• Fairies size ranges, from tiny fairies smaller than fireflies to powerful forces that guide the wind
• Fairies love fresh flowers and laughter,this attracts them
• Fairies live on islands, hollow trees, under toad stools, where streams divide or border hedges
• To discover the portal to their world, you must walk nine times around a suspected place on a full moon night
• A ripple in the water or sudden chill often indicates their presence
• They are passionately fond of music, bells and jingles!
• They play melodies which are haunting and wistful
• Fairies love to dance!!
• Rheumatism, cramps and bruising can be the result of pinches from an agitated fairy
• Tangles in your hair – sometimes known as elf locks – are the work of fairies
• The disappearance of small objects can be a clue they have been visiting
• They can make themselves visible or invisible and can change their shapes and sizes but May Day, Midsummer’s Eve, and Halloween are good times to see them
• Children – particularly young girls – are most likely to see these little people
• They live to be several hundred years old
• They like honey, milk, and nectar

Creating a Fairy Realm / Garden

It is believed that the Fairies usually emerge and play from dusk till dawn, when all is quiet – here is a list of things you can include in your Fairy Garden that will attract and delight them:

• Wind Chimes – Fairies love to hear the tinkling of chimes and bells, anything that chimes and is gentle music is appealing for fairies and if you listen hard enough, you may hear them brush past them! They love to dance!
• A Pathway – Give the fairies a winding pathway to follow through their garden to help them find their way – this makes things much easier for the fairies, you can use stones or gravel to make a little path.
• Water – You can make them a “pond” or fairy pool, by using any shallow receptacle filled with water. But not so deep! This will also attract water fairies.
• A Fairy Door – It is said that Fairies will take up residence wherever they see a fairy door. You can buy or make a small door and attach it to a wall or tree stump in your garden, making a fairy door doesn’t have to be difficult and it can be a lot of fun.
• Glitter – Pretty , sparkles, and shiny objects attract Fairies – see what you can find to suit their sparkling taste!
• Crystals – A crystal such as Rose Quartz, which attracts love into the home, can be placed in their garden to do the same for the fairies.
• Shelter – Fairies need shelter from the wind and rain too … this can be anything from a stone toadstool to an up-turned flower pot with a door cut in it. You can use a flat stone for “seating”! Lots of ways to make shelters, using twigs and leaves and earthy materials.
• Plants - You must, of course, have some plants! Try to keep them small, and even having a fragrant herb, too, such as a miniature lavender will delight the fairies’ keen sense of smell.
• Fairy Friends – Fairies love to explore and play – small weatherproof ornaments of frogs, birds or any forest animal will charm them – let your imagination run away with you!

Additional tips & tricks: Fairies love friends, butterflies especially so by adding a small flower garden, or shrub will delight fairies as more butterflies will pass by. Fairies love to feel secure, and protected, so make sure the doorways are easy accessible so that fairies can disappear quickly from praying human eyes. Create mushroom rings, but be careful not to cross the boundary border yourself! …. you can buy fairy homes here

A fairy (also faery, faerie, fay, fae; euphemistically wee folk, good folk, people of peace, fair folk, etc.)[1] is a type of mythological being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural. [ref: wiki]

Etymology

The word fairy derives from Middle English faierie (also fayerye, feirie, fairie), a direct borrowing from Old French faerie (Modern French féerie) meaning the land, realm, or characteristic activity (i.e. enchantment) of the legendary people of folklore and romance called (in Old French) faie or fee (Modern French fée). This derived ultimately from Late Latin fata (one of the personified Fates, hence a guardian or tutelary spirit, hence a spirit in general); cf. Italian fata, Spanish hada of the same origin.

Fata, although it became a feminine noun in the Romance languages, was originally the neuter plural (“the Fates”) of fatum, past participle of the verb fari to speak, hence “thing spoken, decision, decree” or “prophetic declaration, prediction”, hence “destiny, fate”. It was used as the equivalent of the Greek ?????? Moirai, the personified Fates who determined the course and ending of human life.

