For starters, Irish faeries are not like tinkerbell. They like to play pranks. Like kidnapping babies and replacing them with mimics. The creature we’d recognize as the Headless Horseman is Irish folklore, as well as the whole concept of Halloween. Bram Stoker, an Irishman need not have borrowed from Eastern European traditions, because the Irish had a bloodsucking undead monster too.
It was fun growing up in the countryside and things like banshees and fairies being taken as a fact of life. I had a childhood friend that would come in to school saying she heard the banshees howling during the night and then woke up to find out a relative had died.
There was a news report that resurfaced a few years back, accessible here, about the Housing Executive in Newry trying to get a fairy tree chopped down to build houses, and even after trying to bribe the workers with £200 no one would touch it and they had to build around it instead. And another where some builders halted work in the Mournes once they realised they were inside a fairy ring, 3 of them went on to suffer accidents that they attributed to revenge by the fairies, the foreman apologised to the fairies, and even the reporter was too worried to step inside the ring. We were told the legends too, like Tír na nÓg or Finn McCool, but I think it’s amazing how much of the superstition and old mythology has persisted through the years, even after the country becoming Christian and even now as it becomes more secular.
For starters, Irish faeries are not like tinkerbell. They like to play pranks. Like kidnapping babies and replacing them with mimics. The creature we’d recognize as the Headless Horseman is Irish folklore, as well as the whole concept of Halloween. Bram Stoker, an Irishman need not have borrowed from Eastern European traditions, because the Irish had a bloodsucking undead monster too.
It was fun growing up in the countryside and things like banshees and fairies being taken as a fact of life. I had a childhood friend that would come in to school saying she heard the banshees howling during the night and then woke up to find out a relative had died.
There was a news report that resurfaced a few years back, accessible here, about the Housing Executive in Newry trying to get a fairy tree chopped down to build houses, and even after trying to bribe the workers with £200 no one would touch it and they had to build around it instead. And another where some builders halted work in the Mournes once they realised they were inside a fairy ring, 3 of them went on to suffer accidents that they attributed to revenge by the fairies, the foreman apologised to the fairies, and even the reporter was too worried to step inside the ring. We were told the legends too, like Tír na nÓg or Finn McCool, but I think it’s amazing how much of the superstition and old mythology has persisted through the years, even after the country becoming Christian and even now as it becomes more secular.
Well the Christianity was just a layer painted on top. Peel it back and it was all there, just barely under the surface.
So… exactly like Tinkerbell? She was constantly “pranking” (read: trying to murder) Wendy throughout the story.
Tinkerbell of Disney
Kidnapping, it’s just a prank bro.