The Morrigan, The Dagda, and Samhain

 As we're getting into October and people are turning their  attention to Samhain I'm starting to see discussion and references to the meeting between the Morrigan and the Dagda at the river Unshin showing up here and there. This is one of those stories from myth that often suffers from 'telephone game syndrome', that is people who haven't actually read or heard the story themselves taking a small part of it that's widely repeated and creating their own context for it. Which, in the wider scope of modern folk belief, has its place - however today I thought it would be helpful to outline what's actually going on in that part of the story and address some common misconceptions around it that directly contradict the myth. 
    This isn't intended to argue against the more modern takes so much as to show the context and give some insight into the actual original story for those who are interested. This is easier to do to be honest because there is only one surviving manuscript containing this story, which occurs in the Cath Maige Tuired (CMT), so for once we have a singular source to look to rather than carefully sorting through multiple contradictory texts. 

I'd like to look at several specific ideas that I find are really common around this topic:

1 The Dagda and the Morrigan meet up/have sex on Samhain
Well....no, not exactly. They do meet up and have sex, that part's true, but in the text its pretty clear that their meeting occurs more than a week before Samhain - its the battle with the Fomorians which occurs on Samhain.
According to the text the Morrigan and the Dagda meet 'around' the time of Samhain and she asks him to gather the Aes Dana, the skilled people of the Tuatha Dé (TDD), while she goes herself to attack Indech one of the Fomorian kings. She then meets them all at an agreed on point and displays the king's blood as proof she has done as she said she would. The text says of that second meeting: "Sechtmad rie samain sen, & scaruis cach oroile diob go comairnectur fir Erenn uili al-la rie samain."
"This was a week before Samhain and they all scattered until all the men of Ireland came together the day before Samhain."*
Now we can argue that Samhain itself isn't a single day - although its named as the first of November in the texts - but a time period, which is fair, but that time period is generally seen as extending forward beyond the 'day' of Samhain not as a nebulous time around that 'day'. Hence the month of November in Irish is the month of Samhain, mí na Samhna, beginning with the day of Samhain, 1 November. So when we see this meeting in the story its happening at some point around the middle of October, then she goes and attacks the Fomorian king, and then she meets up with the Dagda and Aes Dana a week before Samhain, then the day before Samhain all the Tuatha Dé gather for the battle. 

2 The Dagda sought the Morrigan out for her help in battle
When people talk about the meeting of the Dagda and the Morrigan its often framed in the context of the Dagda seeking the Morrigan out, as if he had gone on a quest to find her. However its clear from the myth that this meeting was one that occured every year between the two: 
"Bai dno bandal forsin Dagdae dia bliadnae imon samain an catha oc Glind Edind.....Is hi an Morrigan an uhen sin isberur sunn."
"The Dagda was to meet a woman on a day, yearly, about Samhain of the battle at Glen Etin....She is the Morrigan, the woman mentioned particularly here"
Its also important to note that these two figures aren't strangers or casual acquaintances, in fact they are referred to in several places as a married couple and in the CMT its said that the place they lay together was called Lige ina Lanomhnou 'the bed of the married couple'. So rather than going out to search for her he was simply meeting her where they met every year, and because the meeting that particular year was right before a battle she gave him martial advice - marital martial advice as it were.

3 The Morrigan had to be persuaded to aid the Tuatha Dé
 One of the more common ideas I see attached to the union of the Dagda and the Morrigan is that the Dagda slept with her in order to gain her aid in the battle with the Fomorians; this is often tied into a related (inaccurate) idea that the Morrigan was some sort of neutral party or was not one of the Tuatha Dé herself. 
Now putting aside that we've already established she was the Dagda's wife, its important to note a couple other points. Firstly the Morrigan is very clearly listed as one of the Tuatha Dé across all of the source material we have that mentions that sort of thing and her mother is listed as one of the women of the TDD. She has already appeared in the Cét-Cath Maige Tuired (first battle of Maige Tuired) against the Fir Bolg using her magic against the Fir Bolg and aiding the Tuatha Dé. More importantly perhaps in the story of the Cath Maige Tuired the Morrigan has already been helping the Tuatha Dé prior to her meeting with the Dagda, specifically by appearing to Lugh and inciting him to rise up and fight against the oppression of the Fomorians. She is without doubt on the side of the TDD and working in their favour and nothing in the story directly indicates the Dagda ever asked her for her aid or even advice. It says only that the Dagda spoke to her, they slept together, and afterwards she gave him military advice and went to attack the Fomorian king herself. 

