Mythology: Faery Love in Myth and Lore

Forget everything you know about the world of faerie, probably culled from the Disney movies and the stories your mother read to you about the fae. They are not as sweet or as prurient as you might have always thought. In fact, the fae are lusty and well known to seduce, deceive and even rape.

The love and affection side of faeries are complicated. It is not simply a matter of humans falling in love with the fae, either. Sometimes, it is the fae who do the falling in love and they are fairly ruthless about how they do it.

Take for example the story of Finnvarra, who fell in love with the mortal Ethna. Ethna was married and deeply in love with her husband, but the faery Finvarra loved her too, and told her that he would kill her husband if she did not come with him to his bride for the usual year and a day arrangement usually thought of as a fair contract period in the world of magik. She agreed and was a dutiful “wife” to the faery Finvarra, even to submitting to him in bed. When the year and day came to an end, however, Finvarra would not release her and her mortal husband had to come and rescue her and did so by digging into Finnvarra’s “rade” or stronghold and exposing it to the light of day in order for him to get his wife back.

Niamh fell in love with the mortal Oisin. Oisin was taken by Niamh to the Land of Eternal Youth and Beauty and lived there with her for more than a hundred years. But he longed to visit the land of humans and she contrived to keep him with her. SHe enchanted a saddle and placed it on a magikal horse and told him the only way he would survive would be if he stayed on the horse. In his excitement of being back in the land of humans, he jumped down from the horse and as soon as his feet hit mortal soil, he turned into an incredibly old man and then turned to dust.

Finn McCool fell in love with the faery shape shifter named Sive and she went back to her people after the birth of their son, taking him with her. He spent the rest of his life loving her and looking for her and made it illegal to kill deer, his Sive’s go to shift.

And who can forget the legendary faery, Morganna Le Fay, who loved Arthur Pendragon. Though Mallory cast Morganna as the daughter of Cornwall, she actually exists long before the romantic tales of Medieval times in Pagan story telling. Legend has it that she is the ruler of Avalon and when Arthur died his mortal death and was taken to Avalon, Morganna revived him and made him her champion.

Having children with faeries are often a dicey proposition as faeries are not the most successfully fertile of the supernaturals and often replenish their dwindling populations with human children they steal, leaving changelings in their place.

Source: Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee and Faeries and Elves by Time-Life Editors.