Dark Faeries to Learn About this Samhain

Hello my lovely readers, as we get closer and closer to the best day of the year, Samhain, I have decided to do a post on dark faeries that would be fun to learn about!   There will be a brief overview of several dark faeries, and I will give readers interested a suggested reading list at the bottom of the post, as usual.

Faeries can be considered to be close to the Greek concept of “daimon” which translates to spirit.   Faeries are spiritual beings that are slightly less powerful than gods.   Of course, in many cultures fae were considered to have previously been gods, or even fallen angels!   

First a brief look are dark faeries from across the world.   Mermaids, in the guise of more deadly variants (like rusulki) are sexy sirens that lead men to their watery doom.   They achieve this by either singing a song, or luring them in with pure sexuality.   Valkyries of Norse culture can be seen as dark due to their connection with collecting the dead from the battlefield!   Djinn, or as they are better known genies, can use their ability to grant wishes to cause mayhem.   They are even known to be quite malevolent in many cases.   The incubus and the succubus are deadly by seducing people of the opposite sex.   This is what can be said to have inspired the term “nightmare” (as they come at night, and are related to this type of sleep demon).   Fuseli’s famous painting, seems to feature an incubus!

In Celtic cultures there were numerous deadly faeries.   The bean nighe (as they were called in Ireland) or the washers at the ford (as they were called in Wales) were haglike old women who were omens of death for warriors going into battle.   If they saw the washer cleaning their own bloody armor they would die in the upcoming battle!   In Brenton myths the korrigans were similar to the Welsh Gwargedd Annwn (literally meaning wives of the Underworld).   Instead of living in lakes they were spring or fountain faeries, and in all cases some were evil and known to kill the men they seduced!   Morgan Le Fay and the Lady of the Lake can seen to be related to these faeries.   Morgan herself is often linked to the idea of dark faeries, even though her origins are very much of a positive nature.   Finally, I have to mention banshees.   Banshees are the female screaming faeries.   Often in Celtic countries, families would have their own banshee who wailed when a member of their own was about to die!   Banshees are some of the most feared faeries, although they do not kill, instead they are sort of like death detectors.

To conclude, I would like to mention that one of my followers here on White Rose of Avalon recently gave me a free copy of her new novel.   It applies to this post because she based the novel heavily on Celtic faerylore!   The book is King of the House Elves by Holly Merry.   I truly enjoyed reading this book, as it was very well researched, and had a well put together story.   I would recommend it to anyone that loves a tale about faeries!

I hope you have enjoyed this post.   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a banshee.   I found the image on https://deadhaussonata.com/project/banshee/.

Further Reading

• King of the House Elves by Holly Merry
• The Faerie Handbook by the Editors of Faerie Magazine
• The Mermaid Handbook by Carolyn Turgeon
• Fairies by Skye Alexander
• Mermaids by Skye Alexander 
• https://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html