June 5th, 2015

So I finally finished reading my fairy encyclopedia! I don't know why it took me so long to get through, but regardless, here are my thoughts on it.

Title: The Element Encyclopedia of Fairies 
Author: Lucy Cooper
©2014

Calling itself the "ultimate A-Z of fairies, pixies, and other fantastical creatures", I wasn't sure how I would feel about this particular encyclopedia of folklore when I picked it up at Barnes & Noble a couple of months ago; I'd read part of another mythology text in the Element Encyclopedia series and had not been impressed. However - this very quickly won me over.

It is clear from the get-go that the author has done her research. Cooper's writing is authoritative and in-depth. While this is not a how-to for someone interested in actively working with fairies, it also is not condescending in any way towards those who believe in them, either. When one considers writing style, the book is made both engaging and accessible while being very informative. The cross-referencing of different names for the same fairy(ies) is not perfect, but is very good on the whole, and her crediting of and reference to other compilers of folklore is one of the better ones I've run across outside of academic texts.

All that being said, it's really the information that the reader cares about, and this text has a lot of it. There are multiple inserts throughout the book (about one every 150 or 200 pages) which discuss topics not specific to one type of fairy. These include:

• What are fairies?
• Where is Fairyland?
• Connecting with fairies
• Elementals and flower fairies
• Fairies in literature and legend

Then, of course, there is the actual A-Z itself, which talks about fairies and similar spirits from around the world. All of this info is drawn from documented myths, and Cooper even goes on to tell the reader which books they can look to so as to read the original legends. In many cases, she provides abridged versions of the stories, which are interesting reads in and of themselves.

She also includes important people, particularly writers, relevant to the world of fairy tales in the encyclopedia. I found this useful because though I might read classics like Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book and etcetera, I do not always know much about the authors, where they are coming from and what their biases are, or where they were getting the folktales that they then published in their collections. I appreciated Cooper providing that cursory bit of perspective.

The Cottingley fairies, which Cooper discusses at length

And yes, I did say "spirits from around the world". The book is probably Eurocentric, it's true. Many of the stories come from Ireland and the UK. This is not inherently a bad thing, of course. I myself have always loved English flower fairies, and the Celtic Tuatha de Danann. But, other cultures have fairies and fairy-like spirits as well, and they often get ignored in texts like this. Cooper's book, however, actually gave more information than in many of her peers' works.

Although there is very little coverage of South or Central American lore, she talks about spirits from many different North American native tribes (Navajo, Ojibwe, Algonquin, Sioux, Inuit, etc.), Aboriginal Australians, African peoples (primarily focusing on Nigerian Yoruba lore), and the Maori people. There is also discussion of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Siberian fairies.

Additionally, I feel I should point out that Cooper does not take deities and call them "fairies" for the sake of bulking up her content. Of the few that are in the book - Brighid comes to mind - she explains the reason for their inclusion; in Brighid's case, it is because she was a Tuatha de Danann before she was worshipped as a goddess.

Finally, Cooper makes note of where some of these spirits have appeared in pop culture, which I always find to be fun and interesting trivia. For instance, Harry Potter fans might like to know that Dobbys, Cornish pixies, and Padfoots all appeared in local English legends well before JK Rowling wrote them into her delightful series.

Tl;dr: If you are looking for a guide to working with fairies, skip this one. If you want to read about the stories and histories of fairies, this is a great place to start.

~Fairy folk are in old oaks~