In addition to their folkloric origins, fairies were a common feature of Renaissance literature and Romantic art, and were especially popular in the United Kingdom during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

[5] Explanations for the origins of fairies range from Persian mythology[6] to the folklore of the Brythonic (Bretons, Welsh, Cornish), Gaelic (Irish, Scots, Manx), and Germanic peoples, and from the pages of Middle French medieval romances.

Wings, while common in Victorian and later artworks, are rare in folklore; fairies flew by means of magic, sometimes perched on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.

[15] Early modern fairies does not derive from a single origin; the term is a conflation of disparate elements from folk belief sources, influenced by literature and speculation.

[20] This concept may explain the tradition of paying a "teind" or tithe to hell; as fallen angels, although not quite devils, they could be viewed as subjects of Satan.

[23] Entities referred to as Devas were said to guide many processes of nature, such as evolution of organisms, growth of plants, etc., many of which resided inside the Sun (Solar Angels).

The more Earthbound Devas included nature spirits, elementals, and fairies,[24] which were described as appearing in the form of colored flames, roughly the size of a human.

"That growth of a plant which we regard as the customary and inevitable result of associating the three factors of sun, seed, and soil would never take place if the fairy builders were absent.

In an era of intellectual and religious upheaval, some Victorian reappraisals of mythology cast deities in general as metaphors for natural events,[33] which was later refuted by other authors (See: The Triumph of the Moon, by Ronald Hutton).

In folklore, flint arrowheads from the Stone Age were attributed to the fairies as "elfshot",[40] while their green clothing and underground homes spoke to a need for camouflage and covert shelter from hostile humans, their magic a necessary skill for combating those with superior weaponry.

[46] Less harmful pranks ascribed to fairies include: tangling the hair of sleepers into fairy-locks (aka elf-locks), stealing small items, and leading a traveler astray.

[47] Consumption (tuberculosis) was sometimes blamed on fairies who forced young men and women to dance at revels every night, causing them to waste away from lack of rest.

In this context, the term fairy is usually held in a wider sense, including various similar beings, such as dwarves and elves of Germanic folklore.

[53] The theme of the swapped child is common in medieval literature and reflects concern over infants thought to be afflicted with unexplained diseases, disorders, or developmental disabilities.

"[56] In County Wexford, Ireland, in 1882, it was reported that: "if an infant is carried out after dark a piece of bread is wrapped in its bib or dress, and this protects it from any witchcraft or evil.

"Herla cyning"), originally a guise of Woden but later Christianised as a king in a tale by Walter Map, was said, by Map, to have visited a dwarf's underground mansion and returned three centuries later; although only some of his men crumbled to dust on dismounting, Herla and his men who did not dismount were trapped on horseback, this being one account of the origin of the Wild Hunt of European folklore.

And he went on to tell how, in his garden, he had seen 'a procession of creatures of the size and colour of green and grey grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared.'

Many of the Irish modern tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann refer to these beings as fairies, though in more ancient times they were regarded as goddesses and gods.

[citation needed] They are associated with several Otherworld realms including Mag Mell ('the Pleasant Plain'), Emain Ablach ('the place of apples'), and Tir na nÓg ('the Land of Youth').

[84] In the 1691 The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, Reverend Robert Kirk, minister of the Parish of Aberfoyle, Stirling, Scotland, wrote: These Siths or Fairies they call Sleagh Maith or the Good People...are said to be of middle nature between Man and Angel, as were Daemons thought to be of old; of intelligent fluidous Spirits, and light changeable bodies (lyke those called Astral) somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight.

These bodies be so pliable through the sublety of Spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear or disappear at pleasure[85] The word fairy was used to describe an individual inhabitant of Faerie before the time of Chaucer.

According to Maurice Hunt, Chair of the English Department at Baylor University, the blurring of the identities of fantasy and reality makes possible "that pleasing, narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play".

Lewis's Narnia books, which, while featuring many such classical beings as fauns and dryads, mingles them freely with hags, giants, and other creatures of the folkloric fairy tradition.

When Peter Pan is guarding Wendy from pirates, the story says: "After a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy.

Some artists known for their depictions of fairies include Cicely Mary Barker, Amy Brown, David Delamare, Meredith Dillman, Gustave Doré, Brian Froud, Warwick Goble, Jasmine Becket-Griffith, Rebecca Guay, Florence Harrison, Alan Lee, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Myrea Pettit, Arthur Rackham, Suza Scalora, and Nene Thomas.

One early example is Origen of Alexandria in Contra Celsum (8.31) from about the year 248: We indeed also maintain with regard not only to the fruits of the earth, but to every flowing stream and every breath of air that the ground brings forth those things which are said to grow up naturally — that the water springs in fountains, and refreshes the earth with running streams — that the air is kept pure, and supports the life of those who breathe it, only in consequence of the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians; but we deny that those invisible agents are demons.About a century later (c. 335), Athanasius of Alexandria gives an exclusively negative assessment of these same creatures (On the Incarnation 8.47) as simply "demons ...taking up their abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by their frauds."

While such negative or skeptical ideas remained the majority positions for Christians, some exceptions can be found such as the Scottish minister Robert Kirk who wrote The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies in the later seventeenth century (1893).

In the modern era, C. S. Lewis writes about the possibility of fairies being real in "The Longaevi" (the "Long-livers" or "Long Lived Ones") in his book The Discarded Image.

We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth.

[115][116] Hart was a 2015 Templeton Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and has published the most on this topic including references in multiple interviews and books, especially Roland in Moonlight.