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bird-bride and beaver-bride (see A . Lang's Custom and Myth, " The Story of Cupid and Psyche ") . The Gandharvas of
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Sanskrit poetry are also fairies . One of the most interesting facts about fairies is the wide distribution and long persistence of the belief in them . They are the chief factor in surviving Irish superstition . Here they dwell in the raths," old earth-forts, or earthen bases of later palisaded dwellings of the Norman period, and in the subterranean houses, common also in Scotland . They are an organized
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people, often called " the army," and their
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life corresponds to human life in all particulars .

They carry off

children, leaving
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changeling substitutes, transport men and
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women into fairyland, and are generally the causes of all mysterious phenomena . Whirls of dust are caused by the fairy marching army, as by the being called Kutchi in the Dieri tribe of
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Australia . In 1907, in
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northern Ireland, a farmer's house was troubled with flying stones (see POLTERGEIST) . The neighbours said that the fairies caused the phenomenon, as the man had swept his chimney with a bough of holly, and the holly is " a gentle tree," dear to the fairies . The fairy changeling belief also exists in some districts of Argyll, and a fairy boy dwelt long in a small
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farm-house in
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Glencoe, now unoccupied . In Ireland and the west Highlands neolithic arrow-heads and flint chips are still fairy weapons . They are dipped in
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water, which is given to ailing cattle and human beings as a
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sovereign remedy for diseases . The writer knows of " a little lassie in green " who is a fairy and, according to the percipients, haunts the banks of the Mukomar
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pool on tha Lochy . In Glencoe is a fairy hill where the fairy
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music, vocal and instrumental, is heard in still weather . In the Highlands, however, there is much more
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interest in second sight than in fairies, while in Ireland the
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reverse is the case . The best
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book on
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Celtic fairy lore is still that of the minister of
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Aberfoyle, the Rev . Mr Kirk (ob .

1692) .

End of Article: FAIRY (Fr. fee, faerie; Prov. facia; Sp. hada; Ital. fata; med. Lat. fatare, to enchant, from Lat. fatum, fate, destiny)
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