Types of Fairies
Fair Folk

Knowing a little bit about them will help you recognize them in many works of literature and in many stories where they might play a helpful or a harmful role. Here are some types of Fairies.

Banshee

The banshee is an Irish fairy, and she is quite fearsome, given the fact that her appearance and her signature shriek is a sign that someone is going to die.

She might appear as a beautiful redhead washing the clothes of the soon to be deceased in a stream or as a woman with the head of a rabbit

Dryad

The term dryad is Greek, though you will find these lovely fairies everywhere. They live in trees and they prosper or fail as the tree does. They can hide in their personal tree or manifest as beautiful men or women with leaves in their hair.

Huldra

Hailing from the dark forests of Norway, a huldra is a fairy woman who may have the tail of a cow or a fox.

In the further northern regions of the country, she might have back that is covered in bark or that is completely hollow. Huldra are very strong and value politeness; never mention the fact that a huldra's tail is showing.

Jenny Greenteeth

This particular fairy is one of a very nasty breed; they are green skinned river hags with very sharp teeth and very long arms, and if given the chance, they will drag women, children or the elderly into their rivers to drown them.

Kelpie

A kelpie is a water fairy, and though it can look like beautiful man or woman, the form that it most prefers is that of a water horse.

This is a dangerous type of fairy, given the fact that with the least provocation, it will drag a person into the water and drown them.

Kobolds

Kobolds are small fairies that are found in almost every part of Europe.

They are often seen as men no larger than small children, and they usually choose to haunt specific houses, where they can be helpful with household chores or they might be very destructive if displeased.

Pooka

A pooka is a shapechanger fairy. While they can take on almost any form, they will most often appear in the guise of a black horse with yellow eyes, and if a person dares to climb on top of them, they will be taken for a wild ride!

Redcaps

Redcaps are extremely violent fairies that haunt deserted castles and the old battlegrounds. They are usually heavily armed and will dye their signature red caps with human blood.

Seleighe

The Seleighe fairies are tall and lovely; often they are called trooping fairies for their habit of riding from hill to hill at night.

They are fair and slightly more inclined to favor humans than their Unseleighe cousins, but can still be mischievous and capricious towards humans.

Unseleighe

Unseleighe fairies are the darker fairies. They are quite beautiful and very dangerous. While they are not necessarily evil, they do have a code of ethics that is often foreign to the humans that they deal with.