Category: Faeries
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The Noson Weu: Bringing Together Knitting and Folk Tales
Are you a knitter? Or perhaps you like to crochet? My maternal grandmother taught me how to crochet a chain when I was young, but that was about as advanced as I got. I do remember that she and my great-grandmother crocheted blankets—some they kept, some they gave to family, and some they sold. I…
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Apple Trees and British Folklore
When I make my grocery shopping list for holiday dinners and ask my family if they’d like a pie, their eyes grow as large as pie tins, and they answer with a resounding, “Yes!” When I ask what flavor of pie they’d like, the one flavor almost everyone agrees on in our family is apple.…
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Faerie Morality and Its Influence on Humans
In researching faerie folklore for my creative writing, I have discovered that faerie morality was quite complex. Not only did faeries follow their own belief system, they also expected the humans they interacted with to follow it as well. Faerie-approved behavior was often rewarded, but mortals needed to take care not to upset the faeries,…
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Changelings in European Folklore
One of the oldest aspects of European faerie folklore is the belief that faeries desire human children and often steal them away from their mortal parents, replacing them with changelings. Early changeling stories appear in medieval texts and continue through the 20th century. Unlike fairy tales, stories involving changelings are considered to be legends: the…