You Probably Don't Know What Fairies Are

I tried so hard to learn what a fairy was... this was exhausting. Enjoy learning that everything you know is probably just a fairy from someone or somewhere who heard it wrong. The kobold one surprised me the most.
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[@micahbouldin8225]

Fun Fact: it’s believed that the word of “eldritch” originates from the Middle English word “elfriche,” meaning “fairyland.” So if we take this to be true (and I do), then we can add Cthulhu to the list of the things that are also fairies

[@jasonutty52]

Now all I can imagine is Cthulhu in a Tinkerbell costume. Really adds to the sanity-breaking.

[@Jaydee-wd7wr]

@@jasonutty52, Okay but like Mae Whitman voicing Cthulhu sounds really fun.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Eldritch translates literally to "otherworldly", the word for "fairyland" in Middle English is "elfhame".

[@micahbouldin8225]

@@PlatinumAltaria good find 👍

[@acorns-r-us]

In call of cthulhu fantasy (7e) the dark young are referred to as goblins

[@Metal_Maoist]

I kinda like the Eberron approach of "Fuck it, nobody knows what a fairy is anyway, so we have created the Folklore Hole and everything that's in there is fae"

[@Crispifordthe3rd515]

It must have been a WHILE since I've read Eberron because I don't NOT remember that in the thing 😂

[@marcogenovesi8570]

is that a way to say ghey? Ah yes we have the Ghey Hole and everything in there is ghey

[@finderfinder4290]

@@Crispifordthe3rd515 by my understanding eberron fey are kinda just…the idea of magic. Fey are the magic we WANT to see in the world, rather than the magic that actually exists. Fey are stories made real, like the idea that a tree can have a person in it, and thelanis is where you find these stories.

[@gogauze]

Tbf, this is almost exactly how I was going to portray the scholarly, materia-plane understanding of various creatures from, and the nature of, the feywild in an upcoming campaign I'm running. Just a lot of extremely deep sighs followed by each scholar's personal headcanon based on what limited experience they have. We're going to start with Wilds Beyond the Witchlight, with some extra world building for the setup (well outside of the Sword Coast) that starts to pay off by the end of the module. Then pick up into the rest of the 6-18±2 adventure. I'm mainly focused on keeping a lot of the themes and continuing to have non-combat resolutions for each encounter throughout the post-module campaign.

[@snowboundwhale6860]

@@gogauze The Feywild does have the vibes of a place where "everyone has a different understanding of what this place is and what happens there and they're all correct"

[@stickybird9725]

One thing I feel worth mentioning that wasn't in the video. I have done my own research into faeries and their classification, how it's less-so tinkerbell and more an umbrella term for folklore. The made up creatures depicted in "Fearsome critters" by William T. Cox, our modern Cryptids and even Yokai (as well as the Chinese version of Yokai, Yaoguai.) are all distinctly fairy-like when put side by side with the original myths of the fae. The subject is honestly a rabbit hole in itself which is iornic.

[@monsieurdorgat6864]

It's honestly kind of interesting how post-enlightenment Christianity has so molded our perception of the subject that we struggle to understand them and feel the need to put an entire religion into a separate category. Even early Christians had the perception that religion wasn't a faith - it was a way of understanding the world. The Enlightenment created the idea that religion was a matter of faith rather than a matter of fact, but didn't really realize it because they just took Christianity as a matter of fact and instead just denounced all other faiths as "myth". So the distinction between religion, myth, and science was once just one thing and now we have this extremely muddy set of categories that don't make sense 🤣

[@jorikrouwenhorst7220]

So if I understand you correctly fae/fairies, yokai and yaoguai are more or less the same thing.

[@jamesjoy7547]

@@jorikrouwenhorst7220 makes sense, really. The archetypal "other" or "hidden" folk, alternately capricious benefactors or malevolent tormentors. Because belief in entities who can be appeased, outsmarted, or defeated offers a more comforting worldview that the inexorable nihilist emptiness inherent in an undirected mechanistic umiverse

[@stickybird9725]

@@jorikrouwenhorst7220 Yep, basically just the eastern equivalent.

[@nidohime6233]

Don´t forget the djins or genies from islamic folklore, which depending of who you ask they can be considered fairies too.

[@DodWilEcton]

Just to confuse you further, in the Silmarillion and other Tolkien stories he does have gnomes… but it’s just another name for the noldor, or deep elves, making up most of the main characters. Including Galadriel. Yes, Galadriel is a gnome.

[@meiliyinhua7486]

I was about to mention the noldor originally being something like "gnoldor" because they were originally gnomes

[@federerlkonig330]

Yeah, Tolkien chose the word Gnome because it meant something like "wise-knowing one" and he thought it was a fitting translation of "noldor".

[@Fyrverk]

Aah, Tolkien. Goblin is english for goblin. Orc is orcish/goblish for goblin. Kobold is german for goblin. Vätte is swedish for goblin.

[@egoalter1276]

Kobolds are specifically associated with cobalt, and thus mines, so I think its more accurate to say its german for dwarf.

[@Fyrverk]

@@egoalter1276 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobold

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Slight correction: seelie means happy. It's related to the word silly but it means happy; as in these are the fairies who are not actively out to get you. Unfortunately "not trying to kill you" is a few rungs below "nice".

[@DCdabest]

I always have this impression that Seelie are friendly but dangerous and Unseelie are unfriendly and dangerous. Neither necessarily want you dead automatically but they certainly have very different ideas about how much they want to interact with mortals lol

[@Ultrascale]

I would like to add to this. Here in Iceland Álfar (elves) were often described to be indistinguishable from people. They lived in palaces hidden in the rocks and mountains. So they weren't really little, but magical people.

