Size of Faeries

The size of fairies is an often debated subject, yet folklore paints a clear, if varied, image of them. While modern depictions tend to favour small, childlike imagery looking at the wider scope of material we find everything from miniscule ant sized beings to gigantic fairies twice as tall (or more) than humans. The most common depictions fall into two main categories: those that are around 2 feet tall and those that are the height of an average human being.

What we find in many of the stories and ballads is that fairies look very much like human beings except that they have an aura of Otherworldliness to them or in some other intangible way project their fairy qualities. As Andrew Lang puts it:

“There seems little in the characteristics of these fairies of romance to distinguish them from human beings, except their supernatural knowledge and power. They are not often represented as diminutive in stature, and seem to be subject to such human passions as love, jealousy, envy, and revenge…The People of Peace (Daoine Shie [sic]) of Ireland and Scotland are usually of ordinary stature, indeed not to be recognized as varying from mankind except by their proceedings…” (Andrew Lang, 1910).”