Once upon a long time ago, our ancient ancestors told their offspring the stories of the time. It was a form of the "news" and bonding. These stories included tales of war, the history of their culture, and religious views and practices. The stories also included romantic tales of great warriors and the fair maidens that they protected from evil while also upholding the crown. They included fanciful tales woven on the gossamer wings of fairies, dwarves, leprechauns, and trolls. These tales, passed down by verbal recount only, carried fact, faith, hope, and love through the generations that followed. Now no one knows which is fact and which is fiction. It has been proven that some of the tales were not true while archeological and historical studies have shown that some of the stories were in fact, true.
In the Case of the Cottington Fairies, 1917, two English schoolgirls, 16-year-old Elsie Wright and her 10-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths, produced photographs that, at the time, were endorsed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes) as authentic proof that fairies existed. Sixty years later however, the two girls confessed that the photos were a hoax (http://www.randi.org/library/cottingley). Caitlin Matthews (Van Gelder, 1977, 1999) discusses two instances of fairy encounters, which involved clergymen, one Catholic, and one Protestant. Today, the search for the "Lost City of Atlantis" continues based in part, on Zeus's account that the Grand Island existed. (The Learning Channel, episode: Atlantis - The Lost City).
Fairy tales span the globe. The fairies included in the tales vary in shape, color, and size. And in some cases their names vary as well. There are several fairies that contain the same characteristics from nation to nation and culture to culture. (Schorsch, 2000) "People in Africa told the same stories as people in China. People in Briton told the same stories as people in New Zealand" (Jeffies, 1998, p.
