Fairyland

This article is about mythical land of fairies. For other uses, see Fairyland (disambiguation).

Fairyland (Early Modern English: Faerie; Scots: Elfame (Scottish mythology; cf. Old Norse: Álfheimr (Norse mythology)) in English and Scottish folklore is the fabulous land or abode of fairies or fays.[1] Old French faierie (Early Modern English faerie) referred to an illusion or enchantment, the land of the faes. Modern English (by the 17th century) fairy transferred the name of the realm of the fays to its inhabitants,[2] e.g., the expression fairie knight in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene refers to a "supernatural knight" or a "knight of Faerie" but was later re-interpreted as referring to a knight who is "a fairy".[3]

  1. ^ "fairyland". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. ^ "A Study of Fairy Tales: Chapter IV. The History of Fairy Tales". Internet Sacred Text Archive.
  3. ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1964). "On Fairy-Stories". Tree and Leaf. George Allen and Unwin. Fairy, as a noun more or less equivalent to elf, is a relatively modern word, hardly used until the Tudor period. The first quotation in the Oxford Dictionary (the only one before A.D. 1450) is significant. It is taken from the poet Gower: as he were a faerie. But this Gower did not say. He wrote as he were of faerie, "as if he were come from faerie".