4 The Morrigan and Fomorian Princess are the same person
 Another idea I see floated around a lot, which may be tied into point three, is a confusion between the Dagda's meeting with the Morrigan and the subsequent meeting and tryst he has with a Fomorian princess. Basically he meets with the Morrigan as discussed above and is later, after other war preparations, sent out by Lugh to spy on the Fomorian camp; in leaving there he encounters a Fomorian woman who says she is the daughter of the king Indech and the two become lovers, after which she promises to work magic against her own people. I will note that the second meeting is entirely omitted from Stokes translation of the CMT because as he says of it "Much of it is obscure to me, and much of the rest is too indecent to be published in this Revue."^; I suspect that this being the easily available public domain material which many people access and that section being omitted is one factor that led to the conflation of the two encounters, as people hearing of the second but unfamiliar with it assume it is in fact the first. In any case while there are some common themes between the two there are also multiple notable differences which makes it clear that the two are different figures within the story. 

These are a few of the most common things I run across that I feel should be addressed or clarified. As I said in the introduction people are free to believe what they will and follow different modern ideas of this meeting, but hopefully this has helped clarify the written version of the myth and what it actually tells us. 

*all translations are my own
^ I hate Whitley Stokes

Quick Guide to Common Folklore Related Terms

Today I wanted to offer a quick and very rough guide to terms used around material connected to folklore. I find that this subject can be very confusing for people and hope this may help a bit with that. Disclaimer that these definitions are based in my own understanding of these concepts as an amateur folklorist.

Folklore - according to Oxford dictionary folklore is "the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth.". Folklore has several key aspects including both its oral nature as well as its existence within a community. Folklore is also fluid and evolving, showing change in line with the community it is attached to.
Michael Fortune's Youtube videos of people being interviewed and discussing their community's or their family's fairy beliefs is an example of folklore. 

Anecdote - an anecdote is a personal story being recounted by the person who experienced it or passed on as such. It represents a real person describing events they witnessed or experienced. 
Someone describing their own encounter with a fairy is an anecdotal account. 

Retellings - Much of the Victorian material we have, as well as some popular modern material, falls into this category. Retellings represent folklore that is being preserved in written form with additions from the author; there can often be a fine line between a retelling and the folkloresque but while retellings often add flourishes and drama they generally adhere to the broad strokes of the original folklore. 
Lady Wilde's work may best be described as retellings. 

Folkloresque - Also previously known as fakelore and sometimes called folklorism, folkloresque is material that is rooted in folklore concepts of motifs but which heavily incorporates creativity and fiction to create something new. The folkloresque isn't properly folklore - it isn't representative of a group's beliefs or practices - but is inspired by or based on existing folklore. Another key difference between folklore and the folkoresque is that the folkloresque exists in a fixed form.
The movie Labyrinth can be described as folkloresque. 

Fiction - is written work that describes imaginary stories or relates events that aren't true. This is why works of fiction usually include disclaimers that the work was created by the author and any resemblance to real people or places, etc., is unintentional. Fiction is an exercise in human imagination and is usually predicated on telling an interesting story. 
The Dresden Files is an example of fiction. 

There is often debate on whether or not folklore is fiction, but in my opinion this presupposes that folklore is untrue and was created at some point purely for entertainment, which ignores the key aspect of folklore as belief and practice of a community. Whether or not stories of selkie wives did happen they represent active belief in a community, with attached practices, and were understood as true by the people who believed in them. Fiction in contrast is created intentionally to be a story for entertainment. This is an essential and pivotal difference. 

