Fairies

The term fairy was on occasion applied uniquely to explicit enchanted creatures with human appearance, gifted with mysterious powers, and a propensity for duplicity. At different times it has been utilized to depict any otherworldly creatures, like trolls and elves. It has also been used as an adjective, with a meaning equivalent to "enchanted" or "magical". It is also used as a name for the place these beings come from, the land of Fairy.

The belief in fairies seems to reach back into ancient times, being traceable both in written and oral tradition. Traces stem from the Sanskrit gandharva (semidivine celestial musicians) to the nymphs of the Greeks and Homer, the jinni of Arabic mythology, and other folk characters of the Samoans, Arctic, and other indigenous Americans.

All the more by and large, it concerns most creatures of the folklore of every country in the world that are linked to nature and that were venerated (now and again as genius loci) faithfully before monotheism expansion destroyed local and agnostic beliefs. Fairies are common in literature from the Middle Ages on and appear in the writings of the Italians Matteo Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto, the English poet Edmund Spenser, the Frenchman Charles Perrault, and the Dane Hans Christian Andersen, among others. Fairy lore is particularly prevalent in Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. Asia, Americas and Africa have their own fairies, sometimes similar to the Little People.