To the word faie was added the suffix -erie (Modern English -(e)ry), used to express either a place where something is found (fishery, heronry, nunnery) or a trade or typical activity engaged in by a person (cookery, midwifery, thievery). In later usage it generally applied to any kind of quality or activity associated with a particular sort of person, as in English knavery, roguery, witchery, wizardry.

Faie became Modern English fay “a fairy”; the word is, however, rarely used, although it is well known as part of the name of the legendary sorceress Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend. Faierie became fairy, but with that spelling now almost exclusively referring to one of the legendary people, with the same meaning as fay. In the sense “land where fairies dwell”, the distinctive and archaic spellings Faery and Faerie are often used. Faery is also used in the sense of “a fairy”, and the back-formation fae, as an equivalent or substitute for fay is now sometimes seen.

The word fey, originally meaning “fated to die” or “having forebodings of death” (hence “visionary”, “mad”, and various other derived meanings) is completely unrelated, being from Old English fæge, Proto-Germanic *faigja- and Proto-Indo-European *poikyo-, whereas Latin fata comes from the Indo-European root *bhã- “speak”. Due to the identity of pronunciation between the two words, “fay” is sometimes misspelled “fey”.

Characteristics

Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and having magical powers. Their origins are less clear in the folklore, being variously dead, or some form of demon, or a species completely independent of humans or angels.[3] Folklorists have suggested that their actual origin lies in a conquered race living in hiding,[4] or in religious beliefs that lost currency with the advent of Christianity.[5] These explanations are not necessarily incompatible, and they may be traceable to multiple sources.

Much of the folklore about fairies revolves around protection from their malice, by such means as cold iron (iron is like poison to fairies, and they will not go near it) or charms of rowan and herbs, or avoiding offense by shunning locations known to be theirs.[6] In particular, folklore describes how to prevent the fairies from stealing babies and substituting changelings, and abducting older people as well.[7] Many folktales are told of fairies, and they appear as characters in stories from medieval tales of chivalry, to Victorian fairy tales, and up to the present day in modern literature.

The Reverend Robert Kirk, Minister of the Parish of Aberfoyle, Stirling, Scotland, wrote in 1691:

“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” – from The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies[8]

Although in modern culture they are often depicted as young, sometimes winged, humanoids of small stature, they originally were depicted much differently: tall, radiant, angelic beings or short, wizened trolls being some of the commonly mentioned. Diminutive fairies of one kind or another have been recorded for centuries, but occur alongside the human-sized beings; these have been depicted as ranging in size from very tiny up to the size of a human child.[9] Even with these small fairies, however, their small size may be magically assumed rather than constant.[10]

Wings, while common in Victorian and later artwork of fairies, are very rare in the folklore; even very small fairies flew with magic, sometimes flying on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.[11] Nowadays, fairies are often depicted with ordinary insect wings or butterfly wings.

Various animals have also been described as fairies. Sometimes this is the result of shape shifting on part of the fairy, as in the case of the selkie (seal people); others, like the kelpie and various black dogs, appear to stay more constant in form.[12]

A hidden people

One common theme found among the Celtic nations describes a race of diminutive people who had been driven into hiding by invading humans. They came to be seen as another race, or possibly spirits, and were believed to live in an Otherworld that was variously described as existing underground, in hidden hills (many of which were ancient burial mounds), or across the Western Sea.[4]

In old Celtic fairy lore the sidhe (fairy folk) are immortals living in the ancient barrows and cairns. The Tuatha de Danaan are associated with several Otherworld realms including Mag Mell (the Pleasant Plain), Emain Ablach (the Fortress of Apples or the Land of Promise or the Isle of Women), and the Tir na nÓg (the Land of Youth).[34]

The concept of the Otherworld is also associated with the Isle of Apples, known as Avalon in the Arthurian mythos (often equated with Ablach Emain). Here we find the Silver Bough that allowed a living mortal to enter and withdraw from the Otherworld. According to legend, the Fairy Queen sometimes offered the branch to worthy mortals, granting them safe passage and food during their stay.

