There really is no introduction to the world of Faerie. That is, no one can introduce you to faeries. (This is an old-fashioned idea, probably rooted in the wealth of questionable fiction about these ubiquitous creatures.)

The fact is, they will either accept you as a part of their world, or they wont. It's up to them. Sometimes, indeed , a totally unwilling human will nevertheless become captive (ie captivated) - taken by Faerie for their own purposes.

Sometimes no amount of mooning around in misty forest glades or communing with nature at the bottom of the garden (erroneoulsy said to be a favourite haunt of faeries) will bring about anything other than a general sense of damp.

Our own personal experience with faeries is complicated. This is neccesarily so with creatures of such varied and ever-changing character. In an effort to bring some order, at least to a controversial subject we have explored legend, myth, folklore, faerielore, and even outright fantasy. It has been necessary to sit down the mass of material thus accumulated to practical dimensions.

The real faerie experience is very difficult from the general view of faerie built up by clouds of sentimental fiction with lefions of inevitable happily-ever after endings. The world of " once upon a time" delightful as it is and higly as we value it , is not the real world of Faeries. Faerie represents power, magical power, incomprenhensible to humans and hence imimical.

It must always be rememebred that thought the world of Faerie is to large extent dependent on humans, faeries are alien creatures with values and ethics far removed from mankind: they do not think, and most notably they do not feel, the way that humans do.

This is precisely the core of much of their envy of mortals and the source of a good deal of the trouble they cause. Faeries are themselves creatures of the raw stuff of life and are ceaselessly attracted to all forms of creativity and particularly to moments of high
emotion in which they seek to be participants. Lovers, poets, artists, writers, sculptors, weavers, musicians, and the like- all the arts, indeed, acknowledge a debt to an unidentifiable , invisible, capricious, sensitive, delicate, elusive, and powerful force which is called 'inspiration or 'Muse' and is generally irresistible when present. It is no coincidence that these are also the chief characteristics of Faerie. Hence Faerie should be held as infinitely valuable.

Faerie is a world of dark enchancements, of captivation beauty of enourmous ugliness, of callous superficiality, of humour, mischief, joy, and inspiration, of terror, laughter, love and tragedy. It is far richer than fiction would generally lead one to believe and beyond that, is a world to enter with extreme caution, for all things that faeries resent the most it is curious humans blundering about their private domains like so many ill mannered tourists. So go softly-where the rewards are enchanching, the dangers are real.

But the time is getting short fot the taking of such delicious risks- faerie contact with humans, dependent as it is on the natureal world of humans, is shrinking with our own shrinking habitat. It is time- and beyond - to distiguish the accumulated superstitions and conjectural fictions about Faerie from its reality, to study the world of Faerie with , we hope, kindly objectivity and a proper enjoyment of its true value to man.

-Betty Ballantine ( Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee)