faery

1. Faery Faeryland, or Elfland. The place where faeries live. 2. faery (fairy, fey, sidhe, seelie) A faery is an etheric being and a nature spirit. Victorian faeries were flighty and kind, beautiful winged ladies who were kind to children and were slightly preachy. This idea is incorrect. Faeries come in all shapes and sizes, and can be beautiful and good (though still do harm) as well as malign, though are more often unusual (whether ugly or beautiful, not in a normal way) and unpredictable. Mortals must always be wary of the Good Neighbors (as they are called, for it is bad luck to use the name 'faery', which offends them). To be able to see them is called the "Sight", and it is rare; however, all cats have it. It is said one can gain the sight by bathing one's eyes in a marigold ointment, while holding a four-leaf clover, or while looking through a stone with a natural hole in it. Their magic is called "glamour", and it is something like the power of illusion for it enchants the mind, sometimes confuses it (such as causing one to lose one's way), and can make a thing look differently than it does. Glamour is often employed to make a faery look normal when it is among humans; however, they usually retain some odd characteristic, like a hollow back or goat's hooves, or something more subtle, like oddly coloured eyes. Faeries sometimes steal human babies and leave behind wood glamoured to resemble them, or on rare occasions, a glamoured faery. These faeries are called changelings. Sometimes the Changeling pretends to grow ill and die, and returns to its faery family, or as it grows older it becomes mischeivous and plays pranks. They all eventually leave their human families to return home. There are two kinds of faeries; solitary fey and the Gentry, or court fey. Of the latter there are two courts, Seelie and Unseelie (which simply mean 'blessed' and 'damned'). The former is the benign court (though it too can cause harm, for faeries can't be trusted), while the latter is, of course, purely malicious and should be avoided at all costs. These courts have been used in modern fantasy writing, most notably in Holly Black's "Tithe"; however, that book can be misleading for the Unseelie Court is portrayed inaccurately; it is far more deadly than the book made it appear.