Do you remember the Folk and Fairy Tales of your childhood?

 

 

We all heard wonderful stories of legendary heroes and creatures when we were children. Fables that ignited our imaginations, chronicles of fanciful and magical people we wanted to be like, and fabulous animals that roamed the world.

Most Folk and Fairy Tales started as word of mouth parables, meant to explain the unknown or teach the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. Much of the whimsical lore from those tales stays with us in one way or another for our whole life. Folk and Fairy Tales give us a fondness for images of unicorns, dragons, enchanted castles, and the wizards that lived in those castles.

Fantastic adventures abounded, mysterious beasts strolled through primal forests, or stalked the corridors and dungeons of each story. Almost every non-human being in Folk and Fairy Tales was endowed with magical powers. Most could speak, and were usually at least as intelligent as their human counterparts. Folk and Fairy Tales gave us a way to let our imaginations soar through mythical realms of fantasy.

Folk and Fairy Tales were also the basis of some of our most enduring superstitions. According to several Folk and Fairy Tales, eclipses were considered the work of evil spirits, breaking a mirror was seven years bad luck. Black cats developed a reputation for being bad luck, since they were associated with witches and wizards, while the witch or wizard could be either evil or beneficial.

In other Folk and Fairy Tales, some magical beings hoarded treasure in caves or at the end of a rainbow, and if you could find the treasure, it would bring either good or bad fortune.

Unicorns symbolized purity, and slowly became very shy and retiring creatures, showing themselves only to the pure in heart, mind, and body. Dragons were originally exceptionally intelligent helpers and teachers for humanity. Through the repeated telling of these Folk and Fairy Tales, some of the characters went from good and helpful, to corrupt and harmful, as is the case of the dragons and some types of fairies.

To this day, many young girls grow up looking for their prince charming to come and rescue them from the struggles of every day life because of the enchanting mythicism of the Folk and Fairy Tales they heard as children, and some people live their lives in their very own Fairy Tale, seeing our society’s problems as dragons to slay, or evil wizards to fight and conquer.

This site is devoted to the creatures, people, and tales of folklore and mythology, and to keeping those stories alive in our modern world for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. No matter how many times we hear or read them, these stories strike a cord with us, always leading us back to that mystical world of fantasy and belief in the unknown, unseen world of Folk and Fairy Tales.

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