Maps of the world in older times used to fill the blanks of exploration with an array of fantastic creatures, dragons, sea monsters, fierce winged beasts. It appears that the human mind cannot bear very much blankness - where we do not know, we invent, and what we invent reflects our fear of what we do not know. Fairies are born of that fear. The blank spaces on the village map, too, need to be filled; faced with woods and mountains, seas and streams that could never be fully charted, human beings saw blanks which they hastened to fill with a variety of beings all given different names, yet all recognisable as fairies. Our fairies have become utterly benign only now, when electric light and motorways and mobile phones have banished the terror of the lonely countryside.
Diane Purkiss, At The Bottom Of The Garden