Some 19th century archaeologists thought they had found underground rooms in the Orkney islands resembling the Elfland in Childe Rowland.[35] In popular folklore, flint arrowheads from the Stone Age were attributed to the fairies as “elf-shot”.[36] The fairies’ fear of iron was attributed to the invaders having iron weapons, whereas the inhabitants had only flint and were therefore easily defeated in physical battle. Their green clothing and underground homes were credited to their need to hide and camouflage themselves from hostile humans, and their use of magic a necessary skill for combating those with superior weaponry.[4] In Victorian beliefs of evolution, cannibalism among “ogres” was attributed to memories of more savage races, still practicing it alongside “superior” races that had abandoned it.[37] Selkies, described in fairy tales as shapeshifting seal people, were attributed to memories of skin-clad “primitive” people traveling in kayaks.[4] African pygmies were put forth as an example of a race that had previously existed over larger stretches of territory, but come to be scarce and semi-mythical with the passage of time and prominence of other tribes and races.[38]

Practical beliefs and protection

When considered as beings that a person might actually encounter, fairies were noted for their mischief and malice. Some pranks ascribed to them, such as tangling the hair of sleepers into “Elf-locks“, stealing small items or leading a traveler astray, are generally harmless. But far more dangerous behaviors were also attributed to fairies. Any form of sudden death might stem from a fairy kidnapping, with the apparent corpse being a wooden stand-in with the appearance of the kidnapped person.[7] Consumption (tuberculosis) was sometimes blamed on the fairies forcing young men and women to dance at revels every night, causing them to waste away from lack of rest.[43] Fairies riding domestic animals, such as cows or pigs or ducks, could cause paralysis or mysterious illnesses.

As a consequence, practical considerations of fairies have normally been advice on averting them. In terms of protective charms, cold iron is the most familiar, but other things are regarded as detrimental to the fairies: wearing clothing inside out, running water, bells (especially church bells), St. John’s wort, and four-leaf clovers, among others. Some lore is contradictory, such as Rowan trees in some tales being sacred to the fairies, and in other tales being protection against them. In Newfoundland folklore, the most popular type of fairy protection is bread, varying from stale bread to hard tack or a slice of fresh home-made bread. The belief that bread has some sort of special power is an ancient one. Bread is associated with the home and the hearth, as well as with industry and the taming of nature, and as such, seems to be disliked by some types of fairies. On the other hand, in much of the Celtic folklore, baked goods are a traditional offering to the folk, as are cream and butter.[32]

“The prototype of food, and therefore a symbol of life, bread was one of the commonest protections against fairies. Before going out into a fairy-haunted place, it was customary to put a piece of dry bread in one’s pocket.”[44]

Bells also have an ambiguous role; while they protect against fairies, the fairies riding on horseback — such as the fairy queen — often have bells on their harness. This may be a distinguishing trait between the Seelie Court from the Unseelie Court, such that fairies use them to protect themselves from more wicked members of their race.[45] Another ambiguous piece of folklore revolves about poultry: a cock’s crow drove away fairies, but other tales recount fairies keeping poultry.[46]

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.”[47]

