Paranormal Creatures discussion

I have been hearing a few things about Fae lately so I am wondering if anyone knows anything about them

I love this subject! I have been researching them for my books, maybe I can help. What would you like to know about them?

To start, maybe we could try to define what the fae are. There is a big divide that occurs around the Victorian era when everything was romanticised and moralised and as a result we have the small cute harmless fairies that flit around flowers and that people usually think of first when someone mentions fairies.
Before this divide the fae were taken very seriously. It was for example considered dangerous to say their name, or even call them faeries out loud. So people came up with euphemisms that wouldn't bring their wrath upon them. They called them 'the good neighbours', 'little people' and 'shining people' and many other things.
These were the dangerous, fickle fae that could reward you or curse you depending on their nature and mood. They could snatch a baby from its cradle and replace it with a changeling. They stole adults too, especially women.
This is the tradition where you get the Seelie (good fae) and Unseelie (evil fae) Courts, the Wild Hunt and all the good, spooky stuff that makes folklore so appealing.

If there are specific questions, I can dig into my research and see if I can come up with an answer. :)

-Piia-

I've always had a soft spot for fae and fairies. Especially the easily annoyed, liable to curse you, maim you, or twist any wish you make into something awful kind; I used to annoy most of my friends when they were playing World of Darkness RPGs by doing Unseelie Changelings.

I blame my Gaelic heritage; my family still warned you to leave out saucers of milk and watch out for the goblins; that's partially where Andrew from Woken came from, I think.

Of course, there's also the older definitions (relating to the Tuatha De Danaan) that they're just an "older" race, that humanity supplanted (possibly after the Tuatha got borked fighting with the Fomori) and the more general definition that was popular in the Middle Ages up to the Victorian point where all the bloodthirsty little nightgaunts and redcaps were replaced by innocent little pixies, that said essentially anything supernatural (from "alien" species like the Tuatha, to twisted dream spirits, to plain ol' ghosts and demons) were "fae" of some kind.

One Christian Irish Myth is that some angels did not choose a side during the First War in Heaven, and fell to Earth. They became the respective spirit of where they landed(water fae, forest fae, mountain fae, etc)

I haven't heard that either but I don't really know anything about fae that didn't come out of Merlin...

S.K.N. wrote: "I haven't heard that either but I don't really know anything about fae that didn't come out of Merlin..."

I'm on the last season of Merlin.

I love that series XD And the last episode is horribly sad