Trooping and Solitary Faeries

In order to classify the faerie characters in the stories, the race is divided up into two groups: the peasantry and the aristocracy; trooping and solitary. It is a distinction that hold good throughout the British Isles, and is indeed valid wherever fairy beliefs are held. The peasantry is made up of the solitary faeries that are believed to have descended from spirits who made up all of nature. Although they had some of the same powers as their more prestigious relatives, i.e. the ability to become invisible and shape-change, they were known to be more wild and capricious. Fortunately, true encounters with mortals were relatively rare, instead their presence were most often announced by evidence of the creatures�?activity. It was believed the bending of the grass, the rustling sounds of tree branches, and the glittering patterns of frost on windows could be attributed to their nearness.

The Faerie aristocracy was very different from their isolated cousins. They were known as trooping faeries because they travelled in long processions. These faeries are believed to be descendents of ancient, vanquished gods. They dwell in underground kingdoms or across the deepest seas.The trooping faycan be large or small, friendly or sinister. They tend to wear green jackets, while the Solitary Faery wear red jackets. They can range from the Heroic Faery to the dangerous and malevolent Sluagh.

In many cultures like those in Scandinavia and Scotland, they subdivided the aristocracy into good and evil. However, there is no distinction between the good and evil faeries in Wales and Ireland. They were called the Tylwyth Teg (Fair Family) and the Daine Side (Dwellers of the Faerie Mounds) respectively. The Irish have the most complete accounts of the trooping faeries hidden within their many songs and folktales.