[@librarianseth5572]

So in every other culture the ancient eldritch beings are treated with great reverence for being unknowable, but for you guys it's like talking about a family that used to live in the house down the street and threw weird parties? I respect that. Wisconsin has its own versions of that too from the coal mining days called knuckers and hodags.

[@adamcarr1387]

Sídhe, the fairies in ireland are the same "they could be the person beside you, and you wouldn't know it"

[@missa2855]

Here in Denmark elvere, or elves are hot ladies that dance in the fog and lure young men with them into their underground mounds never to be seen again. Other times they are just hot ladies that lure men with them without fog. Such as in the folksong "hr bøsmer i elverhjem."

[@Ultrascale]

@@librarianseth5572 Yeah well, there are tales where they weren't really nice tbh. Some were down right cruel and if you figured it out that they were elves or knew where they lived they would just kill you or your family or destroy your crops etc

[@andreasbuehler1821]

Around here in the alps, we don't really have elves, but we have dwarves. They vary in size, the smallest I remember are as big as your thumb and live between tree roots, but some, especially the more powerful ones, are indistinguishable from bearded old men. Hunched over, but not that small. Also, they are just generally horrible. THey steal children and curse people and places. Even if you help them. There's the story of the dwarf who had his beard stuck in a tree and couldn't get out, so a passing farmer cut him free. The dwarf cursed him and his family for damaging his magnificient beard. After threatening to curse him if he didn't help him.

[@comet3136]

Love that seelie literally means "silly". They truly are silly little guys.

[@stephenwood6663]

On a not-unrelated note: abrupt, seemingly inexplicable changes in mental or physical well-being of both humans and animals were once popularly attributed in many nations to the fairy stroke. Most often the fairy stroke denoted a paralytic seizure; the colloquial English usage of ‘stroke’ for cerebral haemorrhage derives from this once widespread belief.

[@aureliusvt5191]

the post Christianity rationale that they were angels that got too silly might be one of the funniest things I ever heard

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Sadly it means happy, not silly.

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

Technically doesn't *mean* silly, rather more like blessed, but it is *cognate* with the English 'silly' the word seelie (and unseelie) are words from Lowland Scots, and these are an example of how the two language diverge in meanings sometimes

[@stephenwood6663]

It's *also* related to the etymological root of the word "pixilated", meaning bewildered or confused (or having had your wits stolen away by the pixies!)

[@ROBANN88]

the idea of the Changeling, in my understanding is that at some point, a troll came by, stole your kid and exchanged it with theirs. and the best way to fix this was to horribly abuse the kid until the troll would feel bad about their child and return the real one. essentially, an excuse for child abuse

[@monsieurdorgat6864]

Honestly, the entire premise of trying to categorize things and how those categories ultimately fail is an interesting idea to explore in DnD by itself. Reality is there, but the categories are something we imagine. What we call "myth", "religion", and "fact" depends on who you talk to and their goals. The same thing undoubtedly happens in fantasy worlds!

[@andrewgreeb916]

The issue is since belief manifests reality, and reality manifests belief. You essentially have created a feedback loop that is only going to get more out of hand longer it goes on.

[@sarahlachman1349]

True, we humans love to catorgize things

[@MrTwrule]

If you think that's bad, the word 'fairy' etymologically means something like 'of the fates' - i.e., the children of the gods...which technically applies to every creature, including human beings and even most gods in the ancient pantheons. From what I can tell, the ancient Greeks and Romans at least seemed to use related terms to roughly mean any non-human, non-god, intelligent being or spirit. In Celtic myth, the 'fairies' were originally either people, giants, or gods who lost a war to another tribe of people/giants/gods and so retreated underground (where passage to the otherworld / realm of the dead was located, hence the relation to burial mounds). The word for them just meant 'people of the (burial) mound'. Some (but not all) of them took on some monstrous qualities but otherwise it seems that being a 'fairy' originally had more to do with where you lived than what you were.

[@kacperdrabikowski5074]

Well, there's also the famous "Fair Folk" descriptor (because that was the most popular phrase used to describe them so as not to insult them). I'm not that good at linguistics, so I can't tell for sure if "fairy" and "fair" share a common ancestor, but I wouldn't rule it out. I've also heard the interpretation that faires are everything liminal or 'between' - human and divine, good and evil, etc. That's why they were so commonly encountered at the crossroads (between places/roads), at midnight (between days) or at certain days between seasons (like Halloween, between autumn and winter)

[@Neutral_Tired]

in celtic mythology, pretty much all of those faeries, people and giants were gods or god-like beings but they were forced to rewrite their mythology when the christians invaded

[@MrTwrule]

@@Neutral_Tired I know that that's what's generally thought now; I just chose not to weigh in on that particular question (partly because leaving it ambiguous helped serve my point haha).

