Dissecting Literature

Today's topic isn't specifically a type of fairy (or a myth circle about fairies), rather a phenomenon linking us to this blog's origins (about myths founded on rare or misunderstood medical conditions) while still remaining in the court of these many-faced spirits. The fairies definitely have a bright side, as cute little winged creatures, or oversexualized sexy bad guys (I’m looking at you SJM), but there are some very dark tales and legends surrounding them. So today, let me introduce to you the strange occurence that was the Changelings. In Europe, people believed that fairies could (and most definitely would) kidnap babies from their cradle and replace them with either a young of their own, or a fairly old fairy to live his last days with a caring family. This fairy baby is the changeling. But how could someone think that their child was in fact a changeling? In old times, when fitting in with society was literally a matter of life and death, anything strange about a c...

To be honest, I was intimated by the amount of raw lore surrounding today’s topic, but it’s pretty much unavoidable when speaking about fairies. From Shakespear and Tolkien to Neil Gaiman and Sarah J. Maas, writers love drawing on the mysterious Celts (especially their Irish variant) when portraying fae creatures, because this was basically the culture that made them famous. It’s the first thing people think about hearing the word “fairy”, so let us not tally longer and plunge into this monster of a trope. In Irish-Celtic mythology, the Tuath Dé, or Tuatha dé Danann (“the tribe of the goddess Danu” or “the tribe of the gods”) are a supernatural race of people, making up most of the region’s pre-christian pantheon, filling every must-have god role  (like we talked about in here ). As belief holds, they dwelled in the Otherworld, a plane specifically for supernatural creatures accessible through ancient passage tombs (a type of underground burial mound with a narrow, mostly stone p...