In the 1691 The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, Reverend Robert Kirk, minister of the Parish of Aberfoyle, Stirling, Scotland, wrote: Others are mischievous. They delight in misleading travelers or luring them into exhausting dances that go one for days. They also like to taunt domestic animals, pinching horses to make them gallop, stealing milk from cows, and playing cat-and-mouse with cats. If you saw a picture of an ancient fairy, you might mistake it for an elf or even a troll! The first fey people certainly weren’t as delicate as the fairies we know and love today. Most were the size of children, although some of them could be as tall as adults. They all looked human, but they ranged from supernaturally beautiful to hideously deformed. Some of them had traits that clearly set them apart from humans, like pointed ears, webbed fingers, missing noses, or green or blue skin. Still, Sage is pleased to see the Flower Fairies exhibited in a fine art context at the Lady Lever gallery. For a long time, men painting fairies has been considered art – but when women do it, it's just silly flowery stuff for children. When belief in fairies was common most people didn’t like to mention them by name and so referred to them by other names: the Little People or the Hidden People.

Sikes, Wirt (1880). British Goblins: Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Mythology. Legends and Traditions. J.R. Osgood and Company. p.11. Young, Simon (May 2013). "Against Taxonomy: The Fairy Families of Cornwall". Cornish Studies. 21 (3): 223–237. doi: 10.1386/corn.21.1.223_1.

Early modern fairies does not derive from a single origin; the term is a conflation of disparate elements from folk belief sources, influenced by literature and speculation. In folklore of Ireland, the mythic aes sídhe, or 'people of the fairy hills', have come to a modern meaning somewhat inclusive of fairies. The Scandinavian elves also served as an influence. Folklorists and mythologists have variously depicted fairies as: the unworthy dead, the children of Eve, a kind of demon, a species independent of humans, an older race of humans, and fallen angels. [19] The folkloristic or mythological elements combine Celtic, Germanic and Greco-Roman elements. Folklorists have suggested that 'fairies' arose from various earlier beliefs, which lost currency with the advent of Christianity. [20] These disparate explanations are not necessarily incompatible, as 'fairies' may be traced to multiple sources.

The #1 Best Overall children’s book about fairies is Magical World of Fairies by Federica Magrin (Author) and Claudia Brodin (Illustrator) . At one time it was thought that fairies were originally worshiped as deities, such as nymphs and tree spirits, [30] and with the burgeoning predominance of the Christian Church, reverence for these deities carried on, but in a dwindling state of perceived power. Many deprecated deities of older folklore and myth were repurposed as fairies in Victorian fiction (See the works of W. B. Yeats for examples). Fairies secrets are sometimes encoded and told in ballads by human musicians, an example of which is the tales of Thomas the Rhymer — being both a story and instructions on how to break someone out of Fairyland.Best Tooth Fairy Book: How to Catch the Tooth Fairy by Adam Wallace (Author) and Andy Elkerton (Illustrator)