Fairy Stories

While music is associated with the fairies themselves, poets, particularly Irish poets, have been inspired by the otherworld for centuries. Here is a selection of Celtic poems from as early as the 12th Century taken from the Book of Leinster, up to the 20th Century when W. B. Yeats was enthralled with Celtic mythology and the world of fairy. Much of Yeats' poetry and writing alludes to the Celtic...

The faeries to whom the Irish refer are by no means the beautiful, butterfly-winged and benign Disney-sanitized sprites of our youth. They possess a far more capricious nature and the capacity for both great benevolence and great mischief, much like the Trickster in Native American culture.

Favorite poems on fairies, Celtic and otherwise, with poems from Walter de la Mare, Keats, Herrick, Sir Walter Scott, Shelley, Campion and other great masters who loved to delve into this world of fairy for inspiration. This listing would not be complete without a few quotes from the bard himself and a Midsummer Night's Dream....As you make your journey through the 'looking glass,' hope you enjoy...

Broadly speaking, the Irish had three otherworlds. The land beneath the waves (selkies and mermaids), the land of eternal youth (Tir na nÓg) and the land beneath the ground, the world of fairy. Each of the three yielded a rich array of mythological stories and characters. A great place to start is WB Yeats Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland. Here's the first fairy story I was told....Here's a link to...

Changeling is a term that has found its way back into the English langauge with the rencent release of a film by the same name, where a woman is asked to accept that a child that she knows is not hers is returned to her in place of her own. But what did it mean in fairylore?A 'changeling' is the term used to describe a sickly, wizened fairy child who had been left in place of a healthy, happy human...