Cana Cludhmor - Inventing an Irish Goddess

I saw a post on Twitter, under the folklore Thursday hashtag, claiming that the Irish goddess of music and the harp is Cana Cludhmor, which was a new one on me, so I decided to research the idea and that figure. I wasn't familiar with her as a name of any of the Tuatha De Danann, Fomoirians, or Fir Bolg, or from the Ulster or Fenian myth cycles but I am certainly not infallible nor do I know everything or every obscure figure from Irish mythology. Cana is a grade of poet and Cludhmor would read as roughly 'greatly famous' so the name itself could fit with the story. So I looked at what the modern idea of her was and tried to trace it back into the older source material.

The most readily available material is a wikipedia article about it, under the name Canola but noting the name Cana Cludhmor as well, claiming she fell asleep on the shore to mysterious music and awoke to realize it was the sound of wind on sinew & bone that had washed up on shore and invented the harp. This article, unsurprisingly, is repeated word for word in almost all the other main internet search hits (people love to plagiarize wiki). However the article lists only three sources: the 1854 Transactions of the Ossianic society, Patricia Monaghan's 2004 'Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore', and Brandi Auset's 2009 'The Goddess Guide'.
We'll get back to that first source in a minute, but let's look at Monaghan to start. Monaghan's book is widely problematic as it offers no sources or citations for any of the material it presents, so that's an immediate concern. The entry on 'Canola' is written in flowery prose and describes not a goddess but a 'legendary woman' who quarreled with her lover, then left his side to fall asleep near the seashore to the sound of gentle music; upon waking she realized it was coming from the remnants of a whale carcass where the wind was singing through the sinew still attached to the bones and was inspired to create the first harp.

Monaghan's story is suspicious but not entirely implausible across the breadth of Irish folklore, and its vital to note she describes 'Canola' as a human figure not a goddess. Digging further I found a single line reference in MacKillop's 1998 'Dictionary of Celtic Mythology' that says 'Canola' was the discoverer of the harp after hearing the musical sound of the wind over sinew attached to a whale skeleton. Very bare bones, if you'll forgive the pun, and no sources listed. However what we have at this point, roughly the early '00's, is a legendary woman who discovered the harp. 

Now back to the first source listed in wikipedia. I tracked down the original story that was reprinted in the Ossianic Society text to the Imtheacht na Tromdháimhe, a satirical work from around the 13th century, in the book of Lismore which is as follows:
""I know it," says Marvan, "and I will tell it thee. In former times there lived a married couple whose names were Macuel, son of Miduel, and Cana Cludhmor (or of great fame) his wife. His wife, having entertained a hatred for him, fled before him through woods and wildernesses, and he was in pursuit of her. One day that the wife had gone to the strand of the sea of Camas, and while walking along the strand she discovered the skeleton of a whale on the strand, and having heard the sound of the wind acting on the sinews of the whale, she fell asleep by that sound. Her husband came up to her, and having understood that it was by the sound she had fallen asleep, he proceeded into an adjacent forest, where he made the frame of a harp, and he put chords in it of the tendons of the whale, and that is the first harp that ever was made.'" 

So what the actual original story says, and what was still being told in the mid 19th century, is that Cana Cludhmor was a woman who fled from her husband and fell asleep to strange music produced through a whale carcass but it was her husband Macuel who found her and understood what was making the sound then recreated it using a wooden frame thus inventing the harp. 

I will note for thoroughness that she cannot be found at all in works by O'hOgain, Green, Waddell, or other reliable sources on actual Irish mythology and folk belief. 

