7 Signs of a Good Fairy Book

 Several years ago I wrote about 7 Signs of  a Bad Fairy Source so I thought today I'd take a look at the opposite and talk about things to look for in good books on the subject. With, of course, the understanding that 'bad' and 'good' are subjective and that this is my opinion on what can constitute a good source of information.

Young's 'The Boggart' is an excellent source for boggart beliefs

1. Clear References - if the book is non-fiction and is presenting information gathered from outside the author's personal experiences then sources should be clearly cited and referenced so that you can track them down for yourself. Seeing citations is usually an indication of a more trustworthy book - although I do also encourage people to go to those sources directly for themselves as well. 
2. Clear Focus - a good fairy source should be upfront and open about its intentions and focus. If its relaying wider folklore the reader should know that and if its sharing personal experiences the reader should know that too. 
3. Differentiates non-fiction and fiction - Despite a rather widespread misunderstanding of the two topics folklore isn't fiction and vice versa. It is possible for things to begin in fiction and migrate into belief, but still the two subjects should be understood as different. Folklore represents the beliefs and practices of people or groups, whereas fiction is entertainment. While the two can get a bit muddy and overlap there is nonetheless a distinction that must be noted, especially where modern urban fantasy is concerned. If a book is discussing fiction alongside folk belief then the two should be clearly defined. 
4. Personal Experiences Are Presented As Such - personal experiences are a vital part of modern fairy belief and shouldn't be discounted. That said a good fairy source will be very clear when something is personal experience, and offer wider grounding for that experience. 
5. Context Is Provided - Fairy belief is something that almost always requires context, so a good source will offer that. This may include discussing when and where a story occured, or it may be about explaining any issues with the source that shared the story. For example if Yeats is used as a source it would be ideal to contextualize his material by explaining his relationship to Irish culture (he was Anglo-Irish and grew up for period is England), language (he didn't speak Irish), wider career (he was primarily a poet and author of fiction), and occult interests (he was influenced by Theosophy and the Golden Dawn). All of these factors effect the fairy stories he shared and hos much they can or should be trusted.  
6. Solid Bibliography -  when I get a new book the first thing I do is look at the bibliography to get an idea of both the sources being drawn on and the wider quality of the text. A book without a bibliography is rarely a good sign, unless it purely personal experiences being shared, but a book with a strong bibliography which touches on a range of sources related to the subject is usually a good sign.  
7. Terms - any terms used, especially those coming from outside the source's language should be explained and used correctly. A good way to vet a source in English for example is to look for any non-English terms used, how the source if defining them, and then cross check that against an established trustworthy source or dictionary. Solid sources will be in line with wider understandings of a word, while less trustworthy sources will redefine things without concern for the source language. For example if you find bean sidhe (banshee) in a text and its defined as anything except fairy woman or Otherworldly woman, than that source shouldn't be trusted, but if you have a source that does line up with those definitions that's a good sign. 

These are only guidelines, but they are what I personally use when looking at books on fairies and related subjects and I have found them very helpful. Obviously each bullet point doesn't apply equally to every book, as something written as a record of a person's own experiences wouldn't necessarily need citations or a bibliography and something looking at older folk belief wouldn't necessarily get into the nitty gritty of personal experiences, but in general I believe this is a solid list. I hope that this short list may also help other people to distinguish what might be a good book from a bad one. 

Mystic South 2024

 

cool door in the hotel

This past weekend I attended the Mystic South conference for the second time (the first time was in 2017). Mystic South is a large esoteric/pagan/witchcraft/occult conference that takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, USA each summer and features a wide range of workshops, some rituals, and a dance - the Phoenix Ball - as well as a market area. It offers a great chance for people to socialize, learn, and have fun and while many of the attendees were local there were also many like myself that had come from a greater distance.
I'm just going to share some recaps of the event with some pictures. This is hardly a comprehensive description and for a more rounded picture I'd suggest checking out John Beckett's '11 Things About Mystic South 2024' and Thumper Forge's 'Things You Hear At Mystic South, 2024 Edition' (you can try to guess which 'thing' I said). 

