Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, I'm a newbie, so... I don't know much, but here's what I've gathered.

Some people choose to work with fairies in a manner similar to working with a deity. I've heard of people saying their spell and leaving some kind of trinket or other offering for the fairies, such as a coin or a saucer of milk.

I'm not sure how most pagans view fairies; I personally suppose that if they are real, they are probably another non-corporeal entity. I suppose would mean they wouldn't have any need for a shiny object or milk, but perhaps they appreciate the thoughtfulness anyhow.

Worship? Nah, I don't think so. Most of the rituals I heard about just involved doing some kind of ritual to get the fairies to help you.

Technically, "fairy" is a catch-all term for most supernatural creatures of European origin. Leprechauns, selkies, kelpies, sprites, trolls, banshees, gnomes, and elves are all fairies. I don't know if you're familiar with the Japanese term "youkai," but the original meaning of "fairy" is closer to the concept of youkai.

A pixie is a specific type of fairy, although what type it is depends on who and where you ask. Old-school pixies were said to be invisible, and either tiny or near-human-sized depending on who you asked. They were sometimes said to be helpful, though other people believed they would steal children away. They might punish or reward humans, or take their horses out for rides and tangle their manes for the lulz.

Today, both the words "fairy" and "pixie" are often associated with tiny wingaling humanoids. Exactly how this creature came to be is a long story - hang in there!

In the old days, fairies could be good, bad, or neutral, and very often fickle. Families were careful never to speak ill of them, lest they incur their wrath upon the household. Stories were told of fairies, of course, many of whom wanted to devour little children or did nasty things to unsuspecting people. (Some of whom did deserve it.)

But as time went on and the world became more civilized, old folklore was often cleaned up and sanitized for the increasingly delicate sensibilities of the people. You might hear people talk about how the "original Grimms' Brothers versions were sooooooo much better than those stupid Disney versions!" but even those weren't the original - they are sanitized versions of even bloodier stories that came before, so even then people were already engaging in what you might call "Disneyfication."

By the Victorian era, most nasty elements of old folklore had been cleaned up. Fairies, which by this point were often thought of as malignant, were re-imagined as small, delicate humanoids with wings. These creatures became what most people would think of when hearing the words "fairy" or "pixie."

NOWAI. D: I thought just about everybody was familiar with the fairies I listed.

I guess you'd better get researching, then. Here are a couple of sites that might give you a taste of old-fashioned fairies.
http://www.irelandseye.com/animation/intro.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html

Now, I will warn you - you might want to be careful about Wiccan pages on fairies. One page, rather than providing authentic folklore, seemed more interested in shoehorning different fairies into a Wiccan worldview. Apparently, Faery Wicca is full of this kind of thing. The Wikipedia article on Faery Wicca has some links that call these people out on their shenanigans.

None of our threads ever quite die......hehehe

Anyone see the movie "Labyrinth"? The fairies in that, while being the Victorian Tinkerbell type, are actually nasty biting things - when the character Hoggle is introduced he is running around gleefully using an insect fogger to get rid of the fairies.

Hmmmm, at this rate I'm going to go get out the folklore books. I know that a non-posting member of this guild has an original-text (not for children) Brothers Grimm that might have a fairy story or two to pass along.

I wonder how much we have lost, glossed over and renamed by, as Yanueh brought up, successive waves of people who were seeking to impose a new religious order. I would think that it is worse than most of your lore coming from books stored in someone's basement in Iceland (and written out by a non-believer to boot).

Yanueh, has anyone written a good essay on the rationale for the shift of folktales from their original/earliest state to the modern conception of fairytale, and the accompanying 'sanitizing', as you put it? How/Why did they go from adult content to children's bedtime story?