Celtic Fairies

About the Celtic Fairies

Early Celts had a profound belief in an invisible realm inhabited by the “other” world beings known collectively as the Sidhe, or fairies. The Sidhe are considered to be a distinct race that has had much interaction with mortals over the centuries. Belief in these beings who have powers to move quickly through the air and beneath water and change their shape at will once played a large roll in the lives of the Celtic people in rural Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Fairy-lore began with the coming of the Gaels. When the first Gaels arrived in Ireland, they found that the Tuatha De Danaan, the people of the goddess Dana, controlled the land. The Gaels fought them in battle and defeated them, driving them ‘underground’ where it is said they remain to this day in the hollow hills or Sidhe mounds as fairies.

 The belief in the Sidhe or fairies is part of a pre-Christian religion which continued for thousands of years, and survives today in the oral tradition of storytelling by the Celtic people.