Travel 
 So, in the case of myself and my inestimable travel buddy Mel getting to Mystic South was an adventure in itself, which involved an hour drive to the airport, multi-hour flight, and then a very intense shuttle ride through Atlanta's rush hour traffic. It was all just part of the adventure but it was, admittedly, a stressful way to start. Going home, as it would turn out, was even more eventful but we did make it back safely. Eventually. 

Keeping Busy  
   So, I was a headliner at the event and gave two presentations as well as sitting on a panel discussion with Wendy Mata Houseman and Sen Elias. While I was there myself and Mel were guests on the That Witch Life podcast with Courtney Weber and Kanani. I also was part of a meet'n'greet for Moon Books.
    Presentations - My first presentation was on European Fairies in the US, a topic inspired by my forthcoming book Celtic Fairies in North America, but with a slightly more focused approach. Its a great subject to dig into because there's a lot of material there and as usual I ended up running out of time before I could get to all of it. Despite that there were some good questions in the Q&A and people seemed happy with it overall. My second presentation focused on witches and fairies, looking at evidence of early modern witches in Ireland and Scotland and the intersection of fairy beliefs, especially the idea of fairies teaching witches, then segued into modern material, slightly, then a discussion of the fairy as familiar spirit. As with my first presentation time went by quickly and honestly even with a couple hours there wouldn't be enough time to get into all the layers of this topic, but we definitely covered the highlights. There were a lot of great questions afterwards and we ended up running slightly past our allotted time slot. Overall I felt like everything here went pretty well though.
  Panel - I was excited to get to be on a panel with Wendy Mata Houseman and Sen Elias, who are both amazing people and extremely knowledgeable on folk magic. The panel questions focused on various aspects of folk magic practices and I loved seeing how similar our approaches were despite our varied backgrounds; it makes me believe that folk magic has a cross-cultural aspect underlying the unique qualities of every version. Although I was on the panel I think I got a great deal out of listening to my co-panelists and I kind of wish I could have been in the audience instead - it was a great discussion. 
  Podcast - this was my third time guesting on That Witch Life, but the first time live and the first time I was sitting down and chatting with Courtney and Kanani in person (the third host, Hilary, wasn't at Mystic South). It was a good time, and we managed to talk about a few on topic things in between discussions of random fae-ness and what a fairy would wear during a late night hotel fire alarm (no really). I think it will be an interesting episode when it comes out. 
   Meet'n'greet - Moon Books arranged to have an author meet'n'greet at Mystic South with a half dozen people who write for Moon. This was the first time I've ever done something like that and my first time meeting other people who write for my publisher, and I don't think I was too awkward about it. I met some really nice people, signed some books, and had some great discussions. 

my badge before I added some extra ribbons

Attending Things...Or Not 
    Mystic South, like some other large events uses an app called Sched to allow attendees to see the full schedule, choose what they want to go to, and have a clear idea of what they're doing when. I had signed up for a lot of fascinating looking presentations and activities and had been looking forward to attending them, but unfortunately I only made it to 2: Frater Aaron's 'The Ecstatic Craft Hidden Within Grimm's Fairy Tales' and Michael Smith's 'Through the Hidden Door'. Ecstatic Craft was a PAPERS presentation, which is intended to have a more academic tone. I believe the paper will be publicly available later. It was an interesting survey of different initiatory themes found throughout Grimm's fairy tales. 'Through the Hidden Door' was a discussion of modern fairy belief and the teacher's personal gnosis, and included a guided meditation. It was quite insightful to get to hear about another person's approach to a topic that is so pivotal to both my academic study and personal life. 

