1/3 hello!! i discovered "coffee and faerie cakes" this past weekend and ended up reading the whole story in one afternoon; your characters are absolutely adorable and you did a fantastic job of creating a fluffy, short romance while still working in conflict and plot. the way you introduced and expanded on the fae lore/tales inspired me to restart my old wip (lesbian cinderella w/ a main fae character!), so i was wondering if you could recommend some folk tales/resources about the fair folk?
2/3 i’m curious if the fair folk are referenced as both fae and fey; i first came up with my wip idea years ago and my past self thought she was being super clever by naming her character ‘fey’, so i’m trying to come up with other name ideas too.
Hi! Thank you, that’s so lovely to hear! I’m chuffed you liked it and even happier it’s inspiring you to write ^^
As for the fair folk:
When it comes to lore I like the Scottish, Irish and Welsh fairy tales the best by far. They can be a little hard to find because of the translation issue, but if you search for their original names there’s some really cool stuff to find:
Irish: Aos Sí
Scottish: Aos-sídhe
Welsh: Tylwyth Teg
As far as I can tell this is where most our “faerie laws” come from nowadays. But of course the fair folk exists in folklore all over the place.
The whole fae/fey/fairy/faerie thing is just because of languages changing and people chosing aesthetics. Technically “faery” and “faerie” are archaic English, but nowadays most people like it better than “fairy”. In old French there were the words faie and fae that led to the words fay and fey. Faeries are still called “fée” in French (and in Dutch, without the fancy é).
One difficulty in research is that these words are in use for a whole host of very diverse magical creatures. Some small and harmless, some human-like, some very powerful. But if you want to start your reading somewhere you chould check out some of folklorist D.L. Ashliman’s online collections:
Captured Fairies
Fairy Cup Legends
Fairy Gifts
Fairy Theft
