Trooping and Solitary Fairies
Yeats divided fairies into the solitary and trooping fairies, as did James Macdougall in Folk Tales and Fairy Lore. Katharine Mary Briggs noted that a third distinction might be needed for "domesticated fairies" who live in human households, but such fairies might join with other fairies for merry-making and fairs.
The trooping fairies contain the aristocracy of the fairy world, including the Irish Daoine Sídhe. They are known as trooping faeries because they travel in long processions, such as the one from which Tam Lin was rescued. But the trooping fairies also include other fairies of lesser importance; a trooping fairy can be large or small, friendly or sinister.
Unlike the trooping fairies, solitary fairies live alone and are inclined to be wicked and malicious creatures, except for beings such as the brownie who is said to help with household chores.
Read more about this topic: Classifications Of Fairies
Famous quotes containing the words solitary and/or fairies:
“He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)