Rubber ducks. Everywhere

Duck Raiding
  A small sidenote to the wider weekend - the people behind the conference were hiding rubber ducks and smaller resin (?) ducks all around and we were encouraged to take them. I may have already been taking them before that. Anyway, once we found out its kind of a game that goes on during the conference all bets were off, because Mel and I are both extremely competitive people. Ultimately I ended up with the higher rubber duck count but Mel beat me on the resin ducks, so I guess we both won. 

Conversations
   I said I had planned to go to many things while I was at Mystic South and didn't make it to hardly any. This is because the main theme for me at this conference was conversations. I lost count of how many great discussions I had, both with friends and with new people. I even helped a wayward kitten find a new home, which is honestly one of the highlights of the whole week for me. 
   A lot of these types of conferences advertise themselves as community building and this one definitely was. I was able to meet friends in person I've only known on social media and to make some new friends along the way too. Meals stretched to hours as we sat and talked, and I came away with some intriguing new ideas to explore as well as a deeper sense of connection. To be completely honest it was exhausting but not in a bad way, rather it was exhausting in a way that felt like an accomplishment. I wish I had gotten to more presentations, but I also feel like I still learned a lot and more importantly like I gained a lot. I am not generally a very social person - I am the classic introvert trope - but I wouldn't trade any of those myriad discussions for extra downtime or my usual hiding in my quiet hotel room. It pushed my limits, I pushed my limits, but if anything I wish I'd had more time to hang out with people and chat. 

my hotel room....which I didn't see very much of

The Market Area
   Every pagan conference I've gone to has always had a market area and Mystic South is no exception. What makes it different is that it effectively had a full on books store in a room past the rest of the market area, which was also hosting author book signings. Luckily for me my budget wasn't prepared for book shopping because I could never have fit everything in my luggage to get home. As it was though I was able to see a range of titles that will go on the to-buy-later list, and to have a nice chat with a couple people during book signings, most notably Joshua Cutchin, whose work on the overlap between fairylore, UFO/aliens, and bigfoot has long fascinated me. 
   The rest of the market area held a diverse array of options, from jewelry to knitted objects, from D&D dice to artwork. I loved seeing so many handmade goods and so many artists - honestly in the AI era its inspiring to know that real artists are still around and being appreciated. Before successfully escaping I did find gifts for my kids and a couple things for myself too.

the display of my books in the Sojourner area of the marketplace

Pagan Prom
    One thing that Mel and I both remembered from Mystic South in 2017 was the dance party they'd had. It was super fun and we both were excited to go again to what we have jokingly nicknamed pagan prom. Although the DJs playlist was a little out of my comfort zone it was still a great time and I will always remember doing the Time Warp with a couple dozen other witches and pagans who were all just embracing the moment. 

all dressed up for pagan prom, er, Phoenix Ball

Overall Mystic South was a great experience. There were, as to be expected, some bumps in the road - like the Starbucks being inexplicably closed after we'd hiked out there in search of morning coffee - but it was a really good time. 

Fairy Facts: Bean Sidhe

 For this installment of fairy facts I wanted to discuss a popular but often misunderstood being, the Bean sidhe. I will note at the start that there is an ongoing debate about whether or not the Bean sidhe is a fairy or a separate type of being, but I am including her here because of the long standing translation of bean sidhe as fairy woman and her wider association with the Otherworld. I recommend Patricia Lysaght's book 'Banshee: The Irish death messenger' if you really want to deep dive into who and what the mná sidhe (banshees) are. 

Name: Bean Sidhe (Irish), Ban-sìth (Scottish). Anglicized as Banshee, the term literally means 'Otherworldly woman'. In Ireland the bean sidhe may also be known regionally as the Bean Chaointe or Badb.

Description: Descriptions of these beings vary across stories. By some accounts they appear as old women with grey hair, while others describe younger women, sometimes blonde, whose eyes are red from weeping. In a few accounts of a Bean sidhe who is known by name as one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, like Clíodhna, they may be described as enchantingly beautiful. They may wear white, grey, or green, sometimes with red shoes. 
In folklore they can take the shape of owls or of hooded crows.