The question becomes how did an obscure story about a man inventing a harp after chasing his wife to the shore get turned into her, under the name Canola, as an Irish goddess of music, and inventor of the harp? Because at this point in 2021 the idea is widespread online and ingrained to the point that there's an Irish tour company (founded in 2017) named Canola after this supposed goddess of music and the harp. It can be difficult to pinpoint the timeline of these things, but by 2011 there are multiple blogs and online articles that list her alongside well-known Irish deities and describe her as a goddess of music, dance, dreams and inspiration. So where did this begin? The answer seems to be wikipedia's third reference Auset's 'Goddess Guide'. This 2009 book by popular publisher Llewellyn - which cites no sources - claims Canola as the Irish goddess of not only music but also dance, and describes her inventing the harp to "capture the glorious sounds she'd heard in her dreams" before claiming she is the patron of musicians and poets and giver of inspiration - a far, far cry from the account in the Imtheacht na Tromdháimhe. While I might personally suppose Auset's creative text is based on Monaghan's that can't be proven as no source or citation is offered for the entry on 'Canola', however I do feel safe in suggesting Auset as the source of the modern idea of Canola or Cana Cludhmor as the Irish goddess of music, dance, dreams and inspiration as the 2011 online material closely follows Auset's Canola entry in both description of Canola and of her supposed purviews. 

So, effectively what we have here is an 'Irish' goddess created in or around 2009 by an author in the US, possibly based off a 2004 work which colorfully altered the story found in a snippet of a 1998 work, based on a very different 13th century Irish myth. The result 10+ years on being widespread online material including this new deity who is largely unknown in Ireland. 

References:

Connellan, O., (1854) Transactions of Ossianic Society 5. Retrieved from  https://sejh.pagesperso-orange.fr/keltia/version-en/tromdham.html?fbclid=IwAR1Rvh1vNc6VItB14PWICj4zfVta2-JZRl7EbY0JAF0WyCa5-XMk1wZPvrY 

Ossianic Society (1854) Transactions of the Ossianic society for the years, 1853-1858. Retrieved from  https://archive.org/details/transactionsossian05ossi/page/96/mode/2up

MacKillop, J., (1998) Dictionary of Celtic Mythology

Monaghan, P., (2004) Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore

Auset, B., (2009) Goddess Guide

Wikipedia (2021) Canola Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola_(mythology) 

O'hOgain, D., (2006) The Lore of Ireland

A Charm Against the Evil Eye

      The Carmina Gadelica has a series of charms which all deal with the evil eye, that is the curse laid upon a person by another who wishes them ill or looks upon them with envy.  This one is my personal favorite and I have modified it slightly to be more pagan; the original can be found here.

 I love the imagery it presents and find it reminiscent of the Song of Amergin. Anyone who has read the works of the witch Sibyl Leek may recognize the middle portion of the charm, the “power over” section, as she made use of this portion in an unhexing spell in one of her books, clearly drawing on the Gadelica as a source. That same section has also appeared in a young adult novel by L. J. Smith called The Power; all of which could be seen as a testament to the power and flexibility of the Carmina Gadelica charms, as well as their intrinsic value.

Exorcism of the Evil Eye 141

I trample upon the evil eye,
As the duck tramples upon the lake,
As the swan tramples upon the water,
As the horse tramples upon the plain,
As the cow tramples upon the grass,
As the host tramples the sky,
     As the host tramples the air.

Power of wind I have over it,
Power of wrath I have over it,
Power of fire I have over it,
Power of thunder I have over it,
Power of lightning I have over it,
Power of storms I have over it,
Power of moon I have over it,
Power of sun I have over it,
Power of stars I have over it,
Power of earth I have over it,
Power of sky and of the worlds I have over it,
     Power of the sky and of the worlds I have over it.

A portion of it upon the grey stones,    
A portion of it upon the steep hills,
A portion of it upon the fast falls,

A portion of it upon the fair meadows,
And a portion upon the great salt sea,
She herself is the best instrument to carry it,
     The great salt sea,
     is the best instrument to carry it.

In the names of the Three of Life,
In the names of the Gods of Skill,
In the names of all the Ancient Ones,
And of the Powers together.

