Or, we have such a vast wealth of faerie folklore because they exist. That’s supposedly the theory behind why faerie folklore exists: what we know as fae and their ilk are the creatures that populated that darkness, that unknown space through which the meagre lights from candles and lanterns couldn’t penetrate. When there is an open and vast space between what we know to exist and the boundaries of that knowledge, our instinct-our need-is to fill that space. We’re going to talk about the complicated and unfailingly cruel creatures who inhabited that deep darkness between everything our ancestors knew and everything that they didn’t. Go with me here, but we’re talking about real faeries the kind that haunted the darkness of Great Britain long before even Shakespeare took it upon himself to romanticise them. Faeries are far too associated with all that is pink and feminine and girly, which not only offends my fluid sense of what defines what is masculine and what is feminine-but is downright false. Tinker Bell is a pretty fiction dreamed up in order to invite little girls to dress in frilly gowns that glitter and sparkle in the sun. For the purposes of both my sanity and authenticity, leave any and all notions of Disney’s Tinker Bell at the door.

Descent legends of the dark fae