Fairy Queen

Although the romances and ballads associated with Thomas the Rhymer have parallels to Tam Lin, including the tithe to Hell, this fairy queen is a more benevolent figure.

[5][6] Goodwin Wharton, a 17th-century English politician and mystic, believed that he had married a fairy queen named Penelope La Gard.

[8] One Welsh folk informant stated that the queen of the Tylwyth Teg was Gwenhidw, wife of Gwydion ab Don, and small, fleecy clouds were her sheep.

"Old Moss the fairy queen" appears in Shantooe Jest, a 19th-century poem by Thomas Shaw inspired by Yorkshire and Lancashire folklore.

[13] Later scholarship has disputed this; Nicneven's earliest known appearance was in Alexander Montgomerie's Flyting (c. 1580) as a witch and worshiper of Hecate, and a separate character from the Elf Queen.

In Romeo and Juliet, the character of Queen Mab does not appear but is described; she is the fairies' midwife, who rides in a tiny chariot and brings dreams to humans.

[18] Aside from Titania and Mab, Oberon was sometimes depicted with wives of other names: Aureola in a 1591 entertainment given for Queen Elizabeth at Elvetham in Hampshire,[19] and Chloris in William Percy's The Faery Pastorall around 1600.

The fairies are ruled by a queen in Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's Beauty and the Beast, and in several of Madame D'Aulnoy's tales, such as The Princess Mayblossom.

In Disney's series of films based on Tinker Bell, branching out from their adaptation of Peter Pan, the fairy ruler is Queen Clarion.

[citation needed] In Foxglove Summer, part of the Rivers of London series, the protagonist Peter Grant is captured by the Fairy Queen and taken off to her Kingdom (an alternative reality or Otherworld where Britain is still covered with a massive unbroken primeval forest, with no sign of the familiar towns and villages).

Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock is a modern reimagining of the ballads of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, in which the Fairy Queen is known as Mrs Laurel Perry Lynn.

[23] Medieval Christian authorities condemned cult beliefs of nocturnal, female spirit leaders who might accept offerings or take practitioners on a nighttime journey.

Julian Goodare clarifies that "[t]here is no reason to believe that there was a Scottish cult of Diana"; rather, the name was contemporary authorities' way of classifying such beliefs.

[24] Names used for this figure included Herodias, Abundia, Bensozia, Richella, Satia, and numerous others[25] like Doamna Zînelor in Romania (translated by Mircea Eliade as "Queen of the Fairies")[26] or Wanne Thekla in the Netherlands.

Prince Arthur and the Fairy Queen by Johann Heinrich Füssli , c. 1788
Arthur Rackham - Queen Mab