While most studies of fairies believe they originated within Celtic mythology, Diane Purkiss makes a case for the harbingers of birth, marriage and death of ancient Greek and Mesopotamian cultures as the dangerous visitors that our idea of fairies grew from. The stillborn ghosts named Kubu, the childless Lamia that turns her loneliness to hunger and the Nymphs who would keep a boy ever young and in (a) paradise if he were to stay with her forever, never living his own life.

Fairies are tricky types to pin down and they next appear in medieval stories then onto two specific cases during the Scottish witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries that continue to carry the weighty power of the taboos that fairies are used describe.