 - excerpted from By Land, Sea, and Sky by the author

7 Dangerous Fairies

 Despite the common modern perception of fairies as lovely and helpful folklore offers a wide range of dangerous Fairy beings who represented a real threat to any humans they happened to encounter. I'd like to offer a list of 7 such dangerous beings here, although there are of course many more than that found across the folklore. These are definitely not the sorts of fairies one would want to find in one's garden. 

1. Redcap - a malicious type of goblin the redcap gets his name from the hat he wears which is dyed red with human blood. He is known to live in ruins and will attack humans unfortunate enough to cross his path. Unlike many other fairies he isn't averse to iron - in fact its said his shoes are made of iron or iron toed - but he will flee at the sight of a Christian cross or at Christian prayers.
2. Each Uisce - literally 'water horse' these are shapeshifters who can take the form of a human when they choose to but are most often in the form of a horse. In both Irish and Scottish folklore the Each Uisce will appear on land and lure a human into riding them, only to run back to the water, drown, and eat them. 
3. Nuckelavee - found in Orcadian and Scottish folklore these monstrous beings live in bodies of salt water. They look like a horse with the torso of a rider on their back, the head rolling bonelessly, the arms hanging down unnaturally long; instead of hooves the horse has flippers and the entire creature is skinless. The Nuckelavee avoids fresh water, including rain, but will roam the strand near the sea and kill any living thing it finds there. It has also been blamed in folklore for droughts and for illness among horses. 
4. Hags - a type of water fairy found across English folklore, usually under specific names like 'Peg Powler'. Hags lurk in waterways and drown the unwary, particularly children; by some accounts they eat the people they drown. Usually described as emaciated elderly women with talons or iron tipped claws.
5. Slua Sidhe - not a specific individual fairy but a grouping of them, Slua Sidhe means 'fairy host' or fairy army and is a collection of malicious Otherworldly beings who travel through the air. They may snatch up a human they run across or else may cause illness, death, or madness to those they encounter. 
6. Mare - The source of the modern word nightmare the mare or mår is sometimes also called a hag (not to be confused with the water ones) and attacks people while they sleep by perching on the human's chest causing sleep paralysis and night terrors. Occasionally those she torments do not survive her nightly attention and she is known to kill both humans and animals. 
7. Baobhan Sith - Her name means, roughly, 'evil fairy woman'. In Scottish folklore the Baobhan Sith lurk in forests and appear to hunters who express loneliness, offering to keep them company. Several accounts discuss a group of hunters out at night in the woods who meet a group of Baobhan Sithe - seemingly just human women - and invite them to join them for some music or dancing. One hunter eventually notices something is amiss and realizes the women have killed his companions and flees into the night taking refuge among the horses whose iron clad hooves ward off the fairy women. The Baobhan Sith kills by draining her victims blood and in some accounts by ripping out his heart. 

John Henry Fuseli, 'The Nightmare"

Feri, Faery Wicca, Fairy Witchcraft...Which is Which?

 There are several very similarly named traditions of witchcraft connected to fairies out there and this has long caused confusion. Which, given the subject relates to fairies, is perhaps inevitable or at least predictable. Nonetheless I thought that today it would be helpful to offer as much clarity on this as possible by briefly discussing the different traditions to illustrate how they are similar and different and how they may choose to incorporate - or not - fairies. It may be impossible to dispel the confusion entirely, particularly as each different group tends to claim it is the most accurate and genuine or the only one passing on the true beliefs. Hopeful this article will still offer some clarity on an admittedly muddy subject.
This is in no way meant to be a comprehensive discussion of these groups but only a basic outline to give readers a general idea of what they are and how they began, and hopefully a place to start digging further if they choose to.
I am going to present everything in chronological order to help illustrate the flow with this and also show readers a rough evolution of these groups within the last hundred years or so. 