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

Not quite. The word Fairy is just the word fey plus a suffix meaning something like 'place of' The place where one finds feys, where the fay rule, etc. The original Latin was Fata, a goddess of fate, who herself's name is the plural of the general word for fate, as you yourself note, but as far as I'm aware this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Greek 'daimon' nor anything at all to do with a 'children of the gods' meanings. That is, to be quite honest, probably 19th/20th century bullshit (that time period was just rife with it). In fact, daimon was simply borrowed into Latin as Daemon, which is where we get demon from as you likely know already. The word fey was actually first used for a kind of stock character that occurred in late medieval and renaissance court epics and chivalric poems. Those poets were often strongly influenced by French traditions, or were just French themselves, which why the term was borrowed from French into English in the first place. It meant something like 'enchanted' or 'affected by magic/does magic' thus a fairy knight could be a knight who was cursed to wander around on his horse or something, or a fairy queen being a lady who'd take a human husband every century or something like that, you get the picture. Fairies then jumped from the literary tradition, where they were just fiction, into actual folk practices specifically in England and the lowlands of Scotland where they replaced older traditions of elves, or more accurately affected a paradigm shift. Witch hunts sadly more or less exterminated this, along with the general ravages of time causing the tradition to peter out Fairies don't begin being conflated with the Good Neighbor traditions of the Gaels (and the Welsh, though I don't know what they'd call theirs) until the 19th century when English romantism became really interested in these spirits and began calling them all fairies. That, 19th century romanticism and the beginnings of (yet to become professional) folkloristics, is when the term 'fairy' begins being used for spirits of all kinds. It's nowhere near the original use of the word by far. Ronald Hutton, a researcher in Folkloristics and the beginnings of the neo-pagan movement, has a really great book called "Queens of the Wild" whose chapter covering the origin of the idea of a fairy queen has much more information about the origins of the word fairy and how it was originally used. Also has some fascinating stuff into the Grimm Brother's invention of the wild hunt which you might find interesting.

[@MrTwrule]

@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 I fully submit that I may have some of the details above wrong, especially the one about there being a direct translation from 'daimon' to 'fata' (I've gone ahead and withdrawn that claim), but I do think there's a case to be made that my basic points hold regardless. You're right that the more developed word ('fairy') in the 12th and 13th centuries was more completely something like 'meeting place (of the fairies)' or just 'enchantment/magic' in general, which does actually indirectly align with my point about the Celtic focus on place, but as we are in agreement over, it does come back to 'Fata'. As you acknowledge, 'Fata' is a plural in Latin - to my knowledge, there is no one goddess named 'Fata', there are the 3 Fates, the same goddesses imported from Greek mythology, like the Romans did pretty much wholesale with the Greek pantheon. In Greek they were the Moirai, literally the apportioners of 'lots' or 'destinies' (meros) (i.e., they governed the fate of each individual). So there may be no direct linguistic connection between 'Fata' and 'Daimon', as I suggested above, but 'daimon' does often get used to mean 'destiny' or 'fate'. For example, in one of Heraclitus famous sayings: "ethos anthropos daimon", which roughly translates to "Character is fate/destiny". 'Daimon' itself means 'provider or divider (apportioner) of fates or fortunes' and so may not have been directly translated into the Latin but carries a very similar meaning to the 'meros' line. As for the 'children of the gods' relationship in the Greek, I was admittedly thinking of Socrates in the Apology, who claimed to have a daimon, a spirit which seemed to haunt him and sometimes tell him what not to do, and part of his defense against the charge of impiety in his trial was that if he apparently believed in 'the children of the gods' (like the daimon), then he must believe in the gods too. 'Daimon' seems to be used at least for a variety of spirits/powers who range from lesser deity status to something as lowly and simple as what haunted Socrates (though I realize that there is some controversy over whether they were mostly more deific before Plato). A similar idea seems to have been preserved in the much later 14th century Old French 'fate', which could mean ('one's guiding spirit' in addition to 'one's destiny'). From what sources I could find, 'fey' was actually a separate offshoot word which neither evolved into our word 'fairy' nor shared the same etymological line between 'fairy' and 'fate', even though it too carried some similar connotations, namely the sense of being 'fated to die' or 'possessed by spirits' - though some sources suggest that this may be because of a confusion with the similar word 'fay' (which *is* connected directly to 'fate' and 'fairy'). Perhaps it's thanks to several such linguistic entanglements, among other historical influences, that our modern nebulous idea of 'fairies' came about. Anyway, as I said up front, I am willing to defer to those with more expertise in this matter than myself. I did not intend to claim any special authority on these matters - I am just something of an independent dabbler in these topics where they happen to intersect with my actual area of expertise (which is neither linguistics nor the anthropology of folklore). It's certainly interesting to learn about different perspectives on the matter though.

[@catdragon1313]

Always here for a lore dump courtesy of the Runesmith. Thanks papa Logan! 🎉

[@KevinCrouch0]

Right? I'm pretty sure it's not even technically lore unless it's a video from RuneSmith

[@wyattlangille8319]

If you like stuff like this, "GM Word of the Week Podcast" is great. They go through the history of lots of words related to D&D

[@kid14346]

I tried doing a little TTRPG translation into Esperanto as a practice for myself... when I got to Fairies, Goblins, Kobolds, Gnomes, and Dwarves the entire thing started to fall apart. Edit: Oh my god it really doesn't help when you start getting into the stories of creatures that the Europeans learned from other cultures and just went, "Sounds like a fairy... I'm just gonna say it was a fairy."

[@PopfulFrost]

To be fair, there IS a lot of overlap between "weird supernatural gooblies" of various cultures. Yokai have a lot in common with fae, and you have plenty of Native American cultures with stories about little men and mischievous or downright inscrutable spirits roaming the woods. Plus, the field of anthropology is mired in some very imperialistic baggage that it's only recently been starting to shed. Learning to think about and record things on their own terms is a fairly recent thing, for the most part.

[@mapache-ehcapam]

​@@PopfulFrost Lol yeah where I'm from we have a little goblin looking ugly dude that kidnaps good looking women and rapes them, it's the Trauco.

