Faeries Book

Faeries is a wonderful book: illustrations that are charming, eerie and beautiful, and stories and a wealth of information on fairy-lore. I learned some things that surprised me - for example, although I was aware that people used to attribute prehistoric flint arrowheads to the fairies, I didn't know that the word 'stroke' for paralysis derives from a belief in seizures caused by the touch of a fairy, or 'Elf-stroke'. And although I've read the Harry Potter series a number of times, and tend to notice which elements of myth and fairytale Rowling draws on, it wasn't until reading Froud and Lee's description of Brownies being insulted by the gift of clothes, that I made the connection between Brownies and House Elves (furthermore I was a Brownie Guide when I was about seven!).

Faeries reminds me how people from not so long ago viewed the world very differently to how we do now. Our ancestors dwelt in a world that was mysterious and unpredictable, shaped by capricious beings whom they sought to propitiate and protect themselves from. My favourite pictures and tales in Faeries are those which emphasis the thin membrane between the human world and the enchanted one, such as fairy islands or or cities under the the surface of a lake.

And those that remind me of the uncanny sense of magic I sometimes gain from the world I live in: in my walks along the River Kelvin near my home in Glasgow I can just imagine coming across a Ghillie Dhu in the birch trees, or a lonely, Gollum-esque Urisk