The Fairy Faith 
Although not a tradition, per se, or witchcraft in any way, the Fairy Faith is an important place to start with this subject. The term Fairy Faith was coined in the late 19th/early 20th century by folklorists studying fairy beliefs who needed a simple term to describe what they were studying. The Fairy Faith is the collected beliefs and practices of people who believe in fairies as contained in folklore and anecdotal accounts; as such it is less a cohesive system of faith as it is a loose collection of concepts that all relate to fairies. There is no prerequisite to this belief (beyond the belief itself), no required religion, no initiation or acceptance. And as with all such folk traditions the name it was given by outsiders is not generally what people within the 'faith' call what they believe and do. The general focus of the Fairy Faith is on protecting against fairies and mitigating harm caused by them, and most stories have this focus. 

Feri 
The Feri Witchcraft tradition was founded in the 1960's by Victor and Cora Anderson. 
Author and Feri initiate Sara Amis describes Feri as a strand of Trad Craft, that is a non-Wiccan initiatory approach to witchcraft. Feri is often conflated with or confused with various forms of Fairy Witchcraft, something that is exacerbated by the alternate spelling 'Faery' sometimes used for Feri by other initiates or more widely with the Fairy Faith but it is its own distinct tradition. Feri is based heavily on Anderson's teachings which in turn were heavily influenced by his own ecstatic and experiential beliefs rather than older or traditional folklore, although Anderson himself claimed his tradition was identical, except for cultural framework and terms, to the 'Faery Tradition' taught by RJ Stewart which is more strongly drawing from older folklore. Opinions among modern initiates about how much fairy material is included in Feri varies, with Amis saying there are some ties to general fairylore (non-culture specific) and inclusion of some fairy beings, an anonymous source saying that they felt fairies and fairy folklore didn't play a significant role, and a third initiate Shae saying that fairies are important but are understood through a different lens based on the traditions approach to several things. Amis and the anonymous source agree that a fairy king and queen play a role in Feri, however not a king and queen found elsewhere in folklore. 

Faerie Faith
Founded by an offshoot of the MacFarland Dianics; this group isn't specifically fairy focused, per se, although it does include fairies but rather loosely 'Celtic' and uses Graves' Tree calendar as a framework for teaching. It blends an array of concepts from Bach flower essences to Jungian archetypes into its system which emphasizes cohabitation with the unseen world.

Faery Tradition
Created in the 1980's by RJ Stewart this approach blends older fairylore, especially from the ballad material, with new age ideas and Kabbalah to create a unique new system. Stewart has written several books about Faery Tradition and also teaches widely on the subject. The Faery Tradition views fairies, generally, as allies to humans and protectors of nature. Teachings within the tradition seem to be aimed at helping the human connect to and work with these spirits for positive ends. 

Faery Wicca
Founded in the 1990's by author Kisma Stepanich (now Kisma Stepanich-Reidling) it is very loosely based on Irish and wider Celtic language speaking folklore heavily mediated through the author's personal lens. The original books about this tradition were pulled from publication and have long been overshadowed by accusations of plagiarism. Despite the name this tradition of modern Wicca is only tangentially connected to fairies or fairy beliefs, with its primary focus on a pseudo-Celtic framework applied to a more standard neo-Wiccan approach. 

An Creideamh Sí
The name for the Fairy Faith as Gaeilge [in Irish] this term was coined around the turn of the 21st century by Catholic priest Sean O'Duinn as an Irish language alternative for the English 'Fairy Faith'. As with that term this is not, of course, what people in Ireland who believe in fairies would call their system of belief which generally has no name. 

Faery Seership
Founded in the mid 2000's by Orion Foxwood Faery Seership is a collection of beliefs and practices shaped by both European and  Appalachian culture which takes the view that fairies are 'earth angels' and cousins to humanity and seeks to help humans realign with the earth and all living beings. Foxwood has several books on the tradition as well as a CD,  DVD, and offers classes.  

Fairy Witchcraft
A tradition founded in 2014 by me, based on my years of practice and experience. Fairy Witchcraft blends early modern witchcraft, neopagan witchcraft, and folkloric fairy beliefs into a cohesive system with an emphasis on allying with and connecting to fairies and the Otherworld. The name for the tradition is descriptive, as it is basically witchcraft focused on fairies; even the Gods acknowledged are ones connected to or based in Fairy folklore. No initiation or formal training is required and the tradition is mostly a personal one that anyone can claim if they follow the basic tenets outlined in the books describing the practice. 