[@Silungar]

Fun Fact: Since the word "Goblin" wasn't really a thing here in germany before it got introduced via the fantasy genre, many old fantasy stories translated "Goblin" with "Kobold", as those two fairy tale creatures were basically the same thing (the latest example I could find was Dragon's Dogma, which came out at a similar time as Skyrim) Other german names for goblin-like creature include: Wichtel, Hauselfen, Hausschrate, Waldschrate, Grottenschrate (also the german translation for "Bugbear" btw), Milchhasen, Mühlenkobolde, Feen, Alben, Klabautermänner and many more. We... we have a lot of Goblins... (Elves also had a similar fate, often being translated as "Elben" - even in the german translation of Lord of the Rings; Dwarves on the other hand have always been "Zwerge" in german, no changes there)

[@brandongalvan6603]

DM: "Are you a Seelie or an Unseelie?" Fairy Barbarian: "Well, that depends. If you're one of my party, then I'm just a silly little dude. If you're my enemy, then I'm a whirling blitz of death and destruction."

[@edwardg8912]

A slight correction. Fairies were sometimes thought of as demons, but generally, in the Medieval times, they were thought of something else. Spirits of nature or something from the Otherworld, sometimes they were even conceived of as angels who neither supported or rebelled against God. Lots of interesting things there.

[@zanir2387]

Also, they wre thought as the gods of old, like the greek nymphs

[@l.psimer6124]

At least in terms of DND I see fey as an in-between of fiends and celestials.

[@bakawaki]

It's interesting how DnD changed the modern perception of kobolds from tiny goblin/imp-like fairies into reptilian dragonic scalies. The funny thing is, early Japanese anime based their kobolds off of the early depictions of DnD kobolds which were dog like, so their versions of kobolds ended up like humanoid dogs. One example of this lasting trend is Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon) which has a wild variety of humanoid canines.

[@andrejg4136]

Final Fantasy 14 also have more furry Kobolds. They are basically like gnomes and look half dog and half rat (it makes more sense when you look at them).

[@proxy90909]

Oh yeah, not "recent" but _Record of Lodoss War_ has a bunch of scenes with kobolds and they look closer to modern Gnolls than modern Kobolds (Being that its an anime adaptation of a novelization of a written replay of a D&D campaign kind explains a bit I guess)

[@MonkeyJedi99]

In a LARP I played, I helped the creator of the setting with database stuff and successfully campaigned to get their kobold race to be both furry and blue instead of red and scaly. - In part it was because I had recently learned different versions of the kobold mythologies, and in part because the red makeup stained skin for a week or more, while the blue stuff only really permanently stained clothing.

[@Tortferngatr]

Meanwhile my introduction to Kobolds was Hearthstone, where they’re rat people who wear candles on their heads and think everyone is trying to take their candles.

[@timhaldane7588]

My introduction to Kobolds was the original Bard's Tale PC game from the mid 80's, where Kobolds shared the same creature image as Gnomes, and had that deeply-wrinkled-weathered-old-man-with-bulbous-features / Hoggle-from-Labyrinth look. As opposed to the red cap garden Gnomes. It took a while to get used to the D&D mini dragons.

[@PhilTruthborne]

I'd like to add regarding the Swedish fairies in later-to-current times are also split in multiple categories as well. What you displayed in the vid is (nowadays) a tomte, a little fellow who takes cares of farms and their animals, but if you don't treat them well and misbehave they start causing trouble for you instead of helping. Meanwhile, älvor are more like spirit-like people who are generally very mysterious and something you are told to be weary of. Mist gatgered in fields is literally called "älvdans" (fairy dance) as well as it was believed it wad the fairies dancing and you could see them if you look closely, but if you were tempted to join them you could get lost in the dance forever and disappear.

[@missa2855]

I don't think it's a newer thing elves are the spooky ladies that take you. We have old folksongs from the 11-1300s of elven girls luring men with them to their death. Hr bøsmer i elverhøj is one example. Though I guess in Sweden that is a story about a mermaid. "ungersven och havsfrun"

[@PhilTruthborne]

@@missa2855 Ngl i used the term "newer" really loosely hehe... at least newer than the very origin that's named in the video xd But yes you're absolutely right about our versions, they seem to vary quite a bit even between the neighbouring countries. I also think Näcken is a fairy to some degree? The naked lad playing a violin who lures people into streams to drown. Don't quote me on that one tho lol

[@vatril]

In my homebrew world fae, celestials and fiends are all the same thing: nature spirits. Celestials are good and helpful spirits, Fiends are evil spirits and fae are neutral spirits.

[@QuintonCenter]

Regarding Banshees, you mentioned that they were part of a group that would "kill solicitors," but the Banshee is not violent or vengeful at all. She is highly misunderstood by modern pop culture, but in traditional Irish folklore, the Banshee (or Bean sí, in the original Irish) is a spirit loosely associated with the faeries who acts as a harbinger of death for members of certain old Irish families (such as the Kellys, the Murphys, etc.), so when a member of such a family is about to die, those around them will hear the Banshee cry. It is not an evil thing, but a mournful thing. If you're curious to learn more about the original Banshee, this is a great introduction: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWKQiqZsatWkbqs

[@Barziboy]

In Irish mythology, it's believed that once the invader race of god-like men known as the Tuatha de Dannan lost power of Ireland to the battle-hardy Fianna, they devolved into smaller forms of themselves and moved underground, then becoming the angry and spiteful Sidhe, where as the winners of the myth stories (i.e. Fionn mac Cumhail) grew in size and importance until he literally became a giant who helped form the Giant's Causeway.

[@dragon12234]

It depends. In the stories I know Fionn came a lot later, and the ones that pushed the Tuatha underground were the Milesians, or the Sons of Mil who are the modern Irish people who arrived from Spain after wandering the earth for 400 years. They invaded Ireland, and then made a deal with the Tuatha to split it in half, and the Milesians took the top half

[@garfieldcat007]

I remember in Disney's Gargoyles all the mythological beings they encountered who were not gargoyles were called Children of Oberon. I just looked up Oberon and it points to a character from the shakespeare play mentioned in this video who happens to be "the king of the fairies". I think the show's creators REALLY understood the mytholgies the show tackled if they made HIM the boss.

