Template talk:Fairies

"Fairies": Rewrite Needed

Currently this template just includes whatever passing editors have decided are "fairies", itself a notoriously dubious and all but meaningless term. As but one example, this even includes the Norse goddess Freyja, who is nowhere referred to as a "fairy". This is not acceptable; if there's no primary source that refers to these beings as "fairies" then they have no place being listed here. As it stands, this template needs to be rewritten. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I could possibly agree with the removal of some beings which are more deities than fairies, but there are many crossovers, and many of the faeries are thought to be Folk memory of specific gods. I find a more inclusive list useful, and I have been using the links in this template for two years now (as a reader, not an editor). Certain creatures are clearly gods or ghosts, and possibly should not be on the list, but in other cases that line blurs. For instance, the Tuatha Dé Danann were both gods and fairies. So specifically named Tuatha Dé Danann should be on this list, even though they are also thought of as deity. Folklorist Evans-Wentz (Wentz, W. Y. (1998). The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019072518.) found that some Celtic people described the fae as the souls of the dead, or ghosts, and they were still fae. At any rate, I do not find the term "Fairy" dubious OR meaningless, and I use the template as a resource for research all the time. I also find the non-European, non-Celtic categories useful, as it describes other cultures' ideas of unembodied, non-ghost entities/lore similar enough to the fae that I want to know about them. Without this template as a reference, most of it would be difficult or impossible to find.

Lately I've been adding to the template because after years of use, I had to click "see also" on each article, or do manual searches on verified fairy names (for instance from Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, ISBN 0-394-73467-X.) to find all the articles on fairies. They were not all linked on the template. I think anyone interested in fairy lore (which is a very important topic of interest to many) will find this template useful as it is.lunaverse (talk) 20:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The words fairy and fay have nothing to do with the Celts; stemming from Latin fata ("fates") and introduced by way of Old French, it's a blurred, foreign concept applied to a jumbled, post-Christianization mass of anything "supernatural". This is why it's such a useless term. Indeed, only more specific terms are appropriate. That said, if you do not have a primary source referring to the being you've added as a "fairy" (and I know they do not exist for the majority of your additions), all of your edits here will soon be reverted. I will give you time to dig up references and delete links that you know are a problem before I start the culling. :bloodofox: (talk) 06:04, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

My primary text sources are Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, ISBN 0-394-73467-X and Wentz, W. Y. (1998). The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019072518., though I have copies of several other accepted works on the subject. (If you'd like I could list them all.) I also base my inclusions on other Wikipedia editors who have made similar decisions over the years this template has been in existence. (Examples: Barghest, Knocker, and Buggane that I added are considered in Briggs and Evan-Wentz as "fairies" as much as Banshee, Leperchaun, and Sluagh, which have been on the list for a long time.) Very few ethnic groups, be they Celt or Slavic or Germanic called them "fairies" even though the creatures carried nearly identical characteristics as the fae. Almost every village and berg called them something different. Please see Fairy for the Wikipedia summary of this. I will also quote Briggs, who is not only referenced often on Wikipedia, but in the bibliography of almost every post-1970's book on fairies. Briggs, p. 131 "The word "fairies" is late in origin; the earlier noun is FAYS, which now has an archaic and rather affected sound...The term "fairy" now covers a large area, the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian ELVES, the DAOINE SIDHE of the Highlands, the TUATHA DE DANANN of Ireland, the TYLYTH TEG of Wales, the SEELIE COURT and the UNSEELIE COURT, the WEE FOLK and GOOD NEIGHBORS and many others." And she goes on to describe the wide range of supernatural creatures she considers to fall under this category, "fairies of human or more than human size, the three-foot fairies and the tiny fairies; the domestic fairies and those that are wild and alien to man; the subterranean fairies and the water fairies that haunt lochs, streams or the sea. The super-natural HAGS, MONSTERS and BOGIES might be considered to belong to a different category, and there are, of course, FAIRY ANIMALS to be considered." Evans-Wentz takes a similar view on what should be counted under this umbrella. If you'd like, I can find a tidy quote from him. I agree with you on this point -- that all we have are the post-Christianization understandings of the folk beliefs of those people, but as such, we have chosen to call them "Fairies" as a generic term. Our culture refers to them as such, our folklorists group them as such, and therefore, Wikipedia should do the same so that people can find what they're looking for. I think the Fairies article does a good job of describing the background of fairy lore, its history, its roots in paganism, and how the described creatures vary between regions. If one wishes to study all of these creatures, which again folklorists themselves all group together, then this template is useful. It is not within everyone's power to remember the exact name of each kind of creature in order to look it up, which is what makes a template like this useful. Sometimes it is hard to make decisions on specific creatures, whether it is a "Fairy" or instead should be a ghost or dragon or deity. That's the nature of this type of folklore. (Wentz points out regions or villages where the people thought the fae were the hosts of the dead, others thought they were unborn souls, others thought they were demons, others thought they were as real as animals.) In those cases, I'm trying to make good distinctions, and in those cases, I am willing to be wrong. But I am strongly against reverting *all* my changes. If you revert Fuath and Gnome and Bluecap and Water Horse, you may as well revert most of the rest of them. Each article I have linked to has its own references (more or less) which point to fairy lore books, including Briggs, Robert Kirk, and Evans-Wentz. And in most cases, the articles I link to actually use the word "fairy".lunaverse (talk) 21:07, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I didn't add *any* of the deities. Those have been there since I started using the template. I'm not invested in keeping those one way or the other... other than that it might be useful to have a general link to another list of deities from the regions in question, i.e. instead of to Freyr under the Royalty section, it's fair to link to Norse_mythology under "Related Articles". I would lean towards keeping any entries where there is a strong deity to fairy link, i.e. those thought to be fairies in later folk memories.lunaverse (talk) 21:57, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