Fayerie Traditionalism
Publicly appearing in 2018 with the publication of a book describing the beliefs and practices of the tradition, Fayerie Traditionalism was founded by author Robin Artisson from an amalgam of source material and the author's own practices and experiences. It incorporates an understanding of fairies and animism into its framework, through the interpretation of the author, as well as blending in material relating to fairies from the grimoires. Artisson has several books out on the subject now as well as a website.

Witchcraft with Fairies
The concept of witchcraft with or connected to fairies is an old one which can be traced back at least four hundred years (see Emma Wilby's 'Cunningfolk and Familiar Spirits' for more on this). Besides the specific traditions and groups discussed here there are of course a multitude of personal approaches and practices today which may be based on what would be called the Fairy Faith but aren't as cohesive as a a formal tradition. It is impossible to know how many people may follow this system or a spirituality that incorporates these beings in any sense - folkloric, popculture, or new age - and to what degree. 

The Fairy Wood, Henry Meyenell Rheam, 1903

I hope that this quick guide can offer some clarification for those who find the many similarly named groups confusing or who are just starting to explore the idea of witchcraft connected to fairies. I have done my best to present all of this without any bias and not to insert my own opinions on each of the groups/traditions being discussed but its impossible to do so completely so I do encourage readers to explore further on their own and to ask others in the community for opinions. 

Why Do We Envision Fairies As Tiny?

 

fairy from the movie Labyrinth

For many people today the word fairy immediately invokes images like the picture above, of a tiny winged being. In today's post I want to discuss specifically the idea of fairies as tiny, because its so pervasive and yet largely a popculture concept, albeit an early modern one. So, why do we envision fairies as tiny?

The fairies of folklore - historic and modern - are depicted across a wide range of sizes and forms, from about 18 inches tall to well over 13 feet. These beings are known as shapeshifters and their size is often fluid and changeable, or at least human perception of their size isn't constant. Also specific types of beings are known to have particular sizes and appearances, such as the selkies who are human-like on land and seals in the water. In many Irish fairy encounters the beings are described as more or less human sized, a feature we see as well in Scotland. Some specific beings like Leprechauns were known to be about 18 inches to 3 feet tall, depending on the story. As with so many aspects of folklore this subject isn't clear cut or easy to simplify but includes a spectrum of possibilities. However we can say in a very general sense that the idea of tiny, insect sized or smaller fairies isn't common across Western European folklore. 

Where we do find tiny fairies is in England, particularly English literature but with possible roots in older folk beliefs. Katherine Briggs discusses several medieval English examples of what she terms 'diminutive fairies' which are described as about as tall as a finger is long; these were either specific types of beings or specific individuals in context, rather than all fairies more generally. The earliest such account comes from Gervase of Tilbury in the 13th century who describes beings he calls 'Portunes' which are between a half inch and a foot tall* (Briggs, 1976). While a foot tall is on the smaller end of fairy sizes within folklore in general it isn't as tiny as we will find later as fairies are refined into the early modern period literature.

The earliest description I have found in writing of tiny fairies comes from Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, completed in 1597, where he describes the fairy queen Mab as 'In shape no bigger than an agate stone; On the forefinger of an alderman' (Shakespeare, 1980). Mab is not only as tiny as the stone in a finger-ring but is said to travel in a wagon fashioned from insect parts: wheels spoked with spider legs and a wagon cover made of grasshopper wings. This idea is expanded several decades later in Michael Drayton's 1627 'Nymphidia' a poem which describes the English fairy court. In this poem the fairies are firmly established as tiny beings who can fit into flowers and use small natural objects for their construction - spider legs to build walls and bats wings to cover their roofs, for example. This comes to us from English literature (the literate class as opposed to direct folk belief) and is an idea we will see repeated in later works as well, blending the idea of diminutive fairies with Paracelsus's elemental divisions of these beings to create the tiny air and earth fairies that would later take hold in popular imagination. As to why fairies were so far reduced, as Diane Purkiss so aptly says it: "The Elizabethans and even more so the Jacobeans loved the miniature. In their hands, fairies shrank to tininess." and "Reducing the other to miniature scale reduces it to manageability too, making it laughable." (Purkiss, 2000, ps 181 & 182). Despite this diminishment the fairies of this period were still seen as having power and influence, particularly over human dreams, madness, and crops.

