Fairies On Center Stage Thanks To Books, Film

Do you believe in fairies?

Chances are you haven’t thought about it much, but you’ll be hearing a lot about the wispy wee folk thanks to some new books and a film released Friday.

Trend-watchers say fairies may flutter up to rival the popularity of angels, now venerated in books, wearable pins and all manner of heavenly merchandise.

The new movie, “FairyTale: A True Story,” is a semidocumentary account of a fairy photograph controversy in England during World War I. Two schoolgirl cousins - Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright - took photographs of the fairies they claimed to have seen in a West Yorkshire garden.

The photographs, dubbed “the Cottingley fairies,” appeared so real that they attracted international curiosity. Drawn into the case were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Houdini, illusionist and magician.

Doyle, played in the movie by Peter O’Toole, steps in to defend the photographs, pronouncing them authentic. Houdini (Harvey Keitel), an opponent of Spiritualism and other occult movements of the day, says they are fake. The very real dispute between the two men frames the story of two girls swept away by the fantasy world of childhood.

Several books on fairies are due out this fall, including the intriguing “Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People” by Welsh author Janet Bord ($21, Carroll & Graf). Through photographs and interviews, Bord documents the claims of fairy sightings, and explores the links between the mythical creatures and UFOs.

Also new is a book that parallels the movie - “The Case of the Cottingley Fairies,” by British journalist Joe Cooper - along with “Fairies, Elves and Gnomes” by Leslie Gibbs, and “A Handbook of Fairies” by R. Coghlan.

One observer chalks the popularity of fairies up to “millennium fever” - a syndrome marked by the growth of cults, doomsday theories and an increased interest in extraterrestrial beings.

Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., says the millennium marks a psychological shift, a trend toward the spiritual.

People are looking outside the material realm for deeper meaning in their lives, Celente says. They are also looking toward ancient wisdom and beliefs to make sense of life-styles that seem superficial.

Sean Lucy, a native of Ireland who now lives in Chicago, has taught courses in Irish literature, folk tradition and the Irish supernatural at the Irish American Heritage Center and Loyola University in New Orleans.

According to legend, Ireland was invaded by a series of tribes, one of them from Greece, called the Tuatha De Danaan, who were to become the fairy race. The Danaan people, with their magical powers, ruled Ireland until the invasion of the Celts (also called the Milesians), about 300 B.C.

When the Celts defeated the Danaan a deal was struck: The Danaan would occupy a fairy, or imaginative, Ireland, and the Celts would occupy the everyday Earth. The Danaan retreated into the hills, the rivers and lakes, the ocean and the sky, where they occupied parallel worlds.

That, according to those who believe in them, is where they remain today.

Unlike British fairies, which most poets describe as tiny, Irish fairies can be monstrous in size and take many forms. They envy humans and have been said to steal beautiful young women on the eve of their weddings, and beautiful children from cribs, and whisk them off to fairyland. Sometimes they leave “phantom” people, or changelings, in their places. In Ireland, fairies are believed to make their homes in the ancient “ring forts,” built by various invaders. They aren’t to be bargained with or trusted.

Perhaps it is easier to believe in fairies if one lives in a culture drenched with otherworldly lore. Maybe fairies don’t translate to the land of Golden Arches.

Celente, of the Trends Research Institute, doubts fairies will attain the popularity of angels in the United States for another simple reason: Angels are closer to God, or at least Western civilization’s concept of divinity.

“Fairies are in a different league than angels,” he says. “Angels have a higher spiritual connotation, and more of a personal connotation as well. As people say: ‘My angel watches over me.’ Fairies are more synonymous with fairy tales. They’re there, but they’re not real.”