| While there are various explanations of the origins of | | | | fairies were established as little winged beings. |
| fairies and the nature of them and their lands, there is | | | | Thomas Croker (1789-1854) in his collection of Irish |
| little explanation in any studies of where the modern | | | | Fairy Tales, described fairies as being "a few inches |
| conception of winged fairies has come from. | | | | high, airy and almost transparent in body; so delicate in |
| None of the books suggest that fairies have wings like | | | | their form that a dew drop, when they chance to |
| dragonflies or butterflies. The wee-folk of Celtic | | | | dance on it, trembles, indeed, but never breaks." |
| mythology are generally thought to be the size of small | | | | One of the first of these "delicate" fairies to impinge on |
| children or dwarfs, rather than the size of insects as | | | | popular consciousness was probably Tinkerbell in J.M. |
| they are thought of today.They also tend to be | | | | Barrie's Peter Pan. Around that time, there was also a |
| suitably disproportionate, like chunky hobbits or dwarfs | | | | large amount of sentimental art, creating cutesy |
| rather than the tiny but perfect adult fairies in modern | | | | portrayals of fairies and cherubs. There was also a |
| storybooks. It is likely that these modern depictions of | | | | large fuss made about the fairy photographs taken by |
| fairies sprang more from the minds of individual | | | | two young girls in England at Cottingsley. These |
| humans than any specific culture or mythology. | | | | photographs sparked a world-wide debate that did |
| For almost as long as people have been seeing fairies, | | | | much to "fix" the image of the small, winged, fairy in |
| people have been writing about them. The countries of | | | | the public mind, and if you ask any group of people, |
| the world have a wide variety of myths and legends, | | | | there'll no doubt be someone who remembers seeing |
| but the "little people" crop up in a great many of them. | | | | the pictures at some time. The Victorians had a soft |
| Into more modern times, we have Spenser's "The | | | | spot for the "cute", and much of the modern |
| Fairie Queen", and Shakespeare's "A Midsummers | | | | conception of the little delicate, insect size fairy came |
| Night's Dream" in Elizabethan times, both of which did | | | | from them. |
| much to cement the modern conception of what a | | | | Disney also has a part to play from the 1950s onward, |
| "fairy" is. | | | | pushing the sanitised Tinkerbell as a sort of happy |
| A wide variety of cultures believe in fairies similar to | | | | go-lucky nature sprite, making fairies happy and |
| the Celtic version, and some cultures see fairies as the | | | | unthreatening, reinforced even more by having Julia |
| animistic spirits of nature. None of these fairies bear | | | | Roberts play her in the live action version. |
| much resemblance to the modern fairies and if they | | | | From these images people have come to see fairies |
| had wings, it is a detail that is usually left out. Spencer's | | | | as a happy, positive, image... a far cry from the |
| fairies were like the Celtic version, Shakespeare's | | | | baby-stealing wee folk of Celtic mythology from which |
| were like a combination of tall elegant elves and the | | | | they derived. |
| wee-folk, but it was not until the Victorian era that | | | | |