Fairy

The name given to a wide variety of supernatural beings that either help or hinder mankind. Fairy beliefs are strongest in the Celtic lore of Britain, Ireland and Europe, but nearly every culture possesses myths and legends concerning miniature biped creatures. The word is derived from the Latin fata, ‘fate', which refers to the mythical Fates, three women who spin and control the threads of life.

According to theory, fairies are either: earthbound unbaptized souls; guardians of the souls of the dead; ghosts of venerated ancestors; fallen angels condemned to remain on earth; nature spirits,  or small human beings. They are said to have magical powers and to consort with witches and other humans with supernatural powers. They have many different names and come in all shapes and sizes. They are invisible and can only be seen by clairvoyants or when they make themselves visible.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was deeply interested in spiritualism and psychic phenomena. In the early 1920s he was fooled by a photograph purporting to show tiny, winged, female figures dressed in fashionable gowns and floating in the air. The picture was taken by two young sisters, Elsie and Francis Wright, of Cottingley, Yorkshire. The girls insisted the photograph was genuine, and despite expert testimony that the picture was a fake, Doyle wrote about the picture as proof of fairies in his The Coming of the Fairies (1922). The Wright sisters did not admit that the photo was a fraud until the 1980s. See banshee, cluricane, leprechaun, elf and gnome.

Related books:
A Field Guide to Irish Fairies.
A Witch's Guide to Fairy Folk: Reclaiming Our Working Relationship With Invisible Helpers (Llewellyn's New Age Series).
Cherokee Little People: The Secrets and Mysteries of the Yunwi Tsunsdi.
Enchantment of the Faerie Realm: Communicate With Nature Spirits and Elementals.
Faeries.
Fairies: Real Encounters With Little People.
Fairies: The Cottingley Photographs (Theosophical Classics Series).
Fairy Spells: Seeing and Communicating With the Fairies.
Good Faeries, Bad Faeries: 2 Books in 1.
Green Witchcraft: Folk Magic, Fairy Lore & Herb Craft.
Hans Christian Andersen; the Complete Fairy Tales and Stories.
Irish Myths and Legends.
Irish Wonders: The Ghosts, Giants, Pookas, Demons, Leprechawns, Banshees, Fairies, Witches, Widows, and Other Marvels of the Emerald Isle.
Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings: Working With the Intelligence of Nature.
Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (A C.G. Jung Foundation Book).
The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies (Flower Fairies Collection).
The Elves of Lily Hill Farm: A Partnership With Nature.
The Golden Books Treasury of Elves and Fairies: With Assorted Pixies, Mermaids, Brownies, Witches, and Leprechauns.
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales.
The Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf.
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.
More books.
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Further info:
Angels & Fairies.
The Case of the Cottingley Fairies.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiritualism, and Fairies.