Mythology: Fairies

Fairies were once considered malicious human spirits. "Much of the folklore about fairies revolves around protection from their malice."

Medieval fairies were not considered small or friendly. They were not a thing like the cute mythological winged creatures depicted today. Their wings probably derived the same as angel wings due to their spirit aura as well as their ability to astral project making them appear to fly.

Apparently, changing it from a malicious spirit to a cute spirit didn't help the malice situation.

The word origin was from fey (below). Fey normally meant someone "appearing touched or crazy, as if under a spell." Someone who was fey was considered possessed by a malicious spirit ... (a fairy?) ... afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement ... which sounds similar to the mental illness diagnoses of today.

It's interesting, when investigating word origins, how things have morphed to what we know today ... to what once was.

Word History:  The history of the words fey and fay illustrates a rather fey coincidence. Our word fay, "fairy, elf," the descendant of Middle English faie, "a person or place possessed of magical properties," and first recorded around 1390, goes back to Old French fae, "fairy," the same word that has given us fairy. Fae in turn comes from Vulgar Latin Fāta, "the goddess of fate," from Latin fātum, "fate." If fay goes back to fate, so does fey in a manner of speaking, for its Old English ancestor fǣge meant "fated to die." The sense we are more familiar with, "magical or fairylike in quality," seems to have arisen partly because of the resemblance in sound between fay and fey.

Also, try as I could, I didn't find any pictures of the "fairies" of old; the wingless tormentors of humans. The nearest was a 1788 picture called Prince Arthur and the Fairy Queen by Johann Heinrich. It depicts a tall human looking woman (no wings) and another wingless feminine spirit behind her.

It would probably be best to just think any spirit could be malicious or mischievous ... whoever they are or whatever they're called. Besides, today, as throughout history, they call these tormentors many other names.

Maybe we should call them schizophrenic spirits. Since that seems to be the going name in science today. After all, we sure can't fool science. They're absolute in their knowledge.

More information .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy