The Banshee (sometimes called an bhean chaointe – the mourning woman – in Munster) is a solitary supernatural being that warns Gaelic families of approaching deaths in their ranks. The Banshee is always a woman, though descriptions of age and appeareance differ radically. She is heard (and sometimes) seen prior to the death of a family member and ‘follows’ or ‘cries’ only families of ‘pure Milesian descent’ (i.e. pure Gaelic). Her typical approach to death is to scream three times in the night before a family member dies: confusion with seals, foxes, cats and cat-owls have all been reported! The scream is variously described, but is often shrill and deafening. In some cases, not all family members can hear the scream. Local tradition has sometimes made her into a ghost and she is sometimes cast as a surviving pagan goddess. But her name suggests that she is in that very large and loose category of ‘fairies’: the shee is the same as the sidhe, the Irish fairy folk.

Home region: The Banshee is found in Ireland above all, but there are similar traditions from Gaelic Scotland. There are also some intriguing legends from abroad, where Irish families have settled in other countries. The strong connection between family and banshee apparently means that the banshee will follow emigrees.

Physical Description: Sometimes the banshee is described as something resembling a ghost, sometimes an old barefoot woman and, in some descriptions, she is a beautiful radiant young woman. Her hair is uncovered and she often combs her hair: this may mark confusion with a keening woman who tears her hair? Her femininity comes through again and again, there is no male banshee, though see Marvel’s intervention below.

Earliest Attestation and etymology: The word banshee comes from the Gaelic ban sí (an bean sí, in modern orthography), literally ‘fairy woman’. The word first appears in English – at least according to the sometimes fallible Oxford English Dictionary in 1771. However, it appeared in Gaelic a century earlier, in a poem by Fiaras Feiritéir, and its use over the whole of Ireland, with few regional variants, suggests that it may be far older.

Banshee Locations: The Banshee is associated with the place of death, be that hospital or home, but she never seems to appear indoors. The banshee is seen or howls outside.

Banshee Sightings: A Banshee in Canada; Back from a Visit and the Banshee (Co. Clare); Banshee at the Window; Cats or Banshees; Convinced by the Banshee (Co. Offaly); Last of the Banshees, 1905? (Co. Clare); Lizzie Crow’s Banshee (Co. Cavan); Hampshire Banshee in Ireland; Mary Ann and the Banshee (Co. Sligo); Seals, Foxes and Banshees (Co. Donegal) (note that typically we should talk of a Banshee Hearing rather than a Banshee Sighting).

Banshee Story: The Banshee’s Comb and the Farmer’s Tongs

Banshee sayings: ‘The Banshee follows our families’, ‘The Banshee cries our family’.

Popular Culture: The Banshee has perhaps surprisingly not made it big in Hollywood or in modern bookstores. Patricia Lysaght wrote a very capable study of the Banshee, first published in 1986 (The Banshee), which was then re-released in a special shortened form as A Pocket Book of the Banshee in 1998, but neither book has become popular outside folklore circles. There was a 2011 film entitled Scream of the Banshee that involves a museum, an archaeologist and a box: the banshee screams her victims to death, which is not quite what tradition tells us, but at least gets into the spirit of things. A 1970 Hammer Horror Film Cry of the Banshee had absolutely nothing to do with Ireland or the Banshee save that one of the witches was called Oona (!). There is also, from Marvel Comics, The Banshee an Irish mutant man (!) who has a sonic scream.

(Image from Ray Loveday, Hikey Sprites)

The hikey is a fairy or bogey from Norfolk that terrified children in years gone by: ‘get home quickly or the hikeys will get you!’ However, the hikey was a little schizophrenic and sometimes helped human neighbours and did good deeds: rescuing children and lost donkeys. Other traditions include the idea that hikeys would raid houses where families had the temerity to leave Christmas decorations up after twelfth night (!) and that they sometimes stole objects. The other truly remarkable thing about the hikeys is how little has been written about them. There are two important and very well written modern studies, which compliment each other perfectly: Rabuzzi ‘Norfolk’s Hyter Sprites’ and Ray Loveday’s delightful Hikey Sprites (2009), a short booklet. But save an almost certainly misguided story by Ruth Tongue the Hikey was barely written about before this. In the nineteenth-century there were some very fleeting references, the earliest of which dates to 1872. If it was not for these scattered late nineteenth-century references it would be tempting to dismiss the hikey as a joke that got out of hand before the Second World War. Luckily we have just enough to be sure that this was not, in fact, the case.

Home Region: Ray Loveday the only present expert on Hikeys has shown in his studies that the H sprites seem to favour north eastern and central Norfolk and perhaps particularly the Broads. There have been claims that they were to be found in Lincolnshire and even Essex but this is simply not bourne out by the evidence.

Physical Description: Traditional knowledge about the Hikeys has declined to such an extent that even their appearance is unknown (if it ever was). However, the sketch above published by Ray Loveday (and drawn by an interviewee) will probably become the image that jumps into the mind of future hikey researchers. Ruth Tongue misled the fairy community (including Katherine Briggs) by talking of sandy-coloured invidividuals with green eyes who could turn into birds. There is no evidence for this: move on!

Earliest Attestation and Etymology: There is, frustratingly, no reference in the Oxford English Dictionary: we’ve complained so you don’t have to. Rabuzzi and Ray Loveday meanwhile gathered a number of different forms including: high sprite, highty sprightly, hike spike, hike sprike, hike sprite, hiker sprite, hikey, hikey pike, hikey sprite man, hoighty toight, hydra sprite, hyper sprite, hyte sprite, hyty sprite, ight sprite, ighty sprite, ikey sprite and sprikey. Hyter seems to be the original form but none of the etymologies suggested by scholars are even vaguely sensible, so we’ll spare you…

Hikey Locations: Ray Loveday notes that hikey sprites enjoy heathland, wet lands and land with beeches. There are some nineteenth-century references to hikeys at Blow Hill lane in Great Melton that conforms nicely with this.

Hikey Sighting: You be careful…

Hikey Story: Ruth Tongue’s Hikey Sprite (though this is widely thought to be suspect!)

Popular Culture: The hikey sprite seems to be, unfortunately, on its last legs with each generation leaving a weaker and weaker trace of hikey knowledge behind: Ray Loveday’s work is subtitled ‘the Twilight of a Norfolk Tradition’, which frankly says it all. The moon is already high in the sky, the sun has almost vanished. However, there is some cause for celebration. In 2013, Robert Coyle published a children’s book entitled the Hikey Sprite (Pen Press). Fingers crossed then for the Hikey and for Robert… It may be the little devils last chance.

The primary legend of the leprechaun (aka leithbrágan, leprechaun, lepreehawn, leprehaun, lioprachán, luacharman, lubrican, lugharcán, lugracán and lupracán) is quickly told: ‘The best known of [the Irish solitary fairies] is the Leprecaun… He is seen sitting under a hedge mending a shoe, and one who catches him and keeps his eyes on him can make him deliver up his crocks of gold, for he is a rich miser; but if he  takes his eyes off him, the creature vanished like smoke (Yeats, Writings 22).’ With this attractive legend tucked under his arm – and a slightly earlier story about a purse with one auto-renewing shilling – the Leprechaun has slowly shuffled his way to the front of the long queue of Irish fairies. He is perhaps better suited to modern fairy tastes as he rarely hurts anyone, though he frequently makes fools of those who capture him. In modern tales, as Yeats notes, he is invariably a solitary fairy, which is somewhat strange as he spends his time drinking and smoking (quintessentially social activities) and making shoes for others: for the fairies by some accounts. But there are hints in early Irish writing that this might not always have been so disinterested in the company of others. An early medieval text describes how King Fergus was taken by a group of lucorpans to the sea: were leprechauns once mermaids?! Fergus awakes and grabs three of his captors, sparing their lives in return for a wish. The philology that leads us from lucorpan to leprechaun is long and painful  Fergus’ demand for a wish and modern Irish men and Irish women demanding money shows a thread of continuity over twelve or thirteen hundred years. Not many fairies can boast that…

Home region: The word Leprechaun was found above all in the Irish Midlands and Connaught. In other parts of Ireland the Leprechaun goes by different names: the Logheryman in Ulster, the Lurikeen in Leinster, the Luaracan and the Cluricaun in Muster. There is a consensus among fairyists that these are all different spellings and forms of the same word. However, this seems linguistically unlikely and the leprechaun has effectively colonized neighbouring fairies.

This map from Winberry 65

Physical Description:  There is a general consensus that the leprechaun is small: not something generally true of other Irish fairies. He seems to be a foot and two feet hight. The leprechaun dresses sharply. McAnally, for example, tells us that he has a red coat with seven rows of buttons and seven buttons on each row with a cocked hat, ‘on which he sometimes spins’! Consider instead now this medieval description: he has a ‘gold embroidered tunic’, ‘a scarlet coat’ with ‘hair that was ringletted… of a fair and yellow hute… and skin whiter than foam of wave and… cheeks redder than the forest’s scarlet berry.’

Earliest Attestation and Etymology: A being called a lucorpan is mentioned in an early medieval Irish poem. A later medieval account refers, instead, to lupracans. There is agreement – including an authoritative statement by the great Irish Celticist Daniel Binchy – that these are the ancestors of our leprechaun. Modern writers have tried to explain leprechaun as ‘Leith bhrogan’ or ‘one shoe maker’. However, this has nothing to do with the ancient form and smacks of popular etymogy. The original form may have been luch-armunn small warrior or, according to Stokes’ plausible suggestion, lu-corp (small-body). The first element is more certain than the second. The first English reference recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary comes in 1604 in the second part of the Honest Whore by Middleton (iii. i) ‘As for your Irish lubrican, that spirit Whom by preposterous charms thy lust hath rais’d In a wrong circle.’    

Leprechaun Locations: Leprechauns are commonly found in lonely places tapping away at their shoes.

Leprechaun Sighting: Chasing Leprechauns; Liverpool leprechaun scare; a Leprechaun sighting; Leprechaun in Clare; and the Leprechaun’s Shoe.

Leprechaun Story: Clever Tom and the Leprechaun; The Leprechaun in the Garden; the Three Leprechauns; Leprechaun in Court.

Associated sayings: ‘Tell me where the gold is or I’ll cut you to ribbons!’

Popular Culture: The leprechaun became part of Hiberno-American culture after the Second World War. Its appearance in St Patrick Day’s celebrations and in fancy dress shops was perhaps to be expected: likewise its place in children’s games is predictable enough given its penchant for hiding money or presents. However, in the early 1990s leprechauns took on an entirely new and unexpected direction when they became stars of various American horror films. The first appeared in 1993 and was memorable for a first terrified performance from Jennifer Aniston and with the winning byline ‘Your luck just ran out’. Anyone can make a bad film but the fact that there was a series of six and that other films have also demonized the leprechaun suggests that this might be a permanent shift in the leprechaun myth.  Bearing this tendency towards terror, it is nice question whether the Liverpool sightings of leprechauns, which were not particularly pacific, involved the first hint of this desire to portray leprechaun violence.  

Gremlins are one of the most curious of all fairies. They are unquestionably a twentieth-century invention because they are associated with flight: though the question of when are where they originated is controversial. Pilots invoked them to explain freakish mechanical problems on planes and general unexplained happenings. The gremlin was mischievous rather than sadistic. The problem is that when you start messing around with a flight systems or a plane engine things crash. It is all very well the gremlin saying afterwards that he just wanted to stay at home on the runway…  Note that a late piece of folklore is that gremlins were frightened of pigeons, much as fairies are frightened of iron.

Home Region: Gremlins like airports and planes everywhere.

Physical Description: As is perhaps to be expected with a new entry to faery there is a great deal of vagueness. However, there is a surprising consistency about the idea that gremlins wear top hats, something without fairy precedence. To his very great credit one top hat appeared in the 1984 film, Gremlins, though bizarrely the planes disappeared.

Earliest Attestation and Etymology: The earliest reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is to 1941 (thought that reference leads back to the Great War):  ‘As he flew round, he wished that his instructor had never told him about the Little People—a mythological bunch of good and bad fairies originally invented by the Royal Naval Air Service in the Great War. Those awful little people, the Gremlins, who run up and down the wing with scissors going ‘snip, snap, snip’ made him sweat.  But there are claims that gremlin belief dated back into the 1930s or even to the First World War: there is allegedly a poem dating from 1929 (that we’ve not been able to track down unless it is this) and there is certainly a reference from 1938. A couple of points of consensus. First, Gremlins seem to have been a British creation. There are arguments about whether it was the Naval Arm, fliers out of Malta or World War One salts, but there is no question that British fliers were the first to encounter them, though the idea quickly spread through the Allied services of other nations, not least the United States. Second, the name probably means nothing and has been conjured into the air by analogy with Goblin. Gillian Edwards (216) suggests the German word Grämlein (little grief). She notes the adoption of other words such as strafe and blitz in the war years, though these were based on well known German words, which Grämlein is not. Another suggestion connects Gremlin to the British mission in Russia: as the only word that rhymes with Gremlin is Kremlin! Yet another suggestion connects Gremlins to Fremlins a German beer make. The most common suggestion in reference guides is the Old English word gremian, to vex, which would be just dandy had Old English not died out as a language in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: all those Saxons on their biplanes.