While many fairies will confuse travelers on the path, the will o’ the wisp can be avoided by not following it. Certain locations, known to be haunts of fairies, are to be avoided; C. S. Lewis reported hearing of a cottage more feared for its reported fairies than its reported ghost.[48] In particular, digging in fairy hills was unwise. Paths that the fairies travel are also wise to avoid. Home-owners have knocked corners from houses because the corner blocked the fairy path,[49] and cottages have been built with the front and back doors in line, so that the owners could, in need, leave them both open and let the fairies troop through all night.[50] Locations such as fairy forts were left undisturbed; even cutting brush on fairy forts was reputed to be the death of those who performed the act.[51] Fairy trees, such as thorn trees, were dangerous to chop down; one such tree was left alone in Scotland, though it prevented a road being widened for seventy years.[52] Good house-keeping could keep brownies from spiteful actions, because if they didn’t think the house is clean enough, they pinched people in their sleep. Such water hags as Peg Powler and Jenny Greenteeth, prone to drowning people, could be avoided by avoiding the bodies of water they inhabit.[36]

Other actions were believed to offend fairies. Brownies were known to be driven off by being given clothing, though some folktales recounted that they were offended by inferior quality of the garments given, and others merely stated it, some even recounting that the brownie was delighted with the gift and left with it.[53] Other brownies left households or farms because they heard a complaint, or a compliment.[54] People who saw the fairies were advised not to look closely, because they resented infringements on their privacy.[55] The need to not offend them could lead to problems: one farmer found that fairies threshed his corn, but the threshing continued after all his corn was gone, and he concluded that they were stealing from his neighbors, leaving him the choice between offending them, dangerous in itself, and profiting by the theft.[56]

Millers were thought by the Scots to be “no canny”, owing to their ability to control the forces of nature, such as fire in the kiln, water in the burn, and for being able to set machinery a-whirring. Superstitious communities sometimes believed that the miller must be in league with the fairies. In Scotland fairies were often mischievous and to be feared. No one dared to set foot in the mill or kiln at night as it was known that the fairies brought their corn to be milled after dark. So long as the locals believed this then the miller could sleep secure in the knowledge that his stores were not being robbed. John Fraser, the miller of Whitehill claimed to have hidden and watched the fairies trying unsuccessfully to work the mill. He said he decided to come out of hiding and help them, upon which one of the fairy women gave him a gowpen (double handful of meal) and told him to put it in his empty girnal (store), saying that the store would remain full for a long time, no matter how much he took out.[57]

It is also believed that to know the name of a particular fairy could summon it to you and force it to do your bidding. The name could be used as an insult towards the fairy in question, but it could also rather contradictorily be used to grant powers and gifts to the user.

Changelings

Main article: Changeling

A considerable amount of lore about fairies revolves around changelings, fairy children left in the place of stolen human babies.[4] Older people could also be abducted; a woman who had just given birth and had yet to be churched was regarded as being in particular danger.[58] A common thread in folklore is that eating the fairy food would trap the captive, as Persephone in Hades; this warning is often given to captives who escape by other people in the fairies’ power, who are often described as captives who had eaten and so could not be freed.[59] Folklore differed about the state of the captives: some held that they lived a merry life, others that they always pined for their old friends.[60]

Classifications

Main article: Classifications of fairies

In Scottish folklore, fairies are divided into the Seelie Court, the more beneficently inclined (but still dangerous) fairies, and the Unseelie Court, the malicious fairies. While the fairies from the Seelie court enjoyed playing pranks on humans they were usually harmless pranks, compared to the Unseelie court that enjoyed bringing harm to humans as entertainment.[36]

Trooping fairies refer to fairies who appear in groups and might form settlements. In this definition, fairy is usually understood in a wider sense, as the term can also include various kinds of mythical creatures mainly of Celtic origin; however, the term might also be used for similar beings such as dwarves or elves from Germanic folklore. These are opposed to solitary fairies, who do not live or associate with others of their kind.[61]