(This conversation continues at Talk:Fairy#Are_we_not_conflating_too_many_mythologies.3F) :bloodofox: (talk) 07:29, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, absolutely. Anyone who thinks an Orc is a fairy is seriously confused. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Removing pop culture articles

The inclusion of fairy-related articles in popular culture (particularly the entries grouped in "Fairies in culture") feels out of place on this navigational list, since the title article is primarily about fairies in traditional folklore, legends and mythology (as well as notable works in the early to late modern periods). Note that there are more than 100 total articles in the category for fairies and sprites in popular culture if you include the subcategories, such as Fictional fairies and sprites‎, Films about fairies and sprites, and Television about fairies and sprites‎; many of the pop culture articles on the list are also in one of these three subcategories. The significance of these articles and their relation to traditional fairy folklore are questionable, and there appears to be no established criteria or reason when including pop culture articles; one of the articles on the list is about a very short Japanese animated TV show that originally aired only in 2003; another article is about a fictional "half-fairy" protagonist in an American fantasy novel and TV series, which contain numerous supernatural creatures and themes that are not predominantly related to fairies; there are at least five links that redirect to the same article about a Filipino fantasy franchise; and an article under "Royalty in literature" is about original characters from an animated film who are actually fairy godmothers and not royal.

With broad-scoped names like "Fairies in culture" or the navbox title itself, there is no little to no discrimination or limit to how much fairy-related articles can be added into the navbox. This leads to the list at risk of becoming excessively long and full of entries with minor significance or little relation to articles about traditional fairy folklore which, based on the title article, is what this navigational template is meant to serve towards.

My solutions are:

• Remove all "popular culture" articles, which are mainly linked under "Fairies in culture" and "Royalty in literature"; this include articles about a book, drama, film, TV show, comic or video game;
  • Among the articles linked under "Fairies in culture", I think fairy painting is the only acceptable one as it relates to fairies depicted in (Victorian-era) visual art. I would move it under "Related articles". Faerie faith and Faery Wicca are both specific Neopagan traditions; I feel that they were added on the basis of their names, since other modern pagan movements also incorporate fey beliefs. Faerieworlds is an arts festival and the Cottingley Fairies is an alleged hoax; both are niche topics with very little connection to other linked articles, so I think they can be safely excluded from the navbox.
• Remove all articles in the "Texts" subgroup under European fairy-like beings, as I'm not entirely sure why these three works (Daemonologie, Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, et. al, and Goethe's Faust) are linked here since they seem to be dealing with topics beyond fairies in general;
• Re-title the navbox (just the title bar, not moving the page) from "Fairies" to "Fairies in folklore". (The collapsible subgroup "Fairies in folklore" is renamed to "In Northern Europe" to avoid duplicates and repetition; feel free to change this into a more apt title.)

Finally, I'd like to consider the idea of a separate navigational template that is specifically dedicated for fairy-related pop-culture articles (aka "Fairies in popular culture"), considering the high number of articles about fairies in modern culture/media. — Neutral0814 (talk) 04:00, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Update: apparently the majority of the aforementioned pop-culture articles I was concerned about were included by a single IP contributor back in August of this year. Said contributor was also warned multiple times for disruptive editing in the past. — Neutral0814 (talk) 06:01, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Second update/Revision: I'm going to make an exception to Oberon and Titania, and re-add them back into the navlist (under the Royalty subcat). According to their respective articles, Titania is the given name of the fairy queen depicted in the play, while Oberon, which is derived from Alberich, has earlier origins from medieval texts. Both are reasonably well-known fairy figures and have a lot of references, so I believe they have unique merit for inclusion, despite being best known as Shakespearean characters. Not going to re-add Puck (A Midsummer Night's Dream) since the folkloric version is already listed. — Neutral0814 (talk) 23:29, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Third update: I'm reversing the decision to include Oberon and Titania as exceptions, and I'm also removing the other links of literary characters from the navbox. These include Queen Mab (Shakespearean), Morgan le Fay (medieval literature), and the Wicked fairy (Sleeping Beauty). They are not so related to the other linked articles, which are mostly folkloric in origin, and with each other. I kept in fairy godmother but moved it to related articles because it's a stock character rather than a particular creature. Neutral0814 (talk) 01:25, 3 September 2023 (UTC)