Gremlin Locations: Since a famous episode of the Twlight Zone they are also to be seen on plane wings in flight.

Gremlin Sighting: Gremlin in a Lancaster

Gremlin Story: British Gremlin Poem

Gremlin sayings: ‘Bloody gremlins’, ‘the bloody gremlins did it, Captain’ etc etc

Popular Culture: How could popular culture have ignored the gremlins? Already in 1942 Walt Disney (in an anticipation of his flight to Ireland to study fairies) flew to Britain to see if he couldn’t make a film about this new breed. Gremlins also appeared in various cartoons and children’s books including, for example, E.P.Dutton’s Listen Hitler The Gremlins Are Coming (1943), which is all rather curious given that the Gremlins seem to have been working for the Nazis. Roald Dahl’s first children’s book was entitled The Gremlins and was released the same year as a tie in for a Disney film that never happened: Dahl tried, to his credit, to connect the story into traditional British lore. There was one Bugs Bunny program from 1943 (Falling Hare) that included the gremlins though. The US government employed gremlins in various health and safety campaigns (see above). Here for the first time there is the idea that gremlins are mechanical rather than simply aeronautical. The next important step for gremlins was the 1963 episode (Nightmare at 20,000 feet) of the Twilight Zone where a very hairy and hatless gremlin does his best to wreck a plane wing.  In 1983 the Gremlin returns in Twlight Zone: The Movie, he is now more like a dinosaur than a sasquatch.  Last we must mention, of course, Gremlins (1984), a Spielberg produced film: planes were nowhere to be seen though blood was everywhere.   Then, if that wasn’t bad enough gremlins were absorbed into pyscho babble. There can be few worse fates for a malicious fairy… I mean they are not supposed to help people!

Jenny Greenteeth was a water fairy associated with the Lancashire area. She and her sisters ‘lurked at the bottom of pits, and with their long sinewy arms dragged in and drowned children venturing too near’. There has been, since the nineteenth century, an attempt to rationalize Jenny. She was a form of social control: parents evoked her to keep their children away from dangerous ponds, streams, rivers and later canals (Jenny moved with the time). And certainly we have accounts that tend in this direction: ‘Jenny’ll get you!’ One little boy was brought into the garden and told that the moaning of the wind in the trees was Jenny’s voice: another was shown some enameled teeth that had been stained green! But Jenny was also a proud boggart with her own agenda and there are parts of the legend that do not serve to save lives. For example, the idea that duck weed was particularly associated with her or even that it was her hair. It should also be noted that even if there was only one Jenny Greenteeth she apparently dwelt in tens of different bodies of water simultaneously.

Home region: Jenny was overwhelmingly a Lancashire bogie, but there are some references from further afield that might suggest she once had a wider kingdom. In 1870 weed in Birmingham was sometimes called ‘Jenny’ or ‘Jenny Greenteeth’, the wording is ambiguous. There is also an east Riding legend about  drowned girl called Jenny that sounds as if it may be Jenny Greenteeth or a close cousin.

Physical Description:  Pond weed, slime and algae are all associated with Jenny and her teeth were clearly forty shades of green. There is the reference above to long sinewy arms and you did not want to see her teeth. Brian Froud has a particularly effective image of Jenny. See the head of the post.

Earliest Attestation and Etymology: Nineteenth century? Jenny is a common fairy name

Jenny Greenteeth Locations: Coming to a pool or water pit near you.

Jenny Greenteeth Sighting: Jenny at Flamborough

Jenny Greenteeth Story: Billy Meets Jenny

Associated sayings: ‘Watch out, Jenny’ll get you!?

