Fairies :: essays research papers

FAIRIES ARE EVERYWHERE!   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Fairies are magical creatures, usually very much like human beings. But they can do many things that humans cannot do. Most fairies can make themselves invisible. Many can travel in an instant anywhere they want to go, even very great distances. Some can change their shapes; they might look like cats, or birds, or dogs, or any other animal. Some of them live for many hundreds of years; others (Like with Tinker Bell From Peter Pan) live forever. Many fairies like to play tricks on human beings; others like to help them. Fairies come in all sizes and shapes as well. They might be ugly, humpbacked little creatures, like the trolls or gnomes that the people tell about in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. Both trolls and gnomes are supposed to guard treasures. Trolls live in dark caves, and gnomes make their homes underground. Some fairies are handsome, for example, the pixies of Wales, or the goldenhaired white elves of the Scandinavian countries. Some fairies are giants, others are less than two feet tall. Some have special shapes. Example are mermaids and mermen, human above the waist but with the lower part of their bodies like fish. They live in an underwater world of splendor. Beautiful mermaids often lure sailors to their destruction, or cause shipwrecks. The Scandinavians believed in a river spirit that looked like a man above the water and like a horse below.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Most fairies live in fairyland, where some strange things are ALWAYS happening. They live together ruled by a king and queen, whose names are Oberon and Titania. Some people think that the ruler of Fairyland is Queen Mab.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Not all fairies live in fairyland, however. Some live alone as the guardians of certain places. The Lorelei of Germany is a beautiful woman with long golden hair. She stays on a special rock on the right bank of the Rhine River.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many kinds of fairies like to play tricks on human beings. Sometimes they tie knots in the manes of horses at night, and ride them till the horses are tired out. A horseshoe nailed to the stable door will keep these fairies away. If the maid is lazy and does not clean the house carefully, the fairies will pinch her while she sleeps. The pixies of Wales are especially troublesome to human beings. Some pixies lead travelers the wrong way. Others call to a lost person in the voice of his friend. When he follows the voices, he finds nobody there. The pixies like to hid things in houses, and to blow out candles so that the people of the