Medieval Fairy: The Perilous World of Enchanted Beings

Today, when we think of fairies, images of charming diminutive feminine sprites with colourful butterfly wings may spring to mind. These are the romantic depictions of the fairy kind popularised by Victorian writers and artists. However, they have not always been seen as either so delightful or benign.

In medieval times, fairy folk were generally portrayed as enigmatic supernatural beings with magical powers. Their bewildering enchantments were often dangerous and tainted with a disturbing hint of paganism. They could certainly be charming, beautiful, and alluring. However, they were also dangerous and highly capricious. Dealing with a fairy was risky and, for the foolhardy, often doomed.

Legacy of a Pagan Past

So, how were fairies viewed in medieval times? In truth, the concept of fairies evolved from a mixed legacy of earlier pagan traditions. Identifying a true pagan antecedent for the medieval fairy is an impossible task. This is because they were not the product of a single pagan culture but of a blending of different ones.

Old myths from the classical world spoke of a variety of nature spirits, some of which were regarded as semi-divine in Roman times. These included the naiads of streams and brooks, dryads of the woods, and oreads of wild mountain places. There were also deities such as the god Pan, half goat, half man, and lord of the wilderness. All these entities held a strong association with both nature and, of course, paganism.

However, in addition to these old classical myths, the medieval world also inherited tales of mysterious otherworldly beings from both Celtic and Germanic pagan traditions.

Beings of the Celtic Otherworld

The Tuatha Dé Danann as depicted in John Duncan’s Riders of the Sidhe (1911)

Celtic mythology provided a different vision of the fairy. In Celtic cultures, such entities were supernatural, in some cases semi-divine, and, almost always, possessing potent magical powers. In Irish culture, they were the Tuatha dé Danann, who haunted a mysterious underworld realm, hidden beneath ancient prehistoric burial mounds. In early Welsh and Brittonic mythology, they were people of the otherworldly realm of Annwn. Such entities usually appeared in human form, although many possessed shape-changing powers. Rarely, if ever, were they depicted as diminutive but, almost always, as potentially dangerous, magical, and not entirely of our world.

Old Brittonic tales, surviving both in Welsh and Breton folk traditions, referenced another mysterious diminutive fairy race. These are recorded in medieval Welsh triads as the ‘Coraniaid’. They were said to be one of three great oppressors of the ancient Britons (the other two being Picts and Saxons). Their name literally implies a race of dwarfs.

Germanic and Norse Elves

Wayland in Fredrik Sander’s 1893 Swedish edition of the Poetic Edda

Elves appear in both Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology. An especially famous elf (indeed one of the very few to be named in early medieval tales) is Wayland Smith. Only the Norse version of his tale survives, but images of the famous smith’s tale on the C8th Frank’s Casket show that he was also part of early Anglo-Saxon mythology.

Wayland was an elven smith of such great skill that a human king enslaved him, forcing him to labour in his service. The hapless Wayland was hamstrung and exiled to an island forge to prevent his escape. In revenge, Wayland slays the king’s sons and ravishes his daughter before making good his escape by means of magical flight. Like Wayland, many elves in Germanic mythology crafted the most fantastic, enchanted items. This ability to create wonderous enchantments fed through into many later medieval fairy tales.

Whilst Wayland is depicted as being of human appearance, the pagan Germanic elves, like the Brittonic Coraniaid, could also be depicted as diminutive. Old Anglo-Saxon books of medicinal remedies speak of charms used to counter the insidious ‘elf-shot’. These tiny magical arrows were clearly fired by small elf archers. Elf shots had supernatural properties, causing disease in cattle or inducing night terrors in those unfortunate enough to be struck by one.