Popular Culture:A minor star of the fey, Jenny has survived in asides in fantasy books, a couple of rock songs and briefly as a villain in Hellboy (comic)

Brownies (aka browneys or even broonies in Scots) are the most famous of all the solitary fairies and are associated with certain historic houses and farms in Scotland and the north of England. The Brownies exists to help the family or the house to which he (or sometimes she) is attached and particularly to the fireplace where they slept.  Brownies will, night and day, aid their families with farm work, house work and, indeed, almost every imaginable domestic task from churning to weaving. Some brownies have a side-line going in prophecy as well, at least, where the interests of their family are concerned.  At times brownies can become irritable. There is a delightful story of one brownie who took exception to the comment of a servant and threw the servant repeatedly over the house they shared, catching him as he came down. Brownies are also often offended by gifts: the story of brownie’s new clothes mimics that of the pixy. However, they do need to be fed and a wily house-owner would leave out good but simple food and water as she and the family were going to bed: in some cases this was left in a brownie stone.

Home region: Brownies are associated, above all, with the Border areas and the Lowlands of Scotland. There are some hints that the brownie was a fixture further south, but these are very uncertain and late: see further popular culture.  

Physical Description: The brownie is typically naked or dressed in rags. He is smaller than a human being but strong and wiry. The word ‘rough’ is often applied and there are references to his ‘hide’.

Earliest Attestation and Etymology: The earliest reference in English came in 1513, though the word will presumably be somewhat older. There have been some attempts to find a Celtic origin but it is far more likely that brownie comes from brown, i.e. the brown one. There are various references in early Scottish ballads to the ‘wee brown man’

Brownie Locations: Numerous houses in the Scottish lowlands!

Brownie Sighting: Brownie and the Bible

Brownie Story: Brownie of Blednoch;

Associated sayings: Though not strictly a saying the nursery rhyme figure Aitken Drum may have been a brownie.

Popular Culture: Brownies became representative in the nineteenth century of the solitary fairy and early folklorists sometimes used ‘brownie’ to apply to all solitary fairies, even when they came from different regions and went by other names. One result of this was that brownie became a much used word and began to be applied to local fairy traditions in the Midlands and South and Orkney and Shetlands where it had no traditional basis. So in the nineteenth century we have references to brownies in Lancashire (which may just possibly represent a genuine tradition), in Sussex and even in Cornwall: this process still needs to be carefully tracked and has caused great confusion. Brownies were also popularized in children’s fiction:  Juliana Horatio Ewing’s ‘The Brownies’ (first published in 1865) is the most famous instance and the short story that inspired the term brownie in the girl guides movement.

The boggart (aka boggard, buggard, buggart, baggard) is a solitary fairy associated with the north-west. Boggarts break down into two general categories. There are domestic boggarts, those that haunt houses and that frequently indulge in poltergeist activity, and there also those that haunt a road, a bridge or a field out in the wilds. Note that the word ‘haunt’ is used advisedly here as there is often confusion about whether a boggart is a ghost or a fairy or perhaps, somehow, both.  Certainly, there are cases from the eighteenth and nineteenth century where supernatural beings that we would call ghosts are termed, instead, ‘boggarts’. Boggarts are often associated with water: why this should be is a mystery. Likewise, they are said to eat small fairies: owl pellets were interpreted as the bones of fairies devoured and excreted by boggarts! They also devoured fern, a plant with fairy associations and a plant that supposedly encouraged invisibility. It was generally felt that animals could see boggarts more easily than humans and when a horse became frightened it was said that the animal had seen a boggart (‘taken boggart’). It should finally be noted that even in a domestic setting boggarts tended to be unfriendly towards human neighbours and some were downright hostile.

Home region: The boggart originally was a part of the folklore of the English north, the English Midlands and parts of the Marches. However, by the nineteenth century the boggart had become a fairy associated above all with Lancashire and the South Pennines

Physical Description: Boggarts are sometimes humanoid (there are a handful of references to naked men), they sometimes appear in animal form, and, above all, they are shapeshifters, moving between different shapes. Some have the notable talent of detaching and throwing their head after their victims (see image at head of post).

Earliest Attestation and etymology: There are sixteenth-century reference to boggarts. The word boggart probably comes from a related and more general term bogle. It is possible that there is a Celtic term lurking in the background, though this is far from clear.

Boggart Locations: There are literally scores of boggart places in the North West. However, Towneley Boggart Bridge between Burnley and Todmorden and Boggart Hole in Pendle Forest and Boggart Hole Clough to the north of Manchester are three famous Boggart haunts.

Boggart Sighting: A particularly vivid boggart encounter comes from the life of Samuel Bamford: as noted above it is not clear whether this particularly boggart is ghost or fairy!

