Paid with a Kiss: Love and Sex in Fairy Belief

In this intriguing study of fairy folklore, neopagan witch Daimler (Pagan Portals) examines themes of sexuality and gender across centuries’ worth of fae legends, ballads, and literature. Drawing on well-known depictions like Shakespeare’s Titania and J.M. Barrie’s Tinkerbell, alongside firsthand claims of fairy encounters from Celtic times to the present, Daimler shows that fairies occupy a unique space in mythology as humanlike but not held to human moral standards, an ambiguity that lends itself to “narratives where deviance from... cultural mores are almost expected.” Daimler traces the evolution of fae folk from tempestuous revelers in medieval ballads to childlike naifs in Victorian literature to androgynous, ephemeral beings in 20th-century high fantasy; throughout, she finds evidence of gender nonconformity and boundary-pushing sexual liberation, even as in the real world fairy became slang for people who break sexual norms, first promiscuous women and later gay men. In a later segment Daimler also examines mythology about fae-human romantic relationships and fairy marriages, at which point the author will likely lose more skeptical readers with her credulous reports on contemporary fairy believers who claim everything from encounters with fairies in dreams to impregnation by fairies. Still, both fantasy fanatics and scholars of gender and sexuality will find much to interest them. (May)