ALL YOU NEED IS ...

Know what day it is today? 

Care to take a guess?

Anyone?

No?

Let me give you a clue ...

OK, so I told a little fib, today isn't Pixie Dust Day but, close enough, 'tis ...

International Fairy Day.

A day for believers both young and (I won't say old) those who are young at heart as well as those who follow the old ways.

For centuries the wee folk, who according to Peter Pan author, J.M Barrie ...

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” 

have played a part in Celtic culture (indeed even today for many pagans the Fae play an important role and more so around Beltane when the veil between our world and that of theirs is at its thinnest).

Nowadays as often as not thought of as magical diminutive beings, albeit very cute, somewhat ethereal magical diminutive beings, fairies - faeries to give them there more traditional spelling - were once upon a time deemed to include any number of 'magical folk - satyrs, elves, portunes and Tuatha De Danann included.

Portunes, Tuatha De Danann?

Yes,  they new to me as well. 

Believed to be around about the same height as the height of a little finger, the Portune were said to have the appearance of very old men with wrinkled cheeks who could either be very industrious OR, presumably as the mood took them, very mischievous.

Whilst, according to myth ...

Said to be the first inhabitants of Ireland, the Tuatha De Danann, were said to have have the ability to shape-shift at will and, choosing to live above ground, thus became interwoven into heroic legends. Quite unlike the Daoine Sidhe, the 'people of the mound's, who though derived from the Tuatha De Danann, instead chose to reside underground as far away from humans as possible and thus became the stuff of fairy tales.

So many names, so many myths and stories. I guess the fun of International Fairy Day is to celebrate the child within us, to perhaps re-live the magic of our childhood whether it be by taking a walk in the woods in the hope of spotting a fairy ring, building a fairy house - Too ambitious? How about a fairy door? - or merely reading a favourite fairy tale. After all to quote J.M Barrie again ...

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”