Legends

In many legends, the fairies are prone to kidnapping humans, either as babies, leaving changelings in their place, or as young men and women. This can be for a time or forever, and may be more or less dangerous to the kidnapped. In the 19th Century Child Ballad, “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight“, the elf-knight is a Bluebeard figure, and Isabel must trick and kill him to preserve her life.[62] Child Ballad “Tam Lin” reveals that the title character, though living among the fairies and having fairy powers, was in fact an “earthly knight” and, though his life was pleasant now, he feared that the fairies would pay him as their teind (tithe) to hell.[62] Sir Orfeo tells how Sir Orfeo’s wife was kidnapped by the King of Faerie and only by trickery and excellent harping ability was he able to win her back. Sir Degare narrates the tale of a woman overcome by her fairy lover, who in later versions of the story is unmasked as a mortal. Thomas the Rhymer shows Thomas escaping with less difficulty, but he spends seven years in Elfland[63]. Oisín is harmed not by his stay in Faerie but by his return; when he dismounts, the three centuries that have passed catch up with him, reducing him to an aged man.[64] King Herla (O.E. “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.[65][66]

A common feature of the fairies is the use of magic to disguise appearance. Fairy gold is notoriously unreliable, appearing as gold when paid, but soon thereafter revealing itself to be leaves, gorse blossoms, gingerbread cakes, or a variety of other useless things.[67]

These illusions are also implicit in the tales of fairy ointment. Many tales from Northern Europe[68][69] tell of a mortal woman summoned to attend a fairy birth — sometimes attending a mortal, kidnapped woman’s childbed. Invariably, the woman is given something for the child’s eyes, usually an ointment; through mischance, or sometimes curiosity, she uses it on one or both of her own eyes. At that point, she sees where she is; one midwife realizes that she was not attending a great lady in a fine house but her own runaway maid-servant in a wretched cave. She escapes without making her ability known, but sooner or later betrays that she can see the fairies. She is invariably blinded in that eye, or in both if she used the ointment on both.[70]

Fairy Funerals : There have been claims by people in the past, like William Blake, to have seen fairy funerals. Allan Cunningham in his Lives of Eminent British Painters records that William Blake claimed to have seen a fairy funeral. ‘Did you ever see a fairy’s funeral, madam? said Blake to a lady who happened to sit next to him. ‘Never, Sir!’ said the lady. ‘I have,’ said Blake, ‘but not before last night.’ 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 grashoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared’. They are believed to be an omen of death.

Literature

Fairies appeared in medieval romances as one of the beings that a knight errant might encounter. A fairy lady appeared to Sir Launfal and demanded his love; like the fairy bride of ordinary folklore, she imposed a prohibition on him that in time he violated. Sir Orfeo‘s wife was carried off by the King of Faerie. Huon of Bordeaux is aided by King Oberon.[71] These fairy characters dwindled in number as the medieval era progressed; the figures became wizards and enchantresses.[72] Morgan le Fay, whose connection to the realm of Faerie is implied in her name, in Le Morte d’Arthur is a woman whose magic powers stem from study.[73] While somewhat diminished with time, fairies never completely vanished from the tradition. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late tale, but the Green Knight himself is an otherworldly being.[72] Edmund Spenser featured fairies in The Faerie Queene.[74] In many works of fiction, fairies are freely mixed with the nymphs and satyrs of classical tradition;[75] while in others (e.g. Lamia), they were seen as displacing the Classical beings. Fifteenth century poet and monk John Lydgate wrote that King Arthur was crowned in “the land of the fairy”, and taken in his death by four fairy queens, to Avalon where he lies under a “fairy hill”, until he is needed again.[76]

Fairies appear as significant characters in William Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, which is set simultaneously in the woodland, and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon.[77] and in which a disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy dispute creates tension underlying the plot and informing the actions of the characters. 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”.[78]

Shakespeare’s contemporary, Michael Drayton features fairies in his Nimphidia; from these stem Alexander Pope‘s sylphs of The Rape of the Lock, and in the mid 1600s, précieuses took up the oral tradition of such tales to write fairy tales; Madame d’Aulnoy invented the term contes de fée (“fairy tale”).[79] While the tales told by the précieuses included many fairies, they were less common in other countries’ tales; indeed, the Brothers Grimm included fairies in their first edition, but decided this was not authentically German and altered the language in later editions, changing each “Fee” (fairy) to an enchantress or wise woman.[80] J. R. R. Tolkien described these tales as taking place in the land of Faerie.[81] Additionally, not all folktales that feature fairies are generally categorized as fairy tales.