Fairy Hordes Attacking a Bat by John Anster Fitzgerald 1860

The Victorian era is one of the most pivotal points in how popular culture today would come to view fairies, with a surge in interest in romanticized folklore, nature, and entertainment. The fairies of folk belief became subjects of retellings and fairies more generally were rewritten and redefined away from  dangerous and powerful beings and into the fodder of children's stories and art. These fairies were firmly rooted as well in the miniaturization that had begun with Shakespeare and persisted through English literature and poetry, finding expression in Pope's 1712 'Rape of the Lock' for example where fairies are definitively small and generally powerless as well as in William Blake's late 18th and early 19th century works which described tiny fairies. Victorian era literature though took these existing ideas and framed them for children, reducing fairies not only in size by favouring the insect comparisons but also infantilizing and moralizing them. As Carole Silver explains it: "As the elfin peoples became staples of children's literature, the perception grew that they themselves were childish....Some of the tales promoted a false set of conventions, one that made, the fairies tiny and harmless - moral guides for children or charming little pets - and a tradition of sentimentalization and idealization developed." (Silver, 1999, p187). Being tiny was then directly connected to both being childlike and being powerless, creating a being that was physically miniature and more decorative than dangerous. 

Into the 20th century this idea was further refined in popculture with Cicely Mary Barker's flower fairies and with JM Barrie's Peter Pan taking to the stage. While fairies in art during the Victorian period were often shown as small both of these sources were popular and gained wider traction in the popular imagination and refined fairies down to their essential tweeness. Barker's fairy art featured tiny childlike fairies connected to and often clothed with specific flowers and plants. Her fairies then were small enough that flower petals could form a skirt for one and an acorn the perfectly sized cap for another. Barrie's Tinkerbell in print was both feminine and seductive but on stage transformed into an indistinct ball of light who communicated through the sound of bells, existing largely through Peter Pan's perception and translation (Kruse, 2019). The tiny, glowing, nature-bound fairy may well be understood as the conglomeration of all of these influences into the 20th century. 

The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, by Joseph Noel Paton, c. 1849

So while tiny fairies can be found in older material, particularly in England, they represented only a small portion of the wider range of fairies. The image above of Oberon and Titania's quarrel in A Midsummer Night's Dream displays this range of sizes and appearances, including both human sized beings as well as tiny ones, rather than the exclusively tiny sized fairies that some modern sources depict. It is also important to understand that tiny fairies are largely coming from English literary traditions rather than folk belief, a point that Silver notes in her book and which we have traced out here. The tiny fairies that are seen and experienced today and which can be found in modern fairylore exist parallel to older folk beliefs, often contradicting them, and represent one unique strand of belief rather than the entirety.

*the text is sometimes given as 'half an inch' but Briggs rightly suggests this is a scribal error as that size is incompatible with the actions described - such as carrying a young frog - within the text. Despite this the error has undoubtedly influenced later perceptions of the size of fairies. 

References

Purkiss, D., (2000) At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things 
Kruse, J., (2019) "Ray of Light" Tinkerbell and Luminous Fairies', retrieved from https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/ray-of-light-tinkerbell-and-luminous-fairies/ 
Shakespeare, W., (1980) Romeo and Juliet. Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html
Briggs, K., (1976) A Dictionary of Fairies
Silver, C., (1999) Strange & Secret Peoples: Fairies and the Victorian Consciousness