[@gwest3644]

5:15 A lesser known Shakespearean fairy royal is Queen Mab, “the fairies’ midwife” mentioned in a bit of a tangent in Romeo and Juliet, who supposedly gave people dreams and rode in a carriage made of insect parts and an empty hazelnut.

[@Jaydee-wd7wr]

Oh god I had to memorise that, by design, mostly meaningless rant for English in high school…

[@timhaldane7588]

Ah, I see Queen Mab hath been with you

[@kamikeserpentail3778]

Thanks to Dresden Files, one of the ones I've most heard of

[@levongevorgyan6789]

I’m guessing the reason Tolkien didn’t call Hobbits gnomes is because in an early draft of the Fall of Gondolin, he called the Noldor Elves gnomes. Maybe in his head cannon or something, he had it that the gnomes were inspired by the Noldor.

[@chonflis3834]

*Token

[@dcbandit]

Leprechaun is actually the name of a solitary faery, and originally wore red. The modern version is indeed very modern, the original is literally an outcast from faerykin and is forced to speak in riddles, and generally are like those hermits with shotguns who hate intruders, but with magic and way too much creativity and think it's hilarious to tie your hair to your bed frame while you sleep. Also, the headless rider, the Dulahan, is a faery that acts effectively as an Irish Grim Reaper, that, along with the doppelganger, pretty much just kills you by being seen. And you live happily ever after, the end.

[@zoidsfan12]

I kinda like that idea of old people and kids being the only mischievous ones left. Because I've noticed that a lot, old people kinda become kids again, everyday is this wonderful thing. It's even more interesting seeing that it's an old enough wisdom that it's in our tales. Honestly felt for a long time that I can't wait to be old and be able to get away with fucking with people. Like yeah I've got goals I wanna accomplish before that point etc. But I can't wait to be at the point where I'm like George Carlin, I can act tired to get out of something, soil myself if I really just don't feel like getting up, and pretty much get away with anything.

[@Frudki]

The reason Tolkien never used gnomes as a name for hobbits or dwarves is that it's actually an early name for the Noldor elves, like Galadriel

[@lisaellis2593]

The Seelie Court, are just as Wicked as the Unseelie Court, good or bad is a human concept and is foreign to them, and they view us, as , pets, toys, or food,.

[@stephenkellett7836]

It turns out that it's really difficult to define and categorize the leftovers of lost oral traditions that weren't at all interested in classifying most things or anything at all.

[@ryankunst668]

I like how this didn't even get into the D&D lore. It started off with the real life inspiration as usual, but that was just so goddamn indecipherable it took over the whole video. Also: I knew the kobold thing because I learned recently that the name for cobalt comes from kobolds. Presumably someone went into a cave and saw a weird rock and was like "oh fuck this is some kinda magic goblin cave, I better GTFO."

[@Nat-ri3ip]

What's funny in Tolkien's book is that the most prominent angel-like figure is a wandering firework peddler that smoke weed with the short peoples. The elves are just humans but long-lived (and those that survived became wise).

[@arellajardin8188]

Celts: Here's our creation myth. Christians: Needs more Jesus. Here, let me write that for you.

[@Crispifordthe3rd515]

Based honestly. But I do want an unchristianized version. I wanna know what it was really like.

[@ConstantChaos1]

Pretty much I mean shit my family never actually converted and even we know little of our origins because it was punishable by death to practice the old ways so we had to teach without quite saying what our traditions are. Now we can just say it but until... well now it can still get you shunned to be like "oh and the old gods did xyz"

[@ConstantChaos1]

​@Crispiford the 3rd legit a huge part of it is that even the creatures that deal with fate and destiny know that destiny can be muddled with, things are less fateful there isn't the eternal heaven or he'll that you are predestined for cuz Jesus says so things we're just more random and that's ok, unless you were a controll freak emperor who wanted absolute power which would make you hostile to the idea that who knows maybe in a week the whole system would fall by chance. In the pre colonial world random acts of chance dictated life but post colonial everything was part of "gods plan" Idk if I've made any sense but in short life and belief before it was "well shit happens so let's have fun and suffer at random but do our best to have more fun than suffering" while after it's much more "everything is predetermined and working toard good or bad afterlives"

[@Crispifordthe3rd515]

@@ConstantChaos1 please make your paragraph more readable. I can barely understand what the hell you were talking about lol.

[@PaladinLevi]

@@Crispifordthe3rd515 His name checks out.

[@shidosuteshi464]

Im really enjoying these random lore videos. First, Norse Creation and now Faerie origins. Id honestly love to see more of these types of videos.

[@sevearka]

Love that you included the little tomte at 2:17 (Swedish equivalent to gnome sort of, someone correct me) from one of our most famous storybooks about them (in which they were tortured by trolls). My mom grew up with that one and used to read it to us.

[@markusbarten455]

It gets even weirder when one considers that when what was left of the celtic mythology was written down, their gods were first retconned into being fearies (Sidhe) and then retconned again into warlords and sorcerors.

[@kevinedwards5390]

More Fey content would be appreciated. But you're awesome either way, keep on keeping on

[@andrewgreeb916]

The logic of all this is weird, you could honesty have an easier time depicting what isn't fey.

[@Daves-not-here]

So basically everything both is and is not a fae unless it’s human, but even then it still might be a fae disguised as a human, and also, they’ve all died or have otherwise left the mortal realm except for a small few that only like to mess with children and the elderly.