Fairies in literature took on new life with Romanticism. Writers such as Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg were inspired by folklore which featured fairies, such as the Border ballads. This era saw an increase in the popularity of collecting of fairy folklore, and an increase in the creation of original works with fairy characters.[82] In Rudyard Kipling‘s Puck of Pook’s Hill, Puck holds to scorn the moralizing fairies of other Victorian works.[83] The period also saw a revival of older themes in fantasy literature, such as C.S. 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.[84] Victorian flower fairies were popularized in part by Queen Mary’s keen interest in fairy art, and by British illustrator and poet Cicely Mary Barker‘s series of eight books published in 1923 through 1948. Imagery of fairies in literature became prettier and smaller as time progressed.[85] Andrew Lang, complaining of “the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms” in the introduction to The Lilac Fairy Book, observed that “These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed.”[86]

Fairies are seen in Neverland, in Peter and Wendy, the novel version of J. M. Barrie‘s famous Peter Pan stories, published in 1911, and its character Tinker Bell has become a pop culture icon. 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. Any of the other boys obstructing the fairy path at night they would have mischiefed, but they just tweaked Peter’s nose and passed on.”[87]

Fairies in art

See also: Fairy painting

Images of fairies have appeared as illustrations, often in books of fairy tales, as well as in photographic-based media and sculpture. Some artists known for their depictions of fairies includeCicely Mary Barker, Arthur Rackham, Brian Froud, Alan Lee, Amy Brown, David Delamare, Meredith Dillman, Jasmine Becket-Griffith, Warwick Goble, Kylie InGold, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Myrea Pettit, Florence Harrison, Suza Scalora,[88] Nene Thomas, Gustave Doré, Rebecca Guay and Greta James.

The Victorian era was particularly noted for fairy paintings. The Victorian painter Richard Dadd created paintings of fairy-folk with a sinister and malign tone. Other Victorian artists who depicted fairies include John Atkinson Grimshaw, Joseph Noel Paton, John Anster Fitzgerald and Daniel Maclise.[89] Interest in fairy-themed art enjoyed a brief renaissance following the publication of the Cottingley Fairies photographs in 1917 and a number of artists turned to painting fairy themes.

Theosophy

In the teachings of Theosophy, Devas, the equivalent of angels, are regarded as living either in the atmospheres of the planets of the solar system (Planetary Angels) or inside the Sun (Solar Angels) (presumably other planetary systems and stars have their own angels) and they are believed to help to guide the operation of the processes of nature such as the process of evolution and the growth of plants; their appearance is reputedly like colored flames about the size of a human being. Some (but not most) devas originally incarnated as human beings. Less important smaller-in-size less evolutionarily developed minor angels are called nature spirits, elementals, and fairies. [90] The Cottingley Fairies photographs in 1917 (revealed by the “photographers” in 1981 to have been faked) were originally believed to have been real by many Theosophists. It is believed by Theosophists that devas, nature spirits, elementals (gnomes, ondines, sylphs, and salamanders), and fairies can be observed when the third eye is activated.[91] It is maintained by Theosophists that these less evolutionarily developed beings have never been previously incarnated as human beings; they are regarded as being on a separate line of spiritual evolution called the “deva evolution”; eventually, as their souls advance as they reincarnate, it is believed they will incarnate as devas.[92].

