As any hapless woodsman, princess or wandering orphan can tell you, dealing with faeries can be dangerous business. Keebler aside, most of the elves you’ll bump into aren’t going to make you cookies…well, unless they make you into cookies. And dwarves? Forget Doc , Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy Dopey, Bashful and Happy. You’re more likely to meet Crock, Spiteful, Vengeful, Wicked, Sleazy, Hateful and Snappy. Giants and trolls? Actually, they’re pretty nice folks. Who knew?
Really, though, who can blame the faerie-folk for being a might testy? It’s not like human-kind always operates on the up-and-up. Goldilocks is a thief and a house-breaker, Hansel and Gretel eat a poor old woman’s home – totally unacceptable in the current housing market – and Jack, awful, Jack: the less said about that young mountebank the better.
Two recent books look at the light and dark side of faeriedom.
Dark Fairies by folklorist Dr. Bob Curran takes the reader deep into the shadow side of the faerie realm. Curran starts with the ancient origins of faerie mythology and ends with accounts of murders and other dark deeds attributed to faerie malice –some of which are as recent as the late 19th century.
Curran’s research reveals that while belief in fairies has been widespread throughout history, there has never been a consensus reached on what they are. Some believed them to be the spirits of the dead: vagrant souls too good for hell and too evil for heaven, and thus were stranded on Earth. Others believed them to be minor gods, or elemental spirits, or maybe a magical race of beings. Sometimes the boundaries between these ideas have been blurred, with faeries embodying more than one concept at a time.
Curran explores various incarnations of faeries through different cultures – Greek, German, Irish, Native American and more – and finds consistencies between these various mythic traditions: faeries are often associated with sacred or wild places, like mines, mounds, circles or deep lakes, and when humans venture off their well-traveled paths, there’s always a chance they’ll enter faeriedom. Heaven help them if they do!
Dark Fairiesis lavishly illustrated with drawings by Ian Daniels, whose evocative sketches and paintings have appeared in several other books by Curran. This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in the darker side of mythology, but be warned: the door to faerie, once opened, is not so easily closed.
Swedish Fairy Tales is a collection of twenty-nine popular tales from Sweden, translated into English by poet and author Holger Lundbergh, and accompanied by vintage illustrations by John Bauer. In contrast to Curran’s Dark Fairies, the stories in Swedish Fairy Tales are safe reading for audiences both young and old. Trolls abound, but it is mostly just minor mischief that is their aim, and usually it is employed to dissuade humanity from encroaching too far into their rightful realm. This is a durable, hardcover book of handsome design, and it would be a very worthy addition to any child’s library.