[@andrejg4136]

It loops back around with Elves (post-Tolkein) being the closest 'fantastical race' to Humans and the less human they are physically the more weird we consider them.

[@AzraelThanatos]

Tolkien didn't base the elves on angels...that would be the wizards there. You do have taller fey groups and even elves that are more human sized (Norse with the Dark and Light Elves for example) and you have groups like the Danu

[@TheJohtunnBandit]

I wonder if African folklore includes little people/earth people, it would be interesting to see a map of areas with stories like that and compare it to non homo-sapien hominid distribution. I always wonder if these stories are old memories of people like the Denisovans.

[@elvingearmasterirma7241]

There are

[@marcogenovesi8570]

all cultures have stories of little people and of giants. Human imagination does follow the same pattern after all

[@thfkmnIII]

Denisovans couldve been an inspiration, and theres also Pygmies, who were probably demystified after the were systematically enslaved and abused by the Bantu majority.

[@joshuaevans6295]

I'm witnessing this channel turn into a real-world mythology channel in real time and I am all here for it

[@Thunderwolf4]

A bit confused cause Tolkien took his inspiration for elves from Norse Mythology. Which never actually depicted them as small but pretty normal size. But again different cultures and regions have different interpretations for the same creatures.

[@egoalter1276]

Yeah, vanhír are pretty much tolkien elves.

[@LittleMezzoBird]

@@egoalter1276 There is a branch of Tolkien's elves called the Vanyar. They don't come into any of the stories, though, because all of them went to Valinor when originally invited, and then they were too smart to subsequently leave.

[@ragg232]

So "fairy" is basically an umbrella term for various mythological and folklore beings. Definitely gives some wiggle room for some pretty bizarre creatures.

[@Rawkwilder]

Fun fact... There's a faerie in Germany called "Erlkönig" . Patron of the hunters, sometimes Leader of the "wild hunt" and names sake to the BMW prototypes. he hunts in the Black Forest, a forest named that because it's apparently so thicc that no sunlight reaches the forest floor. If there's a grimm brothers fairy tale with a dark creepy forest chances are that it takes place the Black Forest of Germany.

[@bendonatier]

This is why I love fairies in my DND. There's just so much you can do with them, even if they don't all have the fairy tag. Let's all put on our green spandex, speak our magic words(do not steal), and find our fairies. Surely 35 isn't too old to see they fey.

[@eldritchelsbells]

The Hi-Ho caught me off guard ngl xD I never get tired of these videos, thanks for providing us with the sweet lore we didn't know we needed ✌

[@ChibiRagdoll.]

There's a possibility that people who were thought to be changelings were actually neurodivergent people, since they seemed to be "normal" or even advanced babies and children until they suddenly started acting differently, which is a commonly recognized sign of various disorders today.

[@9Johnny8]

I love the way different names for Fae are interpreted: there's Fae, Faerie = Fae Realm/Land of the Fae, Fairy is basically faerie, so inhabitant of the land of the fae. Meanwhile Fey = fated to die, not etymologically related as far as I know.

[@celticbear714]

Midsummer is my favorite play, and everything Rune said about it in this video is 100% correct

[@brianlarson8878]

You tired to define the fey, and found that they make up a little bit of everything, thus making them undefinable. Good research job, thats the most fey answer ever, and probably what they want.

[@skates180]

A flowchart showing the fairy "lineage" would be a magnificent poster

[@torinnbalasar6774]

I remember having to read the first part of Beowulf in highschool, and it's long-winded exposition dump to explain monsters at the beginning. Iirc, it was properly written down from oral traditions well after Christianity had permeated the culture, so it basically said that literally anything that wasn't either a human or a normal animal was a descendant of Cain, and obviously evil, and refered to them all under the umbrella term of fae.

[@WolfCry791]

In Irish and Welsh lore, the Sidhé already had royalty based off of the local tribal hierarchies all ruled over by a High King. Shakespeare wasn't the first to add that into faerie lore

[@weezact7]

One of the thing that makes such research difficult and often contradictory (most of what was said in this video is different than the books I've read on the subject, for example) is that most of these concepts were poorly defined within their own culture and changed over time. Words like "Troll" in Scandinavia, "Oni" in Japanese, and yes "faerie" in Celtic and Old English referred to a lot of quasi-related beings that varied from tribe to tribe. As we developed more agrarian lifestyles, our populations and cities grew, and such tribes merged together, you had all these conflicting (but frustratingly similar) ideas about what these mythological creatures actually ARE.

[@andrewgreeb916]

Mythological creatures are a grab bag, I remember looking up vampires and the wiki has a massive chart of variations and different iterations with largely no unifying aspects besides not liking the sun and having longer canine teeth.

[@FirstLast-wk3kc]

Your participation in mythology KZbin is commendable and respected. Thanks and good luck

[@SockieTheSockPuppet]

As to the LOTR part. Eru Illuvatar is God, the Valar are essentially lesser gods/Archangels, the Maiar (Wizards and Balrogs) are lesser Angels, and there are multiple types of Elves, one of which is the Noldor. The Noldor that are in Tolkien's works were where the word for Gnome comes from, as the Noldor during a large chunk of their prominence held court in a cavern-palace adorned with beautiful jewels.

[@LittleMezzoBird]

Thank you. Elves are not angels, and anyone who doubts this needs to read The Silmarillion. They were decidedly un-angelic there.

[@caitlinsnowfrost8244]

4:02 Banshees aren't actually malevolent, depending on the folklore! They warn the family that someone will die soon, but they themselves aren't responsible for that person's death; they're just the messenger. They're generally still thought of as scary even with this more benevolent portrayal, though! Dullahans, on the other hand...hoo boy.

