Fairies

Shropshire Folklore Introduction Contents

Richard Dadd

Henri Fuseli

When reading these stories it's as well to bear in mind that to our forebears' fairies weren't the nice cutesy beings of Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Andrew Lang. Think more of Richard Dadd, Henry Fuseli...

These were the original owners of the land whom we had ousted from their rightful property, driving them into the forests. They were tall by human standards, noble and gracious. In Ireland they were known as the Gentry. Mostly they avoided human contact but if paths crossed - whether inadvertently or not - the results were predictable: humans came off worse.