Fairies

Fairies are the 'Good People' or 'Gentry' of Irish and British folklore, a hidden race said to live alongside us in a world just out of sight. In Ireland they are the aos sí or daoine sídhe, the people of the fairy mounds. People used polite names for them on purpose, so as not to give offence. In the older stories they can be human-sized, beautiful and dangerous: they steal children and leave changelings, lead travellers astray and take offence at anyone who damages a fairy fort or lone hawthorn.

The tiny winged fairy of Victorian picture books came later. In 1691 Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle in Scotland, wrote The Secret Commonwealth, a sober account of what his parishioners believed about fairies. The belief could have tragic results: in 1895 Bridget Cleary of County Tipperary was killed by her husband, who said he believed she had been replaced by a changeling.

Fairy experiences are still reported today. The Fairy Investigation Society, founded in Britain in 1927 and revived online by historian Simon Young in 2013, ran a Fairy Census from 2014 that gathered hundreds of first-hand accounts. People describe small figures in gardens and woods, lights, music and lost time. The most famous 'evidence', the Cottingley Fairies photographs of 1917, was a hoax: the two cousins who took them admitted in 1983 that they used cardboard cut-outs.

What witnesses report

• Small human-like figures in gardens or woods
• Music or voices with no source
• Lights dancing near old forts or hawthorns
• Getting lost on a familiar path
• Time passing strangely

Famous cases

1. 1691Robert Kirk writes The Secret Commonwealth
   Aberfoyle, Scotland
2. 1895Murder of Bridget Cleary, said to be a changeling
   Ballyvadlea, County Tipperary, Ireland
3. 1917Cottingley Fairies photographs (a hoax, admitted 1983)
   Cottingley, England
4. 1999Latoon fairy bush saved from the Ennis bypass
   Latoon, County Clare, Ireland