Paid with a Kiss: Love and Sex in Fairy Belief

by Morgan Daimler

Paid with a Kiss gives a wide-ranging look at fairies, sex, gender, and human belief through history in Western Europe, focusing primarily on Irish, UK, and French evidence. By examining mythology, folklore, literature, and anecdotes, this book answers common questions of what we know about sex and sexuality among fairies and how they interact with humans, including human-fairy relationships and offspring. Aiming to answer an array of questions on humans, fairies, and intimacy that the author has been asked over the years, Paid with a Kiss is a deep dive into nearly two millennia of folk belief.

144 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2025

About the author

My name is Morgan Daimler. I have had my poetry and prose published in different places including various anthologies, Circle magazine, Witches and Pagans magazine and Pagan Dawn magazine. I am the author of the urban fantasy series Between the Worlds and (through Cosmic Egg Books) the high fantasy novel Into Shadow. I've written more than a dozen non-fiction works through Moon Books including Fairy Witchcraft, Pagan Portals: the Morrigan, Fairies: A Guide to the Celtic Fair Folk, A New Dictionary of Fairies, and Pagan Portals Aos Sidhe

Reviews

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tl'dr if you enjoy fairies and romance, and want to learn more about the lore that laid the foundations for some of the more modern stories, you want to read this book. That said, if you read modern, spicy romantasy, chances are you've run into your fair share of fairies and sex. Daimler has done quite a bit of research, and this book is very well organized. Although I was familiar with some of the fae and older literature referenced in this book, I also learned some new things. Some of the ones I was already familiar with were a few of the ones mentioned from the Fairies Who Love Humans and Literary Lovers sections, particularly Shakespeare. I was delighted to see references to Peter Pan and Tolkien included as well, and I must admit they are the ones I'm most familiar with out of everything I recognized in the book. The most interesting chapter for me was Marriage to the Other, and as familiar as I am with some of the general lore, this definitely filled in some major gaps I had. I absolutely intend to use the included bibliography to do some further reading of my own, as well.

[Susie Dumond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting look at gender and sexuality in fairy lore, especially in how it mirrors taboo human sexuality and gender roles over centuries. Morgan Daimler does a great job of combining mythology, gender studies, and history to craft a compelling argument about what fae stories can teach us about the sex lives of humans.