Boggart Story: The most famous boggart story of all, though it is associated with several northern fairies, is the flit.

Boggart sayings: ‘To take boggart’ [a horse shies and flees]; ‘Turn up like Towneley’s Boggart’ [make an unexpected and not particularly pleasant appearance, related to a Burnley legend]

Popular Culture: The boggart was all but forgotten in traditional-lore when it made an suprising come-back via, first, children’s writer Susan Cooper (The Boggart), and then the Harry Potter series.

Pixies (aka Pigseis, Pizkies and Piskies or Pigsies, Pizkies and Pigsies) are associated, above all, in their south-western heartlands with mischief. Men and women are pixy-led or piskey-led, which means that the pixies lead their victims off their paths. Victims are advised to turn a coin or turn a coat or jacket, socks or even a pocket inside out. Though sometimes the wanderer strays into a bog, which might point to a darker idea behind the legend: were victims originally drowned? Pixies also ride horses, donkeys and ponies at night, indeed, in many stories a farmer will discover platted or knotted manes the morning after on an exhausted animal. Pixies were also believed to have taken changelings as late as the mid nineteenth-century in Cornwall. Pixies are said, in some works, to be able to shape shift becoming ants, birds, hedgehogs and even weasels. Transformation into a weasel may be the result of linguistic confusion: in Cornish English a weasel was a ‘fairy’. Pixies are sometimes said to have been the souls of unbaptised children, a version of the idea that fairies are the dead. Pixies are described both as social and solitary fairies: sometimes they are in groups and sometimes alone.

Home region: Pixies are today thought of as the fairies of the south-west of England: Cornwall and Devon and to a lesser extent Dorset and Somerset. However, there are traces of pixy belief and pixy placenames and legends in the Welsh Marches and along the southern coast of England as far as Sussex.

Physical Description: Descriptions of pixies tend to break down into two different kinds. When pixies are social fairies and live in groups then they tend to be described much as other ‘fairies’: they are small and might wear green clothes and perhaps red hats. There seems also a tendency to be old:  ‘the Piskey has seldom been seen in any other shape than that of a weird, wizzened-looking, little old man’. Solitary pixies tend to be bigger and if they are associated with houses or farms are often naked, hence the pixy clothes story. There is also a tendency, true of other fairy breeds too, for pixy to be equated or confused with Wil-O’-The-Wisp.

Earliest Attestation and Etymology: The origin of the word Pixy is much confused, not least because there is uncertainty about the proper form of the word. Pixies, first reference c. 1630, are also known as Pigseis, Pizkies and Piskies or Pigsies, Pizkies and Pigsies. The difference in spelling is fairly arbitrary (e.g. Pigsey vs Pigsie). The difference in pronunciation is above all regional: e.g. Piskeys are typically found in Cornwall and parts of west Devon. The word pixy or pixey has been preferred perhaps because they come from the more ‘cultured’ Devon or perhaps because the word ‘Piskey’ was a little too reminiscent of ‘piss’ to Victorian ears. But back to the original problem: where did piskey/pixy/pigsey come from? A pyske is the Swedish word for a small fairy: this would be an excellent candidate save for the fact that Norse influence in the south-west was slight. There may be a British-Celtic word lurking behind Pixy or Piskey but, if so, there is no obvious equivalent in Breton or Welsh. And the first occurrence of the word comes in the late sixteenth century. Given some medieval forms from the southern coast of England the correct etymology is almost certainly from Puca (Old English goblin).

Pixy Sighting: Widecome in the Moors.

Pixy Story: Pixy’s New Clothes.

Associated sayings: Pixy-lain or pixy-led [misled]; and Pixilated [OED ‘mildly elated’].

Popular Culture: Pixies first came to the attention of a wider reading public when Coleridge mentioned them in two of his early poems. In the second half of the nineteenth century pixies became truly famous thanks to the writing of Anna Eliza Bray. They subsequently began to appear in nineteenth-century fiction, often as more ‘earthy’ wingless versions of the effete and self-righteous Victorian fairy. They were frequently seen in Victorian theatre where children were cast as pixies. Pixies survived as second rate fairies through most of the twentieth-century. However, when Disney created Peter Pan, Tinkerbell was described as a fairy and pixy. This then tipped over into the later Disney Tinkerbell film series where Tinkerbell and her friends live in Pixy Hollow: though fairy is also used to describe her colleagues and friends.