Three Kinds of Fairies

Webster's Third defines a fairy as 'a mythical being of folklore and romance usually having diminutive human form and magic powers and dwelling on earth in close relationship with man.'

But fairies are not tiny; they also come in medium (brownies) and full sizes (beautiful human-sized fairies) or fairies who could cast a 'glamour' of deceit to make things look as they were not and who may just have looked gorgeous, were often said to captivate men, sometimes marrying into mankind and producing children half fairy and half human, just as certain angels were said to have bred with the sons of men.

A simpler division is into 2 categories: good fairies (such as fairy godmothers, etc.) and bad fairies (such as those who put curses on people, especially infants). Bad fairies are hard to distinguish from malevolent spirits, devils, demons.

Isobel Gowdie, arraigned as a witch in Scotland in 1662, told the court under oath that both witches and fairies can ride on straws carried in the wind by simply chanting 'Horse and hattack (a small hat), in The Devil's name!' In this they both resemble the spirits of the air which Paracelsus named sylphs.