[@chillax319]

I found the easiest explanation for fairies to be "they are European yokai". Basically a category of different spirits and supernatural creatures. PS: I like the idea that fairies appear only to children because they are innocent and don't know szit and to elderly because they learned to not give a single f anymore.

[@oghus]

"You can step into a fairy ring and be fine..." Exactly what a fairy would say to lure me in. Nice try, very nice try :D

[@TentenchiAMVs]

That quick rundown of history segment was priceless! So funny, yet so informative! I couldn't stop laughing. Great job, man. Great job. 😂👍

[@miguelmulero2802]

5:23 To be honest this seems like the most Fae Like shenanigan I’ve ever heard

[@dudefrombelgium]

Thank you for finally shedding some light on what is actually the history and origin of the various farie creatures.

[@joes5010]

Classifying Fairies becomes fundamentally impossible the more cultures versions that get added and has a similar problem to dragons. Rather than any specific thing it just becomes a catch-all term 'magical people not seen in the regular world' in the same way any 'magical lizard thing' becomes either a dragon or a sea serpent while some class sea serpents as a type of dragon.

[@TooHaiku]

The you explain history and mythology is incredible! I've been a fan of your DnD lore videos for years, and mythology is a natural (and welcome) next step for the channel! I'd love to see your take on Shinto mythology.

[@vragithemutant]

I just noticed that the picture shown of an 'älva' with the pointed hat used to shield from pinecones is actually a Dutch 'kabouter 2:12 '. There is this great book about them by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet (also the artist of the pinecone image), describing the day-to-day life and culture of these creatures. The dutch title is 'Leven en werken van de Kabouter'.It is a very fascinating read if you are into 'fantastical science'. There is apparently a part two in which the kabouters themselves clear up certain mistakes made in the first book.

[@colleen6440]

I had friend from Newfoundland who was genuinely superstitious about fairies and would get creeped out when we talked about them. He said everyone there was like that.

[@AuntieHauntieGames]

Also many fairies are just straight up dead folk. A lot of the unseelie were said to be ghosts who, by nature of being supernatural, were fairies. Human while alive, fairy when dead. The sluagh are a good example of this.

[@arbiterskiss6692]

Here's something else to send you for a spin; the word Eldritch was first used to mean 'elf kingdom'(probably, there is debate on the subject). So everything that can be described as an Eldritch horror is just Unsellie. Lovecraft was writting fairy-tales all along.

[@HowlandGreywolfe]

Astronaut 1: Wait, they're all just fairies Astronaut 2 with a wand of magic missile: Always have been

[@GenkiGirl12]

Somebody also told me that fey have no concept of morality so dealing with them is a complete crap shoot of them either helping you or screwing you over.

[@skates180]

Another thing to note is that Tolkein took his varient of elves from Irish mythology, specifically the Tuatha de Danann. (He apparently vehemently denied this influence, but when his "elves" are almost nothing like traditional elves and instead better described [as the Tuatha are] as "...a supernatural race, much like idealized humans, who are immune from ageing and sickness, and who have powers of magic," its not hard to make the leap in logic. Well, I say leap, more of a mild side-step of logic.)

[@Matau228]

Fun fact about names: Tatiana means "Daughter of Titans," (as in the children of Gaia) meaning she is not only Fae but the descendant of Greek gods. Additionally, it's thought that "Leprechaun" was derived from the god Lugh, who became "Lugh-chromain" (Lugh, who stoops), because he had to hunch his shoulders to fit underground and live with the Sidh once Christianization began in Ireland.

[@G-Blockster]

This is a timely video. My research has yielded similar findings. You won bonus points because I'm a huge medieval history buff as well as a fan of Tolkien.

[@TonyRedgrave]

So, fairy lore is confusing, whimsical, random, and scattered-brained? Sounds like some Fae mischief right there.

[@fangorn23]

Immediate thumbs up for contextualizing all "native folklore" as far as europe goes as "people getting drunk more than a few days travel from the nearest town or village"

[@InquisitorThomas]

Tinkerbell would be a lot cooler if she rode a black horse while wielding a spine as a whip and throwing blood at on lookers. Fight me.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

that's metal

[@thfkmnIII]

*Blackwashed Tinkerbell on a black horse with a spine whip

[@angeldude101]

Clearly you've never seen Tinkerbell tinker. Hate to break it to you, but probably the world's most famous fairy is secretly a mech-eng in her own movies.

[@dylansearcy3966]

2:05 elves in Swedish folklore resemble their Norse ancestors being very attractive with slender forms and small insect wings

[@mTealeaf]

I'm a 33yo Strongheart halfling from the south, east of Halruua, who moved up next to Waterdeep, and I still see fairies almost every day. They don't /only/ show up for the elderly and children, but they certainly don't show up for people who are terminally technologic, or who don't have the patience to sit alongside both Silence and Nature. With moderation of both order and chaos, and a reverent awe for the earth and skies, you too, humble reader here on KZbin, can see and speak with the fae as well.

[@jpmx4757]

As a fan of mythology since I was a child, I have always loved seeing people's reaction when they found out that the term fairy (or well, "ferico" is the umbrella term in my case as a Spanish speaker) is much more flexible than what people give credit to

[@Trivial_Whim]

If you look at it as tiny people of the Earth or dwarf like creatures then they are a global concept. Like, the idea of small, magical humanoids that live underground and went away a long time ago extends all the way to pre-“discovered” Hawaii. And if it made it to some place as ludicrously remote as that, you just know there are versions all over the world.