King Herla’s Ride

One of the more famous medieval fairy tales concerns King Herla. This story was first told by Walter Map, a cleric of King Henry II’s court. Map had connections with Wales and drew on old Welsh folk traditions for inspiration. However, he was also classically educated. As a result, his fairy tale blends older mythical concepts.
In this tale, the Briton King Herla is invited to attend an otherworldly wedding by a mysterious fairy king. The fairy king is described as a pygmy-like creature with the appearance of a classical faun. In his dealings with Herla, the fairy king is most cordial. When Herla and his court visit his beautiful underworld kingdom, they are treated to a lavish feast and proffered with gifts. Herla is given a small bloodhound before his party returns. However, the faun-king warns Herla’s party not to dismount before the bloodhound on their return to the mundane world.
Alas, the bloodhound does not dismount, and anyone attempting to dismount before it is turned to dust. As a result, Herla and his court are doomed to roam the countryside as a spectral host. Map tells us that Herla’s spectral riders were seen several times before they finally disappeared, never to be seen again.

Sir Orfeo

Orpheus glances back at Eurydice, 1806 oil painting by Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein Stub.

Sir Orfeo is a Middle English poem dating to the late C13th or early C14th. It claims to be based on an earlier Breton lai (now lost). The story is a version of the old classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (reimagined as Sir Orfeo and Heurodis). However, it features a mystical fairy otherworld rather than the grim underworld of Hades.

In this story, Sir Orfeo’s wife, Heurodis, is spirited away by the magic of a fairy king. To win her back, Sir Orfeo must travel to the otherworld kingdom of her abductor. This involves passing into a mysterious underworld filled with light and marvels. He finally gains access to the Fairy King’s wonderous palace by offering to play him music. There he encounters many people whom the Fairy King has spirited away to his palace. They are held there in a sinister form of suspended animation, trapped in a half-life between living and dying. Sir Orfeo sees women caught in the moment of death in childbirth and knights dying from wounds in battle. However, he also spies his wife, asleep under a tree.
Sir Orfeo, of course, wins back his wife with his musical performance just as classical Orpheus wins back his love from the court of Hades.

Mixed Inheritance

Both Herla and Orfeo blend different pagan traditions to create a new, composite vision of the fairy kind.

In Herla’s tale, the fairy folk described contain a mix of classical, Celtic, and Germanic qualities. They are faun-like, a clear reference to classical mythology. Their diminutive stature is reminiscent of the Brittonic Coraniaid or Germanic Elves. Their underworld realm recalls the ancient barrow dwellings of the Tuatha dé Danann.

In Sir Orfeo, the story’s link to classical mythology is clear. However, the beauty of the underworld realm and the magnificence of its King owe more to Celtic mythology than Roman. Gone is the dismal pagan underworld of Hades. In its place, we are treated to a mysterious and intoxicating Neverland of great beauty. It’s not heaven, or hell, or purgatory, but neither is our world. It is a dream world occupying the cracks in between: beautiful yet clearly perilous and enigmatic.

A Wild and Dangerous Power

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (from original manuscript, artist unknown).

How, then, were such entities as fairies, with their connection to a pagan past, viewed in the medieval Christian mind?

In the late medieval tale of Gawain and the Green Knight, the eponymous knight is supernaturally transformed by fae magic. This magic is presented as clearly pagan, with a strong connection to wild places (the knight’s Green Chapel is described as if it were an ancient pagan mound). Gawain even believes such wild places to be associated with the Devil’s work. For all that, fae magic (and hence fairies) does not appear to have been regarded as wholly satanic.

That said, some churchmen did believe that fairies, if they existed at all, were demons, seeking to deceive the ignorant with illusions. There was, in the eyes of these clerics, no such thing as a true fairy. To believe in such creatures was no more than superstitious foolishness—an ignorant vestige of a long-past pagan age.

Angels, Demons and Fairies

However, other medieval writers believed that fairies were, in fact, angels who had remained neutral in the primordial struggle between Satan and God. Since they had not rebelled with Satan, they were not wholly damned. But as they had failed to fight for God, they could not remain in heaven.

Thus, fairies were banished to an in-between otherworld, neither heaven nor hell. Not wholly evil but neither wholly good. Fairies, therefore, represented a spiritual power associated with the old pagan world: wild, capricious, and separated from God. Despite their separation from God, they still possessed angelic qualities. However, they also possessed demonic ones.

Thus, although not wholly evil, the medieval fairy was certainly perilous—a very different prospect to the charming sprites of the early C20th Cottingley garden.