This one I painted on my tattoo shop wall...
people.tribe.net/ta2joynt/...09b15d340e
and this one I drew up in pencil afew years ago ..
people.tribe.net/ta2joynt/...944a400fc2

I don't know enough fairies to have a favorite, but I did have a fun encounter this weekend. We took our little family (minus the dog, who spent the weekend with my mother-in-law) over to Victoria for the Highland Games there and spent a little time wandering around the city in the early evenings. As we walked past the Empress Hotel there was a whirlwind playing along the sidewalk. Now I have always understood that whirlwinds are one or more fairies passing by (if not dancing) and thus deserve a greeting of respect (isn't there a scene about it in 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People'?). I pointed it out to my son and taught him to tip his baseball cap, saying 'good-day, sirs!'

As soon as he did so, the whirlwind raced over to us and for about twenty seconds we were completely enveloped in its spinning energy as the wind spun directly around us. It was really exciting and we were both giggling about it for almost half an hour.

gwendolynn, daughter of titania and oberon, who, because of the love of a human, stepped thru, and is now bound to the human cycle of life and death, until she has passed to the point of transformation. it will then be her choice to return to the land of fey she left, or continue being with humans as a helping friend, wearing this fleshly form..

I love Goldberry also! Though Tom Bombadill is fae as well. I like him, too.

One of my favorites is Etain, the beloved of Midir. Somehow, I don't recall, she was only allowed her true shape in the Otherworld, and when she visited any other world, ours included, she had to take the shape of a fly. Well, one day she landed on the cup of the queen of Ireland (or one of Her four kingdoms) who drank the fly down, becoming pregnant. The queen bore a girl and they named her Etain. Later when Etain is a young queen herself, Midir comes to claim her back, restoring her memory of all that had happened to her. She kissed her sons and husband farewell, and returned to the Otherworld with Midir.

Okay, having had a moment to think about it, I'd say that selkies are my favorite 'fairy-folk'. Selkies are the seal folk of Ireland and Scotland.

Yes, on reflection - and parallel to the 'Who's your favorite Celtic God' thread over on Celtic Pagans - I think Aoine is right up there for me. She's pretty standard as faeries go: one story says how she was a human girl who was forced to go look for her father's cattle on Samhain night in a raging storm across one of the Sí mounds and was never seen again, but she pops up right the way back in the Middle Ages, so ...

The reason I like her so much though is because of a story I heard about her at the Celtic Colloquium at Harvard about six years ago. This one student and some of his friends were working on a research project collecting local traditions relating to the many hills in Ireland named Cnoc Aoine (Anne's Hill). These hills had certain practices associated with them to be accomplished on particular days in the year. This involved just going up the hill and reciting a particular poem and such. It so happened that on one of these days (my apologies that I can't be more specific) they thought it would be fun to go up the local Cnoc and say the poem - you know, honor the idea of what they were doing by honoring the old custom (by old I mean seventeenth / eighteenth century).

According to the guy giving the paper at the colloquium, on reciting the poem they were suddenly approached by a woman who, thanking them for appreciating the old custom, asked them to leave immediately. When asked why they should leave, she explained that there was a meeting taking place there and they, the researchers, were not allowed to be there. Expressing confusion at hearing of a meeting taking place on a bare hilltop where they and their strange hostess seemed the only ones present, the researchers were presented with a plain ring (maybe it was iron, I don't really remember) and the woman told them to look through it.

When they looked through the ring they could see crowds of people that were otherwise invisible.

The researchers thanked the woman and left the hill in a hurry ... and that's why I like Aoine. Of all the stories I've read and heard, that one is the closest I've come to having one walk up to me in broad daylight and say "hi, I'm that weirdness you always knew was out there."