'Faeries' by Brian Froud and Alan Lee

As child, my favourite section of Walt Disney's Fantasia was the one with the tiny fairies, because of the seamlessness between their magical world and the 'real' natural world of flowers, leaves, snowflakes, etc. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell rekindled an interest in fairy lore, in tales and rituals concerned with morally ambiguous beings who inhabit the edges of our world. I love Alan Lee's illustrations of Tolkien, and, having noted the book Faeries in a list of his works, I've had a vague desire to get hold of the book for a few years now.

Unbeknownst to me, a copy has been in my mum's possession since the late 1970s, and I came across it on one of her shelves when looking for Christmas reading. And it's wonderful: illustrations that are charming, eerie and beautiful, and stories and a wealth of information on fairy-lore. I learned some things that surprised me - for example, although I was aware that people used to attribute prehistoric flint arrowheads to the fairies, I didn't know that the word 'stroke' for paralysis derives from a belief in seizures caused by the touch of a fairy, or 'Elf-stroke'. And although I've read the Harry Potter series a number of times, and tend to notice which elements of myth and fairytale Rowling draws on, it wasn't until reading Froud and Lee's description of Brownies being insulted by the gift of clothes, that I made the connection between Brownies and House Elves (furthermore I was a Brownie Guide when I was about seven!).

Faeries reminds me how people from not so long ago viewed the world very differently to how we do now. Our ancestors dwelt in a world that was mysterious and unpredictable, shaped by capricious beings whom they sought to propitiate and protect themselves from. My favourite pictures and tales in Faeries are those which emphasis the thin membrane between the human world and the enchanted one, such as fairy islands or or cities under the the surface of a lake.

And those that remind me of the uncanny sense of magic I sometimes gain from the world I live in: in my walks along the River Kelvin near my home in Glasgow I can just imagine coming across a Ghillie Dhu in the birch trees, or a lonely, Gollum-esque Urisk.

I have these words of Roald Dahl's, illustrated by Rima Staines, on the wall of my living room:

The book Faeries will help me to heed them.