While it's true that fairy folk love a good garden and take great pleasure in a tulip, there are dozens of beasties who fall under the fairy domain that are not quite as delightful as the quintessential flower fairy. This book is an exploration of the many things that go bump in the night near the fairy mound. Along with an exploration of folklore and historical literature, readers will delight in fairy tales that demonstrate everything from striking a bargain with a fairy to staving off changelings to laughing with the dwarves. Included are fairy tales and myths from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia plus classic stories by Thomas Crofton Croker, Joseph Jacobs, Clara Stroebe, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Yei Theodora Ozaki, and others on goblins, trolls, gnomes, pookas, changelings, banshees, and more! Chapters include: A Fear of Little Men: Elves, Trolls, Leprechauns, Tree Spirits, Brownies, Coblyns, Dwarves, Goblins, Bonga, Trolls and Other Fairy Folk of Glen, Forests and Hearth - The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Changelings and Other Greedy Kidnappers of the Fairy Kingdom - I'm Not Drunk, It's Just My Pooka: Tales of the Trickster Fairy and Its Wild Counterpart - Is That All There Is? Faries Who Give, or The Barter System - Whoops, There It Is: How to Enter the Fairy Kingdom (or How Not To) If you think fairies are merely delicate beings who follow you about on gossamer wings, you are in for quite a shock: the kingdom of the fairy is one of vengeance, thievery, trickery, and wild creatures. Consider yourself warned! Varla A. Ventura is the author of several books, including Enchanted Plants, Among the Mermaids, and The Book of the Bizarre . As a lover of all things strange, Varla’s interests extend into the weirdness and magic of the plant kingdom. With a deep fascination with folklore and medicinal plants, she has been studying herbalism and botany for more than thirty years. Her plant knowledge comes from a combination of experimentation, formal classes in botany, and working in the horticultural industry for fifteen years. She ran a retail nursery in Portland, Oregon, as well as in San Francisco, California, and operated her own landscaping business for more than ten years. She is also the botanical brain behind Rotten Botany, a website dedicated to unusual plants. When not writing, she can be found wandering around the Minnesota woods or tending her poison garden. Fairies, Pookas, and Changelings A Complete Guide to the Wild and Wicked Enchanted Realm By VARLA VENTURA Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC Copyright © 2017 Weiser Books All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-57863-611-2 Contents Introduction: The Woods Are Lovely, Dark, and Deep, Chapter 1 A Fear of Little Men: Elves, Trolls, Leprechauns, Tree Spirits, Brownies, Coblyns, Dwarves, Goblins, Bonga, Trolls, and Other Fairy Folk of Glen, Forests, and Hearth, Chapter 2 The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Changelings and Other Greedy Kidnappers of the Fairy Kingdom, Chapter 3 I'm Not Drunk, It's Just My Pooka: Tales of the Trickster Fairy and Its Wild Counterparts, Chapter 4 Is That All There Is? Fairies Who Give, or the Barter System, Chapter 5 Whoops, There It Is: How to Enter the Fairy Kingdom (or How Not To), Goodbye Is Not Forever, Acknowledgments, Bibliography, CHAPTER 1 A Fear of Little Men Elves, Trolls, Leprechauns, Tree Spirits, Brownies, Coblyns, Dwarves, Goblins, Bonga, Trolls, and Other Fairy Folk of Glen, Forests, and Hearth When hunting in the morning dawn Or through the dead of night Be careful of the winding path That is lit by fairy light — Cameron Bumberford, "A Hunter's Paradise" Once upon a time, goblins, brownies, and elves were as common in a household as a bar of soap or a scrub bucket. While few families set out to lure these domestic fairy folk (they saved their trapping skills for the leprechaun and his infamous golden store), most accepted their presence (or at least blamed the good people for messes, missing objects, and crying babies) and the unwritten rules that went along with housing such a creature. Leave a dish of milk out, sweep your own hearth, don't lock the cupboards up. The world of the domestic fairy was the most common to overlap with that of the mortal. Today we are more likely to blame ghosts than we are fairy folk. And yet who among us has not lost a sock or a watch, a favorite earring or important document, sure that it had been put away for safekeeping? And yet we never point to fairies as the culprits. Instead we blame our own busyness, or absentmindedness, or habit of housecleaning while drunk. I ask you this: can you say for certain that when you wake up in the morning everything is exactly as you left it? Nothing is out of place? I think it is reasonable to assume that many of us do not do a thorough inspection of our homes the night before (if you are in this habit, please text me your number because my house wants for ordering). So if some