Although some claim they are fallen angels and other attest they are former gods who shrank as they were no longer worshipped, fairies, called sheehogue, occupy a majority of Irish folk tales. With their capricious temperaments, they can be both mischievous and vengeful, minuscule and mountainous, and hardened and sensitive while they spend their time eating, fighting, loving, and singing between their three raucous celebrations: May Eve, when they battle over the bounties of the harvest; Midsummer Eve, when they honor Saint John with bonfires, feasts, and the capture of mortals for their brides; and November Eve, when they dance with ghosts, witness witches cast their spells, and flutter about the tables set with food for the Devil.[1] Highly fond of milk and honey, fairies frequent fields and woods; however, a subset descended from the Tuatha-de-Dananns reside in caves and are skilled necromancers who excel in building, magic, music, and poetry.[2] Despite their jovial nature, fairies are prone to acts of ill intent, sometimes stealing mortal babies for their own and replacing them with changelings.[3] Overall, though, these mystical beings are good-natured and highly social, intervening in the lives of mortals while still maintaining a sense of secrecy.
Unlike their social counterparts, solitary fairies, the leprechaun among them, prefer an isolated existence and regularly wear red to distinguish themselves from their green, sociable peers.[4] Gifted in the art of shoemaking, leprechauns often amass large fortunes, which they hide from others – both mortal and mystical – in ambiguous locations.[5]
Also an isolated being, the pooka, a he-goat capable of changing into an ass, bull, eagle, goat, or horse, delights in tormenting and tricking his mortal neighbors, especially during November Eve, with his roguish antics that sometimes prove pernicious.[6]
Equally as lonesome are ghosts, known as Thevshi or Tash, which exist in an intermediary state between the afterlife and the world of the living and, having eluded the fairies who appeared at the time of their death to lead them to Heaven, these lost souls are often the product of a lingering grudge, unexpected death, unfinished business, or unrequited love.[7] Capable of taking the shapes of animals and insects, particularly rabbits and butterflies, ghosts are compelled to obey the commands of the living and, if they perished having wronged an individual, they become slaves to that person’s orders.[8]
The deadliest of all solitary beings, in turn, are the banshee and the Dullahan. An attendant fairy whose wailing and clapping hands precede a death, banshees are most feared when they appear in groups, where their moaning chorus signals the coming death of a prodigious or highly pious individual.[9] Likewise, the Dullahan and its cóiste-bodhar (a massive black coach drawn by headless horses and mounted with a coffin) occasionally accompanying the banshees, is considered a bad omen, and will toss a basin of blood in the face of whomever answers the doors on which they knock.[10]
Similar to the illusive trooping fairies are the aquatic merrow who inhabit the waters encompassing Ireland. While male merrow are exceedingly ugly, possessing green hair and teeth, a red nose, and the eyes of a pig, their female counterparts are strikingly beautiful – despite their fish tails – and often take handsome fishermen as their paramours.[11] Some merrow are capable of venturing onto shore in the form of a hornless cow with a red cap; however, if the cap, called a cohullen druith, is stolen, they cannot return to the sea and are doomed to remain in their bovine form.[12] Akin to the impish fairies of the fields and woods, merrow are known for their harmless trickery and rarely engage in acts of cruelty. The same, though, cannot be said of witches.
While witches obtain their power from allegiances with evil spirits, smell of the grave, transform themselves into cats, hares, and wolves to perform wicked deeds, craft meddlesome love potions by making tea from the dried liver of a black cat, and use the hand cut from a corpse – known as the dead hand – to steal their neighbor’s food, fairy doctors receive their magic from the fairies who carried them away for seven years and trained them in practices of good tinged with occasional acts of mischief.[13] Capable of detecting the misdeeds of witchcraft and crafting counter charms, these lone souls never fall ill, exist mainly on a diet of bread, fruits, and vegetables, do not consume alcohol, revere the scaredness of graveyards, and only confess their role as a fairy doctor on their deathbed to the individual meant to be their replacement.[14]
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