Found: Ireland, Scotland, and related communities. Also becoming more common across popular culture. 

Folklore: Although fairly localized to Ireland and parts of Scotland there is a wide array of Bean Sidhe folklore. This can roughly be broken up into three types: Death omens, Supernatural dangers, Fairy women. Each type has specific folklore surrounding it, although they are both part of one cohesive concept. 

Death Omens. The Bean sidhe as death omen is perhaps her most well known role. It is said that all of the older Irish families have a bean sidhe who follows their family line, usually connected through ancestry, and who appears to wail before a death in that family. There are a range of stories of people in families hearing the bean sidhe before a death as well as those who are unrelated hearing a bean sidhe only to later find out that a local person died. The wailing or cry of the bean sidhe is extremely eerie, not comparable to any normal sounds, and is said to be a kind of keen or caoine, a mourning cry or song.

Supernatural Dangers. The cry or wail of the bean sidhe doesn't cause death or harm to those who hear it, but the bean sidhe herself can be dangerous in other ways. There are various stories of a person who finds a comb on the ground, sometimes of the roadway, takes it home, only to have an irate bean sidhe show up after dark demanding the return of her property. She circles the house, clawing and yelling to be given back her comb - eventually the person relents and passes the comb through a window, but clasped in iron fire tongs. After pulling the tongs back in they are found to be horribly twisted, hinting at the harm that the bean sidhe would have done to the hand that passed them out. There are stories on Duchas.ie as well of people who were chased by the bean sidhe, escaped, only to fall ill and die within a short period of time. 

Fairy Women. The stories around the bean sidhe also include tales that don't fit easily into either previous concept and are usually simply descriptions of a person seeing a bean sidhe who is neither crying nor threatening them. For example, Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries recounts a story of a man who saw a bean sidhe by Lough Gur sitting on a rock and combing her hair. These types of tales often figure into the other two categories - in the above the bean sidhe is described combing her hair and the comb is a key part of many stories of the bean sidhe as a danger. 

The folklore around the bean sidhe is complex. Some are said to be women of the Tuatha Dé Danann, including Áine, Clíodhna, and Aoibheall, who watch over family lines they are bound to. Some are less renowned women of the Otherworld who do the same thing for a similar reason. There are also an array of stories of human women who became mná sidhe: women who died in childbirth, women who committed a horrific offense or who died by violence themselves, or women who were professional keeners in life but failed to do their jobs well. In some the first cases the woman was only bound to act as a bean sidhe until the time that her natural life span would have ended; in the latter it is a less fixed period where she must 'earn' her place in the afterlife. 

Where It Gets Muddy: A lot of the wider understandings of the bean sidhe have been shaped by popculture in the last 50 years or so, and much of that is wrong or badly skewed. White Wolf's Changeling games for example make the bean sidhe incorporeal beings who attack to drain the life force from their victims. The Banshee from the TV show Charmed are witches who become monsters through great sorrow and kill with their wail. Mercedes Lackey's SERRAted Edge series made bean sidhe into 'bane sidhe', explained as 'death of elves', a wraithlike creature who fed on life forces and killed with its cry. In most of these confusions the different concepts of the folkloric bean sidhe are taken and blended then added to for plot purposes creating something close to but very different from the folklore.

What They Aren't: Despite growing claims to the contrary there are no male bean sidhe, nor could there be simply by the nature of the term. A male would be a fear sidhe, an Otherworldly man. If it identifies as male its not a bean sidhe. 
Bean sidhe also don't attack or cause harm with their voice, Marvel comic characters and popculture to the contrary. 
Its probably also worth noting that while the bean sidhe can be an omen of death they are not general death omens and are always associated with specific families they follow. Unlike, say, Mothman, they do not appear before disasters or warn of major coming events; they are strictly indicators of an impending death within a family they follow. 