[@kirilbulgariev]

1:52 this is amazing!

[@ezrafaulk3076]

*If* this guys info is correct, it'd *support* the idea I had for my TTRPG system I'm writing for Jötnar and Djinn to be two species of fairy even though in the myths they appear in, they're *way* bigger than most people imagine fairies to be ( *towering* over humans and even *other* fairy species).

[@marcogenovesi8570]

A fairy always exactly knows what a fairy is, because it always knows what it isn't.

[@luckyday5721]

I've been thinking of stories with fairies crossing over and being a big mix of chaos across worlds and the babies they take when they use changlings becoming the fey royalty and serve as leaders because fey are just too chaotic to control themselves.

[@Groddon]

Farmer: what a lovely night. "Ivaded by dark spirit Hellequin of the Wild Hunt."

[@ianyoder2537]

I'm actually planning a campaign that takes place in the fey wild. I'll start off telling the players that this campaign takes place in the fay wild and you should all play a race with innate spell casting. Start off getting the players used to the weird and wacky status quo of the setting and then once the novelty starts to wear off a little, they see it. "An odd giant bug like you've never seen before. It's got a carapace like any other giant bug, and it buzzes and flies just the same. But that's where the similarity's end. It's body is unnaturally shaped, the size and shape of a jewelry box. Perfectly angular and measured as though hand crafted. It's dull black like unpolished onyx but as smooth ad though it was polished. It only has one eye and 4 rigid limbs spread out wide. It doesn't have 2 wings on it's back like any other bug, but instead it's got 4 sets of tiny wings on the end of it's limbs. It hovers over you for a second, looking at you. Then it flies off in a perfectly strait line." I'll leave the players with that description of a drone and let them deal with the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge. And that's where the plot finally starts. The barrier separating the realms of human's and fey has finally been breached. It's been centuries since a fey and human last made contact, and those stories have since become myth. Now just as in the days of antiquity when the fey could enter the human realm with their magic, now modern day humans have found a way to explore the fey wild.

[@arzadu1138]

GOD thank you for making this. thrilled for some more folks to realize that the concept of "fairy" is (usually) Celtic in origin, not something invented by pop culture/YA authors/Tolkien. Would love to see a source list in the description, though.

[@cesare_1302]

2:22 well technically tall elves exist in the poetic Edda. Iirc it's Snorri Sturluson that didn't like the elves/dwarves conundrum thus making the latter their own thing while dividing the former into light and dark elves in the prose Edda. And given how closely related they're with gods (in the original myht) he may have implied the similarity with angelic being while doing that. Than Tolkien recycled the idea

[@TheVoid_Dweller]

You are one of the few people that I like to hear rant about a random topic. Also your voice is nice. Thank you

[@TheRoomforImprovement]

I really like the idea of Angels, Devils and Fae were all cut from the same cloth. It’s something I plan to explore in my own fantasy series.

[@chadsmith8966]

As someone else said, fairy is more an umbrella term than a specific creature. Worst part is anything more spirit (ethereal) than human (corporeal) could be classified as fae. So ghosts, ghouls, ghuls (Arabian corpse eating demon), orc (originally a type of demon or undead creature), revenants (vengeful spirit) werewolves, and vampires can be classified as fae.

[@Fallenmonkd20]

Midsummer nights dream was basically mom and dad are getting divorced and making it everyone else's problems instead if handling it privately

[@peterdevido8836]

this video kinda makes me wanna write a campaign where the party gets roped into tracking down fae and slowly go through each of these categories and get progressively more confused and annoyed, until they finally get to Actual Faerie Land and party with Titania and shit, but then they witness an ancient ritual where the fae shed all of their glamour and the twist is that Jacques Valee is right, the fairies are greys and interdimensional beings, and the campaign turns into an extended TOOL video where the party has to help Titania protect the world from Cthulhu or some shit

[@clone_69]

Random Trivia: The Noldor of Tolkien's Silmarillion were actually supposed to be Gnomes, and they were even renamed Gnoldor in posthumous works edited by Christopher Tolkien.

[@Flummiification]

nice take. If you read into this stuff there are really interesting parallels through cultures that do things like explain different concepts or illnesses or beliefs. This is very European I've yet to learn more about how these developed in African, American, Asian and Australian cultures. What I really liked in a book about this was how many superstitions are centered around the belief of the soul. Like shapechanging, blood drinking or butter stealing of mythical creatures. Also the term Fairy is very broadly used in Germany we wouldn't really throw all these together in such a specific way.

[@bogats2397]

I may be wrong, but weren't Elves and Dwarves called Elfs and Dwarfs before Tolkien wrote his books? I remember something like that being explained in The Hobbit's foreword.

[@gailengigabyte6221]

For me, with the knowledge of dnd and celtic folklore, the fae are more the living embodiment of emotional chaos. Happiness, sadness, anger, vanity, desire, and more, all cranked up to 11, and affect non fae either directly or indirectly. Thats kidna why there are so many creatures that look nothing like each other, but are categorized as Fae in stuff like dnd.

[@NaviciaAbbot]

Basically, if you aren't comfirmably human, a mute beast, or a dragon, you are a fairy.

[@bastionsea2829]

That ending makes it even more amusing that one of my players (in highschool I believe) tried to convince me to let her play a fairy

[@natsuquilava7917]

And this is why the fairy type in pokemon is both a mix of cute pink creatures and a gaggle of goofy, funky looking critters.

[@retts75]

I'm loving the new "hellooooo" Makes me giggle way too much every time

[@TheBlackSerpentBeta]

*looks at the notes for my setting on fairies* "The Fey are being of pure chaos"