Gilbert, who wrote the words, created fanciful " topsy-turvy " worlds for these operas where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion — fairies rub elbows with British lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates turn out to be noblemen who have gone wrong.

McKean created 6 images for Royal Mail's Mythical Creatures collection, which featured depictions of mythical creatures found in British folklore, including dragons, unicorns, giants, pixies, mermaids, and fairies.

David MacRitchie was a prominent proponent of the euhemeristic origin of fairies, a theory tracable to the early 19th century that considers fairies in British folklore to have been rooted in a historical pygmy, dwarf or short sized aboriginal race, that lived during Neolithic Britain or even earlier.

MacRitchie is often credited as being the founder of the euhemerist school regarding British fairies.

Fairy Euhemerism, as developed by MacRitchie attempts to rationally explain the origin of fairies in British folklore and regards fairies as being a folk-memory of a " small-statured pre-Celtic race " or what Tylor theorised as possible folk memories of the aborigines of Britain.

MacRitchie also discovered through the The Orcadian Sketch-Book by Walter Traill Dennison ( 1880 ) that legends across Scotland describe the homes ( usually underground dwellings ) of the fairies as " Pict's Houses " and so he believed the Picts were literally the basis of fairies in British folklore.

In Fians, Fairies and Picts ( 1893 ), The Northern Trolls ( 1898 ) and The Aborigines of Shetland and Orkney ( 1924 ) MacRitchie attempted to further identify the fairies of British folklore with the Finfolk of Orkney mythology, the Trows of Shetland myth, the Fianna of Old Irish Literature and the Trolls as well as the Svartálfar and Svartálfaheimr ( elves or dwarfs ) of Norse mythology.

Within folklore, MacRitchie's euhemeristic view of fairies developed a racialist school which considered that the fairies and other beings such as elves and goblins of British myth represented primitive pre-Aryans, a view proposed most notably by John S. Stuart Glennie, Laurence Waddell and Alfred Cort Haddon.

In both Haddon's and Waddell's view the fairies or other beings of British folklore were based on the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain.

The folklores of the British Isles contain a wealth of fairy lore, including the idea from which fairy rings take their name: the phenomena result from the dancing of fairies.

In early modern folklore they became associated with the fairies of Romance culture.

In modern Greek folklore, the term " nereid " (, neráïda ) has come to be used of all nymphs, or fairies, or mermaids, not merely nymphs of the sea.

There is at present little scholarly support for the view that tales of Robin Hood have stemmed from mythology or folklore, from fairies or other mythological origins, any such associations being regarded as later development.

Much of the folklore about fairies revolves around protection from their malice, by such means as cold iron ( iron is like poison to fairies, and they will not go near it ) or charms of rowan and herbs, or avoiding offense by shunning locations known to be theirs.

In particular, folklore describes how to prevent the fairies from stealing babies and substituting changelings, and abducting older people as well.

Wings, while common in Victorian and later artwork of fairies, are very rare in the folklore ; even very small fairies flew with magic, sometimes flying on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.

In some folklore fairies have green eyes and often bite.

This is uncommon in folklore, but accounts describing the fairies as " spirits of the air " have been found popularly.

In popular folklore, flint arrowheads from the Stone Age were attributed to the fairies as " elf-shot ".

* They are associated with the Tír na nÓg, the land of the dead and the Sidhe, in Gaelic folklore, and as such frequently appear in Scottish, Irish, and English folksongs and ballads in association with death, or fairies, or returning from the grave.

Child took the threat to take out Tam Lin's eyes as a common folklore precaution against mortals who could see fairies, in the tales of fairy ointment.

The hunters may be the dead or the fairies ( often in folklore connected with the dead ).

Over time, Gwyn's role would diminish and, in later folklore, he was regarded as the king of the Tylwyth Teg, the fairies of Welsh lore.

In European folklore, these lights are held to be either mischievous spirits of the dead, or other supernatural beings or spirits such as fairies, attempting to lead travellers astray.

In Gaelic folklore, hawthorn ( in Scottish Gaelic, Sgitheach and in Irish, sceach ) ' marks the entrance to the otherworld ' and is strongly associated with the fairies.

Elfland, or Faerie, the otherworldly home not only of elves and fairies but goblins, trolls, and other folkloric creatures, has an ambiguous appearance in folklore.

This is often believed to be the origin of the folklore of elves, fairies and other forms of the ' good people ' or ' wee folk ' present in English folklore.

Scottish ballads in particular are distinctively un-English, even showing some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as the fairies in the Scottish ballad " Tam Lin ".

He did not go so far as to say that the photographs showed fairies, stating only that " these are straight forward photographs of whatever was in front of the camera at the time ".

" In Wales it is declared to be a favourite lurking-place of the fairies, who are said to occasion a snapping sound when children, holding one end of the digitalis bell, suddenly strike the other on the hand to hear the clap of fairy thunder, with which the indignant fairy makes her escape from her injured retreat.

An example is Andrew Lang's fairy tale Princess Nobody ( 1884 ), illustrated by Richard Doyle, where fairies are tiny people with butterfly wings, whereas elves are tiny people with red stocking caps.

Children are typically transported into a magical world in which they meet fairies, goblins, elves, pixies, or other fantasy creatures.

Keel suggests that MiBs are a modern-day manifestation of the same phenomena that were earlier interpreted as the devil or encounters with fairies.

Eco-paganism and Eco-magic, which are off-shoots of direct action environmental groups, have a strong emphasis on fairy imagery and a belief in the possibility of intercession by the fae ( fairies, pixies, gnomes, elves, and other spirits of nature and the Otherworlds ).

The lions embrace a stylised letter Q, the crab rests atop the letter with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion.

Many fans of the game consider this to be paradoxical and inconsistent, since applying reason and rationality to the world of Ars Magica should really lead to the conclusion that magic exists and fairies are real, and yet the " True Reason " promoted by the realm of Reason claimed the opposite, and thus resembled a delusional state of mind rather than a rational one.

Although the Asturian monarchy fostered the Christianization of this site ( ordering the edification of a church ), even today there are still pagan traditions linked with the Santa Cruz dolmen: It is said that xanas ( Asturian fairies ) appear to visitors, and magical properties are ascribed to the soil of the place.

Puck and "" Bottom "" are the only two characters who interact and progress the three central stories in the whole play, Puck is the one who is first introduced in the fairies story and creates the drama of the lover's story by messing up who loves whom, as well as placing the ass on Bottom's head in his story.

In the sense " land where fairies dwell ", the distinctive and archaic spellings Faery and Faerie are often used.

Many folktales are told of fairies, and they appear as characters in stories from medieval tales of chivalry, to Victorian fairy tales, and up to the present day in modern literature.

Nowadays, fairies are often depicted with ordinary insect wings or butterfly wings.

Many beings who are described as deities in older tales are described as " fairies " in more recent writings.

According to this theory, fairies are personified aspects of nature and deified abstract concepts such as ‘ love ’ and ‘ victory ’ in the pantheon of the particular form of animistic nature worship reconstructed as the religion of Ancient Western Europe .< ref >

* The Choose Your Own Adventure book Enchanted Kingdom has an ending in which you are rescued from the fairies by a girl you've befriended, who has to hold onto you through three transformations.

A variety of dances are presented with fairies, fish, flowers, mushrooms, and leaves, including " Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy ", " Chinese Dance ", " Dance of the Flutes ", " Arabian Dance ", " Russian Dance " and " Waltz of the Flowers ".