Fairy Facts: Redcaps

 For this instalment of fairy facts we're looking at one of the more infamous Otherworldly beings, the Redcap or Red Cap. 

Name: Redcaps or Red Caps

Description: a short, older man with long thin arms ending in eagle-like talons, wearing faded clothes, iron tipped boots, and the requisite red cap. The cap may be the color of dried blood or coated in fresh, dripping blood. 

Found: Redcaps are found in the folklore of the border areas between Scotland and England.

Folklore: The Redcap is a malicious spirit which haunts ruins, particularly of castles. Katherine Briggs and William Henderson both considered them a type of goblin while the poet William Scott Irving depicted a Redcap as a ghost or haunting spirit. In either case the Redcap lurks in ruins and attacks travellers at night by throwing large stones at them with the intent of killing them to gain fresh blood to die its cap with. Sir Walter Scott claimed that across southern Scotland every castle ruin had a Redcap in residence. Henderson suggests that in East Lancashire there may have been folk belief connecting a human witch to Redcaps, evidenced by a public house named 'Mother Redcap'' although this idea is tenuous at best it is not wholly out of line with wider Scottish folklore which overlapped various Otherworldly spirits with human witches. 

  Across the bulk of folklore these beings are seen as vicious and dangerous, immune to the usual fairy-warding methods involving iron but quick to flee when they hear Biblical passages read or see a cross. Upon hearing or seeing such Christian devices the Redcap will either run or vanish in a burst of flame, apparently unable to bear proximity to Christian holy items or words. 

  One especially well-known Redcap was the fairy familiar or familiar spirit of Lord Willliam de Soulis, rumoured to be a sorcerer, Warden of the West Marches an area including Galloway and Dumfries. Folklore claims that de Soulis made a pact with a Redcap for protection against weapons which aided him in his tyrannical rule of the area. History records that de Soulis was eventually arrested for conspiring against Robert the Bruce and died in prison, but wider folk belief has it that he was dragged to the Ninestang Rig in Roxburghshire and boiled to death in oil - a death that neatly got around the promise for protection against weapons that the Redcap had made him. 

  There is one account of a less overtly dangerous Redcap in Perthshire, who would occasionally be spotted in Grantully Castle. It was thought to be lucky to see him. 

   Redcaps are sometimes conflated with other types of castle spirits like Powries and Dunters. 

Where It Gets Muddy: There are many, many types of fairies and Otherworldly beings who wear red caps or hats but aren't the same beings as the malicious Redcap. This can and has caused confusion between the various folk beliefs and possibly contributed to modern fiction and gaming depicting Redcaps as benevolent to any degree. It should be understood that the Redcap is a particular phenomena of the Scottish borders and that beings of a similar name or sartorial proclivity found elsewhere are completely unrelated. 

What They Aren't: friendly, helpful, or on the 'good' end of the spectrum, despite appearing that way in some fiction and having the option to be played that way in role playing games. 

  There's a horror movie 'Unwelcome' that came out in 2023 featuring Redcaps but, while the movie is fun and clever, it largely leaves actual folklore behind in favour of creative fiction. Oddly enough one of the closest things the movie includes to actual Redcap folklore is the idea of the 'Mother Redcap'.

Book Review: Sacred Bones, Magic Bones

 Today I'd like to offer another book review, this one for Ness Bosch's 'Sacred Bones, Magic Bones'. As someone who has worked with bones for a long time the topic of this book immediately got my attention and I was curious to see what the author's take on the subject was. 

First, this book is not a simple look at bones in a spiritual context. Instead it weaves together several interrelated concepts, including animism and ancestor veneration. These are not treated as separate topics but rather as interconnected, as things that are part of each other. One cannot work spiritually with bones without acknowledging the spirits within them, nor the way they connect us to those who have gone before us. They give us structure both literally and figuratively. 

Sacred Bones, Magic Bones is divided into two parts. Part 1 includes 5 chapters which explore the history and beliefs around the subject. Part 2 includes 3 chapters which take a look at active practices. The second part builds on the first and offers readers a way to put the beliefs of part 1 into action in various ways. The two parts work well together and give the reader a feel that the whole book is building on itself. 

