by Tiffany Turner

Created on: January 14, 2007   Last Updated: July 15, 2010

The belief in fairies has a very long history. They have been found in myths and legends from many countries and ancient cultures. The ancient Greeks called fairies Moerai. The ancient Egyptians called them Hathors, and in Russia they were called Domovoys. But modern legends and myths arise from the ancient beliefs of the Celts and Scots. This is where our common belief of fairies often starts; the picture in our mind of a beautiful creature of miniature size, fluttering as a butterfly to do good deeds or mischief. But do they exist?

How the Belief Began

The Celts and Scots may have gotten the idea of fairies from the earlier Stone Age artifacts that would be found. The early Stone Age tools were believed to be fairy tools abandoned by the "little people". Science explains these to be Neolithic arrowheads belonging to people from 4,000 years ago.

Fairy stories grew out of these early finds. In the past, the world was explained with story and fables. Myths were the substitute for science to explain the world. Our current myths and legends of fairies grew from ways to explain these early human artifacts.

The stories of fairies grew to include different types of fairies. Pixies or Brownies were the playful, tricksters, but would also guard the hearth. Objects missing were blamed on the home Pixie. Nereid was the ancient Greek fairy that would trick girls to go off and dance among them until they pined away. The story of Dryads as tree guardians also arises around this time.

Many other things of old were blamed on fairies. Fairies were famous for switching real children with fairy children. This was to explain away childhood illness. Legends explained sudden death of an infant by the replacement of the baby by a changeling. The fairy child was the malformed or sick child. Many other human deformities were blamed on fairy intervention.

Medieval Additions to Belief

As the ruling class became nobility, fairies became a popular subject among storytelling in court. To entertain the audience, bards would make the fairy world reflect the current world, and the fairy world started to have the aspects of humans, namely a court. Often the fairy tale represented what the court wanted to hear. Poets filled their stores with romantic notions and trickster interference by fairies to entertain the nobility. It was the medieval soap opera.

The King and Queen of the Fairies started to appear in stories, as well as elves, a more human-like fairy. Fairy knights and ladies began to

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