- One of the main characters in my story book is Fae or Fairy and the Celtic Fairy tales have a lot of stories about fae, however they call them shees. In the The Shee An Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire the clever fairy was able to figure out why the Gruahach stopped laughing
Research on Fairies (Welsh Fairies)
Through my research I found a lot of stories about fairies and other mythological creatures in the Welsh section. A story that stood out to me was the story of the Fairy of the Dell. Within this story their is a group of fairies who band together to stop a bad witch. I like this because in pop-culure the view of fairies isn't always positive. I would like to apply this to my project by making it the background of my character Gavin. This story implies that all witches are evil, so the modern way to break this stereotype would be to have Gavin go against this belief!
The Fairy of the Dell by Peter H. Emerson (1894).
I wanted to learn more about Welsh fairies, so I left the Untextbook site and went to google (agh). On google I found the term "Tylwyth Teg." is the common word in Wales for describing Fair Folk. Like the fairy satires in the Celtic Fairy tale section, these fairies give out gifts to people. If people talk about the fairies the gifts disappear. This could be a potentially funny way for someone to think that they could exploit Gavin. If people think that Gavin could make them rich they might try to use him for that purpose.
Information on the Tylwyth Teg from Wikipedia.
This search lead me into a search about fairy rings. These rings naturally occur in nature and are formed of mushrooms or flowers. They got their popularity in fairy stories. In these stories the fairy rings are places you want to avoid. In some tales if you step foot in an empty fair ring you will die at a young age. In the Welsh tales, fairies will try to get you to come into their ring and dance with them. If you step foot in the ring you will be trapped forever in a constant dance.
Information on the fairy ring from Wikipedia.
Character Sketch
As I mentioned above I want to focus on a character from my project. He is a Fae named Gavin. For my story next week I want to write a background story involving Gavin. I think that this would give me a new direction on the character. This week I read the Celtic fairy tales but after my research I found that the Welsh offered me more room to grow with the character.
Gavin: Will be from the tribe of the Fairy of the Dell, whose mission it is to stop evil witches. My college of the elite project is all about breaking down stereotypes. So, for my character Gavin I want him to rebel against the belief that all witches are bad. Since I don't have a witch in my story I am choosing to modify the story for vampires. Like witches they are also seen as a dark race. Gavin getting paired with a vampire for a roommate is a great way to reverse this stereotype.
Willy Pogany to ‘The Welsh Fairy Book’ by W Jenkyn Thomas, first published in 1907. Source