Part 1 begins by exploring bones from a physical perspective which I really appreciated. I find that many times pagan books ignore the practical aspects of a subject to focus on the spiritual, as if the two can't co-exist. This book instead begins with the practical, the physical components and function of bones, and uses that as a foundation to move into the esoteric. Once we understand how bones are what they are and do what they do we can begin to understand how they can be more than just a physical thing. Bones are discussed in the context of history, as a way to understand humans through preserved skeletons, bones, and burials; archaeology segues into anthropology and we learn about beliefs relating to bones across cultures, including the way that various animal bones have been used in folk practices. Next is a discussion of Gods connected to bones and the way that bones are connected to the sacred. Finally we wrap up with a section on modern bone traditions, showing that these beliefs and practices are still alive today. All of this lays the groundwork to establish the deep history of bones in a spiritual context.

Part 2 moves into the experiential and the poetic. These final three chapters explore active practices, stories, prayers, and magic around bones and worked with them. It is the house built on the foundation of part 1, inviting the reader to move in and make themselves at home. The book has included stories from the author's life throughout but part 2 seems to speak in the language of stories, making the impersonal personal. It feels more intimate than part 1, as if the reader has gotten to know the author as the book has progressed, and having gotten to know the story of bones is now getting to know the stories told by them.

Sacred Bones, Magic Bones is a deep dive into a subject that doesn't often get much attention. Bones can be a point of contention with those who don't believe in this type of spirit work or who have strong opinions on the ethics of sourcing materials, and in the same way in modern witchcraft those who work with bones may be mocked for embracing a dark stereotype. This book dispels those images and replaces them with a deep, reverential look at the place bones can hold within a person's spirituality.  

Fairy Facts: Selkies

 In this installment of fairy facts we're looking at a popular one - selkies.

Name: Selkie, Silkie, Selchie, Rón
The name literally means 'seal' and may appear in English as selkie-folk or seal-folk to differentiate from the animal

Description: Selkies appear as seals in the water, like any wild seal except for their eyes which are said to be particularly human-like. They may go on land and remove their seal skin to take on or reveal a human form. In human form they are often described as having dark hair and dark seal-like eyes. 

Found: Selkies, under variations of the name, are found in folklore across Ireland, Scotland, the Orkney and Shetland islands, as well as Iceland.

Folklore: Selkie folklore is vast and complex as well as regionally varied, however some wider concepts can be found across the bulk of stories. Perhaps the most well-known is the idea of the selkie wife: A fisherman sees a selkie dancing on the shore and sneaks over to take her sealskin; without it she is trapped on land and marries him. They have several children together and live as a married couple until one of the children eventually finds the sealskin and tells their mother. Once the sealskin is returned the selkie immediately goes back to the ocean - sometimes with her children other times leaving them behind. In contrast there are two main stories of male selkies. In one the selkie takes a human lover and leaves her with a child which she is forced to raise alone; the selkie returns years later to claim the child. In the other a heartbroken human woman cries into the sea and a selkie lover appears and takes her with him into his realm.
The half-human children of these unions are said to share their selkie parent's dark hair and eyes and to be born with webbed hands or feet. It has been suggested that selkie stories may originate with attempts to explain such birth defects or genetic disorders in some families, while other scholars also suggest it may be an explanation for early encounters with Inuit peoples.
In most folklore selkies can change their form at will, while in some they are limited to only coming on land one day a year. They are described as living in family groups and some selkie wives had a husband and children among the selkie folk before being taken by a human. They are also said to both cause storms at sea and to sometimes save sailors from drowning in storms.