It is asserted by Theosophists that all of the above mentioned beings possess etheric bodies that are composed of etheric matter, a type of matter finer and more pure that is composed of smaller particles than ordinary physical plane matter.[92]

Creating a Fairy Realm / Garden

It is believed that the Fairies usually emerge and play from dusk till dawn, when all is quiet – here is a list of things you can include in your Fairy Garden that will attract and delight them:

• Wind Chimes – Fairies love to hear the tinkling of chimes and bells, anything that chimes and is gentle music is appealing for fairies and if you listen hard enough, you may hear them brush past them! They love to dance!
• A Pathway – Give the fairies a winding pathway to follow through their garden to help them find their way – this makes things much easier for the fairies, you can use stones or gravel to make a little path.
• Water – You can make them a “pond” or fairy pool, by using any shallow receptacle filled with water. But not so deep! This will also attract water fairies.
• A Fairy Door – It is said that Fairies will take up residence wherever they see a fairy door. You can buy or make a small door and attach it to a wall or tree stump in your garden, making a fairy door doesn’t have to be difficult and it can be a lot of fun.
• Glitter – Pretty , sparkles, and shiny objects attract Fairies – see what you can find to suit their sparkling taste!
• Crystals – A crystal such as Rose Quartz, which attracts love into the home, can be placed in their garden to do the same for the fairies.
• Shelter – Fairies need shelter from the wind and rain too … this can be anything from a stone toadstool to an up-turned flower pot with a door cut in it. You can use a flat stone for “seating”! Lots of ways to make shelters, using twigs and leaves and earthy materials.
• Plants - You must, of course, have some plants! Try to keep them small, and even having a fragrant herb, too, such as a miniature lavender will delight the fairies’ keen sense of smell.
• Fairy Friends – Fairies love to explore and play – small weatherproof ornaments of frogs, birds or any forest animal will charm them – let your imagination run away with you!

Additional tips & tricks: Fairies love friends, butterflies especially so by adding a small flower garden, or shrub will delight fairies as more butterflies will pass by. Fairies love to feel secure, and protected, so make sure the doorways are easy accessible so that fairies can disappear quickly from praying human eyes. Create mushroom rings, but be careful not to cross the boundary border yourself! ….

fairy by nene thomas

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare. -The Woods of Westermain, st. 1 (1883)

“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” – from The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, The Reverend Robert Kirk, Minister of the Parish of Aberfoyle, Stirling, Scotland, 1691

The dwarves of yore made might spells, while hammers fell like ringing bells… -J.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Just go out into the country, and sit down quietly and watch
nature at work. Listen to the wind as it blows, look at the
clouds rolling overhead, and waves rippling on the pond at your
feet. Hearken to the brook as it flows by, watch the flower-buds
opening one by one, and then ask yourself, “How all this is
done?” Go out in the evening and see the dew gather drop by drop
upon the grass, or trace the delicate hoar-frost crystals which
bespangle every blade on a winter’s morning. Look at the vivid
flashes of lightening in a storm, and listen to the pealing
thunder: and then tell me, by what machinery is all this
wonderful work done? Man does none of it, neither could he stop
it if he were to try; for it is all the work of those invisible
forces or fairies whose acquaintance I wish you to make. Day and
night, summer and winter, storm or calm, these fairies are at
work, and we may hear them and know them, and make friends of
them if we will. -  Arabella B. Buckley, The Fairy Land Of Science

“The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.” – W.B Butler Yeats

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!” – W.B Butler Yeats

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? -John Lennon

‘Ribbon of pink, I just might think.I would like to see the Fae today. Special sight of Faery’s flight, Send to me the way today. A sprinkle here a sprinkle there, A secret spell I say today. Wispy wings and little things, Are what Id like to see today.’PLEASE note this may need to be repeated to see the Fae, as they are VERY cautious little creatures!
~ Written by Barbara Morris 2ooo – 2oo7

“How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

“How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spread his claws,

And welcome little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws! = Lewis Carroll Alice in wonderland

Ah,” thought the butterfly, “one can’t very well trust these plants in pots;

they have too much to do with mankind.” -

“The Butterfly” Hans Christian Andersen