Where It Gets Muddy: Selkies are becoming increasingly popular across modern fiction in stories which often radically rewrite the older folklore for plot purposes. This has resulted in a growing confusion not only about what selkies are but also about the rules which govern them, particularly around the magic of their sealskin. In some cases attempts to rewrite selkie wife stories to move them away from the abducted or forced bride trope have gone so far the opposite direction that they've just created the same thing under a different rule. For example the story where the selkie drops their coat in a human cafe and a human picks it up and returns it to them causing the selkie to instantly fall in love with them and claim they are now married. 

It is best to take these newer stories with the understanding that they are fiction.

What They Aren't: Contrary to some popular art, selkies aren't described like classical mermaids, with a human top half and seal bottom half. As described above they appear as seals in the water or as fully human on land. This confusion may come from the fact that in some folklore they are called 'mermaids' interchangeably with being called selkies or else are called a mermaid but described as a selkie. It is likely that in Ireland, Iceland, and the UK mermaid at points was being used as a non-specific term and that it may have served as the best English language translation for the terms in the original languages. 

Recommended: For a modern media approach to selkie stories I highly suggest people watch 'The Secret of Roan Inish' a movie about selkies set in Ireland which includes a lot of relevant folklore. The 1994 movie is based on an older book 'The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry' set in Scotland.

Fairy Facts: Slua Sidhe

 For this installment of fairy facts we're going to take a look at the Slua Sidhe, beings found in folklore as well as incorporated into modern Role Playing Games (RPGs). 

Åsgårdsreien by Peter Nicolai Arbo

Name: Slua Sidhe (Irish) or Sluagh Sìthe (Scottish)
In Irish the name translates to the Fairy Host or Army. In Gaidhlig the terms means Fairy People, Fairy Host
In Scotland the term may be shortened to Sluagh, while Sluagh na Sìthe is a poetic term for the fairies

Please note the term slua or sluagh is a collective noun which describes a group of beings, a host or crowd, not an individual being. 

Description: a group of malicious or dangerous beings who travel primarily through the air using magic. May or may not be on horses or accompanied by hounds.

Found in Irish and Scottish folklore, and in Irish mythology

Folklore: in Irish folklore the Slua Sidhe (modern Irish Slua Sí) are malevolent fairies who travel in whirlwinds or gusts of wind and who are prone to both kidnapping humans and causing injuries to those they pass. They might swoop down and abduct any solitary human who takes their fancy, sometimes keeping them and sometimes dropping them very far from home. Those they injure may be blinded, lamed, or driven mad, if not outright killed. According to Katherine Briggs they are most active at night. In older Irish material and myth the Slua Sidhe are simply any army of the Aes Sidhe.

In Scottish folklore the Sluagh may be understood as fairies but are also described as being the unforgiven human dead, who kill animals and restlessly wander the skies. It is believed that they lived wicked lives as humans and must therefore atone for their sins by wandering the earth without rest. They may employ elfshot, invisible arrows, against their victims, and by some accounts serve or are driven by another spirit; Alexander Carmichael in his Carmina Gadelica doesn't name or describe these beings, only referring to them as 'spirit-masters'.

Irish folklore has a different term, slua na marbh, for the host of the dead, however Gaidhlig doesn't differentiate the two in the same way. 

Where It Gets Muddy: The sluagh appear in Changeling: The Dreaming, an RPG put out by White Wolf. However the sluagh of the RPG are vastly different from those of folklore, not only because the term is (mis)used as an individual noun but also because they are said to live underground; the other name used for them us 'Underfolk'. They are primarily associated with causing fear. The RPG sluagh are bound not to cause any real harm and work to frighten children into good behaviour. 
In short the RPG sluagh are entirely different beings than those of folklore, however many people who are only familiar with the gaming concepts are unaware of that. 

What They Aren't: As noted above, Slua is not an individual term. A person cannot be 'a slua', as that literally means a host or crowd. An individual would be a member of the slua.
The Slua are not psychopomps, nor are they associated with stealing newly dead souls (only still living humans). 
The Sluagh do not have wings. They fly via magical means rather than a physical appendage.